World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Volume I
World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Volume I A–L Jennifer Durham Bass
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For my husband, Jeff Allen Bass
Table of Contents Volume I List of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, ix Preface, xvii Introduction, xxxi Biographical Profiles A–L, 1 Volume II List of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, ix Biographical Profiles M–Z, 615 Places to Visit, 1071 List of Leaders by Occupation, 1123 Glossary, 1135 Index, 1153 Primary Documents, 1195
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List of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Volume I Aalto, Alvar, 3 Achebe, Chinua, 5 Adams, Ansel Easton, 6 Akhmatova, Anna, 8 Alain-Fournier, 9 Albee, Edward, 11 Allen, Woody, 12 Amis, Kingsley, 15 Andric´, Ivo, 17 Angelou, Maya, 18 Anouilh, Jean, 20 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 21 Arbus, Diane, 24 Armstrong, Louis, 25 Arp, Jean, 28 Ashbery, John, 29 Ashton, Frederick, 31 Astaire, Fred, 33 Asturias, Miguel A´ngel, 35 Auden, W. H., 36 Awoonor, Kofi Nyidevu, 39 Bacon, Francis, 43 Bakst, Le´on, 44 Balanchine, George, 46 Balthus, 47 Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones), 49 Barber, Samuel, 51 Bardot, Brigitte, 53 Barlach, Ernst, 54 Baroja y Nessi, Pı´o, 55 Barrault, Jean-Louis, 57 Barrie, J. M., 58 Barto´k, Be´la, 60 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 62 Basie, Count, 63 Bax, Arnold, 65 Beatles, The, 67 Beauvoir, Simone de, 69 Beckett, Samuel, 71 Beckmann, Max, 74 Beecham, Thomas, 75 Behrens, Peter, 77
Belloc, Hilaire, 78 Bellow, Saul, 80 Bennett, Arnold, 83 Berg, Alban, 85 Bergman, Ingmar, 87 Bergman, Ingrid, 89 Berlin, Irving, 91 Bernstein, Leonard, 93 Betjeman, John, 96 Bing, Rudolf, 97 Blackburn, Thomas, 99 Blackwood, Algernon, 100 Blais, Marie-Claire, 101 Blake, James Hubert “Eubie”, 103 Blasco Iba´n˜ez, Vicente, 104 Bliss, Arthur, 106 Blitzstein, Marc, 108 Blok, Alexander, 109 Boccioni, Umberto, 111 Bonham, John Henry, 587 Bonnard, Pierre, 113 Borges, Jorge Luis, 114 Boulez, Pierre, 116 Bourdelle, E´mile-Antoine, 118 Bowen, Elizabeth, 119 Brancusi, Constantin, 120 Brando, Marlon, 122 Braque, Georges, 125 Brecht, Bertolt, 127 Brendel, Alfred, 129 Breton, Andre´ Robert, 130 Britten, Benjamin, 131 Brodsky, Joseph, 134 Brook, Peter, 135 Brooke, Rupert, 137 Bunin, Ivan, 138 Bun˜uel, Luis, 140 Burgess, Anthony, 142 Burton, Richard, 143 Caballe´, Montserrat, 149 Calder, Alexander, 150 Calvino, Italo, 152 Camus, Albert, 154 Capote, Truman, 156
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WORLD CULTURAL LEADERS
Capra, Frank, 158 Caro, Sir Anthony, 160 Carreras, Jose´, 161 Carson, Johnny, 162 Caruso, Enrico, 164 Cary, Joyce, 166 Casadesus, Robert, 167 Casals, Pablo, 168 Cash, Johnny, 170 Cavafy, Constantine, 175 Cela, Camilo Jose´, 176 Celan, Paul, 177 Chagall, Marc, 179 Chaliapin, Feodor, 181 Chaplin, Sir Charles Spencer, 183 Chesterton, G. K., 186 Chevalier, Maurice, 187 Chillida, Eduardo, 190 Chirico, Giorgio de, 191 Christie, Agatha, 192 Clair, Rene´, 194 Clark, John Pepper, 196 Cocteau, Jean, 197 Colette, 199 Compton-Burnett, Ivy, 202 Conrad, Joseph, 203 Contanten, Tom, 409 Copland, Aaron, 205 Coppola, Francis Ford, 207 Corta´zar, Julio, 209 Coward, Noe¨l, 210 Craig, Gordon, 212 Cranko, John, 215 Crosby, Bing, 216 Cugat, Xavier, 218 Cusack, Cyril, 219 Dahl, Roald, 223 Dalı´, Salvador, 225 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 226 Day-Lewis, C., 228 De la Mare, Walter, 230 de Mille, Agnes, 231 De Sica, Vittorio, 233 Debussy, Claude, 234 Deighton, Len, 236 Delaunay, Robert, 237 Delaunay, Sonia, 238 Delius, Frederick, 240
Delvaux, Paul, 241 DeMille, Cecil B., 242 Denis, Maurice, 243 Dennis, Nigel, 245 Derain, Andre´, 246 Diaghilev, Sergei, 247 Diddley, Bo, 249 Dietrich, Marlene, 251 Dinesen, Isak, 253 Dolmetsch, Arnold, 254 Domingo, Pla´cido, 256 Douglas, Keith, 257 Douglas, Norman, 258 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 260 Du Maurier, Daphne, 262 Dubuffet, Jean, 264 Duchamp, Marcel, 265 Duchamp-Villon, Raymond, 267 Dufy, Raoul, 267 Durrell, Lawrence, 269 Du¨rrenmatt, Friedrich, 271 Dylan, Bob, 273 Eames, Charles, 281 Eames, Ray, 281 Eastwood, Clinton, 282 Eco, Umberto, 284 Eisenstein, Sergei, 286 Elgar, Edward, 288 Eliot, T. S., 290 Ellington, Duke, 293 E´luard, Paul, 295 Ernst, Max, 296 Evans, Edith, 298 Evans, Geraint, 299 Falla, Manuel de, 303 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 304 Faulkner, William Cuthbert, 305 Fellini, Federico, 307 Ferrier, Kathleen, 309 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 310 Ffrangcon-Davies, Gwen, 312 Fields, Gracie, 313 Firbank, Ronald, 314 Fitzgerald, Ella, 315 Fleming, Ian, 318 Fo, Dario, 319 Fokine, Michel, 321 Fonteyn, Margot, 323
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WORLD CULTURAL LEADERS
Ford, Ford Madox, 324 Forman, Milosˇ, 325 Forster, E. M., 327 Fowles, John, 328 France, Anatole, 330 Franklin, Aretha Louise, 332 Friel, Brian, 334 Frost, Robert, 336 Fry, Christopher, 339 Fuentes, Carlos, 341 Fugard, Athol, 342 Fuller, Roy, 344 Furtwa¨ngler, Wilhelm, 345 Gabin, Jean, 351 Gable, William Clark, 352 Galsworthy, John, 354 Gance, Abel, 356 Garcı´a Lorca, Federico, 357 Garcı´a Ma´rquez, Gabriel, 359 Garcia, Jerry, 409 Garland, Judy, 361 Garnett, David, 363 Gehry, Frank, 364 Genet, Jean, 368 Gershwin, George, 365 Giacometti, Alberto, 369 Gide, Andre´, 372 Gielgud, John, 374 Gill, Eric, 375 Gillespie, Dizzy, 377 Ginsberg, Allen, 379 Giraudoux, Jean, 382 Glass, Philip, 384 Godard, Jean-Luc, 385 Godchaux, Donna, 409 Godchaux, Keith, 409 Golding, William, 387 Goldwyn, Samuel, 389 Goodman, Benjamin David, 391 Gordimer, Nadine, 393 Gorky, Maxim, 395 Graham, Bill, 397 Graham, Martha, 399 Grahame, Kenneth, 401 Grant, Duncan, 403 Granville-Barker, Harley, 405 Grass, Gu¨nter, 406 Grateful Dead, The, 409
Graves, Robert, 412 Greene, Graham, 413 Grierson, John, 415 Gris, Juan, 417 Gropius, Walter, 418 Grosz, George, 420 Guilbert, Yvette, 422 Guille´n, Jorge, 422 Guinness, Sir Alec, 424 Guthrie, Tyrone, 426 Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson, 428 Harrison, George, 67 Harrison, Rex, 435 Hart, Lorenz Milton, 436 Hart, Mickey, 409 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 438 Havel, Va´clav, 440 Head, Bessie, 441 Heaney, Seamus, 442 He´lion, Jean, 445 Hellman, Lillian Florence, 446 Helpmann, Robert, 448 Hemingway, Ernest Miller, 449 Hendrix, James Marshall, 452 Henze, Hans Werner, 455 Hepburn, Katharine Houghton, 457 Hepworth, Barbara, 459 Hesse, Hermann, 461 Heston, Charlton, 463 Hindemith, Paul, 465 Hitchcock, Alfred, 468 Hockney, David, 470 Hoffmann, Josef, 472 Hofmann, Hans, 473 Holiday, Billie, 474 Holst, Gustav, 476 Horta, Victor, 478 Housman, A. E., 479 Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald, 481 Hughes, Howard, 484 Hughes, Ted, 486 Hunter, Robert, 409 Huxley, Aldous, 487 Ionesco, Euge`ne, 493 Ivens, Joris, 494 Ives, Charles Edward, 495 Jacobsen, Arne, 499 Jacobson, Dan, 500
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WORLD CULTURAL LEADERS
Jagger, Mick, 828 Jennings, Elizabeth, 502 Jime´nez, Juan Ramo´n, 503 John, Augustus, 504 John, Gwen, 506 Johns, Jasper, 507 Johnson, Philip, 508 Johnson, Robert Leroy, 511 Jones, Brian, 828 Jones, John Paul, 587 Jooss, Kurt, 512 Joyce, James, 513 Kafka, Franz, 519 Kahlo, Frida, 520 Kahn, Louis I., 522 Kandinsky, Wassily, 524 Karajan, Herbert von, 525 Karsavina, Tamara, 527 Kazan, Elia, 529 Kern, Jerome David, 530 Kerouac, Jack, 532 Kesey, Kenneth Elton, 535 Kiefer, Anselm, 537 King, B. B., 538 King, Stephen, 541 Kipling, Rudyard, 544 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 546 Klee, Paul, 548 Klimt, Gustav, 550 Kline, Franz, 551 Kokoschka, Oskar, 552 Kollwitz, Ka¨the, 554 Korda, Alexander, 555 Koussevitzky, Serge, 556 Kraus, Karl, 558 Kreutzmann, Bill, 409 Kubrick, Stanley, 559 Kundera, Milan, 562 Kurosawa, Akira, 563 Kushner, Tony, 566 Larkin, Philip, 571 Lawrence, D. H., 572 Laxness, Halldo´r, 574 Laye, Camara, 576 Le Carre´, John, 578 Le Corbusier, 579 Lean, David, 582 Leary, Timothy Francis, 584
Led Zeppelin, 587 Le´ger, Fernand, 589 Lehmann, Rosamond, 590 Lehmbruck, Wilhelm, 592 Leigh, Mike, 593 Leighton, Margaret, 594 Leinsdorf, Erich, 596 Lennon, John Winston, 67 Lesh, Phil, 409 Lessing, Doris, 598 Levi, Carlo, 600 Lewis, C. S., 601 Lewis, Wyndham, 604 Liebermann, Max, 605 Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 606 Loos, Adolf, 607 Lowry, Malcolm, 609 Lucas, George Walton, 610 Lutyens, Edwin, 612
Volume II Machado, Antonio, 617 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, 618 MacNeice, Louis, 619 Maderna, Bruno, 620 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 622 Magritte, Rene´, 624 Mailer, Norman Kingsley, 626 Maillol, Aristide, 625 Malevich, Kazimir, 628 Malle, Louis, 630 Mandelstam, Osip, 631 Mann, Thomas, 633 Manning, Olivia, 634 Mansfield, Katherine, 636 Manzu`, Giacomo, 637 Marc, Franz, 639 Marinetti, F. T., 640 Marini, Marino, 642 Markova, Alicia, 643 Marx, Adolph (Harpo), 645 Marx Brothers, The, 645 Marx, Herbert (Zeppo), 645 Marx, Julius Henry (Groucho), 645 Marx, Leonard (Chico), 645 Marx, Milton (Gummo), 645 Mason, James, 647 Massine, Le´onide, 649
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WORLD CULTURAL LEADERS
Matisse, Henri, 651 Maugham, Somerset, 652 McCartney, James Paul, 67 McKernan, Ron “Pigpen”, 409 McNally, Terrence, 654 Mendelsohn, Erich, 656 Messiaen, Olivier, 657 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 659 Milhaud, Darius, 660 Miller, Arthur Asher, 662 Miller, Henry, 664 Milles, Carl, 666 Mingus, Charles, 668 Miro´, Joan, 670 Mistral, Gabriela, 672 Mitchell, Joni, 673 Modigliani, Amedeo, 676 Moholy-Nagy, La´szlo´, 678 Molna´r, Ferenc, 680 Mondrian, Piet, 682 Monet, Claude, 683 Monk, Thelonious Sphere, 685 Moore, George, 687 Moore, Henry, 689 Morandi, Giorgio, 691 Moravia, Alberto, 692 Moreau, Jeanne, 693 Morley, Robert, 695 Morris, Mark, 696 Munch, Edvard, 697 Murrow, Edward R., 699 Mydland, Brent, 409 Naipaul, V. S., 707 Neruda, Pablo, 708 Neutra, Richard, 710 Newman, Paul Leonard, 711 Nicholson, Ben, 713 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 714 Nin, Anaı¨s, 716 Nolan, Sidney, 717 Nolde, Emil, 719 Nureyev, Rudolf, 720 O’Casey, Sean, 725 Oe, Kenzaburo, 726 O’Faolain, Sean, 728 O’Keeffe, Georgia Totto, 729 Okigbo, Christopher, 731 Olivier, Laurence, 732
O’Neill, Eugene Gladstone, 734 Orff, Carl, 736 Orton, Joe, 737 Orwell, George, 738 Osborne, John, 740 O’Toole, Peter, 741 Owen, Wilfred, 743 Oz, Amos, 745 Page, James Patrick, 587 Pagnol, Marcel, 749 Pascin, Jules, 750 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 752 Pasternak, Boris, 753 Paton, Alan, 755 Pavarotti, Luciano, 756 Pavlova, Anna, 758 Paz, Octavio, 759 Peck, Gregory, 761 Perse, Saint-John, 763 Petit, Roland, 764 Picasso, Pablo, 765 Pinter, Harold, 767 Plant, Robert, 587 Plath, Sylvia, 769 Poitier, Sidney, 771 Pollock, Paul Jackson, 773 Ponnelle, Jean-Pierre, 774 Porter, Cole Albert, 775 Poulenc, Francis, 777 Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis, 780 Powell, Anthony, 782 Presley, Elvis Aaron, 784 Priestley, J. B., 788 Prokofiev, Sergei, 790 Proust, Marcel, 793 Puccini, Giacomo, 794 Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 799 Rampal, Jean-Pierre, 800 Ransome, Arthur, 802 Rattigan, Terence, 804 Ravel, Maurice, 805 Redgrave, Michael, 807 Reed, Carol, 809 Remarque, Erich Maria, 810 Renoir, Jean, 812 Richards, Keith, 828 Richardson, Henry Handel, 813 Richardson, Ralph, 814
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WORLD CULTURAL LEADERS
Richter, Sviatoslav, 816 Rietveld, Gerrit, 817 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 818 Rivera, Diego, 820 Robbins, Jerome, 822 Rockwell, Norman Percevel, 823 Rodgers, Richard Charles, 826 Rolling Stones, The, 828 Rorem, Ned, 830 Rossellini, Roberto, 832 Rostropovich, Mstislav, 833 Roth, Philip Milton, 834 Rothko, Mark, 836 Rouault, Georges, 838 Rowling, J. K., 839 Rubinstein, Arthur, 841 Rulfo, Juan Perez, 843 Sandburg, Carl, 847 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 848 Sassoon, Siegfried, 850 Satie, Erik, 852 Schiele, Egon, 853 Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl, 854 Schnabel, Artur, 855 Schnitzler, Arthur, 857 Schoenberg, Arnold, 858 Schulz, Charles Monroe, 861 Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth, 863 Schwitters, Kurt, 865 Scorsese, Martin, 866 Seferis, George, 868 Selznick, David O., 869 Sendak, Maurice, 871 Senghor, Le´opold Se´dar, 873 Serling, Rod, 874 Shaw, George Bernard, 875 Shostakovich, Dmitry, 878 Sibelius, Jean, 879 Sickert, Walter, 881 Sillitoe, Alan, 882 Simon, Marvin Neil, 883 Sinatra, Francis Albert, 886 Sitwell, Edith, 890 Solti, Georg, 893 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 894 Sondheim, Stephen Joshua, 896 Soyinka, Wole, 898 Spark, Muriel, 900
Spencer, Stanley, 902 Spender, Stephen, 903 Spielberg, Steven Allan, 905 Springsteen, Bruce, 908 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 911 Starr, Ringo, 67 Stephens, James, 913 Stern, Isaac, 914 Sternberg, Josef von, 916 Stewart, James Maitland, 917 Stieglitz, Alfred, 920 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 921 Stoppard, Tom, 923 Strauss, Richard, 925 Stravinsky, Igor, 927 Streep, Meryl, 929 Sullivan, Edward Vincent, 931 Sutherland, Dame Joan, 934 Sutherland, Graham, 932 Sydow, Max von, 936 Symons, Arthur, 937 Synge, John Millington, 938 Tagore, Rabindranath, 943 Tamayo, Rufino, 945 Ta`pies, Antoni, 946 Tarkovsky, Andrei, 947 Tatlin, Vladimir, 949 Taylor, Mick, 828 Te Kanawa, Kiri, 950 Tebaldi, Renata, 952 Teyte, Maggie, 953 Tharp, Twyla, 954 Thomas, Dylan, 955 Thompson, Hunter Stockton, 957 Thorndike, Sybil, 960 Tinguely, Jean, 961 Tippett, Michael, 962 Tolkien, J. R. R., 964 Toller, Ernst, 966 Toscanini, Arturo, 968 Trudeau, Garretson Beekman, 969 Truffaut, Franc¸ois, 971 Unamuno, Miguel de, 975 Vale´ry, Paul, 979 Valle´-Incla´n, Ramo´n del, 980 Vallejo, Ce´sar, 982 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 983 Vaughan, Sarah Lois, 984
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WORLD CULTURAL LEADERS
Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 987 Velde, Henry van de, 989 Vidal, Gore, 990 Vigo, Jean, 992 Villon, Jacques, 993 Visconti, Luchino, 995 Vlaminck, Maurice de, 996 Vuillard, E´douard, 997 Wain, John, 1001 Walcott, Derek, 1002 Waller, Fats, 1004 Walpole, Hugh, 1006 Walter, Bruno, 1008 Walton, William, 1009 Warhol, Andy, 1011 Warner, Rex, 1014 Waters, Muddy, 1015 Watts, Charlie, 828 Waugh, Evelyn, 1018 Webern, Anton von, 1020 Weill, Kurt, 1021 Weir, Bob, 409 Welch, Denton, 1023
Wells, H. G., 1024 Welnick, Vince, 409 Werfel, Franz, 1026 White, Patrick, 1028 White, T. H., 1029 Wigman, Mary, 1031 Wilder, Thornton Niven, 1031 Williams, Hank, 1034 Williams, Tennessee, 1036 Wilson, August, 1039 Winfrey, Oprah Gail, 1041 Wolfe, Thomas, 1042 Wolfe, Tom, 1044 Wood, Ron, 828 Woolf, Virginia, 1046 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1047 Wyman, Bill, 828 Yeats, William Butler, 1053 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 1055 Young, Neil, 1056 Zangwill, Israel, 1063 Zeffirelli, Franco, 1065 Zukerman, Pinchas, 1066
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Preface The second edition of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries has been significantly expanded in both scope and size. This first Grey House Publishing edition includes American cultural leaders not included in the first edition due to a sister publication, American Cultural Leaders, by previous publisher ABC-CLIO. Dynamic new additions include a Special Section on 100 selected cultural leaders, new fold-out Timelines of Major Cultural Events, and reprints of current articles on cultural events and trends. These new features are designed to offer insights into the people and events that shaped – and continue to shape – world culture. The Introduction that follows this Preface details the content and arrangement of the two volumes of this major work. The term “cultural leader” encompasses many aspects of the arts. This Preface provides insights into how these various aspects of the cultural landscape have changed over the past 100 years or so. You’ll find 14 categories that introduce the major fields of contribution covered in this edition—acting, architecture, classical music, dance, film, painting, photography, poetry, popular music, promotion, sculpture, television, theater, and writing.
ACTING The most famous British actors of the early 20th century are still fondly remembered today. George Bernard Shaw’s plays showcased some of England’s most renowned actors and actresses, such as Sybil Thorndike. No¨el Coward was a central figure in British comedy and was noted for his satiric portrayals of the British upper classes. John Gielgud was wellknown for his portrayals of Shakespearean characters. Laurence Olivier, Margaret Leighton, Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Gracie Fields, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, James Mason, Robert Morley, Cyril Cusack, and oth-
er international film personalities started their acting careers on the British stage. From Sweden came the actor Max von Sydow, best known for his collaborations with director Ingmar Bergman, and the actress Ingrid Bergman, who became an international film star. France produced the mime and actor Jean-Louis Barrault, as well as the popular cinema stars Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Bardot, and Maurice Chevalier. Germany’s Marlene Dietrich started out on German and Austrian stages and made a name for herself in America’s Hollywood. As well as performing with the USO during World War Two. During the twentieth century, Hollywood produced so many influential actors that it would be impossible to name them all in this edition. American cinema stars often began their careers on the Broadway stage before acquiring Hollywood film roles. Fred Astaire charmed audiences with his appearances as a dancer, singer, and actor in musicals, and Judy Garland was another favorite in film musicals. Both Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers were known for their unique brands of slapstick comedy and satire. Hollywood produced its share of independent-minded and iconic acting personalities during the twentieth century, including Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood, and Paul Newman. Charlton Heston gained fame for his heroic portrayals in epic films such as The Ten Commandments, as well as his spokesmanship for the National Rifle Association. Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, and later Meryl Streep were among many prolific and enormously popular stars on the Hollywood screen. Sidney Poitier opened doors for African-American actors both in Hollywood and onstage.
ARCHITECTURE “Functionality,” whether in its purest form or combined with decorative elements, was the key principle in early twentieth century
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PREFACE
architecture. The American Frank Lloyd Wright was undoubtedly the era’s most influential architect. He changed the world of Architecture not only in terms of style, but with innovative new building materials and building concepts. With the publication of his Wasmuth Portfolio in Berlin during his European travels in 1910, Wright introduced principles of functional architecture that would contribute to the rise of the influential Bauhaus and International Style movements in Europe. Working in the early twentieth century, the architects Josef Hoffman, Baron Victor Horta, Henry van de Velde, Adolf Loos, and others also anticipated the development of the International Style by combining functionality with the decorative elements of the Art Nouveau movement. Walter Gropius, the chief theorist behind the purely functional International Style that rejected all decorative elements in architecture, founded the Bauhaus school in 1919, which served as a training ground for such figures as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, creator of the modern skyscraper. Peter Behrens applied the International Style to industrial design, and Le Corbusier was best known for his application of the International Style to city planning and public buildings. Although he eventually rejected the movement, the American architect Philip Johnson was an early proponent of the International Style and introduced the European movement to American architecture through his 1932 book The International Style and through his collaborative work with Mies van der Rohe. Its popularity is partially due to the Great Depression, when aesthetic excess was seen as wasteful. Richard Neutra, an Austrian-American architect, studied under Adolf Loos and worked for Wright before branching off on his own to design architectural projects highly customized to his clients desires. Influenced by Wright, the American husband and wife team of Charles and Ray Eames worked to develop aesthetically pleasing and comfortable mass-produced furniture, while Frank Gehry offered bold and flamboy-
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ant designs that still retained functionality. The Estonian-born American architect Louis Kahn created his own designs derived from the International Style in the latter half of the twentieth century. Not all twentieth-century architects, however, accepted the International Style. While it influenced the work of Finland’s Alvar Aalto, he retained an expressive functionality in his designs. The Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh favored simplicity in his designs for private homes but rejected the severity of the International Style. In England, Edwin Lutyens spurned the International Style altogether, seeking to retain a traditional look in his gabled dwellings. He also designed many of the important buildings of New Delhi, the capital of India, while it was still a British possession.
CLASSICAL MUSIC A major strand in the development of twentieth-century classical music (“classical” being used in its broadest terms) was the departure from traditional tonality. Arnold Schoenberg led the field with his discordant twelvetone system, in which compositions are formed from a row of twelve tones in the chromatic scale. The twelve-tone system was further explored by his pupils Alban Berg and Anton von Webern. Russia’s Igor Stravinsky explored Neoclassical idioms before turning to twelve-tone music in his later career and was also one of the major forces in twentiethcentury music. Noted Russian composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Shostakovich produced many works for the Soviet Union, including an opera version of War and Peace. Another prominent movement in the 20th century music is represented by the composers who sought to preserve their respective native folk traditions in their work. The folk songs Be´la Barto´k collected during his extensive travels around his native Hungary figured prominently in his music, as did Andalusian folk tradition in the work of Spain’s most
PREFACE
prominent composer of the twentieth century, Manuel de Falla. Britain produced a series of influential composers that began with Edward Elgar, a composer in the late Romantic style, in the early part of the century. Benjamin Britten, William Walton, and Ralph Vaughan Williams continued the British tradition later in the century. France and Germany contributed a number of experimental figures in music. The work of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel has been described as “musical impressionism.” Darius Milhaud composed a large body of polytonal music, while both Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen conducted extensive experiments with serialism (in which musical elements are arranged without regard for tonality) and electronic music. They attempted to look at music mathematically, seeing harmony and pleasant sound as equations to be solved. Bruno Maderna was another major factor, blending classical symphonies with new electronic music. The work of France’s Olivier Messiaen was equally experimental but more eccentric, employing such diverse sounds as Gregorian chant and birdsong. Erik Satie, famous for his use of bizarre sounds like typewriters and sirens and for such instructions as to play “light as an egg,” was another central figure in experimental composition. Before he turned to writing Broadway musicals, Germany’s Kurt Weill composed music that went hand in hand with the “epic theater” embraced by the playwright Bertolt Brecht. In the United States, Aaron Copland was perhaps the twentieth century’s most influential composer, and his work opened the door for other American composers in a field traditionally dominated by Europeans. Working toward a uniquely American style, Copland drew from both modern and classical music, as well as the folk traditions of American and other cultures to form a distinct idiom that earned him the nickname “the dean of American composers.”
Philip Glass and Charles Ives, who combined modern composition with the church music of his youth, advance the notion of modern music in America. Glass infused his operas, ballets, and other original compositions with highly experimental natures influenced by Eastern music (inspired by his meeting with famous Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar and later a transcription of one of his works), the work of other avant-garde composers, and experimental theatrical figures such as Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett. Although the twentieth century was essentially a time of experimentation in music, some musicians and composers aimed their work at preserving older traditions or preferred to compose tonal music. With his operas and symphonic poems, drawing from the tradition of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss continued the late Romantic style of the nineteenth century into the twentieth and was one of the century’s most dominant figures in opera, despite his association with the Nazi Party. Arnold Dolmetsch devoted his career to revitalizing ancient English music through reconstruction of old instruments and performances of traditional song. In the United States, Samuel Barber composed tonal works along traditional lines, as did Ned Rorem, who wrote “art songs” as well as symphonies, operas, piano concertos, and other works. The collective works of the twentieth century’s composers spawned the careers of many noteworthy performers and conductors. Mstislav Rostropovich and Pablo Casals were the twentieth century’s most renowned cellists, while the Ukrainian-American Isaac Stern excelled in the violin. The Russian Sergei Rachmaninoff, the Polish American Arthur Rubinstein, and the Ukrainian Sviatoslav Richter rank among the century’s finest pianists, and France’s Jean-Pierre Rampal earned worldwide fame as a flautist. A number of conductors were highly influential in popularizing both composers and performers. Britain’s witty and colorful Thomas Beecham championed the music of Frederick Delius and helped popularize that
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composer’s work in the United Kingdom. Many performers appeared under the precise baton of Arturo Toscanini and in the ebullient interpretations of Wilhelm Fu¨rtwangler. The Russian-American Serge Koussevitzky was instrumental in popularizing the works of American, French, and Russian composers during his tenure at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Other noted conductors of the twentieth century include Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, and Bruno Walter, who was best known for his interpretations of the works of Gustav Mahler. Leonard Bernstein was as famous as the longtime conductor of the New York Philharmonic as he was for his own compositions, and he was the first American conductor to gain worldwide acclaim, paving the way for other conductors from the United States to work in Europe. The American Aaron Copland, though most famous for his compositions, conducted extensively during the 1950s and 1960s.
DANCE The twentieth century’s best-known choreographers showcased their work through Sergey Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Michel Fokine was Diaghilev’s chief choreographer from 1909 to 1914, during which time he created such standards as Petrushka and Le Carnaval. Le´onide Massine and George Balanchine, the latter of whom worked with Diaghilev during the company’s final years, also got their starts as choreographers for the Ballets Russes. In addition to dancers and choreographers, Diaghilev enlisted the talents of avantgarde painters and composers. Le´on Bakst contributed lavish set and costume designs to many of his productions. Pablo Picasso, Maurice Ravel, and Claude Debussy are among many others who contributed ballet scores, costume designs, and scenery to Ballets Russes productions. After the demise of the original Ballets Russes following Diaghilev’s death in the late 1920s, Britain produced a number of notewor-
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thy figures in dance. Central among them was Frederick Ashton, chief choreographer for the Royal Ballet from 1933 to 1970. The delicate Alicia Markova (who started her career with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes), and later Margot Fonteyn—the celebrated partner of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev for a decade and a half—were two figures who emerged from the British ballet tradition and gained international acclaim. As a dancer and choreographer, Robert Helpmann brought dramatic creations to British and Australian ballet. The popular and athletic Mikhail Baryshnikov continued the Russian tradition for world audiences in the latter half of the century, dancing with the Kirov Ballet from 1966 to 1974, when he defected to the West. Roland Petit was a central figure in French ballet in the second half of the century, bringing a blend of classical ballet, fantasy, and modern dance to international audiences. Two figures were central to the development of modern, expressionistic dance—the choreographerdancers Mary Wigman and Kurt Jooss. In the United States, choreographer Martha Graham helmed an internationally respected dance company amid ill-defined American traditions that constituted American dance in the early twentieth century. Dancer-choreographers Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Mark Morris, and Twyla Tharp carried on the American modern ballet tradition.
FILM The era of cinema began in the early 1900s with the advent of silent film. The first actual piece of film ever produced was made in 1888, but it was not until 1927 that the first commercial picture with sound was produced. France’s Abel Gance was an early pioneer of silent movies, still remembered for his masterpiece Napolean. The Soviet director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein flourished during the Stalinist years and was responsible for introducing “the montage of film attractions” as well as many other technical innovations that heavily influenced the development of
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filmmaking throughout the world. Italian film had a strong tradition in the work of the Neorealists, a post–World War II movement led by Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti that employed improvisation and an informal approach to filming. The work of Federico Fellini, creator of such films as 8½ and La Dolce Vita, had its roots in the Neorealist tradition, as did the films of French New Wave directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Franc¸ois Truffaut in the 1950s. Louis Malle, although not associated with the French New Wave, emerged as a director in France during the same period and made the career of the famed French actress Jeanne Moreau. In Sweden Ingmar Bergman directed a series of philosophical films that included The Seventh Seal, and his films were responsible for launching the career of actor Max von Sydow. After contributing to the development of film in his native Hungary and working in Europe and the United States, Alexander Korda settled in England and founded London Film Productions in 1931. Two years later Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII marked the beginning of a long series of films that employed international acting talents. British film continued to set standards throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Carol Reed and David Lean were two of its most prominent directors, the latter directing such successful epic films as Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia. More recently, Mike Leigh’s satire of British middle-class life in his films Naked and Secrets and Lies gained him international acclaim. With the release of Drunken Angel in 1948, Akira Kurosawa brought Japanese film to international audiences. His film Seven Samurai is considered one of the best pieces of cinema of all time. In the post–World War II era, Rainer Werner Fassbinder probed postwar middle-class German society. Spain’s Luis Bun˜uel introduced Surrealism in a number of highly controversial films during the second half of the century. His criticism of the Catholic Church earned him many enemies, but today he is considered one of the most impor-
tant directors in the history of film. In the 1930s director Josef von Sternberg began a series of films that propelled actress Marlene Dietrich to international stardom, including Morocco and The Devil is a Woman. He typified the personal artistic vision of a director that we now know as the Auteur style. It was the Hollywood studios of the United States, however, that made the strongest international mark on filmmaking. Cecil B. DeMille was a prolific director during the early Hollywood era, and among his noted films are two productions of The Ten Commandments (1923 and 1956). Elia Kazan started out as a Broadway theater director before moving to films based on social criticism, such as the Oscar winner On the Waterfront and the Oscar nominated A Streetcar Named Desire. His dark and at times depressing style contrasted sharply with the optimistic and idealistic films of Frank Capra, typified by Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Francis Ford Coppola was the noted director of the famous Godfather trilogy and was known for other lavish screen productions that earned him five Academy Awards. Martin Scorsese approached his films with similar attention to detail, but Coppola’s work, especially in his later years, catered more to mainstream tastes than did Scorsese’s. The Britishborn director Alfred Hitchcock became famous in Hollywood for his mystery thrillers, of which he produced more than 50 during his career. Directors such as Milosˇ Forman, Stanley Kubrick, and Woody Allen concentrated on more artistic and experimental efforts. Kubrick in particular created films that exposed the darker side of humanity, with his films Lolita, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, and Clockwork Orange showing a violence and perversity that were new to the screen at that time. The director George Lucas, famous for his Star Wars epics, was a highly successful innovator of Hollywood special effects, pioneering many of the techniques used today. The honor of the highest-grossing film director and producer of all time belongs to Steven Spielberg,
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director of such popular classics as Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park. The eccentric Howard Hughes, the independent Samuel Goldwyn, and the prolific David O. Selznick were among Hollywood’s other noteworthy film producers of the twentieth century. Finally, two figures in particular did significant work in the realm of documentary filmmaking. Britain’s John Grierson coined the term documentary in the 1920s, to mean filming life as it is, and was involved in many documentary projects during his lifetime. The Dutch director Joris Ivens worked in the Netherlands, the United States, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, creating documentaries that addressed social conditions from a leftwing perspective.
PAINTING Twentieth-century painting was dominated by “-isms” marking countless abstract or semiabstract experimental styles that flourished most forcefully in Germany, France, and Spain. The avant-guard of the painting world was always one step ahead of critics of the time, and many styles that were universally despised by the art establishment when they arose are now considered important classics. Henri Matisse led a group of painters disparagingly dubbed the “Fauves” (wild beasts) by a critic who objected to their use of bold, striking color. Analytical and Synthetic Cubism developed through the experimentation of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque beginning in 1908 and was a major influence on the subsequent development of abstract painting. Led by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, the German Expressionists flourished during the same period in that country. Circles of Expressionist painters such as The Bridge and The Blue Rider included Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, and others. Although a diverse group whose paths would soon diverge, the Expressionists shared a dislike for academic painting and a preference
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for bold color and distorted, sometimes abstract forms. Spain’s Salvador Dalı´ led the Surrealist movement in painting, crafting bizarre, dreamlike juxtapositions of objects and themes. Also to emerge from Germany were Ka¨the Kollwitz and George Grosz who used their art to further strong left-wing political and social beliefs. In England, Francis Bacon painted distorted, grotesque figures in violent color. The brother and sister Augustus and Gwen John carried on the tradition of portraiture in that country, the former producing many portraits of well-known figures of his day and the latter known for her depictions of women. Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko were major figures in American Abstract Expressionism, which employed the free use of abstract forms and intense, spontaneous emotion conveyed through the use of bold color, thick paint, and other techniques. While many artists feel that Pollock changed painting forever with his new style, he was derided by some critics at the time, and his works were famously called “decorative wallpaper” by critic Craig Brown. Figures like Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol promoted Pop art, which presented everyday objects (such as, in Warhol’s case, Campbell’s soup cans) in unordinary contexts in the middle part of the century. Warhol’s work in particular promoted mass production, both in the subjects he chose to portray and in the creation of his art itself. His art was more of a comment on the state of the art community and the effect of fame than it was actual painting. Georgia O’Keeffe blended abstraction with realism, making familiar objects seem otherworldly. Norman Rockwell painted sentimental, nostalgic, and idealized portraits of everyday scenes in middle-class American life.
PHOTOGRAPHY Three American photographers, Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, and Alfred Stieglitz, left
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a lasting impact on the field of captured images. Adams, known for his clarity and precision, gained fame for his sweeping landscapes at Yosemite Valley, and he also authored a number of technical books on photography. Arbus photographed more experimental subject matter—figures outside of mainstream society such as people with physical abnormalities, bag ladies, and cross-dressers. Stieglitz, who was married to the painter Georgia O’Keeffe, was an avid proponent of raising the status of photography to an art form and often photographed city scenes as well as portraits of his wife. He felt that the photographer was just as much an artist as the painter, and that stylistic elements, such as aperture, angle, exposure and choice of film could all add deep meaning to a photo.
POETRY Britain enjoyed a strong tradition of poetry during the twentieth century, which began with a group of antiwar poets during the World War I era. Of the three of these treated in this volume—Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Rupert Brooke—only Sassoon survived the war. Like much of western culture, their work was profoundly affected by the horrific brutality of the War, and his poetry criticized the senselessness of trench warfare. Although he was cited for bravery many times and had a reputation as an effective commander, Sassoon refused to return to the front after witnessing the death of his friend. Wilfred Owen, an ardent admirer of Sassoon, wrote poems describing in sickening detail exactly what life was like on a modern battlefield. He was killed in action only a week before the War’s end. Another generation of politically oriented poets arose in the 1930s, to which four figures were central. The four— Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, W. H. Auden, and C. Day-Lewis—were dubbed “MacSpauday” by their critics. They represented an opposition to authoritarianism, which they saw in both fascism and communism. Most in-
fluential, however, were the American-born poets Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, pioneers in modern verse and experimentation in style. Their poems continue to influence modern style, and they were the first to use Free Verse poetry, or poetry that has no stylistic limitations such as rhyme scheme. With lyrical verse rich in mysticism and Irish tradition, W. B. Yeats was the undisputed leader in Irish poetry of the twentieth century. Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, was another central figure in Irish poetry. The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas contributed some of the best-known Englishlanguage lyric poetry of the century. Surrealism was the hallmark of French poetry and was advanced by poets such as Paul E´luard. Surrealist poetry was also influenced by the outlandish art of the Dadaists, employing the bizarre and otherworldly to create new symbols and allusions. In America Robert Frost set his philosophical verse to backdrops of rural New England. Carl Sandburg used the city of Chicago as a major theme in his urban verse. Other American poets such as Sylvia Plath and John Ashbery wrote in highly experimental veins. The poetry of Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka utilized the hardship and struggle of the AfricanAmerican experience to talk about the problems of racism and poverty. Pound is, however, both the most influential and controversial poet added to the second edition of World Cultural Leaders. Working in Europe, he created the style of Imagism in poetry and gave the Vorticist movement its name. This style was created by Wyndham Lewis and others around 1913. Through his articles, essays, and other writings, he was partially responsible for launching the literary careers of Eliot, Joyce, and others. Pound was, however, a controversial figure who embraced fascism and supported the Axis powers during World War II. A major early figure in Russian poetry was Alexander Blok, who embraced Symbolism in the early 1900s. Reacting against the Symbolists, poets such as Anna Akhmatova and Osip
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Mandelstam advocated a plainspoken, simplistic style of verse known as Acmeism, a precursor to Socialist Realism. Joseph Brodsky followed later in the century and was expelled from the Soviet Union for writing introspective verse that did not conform to the dictates of Socialist Realism. A number of poets distinguished themselves in the Spanish-speaking world. The Andalusian Federico Garcı´a Lorca was a supporter of the Republican forces in Spain during the civil war and was that country’s leading poet before he was murdered by fascists in 1936. Two Hispanic poets, Mexico’s Octavio Paz and Chile’s poet-diplomat and communist politican Pablo Neruda, earned Nobel Prizes for Literature. Their styles were quite varied, but represent an evolution of South American political thought, showing how the developing world grew during the cold war.
POPULAR MUSIC The term “popular music” encompasses a wide variety of styles and is here used to distinguish them from “classical music,” also treated in broad terms above. Popular music as used here refers to Broadway show tunes, jazz, Big Band, Swing, country, blues, folk, rockabilly, and rock and roll music. The United States (with contributions from Great Britain) was the twentieth century’s world leader in widespread popular music, and the majority of figures from the broad genre treated in this volume are Americans. Musicals produced on Broadway and elsewhere in America provided countless popular tunes from the likes of Irving Berlin (including his famous “God Bless America”), Marc Blitzstein (“Mack the Knife”), George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Cole Porter, Eubie Blake, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, and Stephen Sondheim. Britain’s Andrew Lloyd Webber incorporated popular music into opera, producing such international sensations as Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, and Jesus Christ Superstar.
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The Jazz Age of the 1920s produced the composer, arranger, and pianist Duke Ellington, as well as talented musical innovators like the trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong and the stride pianist Fats Waller. Many figures who began their careers during the Jazz Age moved seamlessly into the closely intertwined Big Band and Swing eras that followed in the 1930s and 1940s. From these eras emerged such notable figures as the immensely popular singers Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, as well as Big Bands headed by Count Basie, Benny Goodman (the “King of Swing”), and many others. The singers Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Billie Holiday all performed with Big Band ensembles and recorded their own work during this period. Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Thelonious Monk, and others were key founders of bebop (or bop), which developed during the decline of the Big Band and Swing eras in the mid-1940s Bebop sped up jazz tempos, and introduced harmonically inspired improvisation into jazz music. Charles Mingus, a jazz musician who rose to prominence in the 1950s, was a pioneer in “free jazz,” a term that loosely describes efforts to expand musical composition outside of the formal conventions of jazz and bebop. The rise of the Mississippi Delta Blues music in the late 1920s with such artists as Robert Johnson was a precursor to the Chicago Blues music of the 1940s and to the advent of rock and roll in the 1950s. Johnson, whose small body of recorded work was largely recognized posthumously, sang soulful, heartfelt blues accompanied with the acoustic bottleneck guitar characteristic of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Muddy Waters, whose real name was McKinley Morganfield, was a Mississippi native who deeply admired Johnson. After moving to Chicago in the mid-1940s, he put an electric guitar sound to the Delta Blues and established himself as a key founder of what became known as the Chicago Blues style. Waters’s song “Rollin’ Stone” lent the title to America’s most popular rock and roll magazine Rolling Stone, to the British rock band
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The Rolling Stones, and to the American singer Bob Dylan’s famous song “Like a Rolling Stone.” Bo Diddley, who, like Waters, a Mississippi native who later moved to Chicago, was dubbed “the Originator” for his work in bridging electric blues with rock and roll. Guitarist B. B. King’s roots were also in blues, and he gained enormous popularity both as a blues musician and a performer with rock and roll acts (for example, the Irish rock band U2’s 1988 song “When Love Comes to Town”). Shortly after the emergence of the Delta Blues, two legendary figures arrived who would prove invaluable in the development of rock and roll. Woody Guthrie traveled the U.S. performing and recording early anti-establishment folk songs that championed the plight of everyday people and the working classes. Guthrie’s work was heavily inspired by the economic hardships of the Great Depression, which he witnessed firsthand in his extensive travels. In country music, the short career of Hank Williams produced a body of work characterized by the soulful longings of a world-weary man who embraced redemption in the form of Christian gospel music. Elvis Presley dominated rock in the 1950s and both shocked and thrilled audiences with his up-tempo rock songs and expressive onstage movement characterized by wild leg shaking and forceful hip thrusts. Drawing from Presley’s boldness onstage, as well as the Mississippi Delta and Chicago blues traditions and earlier folk and country music, rock and roll branched out in the 1960s in both Great Britain and the United States to both reflect varied combinations of these influences and forge unique styles of its own. The American guitarist Jimi Hendrix heightened feedback and distortion to new levels. Particularly in their early music, the British bands The Rolling Stones and The Beatles drew heavily on American blues traditions. The early work of artists such as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell reflected more folk influences, though the still widely respected Dylan especially continues to champion the work of earlier blues artists. From his earliest
music in the 1960s to the present, Neil Young has continued to record both acoustic, folkinspired music and electric grunge-themed music backed by his longtime band Crazy Horse. The British band Led Zeppelin introduced a new form of blues-inspired electric rock and roll in the late 1960s. Drug-inspired psychedelic music, an important part of the hippie-counterculture movement, was another element to emerge in rock and roll during the 1960s and was particularly evident in the later music of The Beatles and the music of the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead later turned to music rooted in folk and country and pioneered the jam band movement, characterized by extended live improvisational performances. The Rock and Roll artists who have arisen since the 1960’s are far too numerous to include in this volume, and in many cases it is still too early to assess their impact on world culture. Notable among them, however, is Bruce Springsteen, whose image as the quintessential embodiment of American rock and roll was bolstered by his enormously popular 1984 album Born in the U.S.A. Aretha Franklin, dubbed “the Queen of Soul,” was an important rhythm and blues performer during the latter half of the twentieth century and was also noted for her ability to interpret songs in many other genres. Johnny Cash, a major and widely revered figure in American country music, kept his distance from the mainstream stereotypes of Nashville, rose to prominence in the 1950s, recorded in a variety of musical styles, and by the time of his death was highly respected by musicians and fans across all genres.
PROMOTION Several famed impresarios were highly instrumental in promoting the work and careers of other figures in this volume. Perhaps the most famous of these was the Russian-born impresario Sergei Diaghilev. His Ballets Russes (1909–1929) catapulted some of the twentieth century’s leading dancers to inter-
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national fame, including the athletic and enigmatic Vaslav Nijinsky, the dainty Anna Pavlova, and Tamara Karsavina, who danced with the Ballets Russes from 1909 to 1922. Rudolf Bing, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera of New York from 1950 to 1972, furthered the careers of many of the century’s star voices and conductors. The American Bill Graham, through his company Bill Graham Presents, was a leading promoter of American and British rock and roll artists and was also responsible for organizing many large-scale benefit concerts such as Live Aid.
SCULPTURE Sculptors such as Emile-Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol evolved their monumental works from the nineteenth-century French master Auguste Rodin. The dominant trend in sculpture, however, was a move toward abstraction, seen particularly in the creations of Britain’s Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and the painter-sculptor Ben Nicholson as well as those of the Romanian-born Constantin Brancusi. These sculptors used flowing forms and abstract geometry to allow the viewer to imprint their own meanings. The trademark of the Swiss-born Alberto Giacometti was his preference for tall, thin figures. Switzerland’s Jean Tinguely was a pioneer in kinetic sculpture, fashioning his works to emit strange noises and sounds and even to self-destruct. In his “readymades,” the French sculptor Marcel Duchamp, representing the Dadaist movement, used everyday objects to challenge people as to what art actually was. The American Alexander Calder was known both for his wire sculptures and his suspended, moving sculptures known as “mobiles.” Other sculptors of note include Italy’s Marino Marini, who produced a series of works on equestrian themes, female figures, and portraits, and Umberto Boccioni, who applied the Futurist principles in Marinetti’s writing to sculpture.
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THEATER Acting and playwriting has always been intertwined with the artistic and political currents of the day. Theater is often the last refuge of political dissidents, and actors are often one of the first groups of people to be repressed in totalitarian societies. The modern movie industry grew out of stylistic advances in live theater, and many of the innovative themes of the last century are still prevalent in our movie theaters. The Russian director Konstantin Stanislavsky, whose eponymous style of acting required actors to become intimately acquainted with their characters, remains even more relevant in today’s full-emersion cinema. A more experimental vein emerged in the “epic theater” of Bertolt Brecht, who purposely sought to establish distance between actor and audience. The Theater of the Absurd playwrights, such as Euge`ne Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Samuel Beckett, created plays with illogical plots and sparse dialog to mirror what they saw as the absurdity of life. During the Irish Literary Renaissance Dublin’s Abbey Theatre hosted the nationalistic dramas of Yeats, Sean O’Casey, and J. M. Synge. Their plays were a vital part of the Irish independence movement. The Italian Dario Fo, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, brought a highly controversial blend of satire, comedy, and mime to world stages after World War II. His comedies criticize the action of many western powers, especially the United States. The central figure in early-twentieth-century British theater was George Bernard Shaw, who authored dozens of plays tinged with social satire and worked extensively with the director-playwright Harley Granville-Barker. Shaw and Granville-Barker stripped what they considered elements of entertainment from their plays in an effort to emphasize the intellectual and social messages of their productions. Later playwrights to find success in Britain included Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. Another trend in modern British the-
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ater was the revival of the Shakespearean tradition at the Old Vic Theater, led in particular by the director Tyrone Guthrie and the actordirector John Gielgud. In South Africa Athol Fugard devoted his efforts to exploring the apartheid system, and his works were banned from the country as a result. Later he examined the problems with post-apartheid society through his plays. Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s leading playwright, combined elements of his native Yoruba tradition with Western literary styles. He was only the second African of the twentieth century to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, and the first black African to be honored so. The Caribbean poet and playwright Derek Walcott explored the clash between Western culture and native Caribbean culture. American theater set itself apart in the twentieth century. At the beginning of the century, America was still a relatively young nation, and the 1900’s finally saw the explosion of American culture onto the world stage. Many American plays of the twentieth century dealt with issues of class, race, and modernization, but American playwrights’ successes were most commonly judged by how well their works performed on Broadway stages. In the early part of the century, Lillian Hellman penned a number of plays dominated by two themes—negative portrayals of the American South and her embrace of leftist political issues. She was blacklisted by the House on Un-American Activities committee for her views and her relationship with a Communist Party member. Eugene O’Neill, another early author of Broadway material, focused on human behavior and character portrayals in his work, as did the later playwright Tennessee Williams. A number of American playwrights, notably Terrence McNally and Tony Kushner are noted for their open treatment of homosexual themes, a radical concept at the time. Edward Albee is perhaps the most experimental and intellectually minded American playwright treated in this volume. Arthur Miller, famous for his bleak minimalist style, pen-
ned the classic play Death of a Salesman. Noted for publicizing issues affecting AfricanAmericans on the stage, August Wilson won two Pulitzer Prizes for his ten-play depiction of African-American life during the twentieth century. Thornton Wilder wrote the popular Our Town and a number of other Broadway standards, while Neil Simon remained one of the most prolific and popular contributors to the Broadway stage with comedies that drew from his working-class upbringing in New York City.
TELEVISION This second edition includes a number of prominent American television figures. Rod Serling was among television’s most famous script writers, responsible for the popular series The Twilight Zone, which was the first television show in America to expose a mainstream audience to Science Fiction. Ed Sullivan hosted one of the most popular early entertainment shows, beginning the careers of countless musicians. Johnny Carson was a pioneer in late-night television. Edward R. Murrow, a founder of and pioneer in broadcast journalism, left a lasting impact on the art of reporting the news. He electrified audiences with coverage of the events leading up to World War Two, and has an important place in American history as the man mostly responsible for the downfall of McCarthyism. During the later part of the twentieth century, Oprah Winfrey became an enormously successful and much-emulated daytime talk show host, focusing on education and poverty.
WRITING The world of literature changed drastically in the twentieth century. James Joyce’s Ulysses and Franz Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle formed part of a new European style of writing, known as Modernism. Influenced by increasing industrialization and the brutality of the First World War, they broke from the regimented styles and topics of nineteenth
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century writers and included controversial subjects such as political repression and disillusionment with modern society. In the early part of the century the Bloomsbury Group, an informal clique of progressive artists and writers, produced such authors as Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, who represented a growing dissatisfaction with the politics of the day. As the century progressed and important political developments such as the battle between fascism and communism, World War Two, and the Cold War took place, a number of famously overt political novels emerged. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness all expressed in some form the anger at the failure of modern political systems, from both the left and right, to deliver on the promises of the last century. Outside of Europe and America, Hispanic literature also produced a number of distinguished figures. Miguel de Unamuno and later Camilo Jose´ Cela were among Spain’s most influential novelists. Unamuno Cela, a member of the Generation of 1950 who fought for the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, employed violent imagery in a literary style called tremendismo. In his short stories and poetry the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges embraced ultraı´smo, a literary style that also used striking imagery. Magical realism, which combines realism with fantastic elements, embodied the trademark style of the popular Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcı´a Ma´rquez. In perhaps the best example of radical literary change in the 20th century, Russian authors Maxim Gorky, Boris Pasternak, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn showcased the upheaval of the Russian Revolution. Gorky formulated the Socialist Realism style that was to dominate Russian literature for most of the twentieth century. He was an ardent revolutionary in the years preceding the revolution, but he became disgusted with the Soviet’s lack of concern for freedom of speech and
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civil liberties, and fled the country. He returned, however, more than a decade later and wrote many propaganda works in favor of the Soviet Union. In contrast, Solzhenitsyn devoted his efforts to exposing the atrocities perpetrated by the Soviet state’s gulags, many of which he experienced firsthand after being arrested for writing letters criticizing Stalin. Pasternak produced a body of stylistically radical poetry, but was forced by the attitudes of Soviet society to write works more in line with Socialist Realism. This corruption of his works eventually turned him against communism. He is best known for his tragic novel, Dr. Zhivago, which depicts the revolution as destroying the main character’s life. While many of the most famous literary works, both fiction and non-fiction, of the twentieth century were political in nature, the century produced many mysteries, thrillers, and detectives novels. Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the infamous sleuth Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet. This famous literary figure’s success set the stage for the detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, creations of the prolific mystery writer Agatha Christie, as well as Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Twentieth-century literature also reached into the erotic, the bizarre, and the mythological. Writers such as Anaı¨s Nin, D. H. Lawrence, and Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette treated erotic themes extensively in their work. Mystery and the occult were the driving forces behind the bizarre tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who was influenced by Edgar Allen Poe. J. R. R. Tolkien formulated an entire mythological world that was the basis of his popular The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. From Italy Umberto Eco fashioned complex novels from his extensive knowledge of signs and symbols. That country also produced such controversial and outspoken writers as Gabriele D’Annunzio and F. T. Marinetti, the latter of whom was a chief proponent of Italian Futurism—an influential movement that praised the motion, speed, and velocity
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of the twentieth century. Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, and Gu¨nter Grass rank among Germany’s chief novelists of the twentieth century, their work having been built on the strong philosophical influence of nineteenth century German thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and G.W.F. Hegel. Grass wrote many plays and stories that expanded the Spanish style of Magical Realism, a technique that earned him many admirers in the harsh reality of the annihilated post-war Germany. Hesse’s writings were some of the first expose modern Europeans to eastern philosophies such as Hinduism and Buddhism, and Mann wrote mainly on how to define and describe the soul. All three were affected deeply by the cultural crisis of the Nazi Party and World War Two, with Hesse and Mann having to flee Germany in the 1930’s, and Grass being conscripted into the notorious SS as a young man. The work of twentieth-century French writers, like many of their European counterparts, was essentially marked by a rejection of tradition in favor of experimentation. With his magazine La Nouvelle Revue Franc¸aise, Andre´ Gide helped launch the careers of many French writers. Gide himself led a varied life, and his works addressed the need to constantly reassess the philosophical underpinnings of life in light of new circumstances or information. The most important and longlasting movement to come out of France, and perhaps even all of Europe during the twentieth century, was known as Existentialism. Building on the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, Existentialism argued several new radical ideas. Rejecting both the religious and scientific quest for universal truth, the dialogue between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre defined a movement that sought to prove that all higher meaning was in fact a projection by individuals, and that the question of the purpose of man’s existence was meaningless.Perhaps the most famous work of existentialism, No Exit shows that of all the hardships man has to endure, the worst is simply: other people.
Post-war Decolonialization set the stage for the emergence of several famous scribes from the developing world. Writers such as Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe explored the clash between native African culture and Western influence, while India’s prolific Rabindranath Tagore received Asia’s first Nobel Prize in 1913 for his poetry. He was a member of India’s independence movement, and his works became the official anthems of not only the movement, but of the independent Indian republic. Japan’s hundreds of years of self-isolation came to an end in 1868, and Japan had several decades of western contact and exchange. Western philosophies such as Democracy, Romanticism, Naturalism, and Humanism began to influence Japanese literature. Jun’ichir Tanizaki became popular in Japan for novels focusing on his Japanese character’s self-discovery, which was strongly influenced by western narrative style. However, the antiwestern backlash that led to Japan’s military dictatorship of the 1920’s also resulted in a return to traditional Japanese styles. Ashihei Hino typifies the group of writers who embraced Japanese ultra-nationalism and militarism, writing in praise of the War against China and America. In the same way that military dictatorship changed Japanese writing, defeat and occupation at the hands of a foreign power radically altered Japanese sensibility. Kenzaburo Oe emerged as Japan’s leading novelist in the post–World War II generation, writing on the transformation of Japan after their defeat. Western ideas, values, and technology were embraced wholeheartedly, and the transformation of Japan from military dictatorship into a western-style democracy underlies of much of his work. The United States produced many respected novelists who could not all be treated in this volume. Included, however, are Saul Bellow, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Philip Roth, and Thomas Wolfe. Gore Vidal established himself as both a novelist and a man of letters. The controversial founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron
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Hubbard, authored a great number of stories, the most famous of which are lengthy science fiction novels published toward the end of his career. Stephen King electrified and horrified audiences around the world with his fantasyhorror thrillers, many of which were made into popular films. A number of American writers rose to prominence during both the Beat Movement of the 1950s and the hippie-counterculture movement of the 1960s. Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were primary literary spokesmen for the Beat Movement, while the writings of Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey promoted the use of psychedelic drugs and became popular among the hippie-counterculture movement. New forms of creative journalism arose in the United States around the same time period, including the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson and the New Journalism of Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer. Comics, long the domain of pure politics, grew through newspaper syndication to embrace not only humor, but social commentary and literary themes. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau blurred the lines between editorial writing and the traditional comic strip, and Charles Schulz produced Peanuts, one of the most popular cartoon strips of all time, along with the characters of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and Lucy.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Barbara Crumpler, April Boud, and Lorilyn Bailey have been loyal friends without whose encouragement it would be difficult to work. Thanks go to Nicole Noel Norman for her insight into the works of the Russian figures and to John Adams for helping with the figures in theater. Jim Freeman, friend and former teacher, introduced me to rock and roll, which contributed greatly to the biographies of the popular musicians in this book. Sarah and Jeff McDade and Jeff Brown have also lent both much-appreciated friendship and conversation that influenced the biographies of popular musicians. John Van Grod has graciously offered his encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of subjects and his uncanny ability to dig up little-known information from unique places—a tremendous help with both the first and second editions of this work. Many thanks to Jim and Judy Durham, Mike Durham and Shawn McKee, Richard and Cathy Bass, and Beth Brehler, for their love and support. It is the staff at Grey House Publishing that has made the second edition of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth & Twenty-first Centuries possible. Jael Powell in particular has been terrific, kind-hearted, and enormously helpful—truly one of a kind in her profession.
Introduction This second edition of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries is the first published by Grey House Publishing. The previous edition was published by ABC-CLIO in 1999. This two-volume revised edition abounds with new material and new features. Most notably is the addition of American individuals who have made significant contributions to the cultural community in not only the twentieth century, but also into the twentyfirst. The previous edition did not include American individuals, which were covered in a separate ABC-CLIO publication, American Cultural Leaders. When choosing which American individuals to write about, we did not simply add new names to existing cultural movements, but identified a number of distinctly American elements that form part of international culture. Among these are a variety of popular music styles—blues, jazz, rock and roll, and country—as well as uniquely American institutions such as Hollywood and Broadway that created many imitators around the world. Features of this edition: This edition of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries includes a total of 577 biographical profiles, 139 of them new American additions. It also offers valuable new sections and elements designed to offer a comprehensive view of who and what shaped world culture in the last 100 or so years. 쐽 NEW Timelines: Three timelines (18801919; 1920-1959; 1960-2007) each in a colorful fold-out design, that highlight significant events in each of six major cultural categories – Artists, Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Theater – and includes major historical and political events that affected the cultural climate.
쐽 NEW Places to Visit: This new sectionhighlights 103 individuals from the main pages of the book. From birthplaces to gravesites, museums to libraries, frequented shops to neighborhood hangouts, this section also includes web sites, audio/video recordings, building designs, and walking tours. Complete with photos and Further Reading, Places to Visit offers the opportunity to get a real life sense of these cultural leaders. 쐽 NEW Primary Documents: Includes full reprints of articles from newspapers and cultural magazines that offer background information on cultural issues and insight into trends that shaped – and continue to shape – world culture. 쐽 NEW Photographs: In addition to replacing many of the existing images with new images, this new edition includes over 75 more photos – for a total of 225 images. 쐽 Updates to Existing Profiles: These include not only death dates for those individuals who have died since the last edition was published, but also new works produced by profiled individuals in the last 8 years, new buildings and museums to house their works, and current additions to their bibliography. 쐽 Updates to Glossary: This 17-page document is so much more than a definition of terms. The 170 culturally relevant people, places and events are not only clearly defined, but also weighted with examples and See Alsos. The Glossary is also where you will find possibly unfamiliar “-isms,” such as names of movements and eras, and technical terms related to one’s work or awards. 쐽 Updates to Leaders by Occupation: This detailed document lists all individuals by 63 alphabetical fields, such as Actor, Cartoonist, Harmonica Player, Pianist, Theorist and
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Writer of Children’s Books. Many figures are listed in more than one category. 쐽 Updates to Index While it is impossible to mention all those who have contributed to world culture, we
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have included individuals who not only made great cultural strides themselves, but who represented movements and group efforts. Thus, it is our hope that World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries credits all those who participated in trends that shaped world culture.
World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Volume I
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AALTO, ALVAR
Aalto, Alvar (February 3, 1898–May 11, 1976) Architect, Furniture Designer, City Planner, Teacher ne of the most internationally influential architects of the twentieth century, Finland’s Alvar Aalto (born Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto) combined the functionality of other modern architects with his own organic, expressive style and the use of indigenous materials. During his long and successful career Aalto designed more than 200 buildings or groups of buildings in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. Aalto was born in Kuortane, Finland, then part of the Russian Empire. His family moved to Alaja¨ri and then to Jyva¨skyla¨. His mother died in 1903; his father, a surveyor, then married her sister. As a child Aalto displayed a mild interest in architecture and began to take notice of the buildings around him. He graduated from the Jyva¨skyla¨ Normal School in 1916. Before he moved on to the Polytechnic Institute in Helsinki, he designed his first architectural piece, a wooden portico for his parents’ home. Aalto fought in the Finnish War for Independence (1918–1919) and graduated from the institute in 1921. Over the next several years he traveled around and began to enter his architectural designs in competitions. Eventually, he returned to Finland, setting up a practice in Jyva¨skyla¨. Aalto soon began to win competitions for building designs and gained opportunities to execute them. His earliest buildings reflect the classical-traditional style then dominant in Finland. Aalto used stucco and masonry as well as wood, a traditional building material in Finland. His major early works include railroad employees’ housing (1923) and a Workers’ Club (1924), both in Jyva¨skyla¨. In 1925 Aalto married Aino Marsio, also an architect. Although there is debate over how much she contributed to his designs, she worked closely with him until she died in 1949. Aalto moved his office to Turku in 1927.
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There he worked in partnership with Erik Bryggman until 1933. His move to Turku marked a new direction in his style and the beginning of his success as an architect. He received a major commission to design the Turun Sanomat Building, a newspaper office in Turku. The resulting building signaled a break from traditional architecture and is particularly noteworthy for its functionality and the tapered columns supporting the roof of the pressroom. Aalto’s next major success was the tuberculosis sanatorium at Paimio. Like many of his designs from this period, the building was finished with a smooth white surface. Sunlit balconies opened out into scenic views for the patients. The Municipal Library at Viipuri (now Vyborg) attracted international attention as an example of the International Style and an innovative library design. Begun in 1927 and completed in 1935, it demonstrates Aalto’s concern with interiors as well as exteriors. He designed the auditorium furniture in laminated wood and covered the undulating ceiling with wood. Circular skylights illuminated the reading room. A large glass window-wall and two-level lending room are among the building’s other notable features. With the library building, he began to move away from the strict functionality of the modernist architects. The building was destroyed in the Russo-Finnish war, after which it fell under the control of the Soviet Union and remained in a state of disrepair. An international campaign to restore the building began in the early 1990s. In 1933 Aalto moved his practice to Helsinki. Around this time he began to find success as a furniture designer as well as an architect. He constructed many chairs and other pieces with laminated wood, aiming to create furniture that was both visually appealing and functional. A show of his work in Lon-
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don (1933) contributed significantly to his international reputation as a furniture designer. With his wife and Mairea Gullichsen, he founded the Artek Company (1935) to manufacture and sell his furniture. Aalto’s notable architectural designs of the 1930s include the Finnish pavilions for the world fairs in Paris (1937) and New York (1939–1940). He increasingly used organic materials such as wood and glass. Aalto also designed the interior of the Savoy Restaurant in Helsinki (1937) and a country home near Noormarkku, Villa Mairea, for the Gullichsens. The Sunila cellulose factory (1936–1939, expanded 1951–1954) included an employee village and marked his first major success designing multiple-building sites. From 1940 to 1947 Aalto lived in the United States and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). While at MIT he designed the Baker House, a student dormitory that overlooks the Charles River. Aalto returned to Finland in 1948 and immersed himself in designing buildings for war-ravaged Helsinki. Following the death of his wife in 1949 he married Elissa Ma¨kiniemi, an architect who also came to collaborate with him. Over the next two decades Aalto designed many buildings for Helsinki, including the National Pension Bank and Finlandia Hall, Helsinki (1971, enlarged 1974), the city’s lakeside cultural center and home of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Pollution caused deterioration in the building’s original white Carrara marble surface, and the damage sparked a controversy in the 1980s over how to restore it. Proponents of the more durable granite lost to the supporters of marble (among whom was Aalto’s widow), who sought to maintain the building’s intended appearance. Renovations began in 1997. Aside from his work in Helsinki, Aalto completed numerous international commissions
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as well as buildings elsewhere in Finland. Abroad he designed an apartment building in Bremen (1958), a post and telegraph office in Baghdad (1958), a church in Bologna (1966), Mount Angel Abbey Library, near Salem, Oregon (1967–1970), and an art museum in Iran (1970). His other works in Finland include a sawmill at Varkaus (1945); college buildings at Otaniemi (1949–1964) and Jyva¨skyla¨ (1952–1957); a church at Vuoksenniska, Imatra (1956–1958); the Community Center in Seina¨joki (1962; expanded 1967); and the Taidemuseo in Jyva¨skyla¨ (1973), later renamed the Alvar Aalto Museum. Aalto’s later work is marked by his use of organic forms and his reliance on indigenous materials for effect, as in the Sa¨yna¨tsalo town hall group (1950–1952), in which he combined metal (copper), brick, and wood. While his designs never abandoned the functionality of his early work, he imbued his buildings with more expressive styles than did other modern architects. He was a member of numerous academies and international societies, including the Academy of Finland (as its president from 1963 to 1968) and the Congre`s Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (1928–1956). Aalto received numerous awards for his work, including the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects (1957) and the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects (1963).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Pearson, Paul David, Alvar Aalto and the International Style, 1978; Quantrill, Malcolm, Alvar Aalto: A Critical Study, 1983; Schildt, Gora¨n, Alvar Aalto: The Decisive Years, 1986; Schildt, Gora¨n, Alvar Aalto: The Mature Years, 1989.
ACHEBE, CHINUA
Achebe, Chinua (November 16, 1930– ) Novelist, Poet hinua Achebe, Nigeria’s chief novelist of the twentieth century, depicts in his novels the conflict between European and West African cultures during the years of colonial rule in Africa as well as the political troubles arising from military dictatorships in the postcolonial period. Although he writes in English, he avoids traditional European literary styles to create a subtly ironic medium rich in the folklore and speech of his own people. He was one of the first African writers to gain a wide readership in the English-speaking world and has been honored with nearly two dozen honorary degrees to date. Achebe was born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe into a Christian family in Ogidi, a town in eastern Nigeria. His father was an Igbo evangelist heavily involved in the church, and Achebe studied at church schools as a youth. Many of his classes were taught in English. He attended Government College, a secondary school, in Umuahia. There he met the poet CHRISTOPHER OKIGBO, with whom he would found a publishing company in 1967. He later attended the University College in Ibadan and studied medicine, literature, history, and religion. Some of his first published writings appeared in the University Herald, which he edited for a year. After years of education in English, Achebe began to investigate the culture and traditions of West Africa. He resented the British rule of Nigeria that had been established in 1906 as well as the British perspective on African culture that dominated his education and characterized such novels as JOSEPH CONRAD’s Heart of Darkness. Following his graduation in 1953 Achebe took a job working for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos. In 1956 he traveled to London and studied with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
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Achebe’s first two novels, Things Fall Apart (1958) and No Longer at Ease (1960), began in part as an answer to JOYCE CARY’s Mister Johnson, the title character of which is a Nigerian civil servant who accepts the values of the British colonial administration, even as it destroys his life. The tragic story of the first begins at the arrival of British missionaries in Nigeria in the late 1800s. Okonkwo, a prominent member of an Igbo village in Nigeria, is successful within his traditional culture but steadfastly resists the introduction of the European order. Okonkwo’s resentment manifests itself in destructive ways and ends in his own suicide. No Longer at Ease portrays the tragic fall from grace of a young Nigerian (Okonkwo’s grandson) who embraces British culture. In 1961 Achebe married Christie Chinwe Okoli. His next novel, Arrow of God, followed in 1964. The story is set in Nigeria in the 1920s and again explores the conflict between European colonialism and traditional Nigerian culture. The conflict takes place in the character of Ezeulu, a priest of the god Ulu who loses the support of his village. He rejects the offer of an office from British authorities, yet at the same time he suffers alienation from his own people; he is trapped helplessly between the two cultures. In 1969 Achebe made his first trip to the United States, where he lectured with Gabriel Okara and Cyprian Ekwensi. When he returned to Nigeria he became a research fellow and later a professor at the University of Nigeria. Beginning in 1970, he served as director of two publishing companies. A Man of the People (1966), Achebe’s first novel set in the postcolonial era, criticizes corrupt African dictatorships. After a gap of twenty years in publishing novels, Achebe finished Anthills of the Savannah (1987), a disturbing portrayal of West African life under
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military dictatorships that follows in the vein of A Man of the People. Among his other works are the short stories collected in Girls at War (1972); a children’s book co-written with John Iroaganachi, How the Leopard Got His Claws (1973); books of poetry, Beware, Soul-Brother (1971), Christmas in Biafra (1973), and Collected Poems (2004); and the essays of Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), later revised as Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays 1965–1987 (1988); The Trouble With Nigeria (1983); and Home and Exile (2000), a short work based on three lectures he delivered at Harvard University in 1998. In 1971 Achebe helped found the literary magazine Okike: An
African Journal of New Writing, and in 1984 he began publishing Uwa ndi Igbo: A Journal of Igbo Life and Culture. Achebe was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident in 1990. As of this writing, he is currently Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. His wife, Christie Chinwe Achebe, is also a professor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Carroll, David, Chinua Achebe, 1980; Currey, James, Chinua Achebe: A Biography, 1997; Innes, C. L., Chinua Achebe, 1990; Mezu, Rose Uru, Chinua Achebe: The Man and His Works, 2006.
Adams, Ansel Easton (February 20, 1902–April 22, 1984) Photographer nsel Adams was perhaps America’s best-known photographer, most famous for his landscape images of the Yosemite Valley and other portions of the western United States. Adams’s vision in photography was one of clarity, precision, and honed technique, and he authored numerous technical books on photography as well as published his own prints. Adams was born to Charles and Olive Adams in San Francisco, California, though the family lived on the more rural western outskirts and his upbringing was not in the city culture. His father owned a lumber company that failed in 1907, and the family’s unstable situation forced Adams to study under private tutors rather than in school during his adolescent years. Among the subjects of his private tutoring sessions was the piano, and for a time Adams considered music as a career. After being exposed to photography exhibitions at the Pana-
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ma-Pacific International Exposition at the age of thirteen, however, he started to lean toward a career as a photographer. A family vacation to the Yosemite country, which would form the subject matter of much of his future work, further encouraged his ambition to become a photographer. In 1919, Adams took a job working at the Sierra Club headquarters in Yosemite, and he would remain involved with the conservation organization for the rest of his life. He explored and photographed the region extensively, and his photographs appeared in the Sierra Club Bulletin. It was at Yosemite that he met his wife, Virginia Best. Later, Adams photographed other areas of the western United States, including the Southwest and Alaska. In 1927, with financial backing from Albert Bender, Adams photographed the Half Dome, a granite dome at the eastern end of Yosemite, to form part of his first portfolio. In this fa-
ADAMS, ANSEL EASTON
mous photograph, Monolith, the Face of Half Dome (1927), he used a red filter to achieve a photographic effect that rendered a blue sky in black hues. The following year, Adams held the first of his hundreds of solo exhibitions at the Sierra Club in San Francisco. In 1929, he met Paul Strand, whose work impressed him and finally cemented his decision to become a professional photographer. In addition to new photographic jobs, he began to write a regular column for the magazine The Fortnightly. In 1933, he opened his own gallery in San Francisco. Four years later, Adams and his family moved to his beloved Yosemite. The landscape he loved there, along with other natural regions in the West, provided abundant material for a sequence of photographic books such as Taos Pueblo (1930) and Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (1938). During the 1940s, Adams was instrumental in developing the zone system, which defined eleven distinct tones. Using the system, a photographer could match a subject’s contrast range to the tone(s) and determine what part related to the zone(s) of the print. The zone system allowed photographers extended control over finished photographs. In 1932, with Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston, he formed f/64, a movement named for the smallest aperture setting on a large format camera. The f/64 group was based on loyalty to straight photography and purity of prints. The group’s manifesto declared, “The chief object of the Group is to present in frequent shows what it considers the best contemporary photography of the West; in addition to the showing of the work of its members, it will include prints from other photographers who evidence tendencies in their work similar to that of the Group.” The members of f/64 deliberately rejected “Pictorialism,” a trend in artistic photography that employed soft focus for slightly impressionistic prints. Some of Adams’s most famous photographs from this period are Moonrise, Her-
nandez, New Mexico (1941), Ice on Ellery Lake (1941), The Tetons and Snake River (1942), and Winter Sunrise (1944). During World War II, Adams documented through photography the injustices JapaneseAmericans suffered from internment at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack. His visit to the camp resulted in a photo essay eventually published as Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans (1944). In 1963 he helped complete a series of photographs, Fı´at Lux, to celebrate the University of California’s centennial. Later in his life, Adams devoted less time to photography and more time to conservation and other activities. In 1952 he helped found the magazine Aperture. From 1967 to 1980, he served as chairman of the board of the Friends of Photography. Throughout his career, Adams authored numerous technical books, including Camera and Lens, the Creative Approach Studio, Laboratory, and Operation (1970), The Camera (1980), The Negative (1981), and The Print (1983). He also won numerous awards, including three Guggenheim fellowships, and in 1966 was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Adams, suffering from cancer, died of heart failure in 1984. Congress passed the California Wilderness Bill the same year, establishing the Ansel Adams Wilderness Area between the John Muir Wilderness Area and Yosemite. The University of Arizona in Tucson houses the archive of Adams’s work that the photographer founded in 1975.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Alinder, Mary Street, Ansel Adams: A Biography, 1996; Spaulding, Jonathan, Ansel Adams and the American Landscape: A Biography, 1995; Szarzowski, John, and Alinder, James, Classic Images, 1986.
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AKHMATOVA, ANNA
Akhmatova, Anna (June 23, 1889–March 5, 1966) Poet, Translator he life of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova was marked by a long series of personal tragedies, in addition to the suffering she endured as an accused enemy of the Soviet regime. Akhmatova’s confessional, plainspoken poetry is highly personal, dealing largely with love, religion, and the suffering of the Russian people under the Soviet regime. She was instrumental in introducing Acmeism into Russian poetry and is widely considered one of Russia’s leading poets of the last century. Akhmatova was born Anna Andreyevna Gorenko in Bolshoy Fontan, near Odessa, Ukraine. Her father was a naval engineer who disliked her poetic ambitions. From her mother she heard poetry, but her parents kept few books. Akhmatova went to school in Tsarskoe Selo when she was 10. After suffering from a strange illness when she was 11, she began to write poetry and was soon devouring the works of other poets. Her father, who did not want his family name associated with poetry, told her to use a pseudonym, and she chose the Tatar name of her maternal grandmother. In 1903, she met the poet Nikolay Gumilyov, who for years was obsessively in love with her. Her rejections of him led to his three failed suicide attempts before they married in 1910. More importantly for Akhmatova’s career, Gumilyov and she were associated with a group of poets known as Acmeists, who formed as a reaction to the Symbolists. The Acmeists, who also included OSIP MANDELSTAM, embraced a straightforward and simple style, with an emphasis on precise form. Akhmatova studied law at the Kiev College for Women beginning in 1907. The Acmeist periodical, Apollon, published from 1910 to 1917, included her poetry. The first collection of her verse, Vecher (Evening), was pub-
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lished in 1912, followed by Chyotki (Rosary) in 1914. Tragic difficulties of love, a reflection of her unhappy relationship with Gumilyov, form the primary theme of both volumes. Rosary was so popular that it even became the basis for a game, in which one person recited a portion of a poem and another finished it. The social, military, and political events of Russia always affected Akhmatova deeply. The collection The White Flock (1917) included some poetry inspired by the war, such as “In Memoriam, July 19, 1914.” Other themes include her continuing preoccupation with love and poetic inspiration. After divorcing Gumilyov in 1918, she married Vladimir Shileyko, and their relationship proved to be even more disastrous. The poems of her next small volume, Plantain (1921), appeared again in the larger Anno Domini MCMXXI (1922). Anno Domini MCMXXI expresses a thoroughly pessimistic outlook, a product of the war, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the blood spilled in Russia. Among those who lost their lives during this tumultuous period was Gumilyov, who was executed in 1921 on false charges of participating in counterrevolutionary activity. Soviet authorities began to denounce Akhmatova’s poetry in the mid-1920s, and from then until 1940 none of her verse was published in the Soviet Union. Akhmatova turned to earning her living translating the works of other poets, including Victor Hugo and RABINDRANATH TAGORE. During this time she also wrote a number of essays on Aleksandr Pushkin as well as a cycle of poems memorializing those who perished under Stalin, Requiem (1963). Unlike many of her contemporaries, she refused to emigrate following the Revolution, and for many years she remained critical of those who chose to go abroad. Akhmatova lost many of her friends and family to arrests, exe-
AKHMATOVA, ANNA
cutions, and suicides, including Gumilyov, Mandelstam, and the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. With the outbreak of World War II, Soviet critics temporarily lifted their unofficial ban on Akhmatova’s work. In 1940, several poems appeared in The Star, and in 1941 she delivered a radio address to the women of Leningrad. She was evacuated to Tashkent and spent part of her time reading poetry to wounded soldiers. This experience served as the source for some of her later poetry. The year 1946 brought a fresh clash with Soviet censors. Andrey Zhdanov, speaking for the Central Committee of the Communist Party, declared Akhmatova’s poetry “completely individualistic” and denounced her as “half nun, half harlot.” Soviet authorities destroyed copies of a planned volume of her poetry. Akhmatova’s son, Lev Gumilyov, was arrested on numerous occasions and in 1949 was sent to Siberia. In a vain effort to obtain his release, Akhmatova wrote poems praising Stalin that appeared in The Little Light; he was not released until after Stalin’s death. Af-
ter the dictator’s death Akhmatova herself was rehabilitated and permitted to publish her poetry. Her longest and most complex work, Poema bez geroya (Poem without a Hero), was written over a twenty-two-year period between 1940 and 1962. Akhmatova also wrote memoirs about ALEXANDER BLOK, AMEDEO MODIGLIANI, and Mandelstam. She counted among her close friends BORIS PASTERNAK; in her later years she became a significant source of inspiration for a younger generation of poets, most notably JOSEPH BRODSKY. In 1964, she received Italy’s Etna-Taormina prize, and the following year, Oxford University awarded her an honorary doctorate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Haight, Amanda, Anna Akhmatova: A Poetic Pilgrimage, 1976; Ketchian, Sonia, The Poetry of Anna Akhmatova: A Conquest of Time and Space, 1986; Reeder, Roberta, Anna Akhmatova: Poet and Prophet, 1994.
Alain-Fournier (October 3, 1886–September 22, 1914) Novelist, Short-Story Writer he literary reputation of Alain-Fournier, whose life was cut short by World War I in 1914, rests almost entirely on his only finished novel, The Wanderer. His celebrated correspondence with the critic Jacques Rivie`re, his closest friend and his brother-in-law, was published after his death. Alain-Fournier was born Henri-Alban Fournier in La Chapelle-d’Angillon, France. His parents, both teachers, moved the family to the small village of Epineuil-le-Fleuriel, where Fournier spent most of his childhood. The village’s rural setting provided the idyllic back-
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ground of The Wanderer, and Fournier cherished the area for the rest of his life. In 1898 his parents sent him to the Lyce´e Voltaire in Paris against his will. He excelled academically, earning more than a dozen prizes during his years there. In 1901–1902 Fournier went to the Naval Academy at Brest, and in 1902 he enrolled in the Lyce´e Bourges. At the Lyce´e Lakanal, where he studied in 1903, Fournier met his lifelong friend Rivie`re. Both took an interest in Symbolist poetry, and Fournier began to write his own verse the same year. A chance meeting in 1905 shaped much of Fournier’s literary output. Outside a
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Paris art exhibit, he spotted the blond and blue-eyed Yvonne de Quie´vrecourt, whose beauty captured his imagination. She did not reciprocate Fournier’s romantic interests but came to embody an ideal of youth and beauty in his mind. The poem “From across the Summers” (1905) recounts his meeting with her, and she was the inspiration for Yvonne de Galais in The Wanderer. In 1905, Alain-Fournier went to London and there began his long correspondence with Rivie`re. His first published work, the prose poem “The Body of Woman,” appeared in the Nouvelle revue franc¸aise in 1907. He was drafted the following year and entered the officer’s training school. The prose poem “Madeleine” belongs to 1909 and captures one of Fournier’s central themes, the conflict between reality and the ideal. Madeleine and Tristan have suffered through failed loves and unsuccessfully strive after an ideal one. The year 1909 was eventful for Fournier in many other ways. Rivie`re married his sister, Isabelle. He underwent a religious crisis that led him to Lourdes, sent him searching in the Bible, and briefly led him to consider becoming a monk. He finished his military service the following year and, having now failed the national teacher’s examination twice, became a reviewer for the Journal and lived with Jacques and Isabelle Rivie`re. Fournier wrote the short story “The Miracle of Three Village Women” in 1910; it begins with three women who romanticize their pasts to compensate for the unpleasantness of their present lives. When they return to their husbands, they find that the men have passively participated in the beating of Ma-
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dame Henry’s sister, the beautiful Marie, by her fiance´e, who had grown angry about her relationship with a previous lover. “The Miracle of the Farm Wife,” also written in 1910, appeared in La grande revue. In 1912, Alain-Fournier went to work for the son of a former French president. The Wanderer (1928), later published as The Lost Domain, was first published serially as Le Grand Meaulnes in the Nouvelle revue franc¸aise in 1913. Franc¸ois Seurel narrates the novel, and its hero is the idealistic Augustin Meaulnes. Alain-Fournier describes Meaulnes’s meeting with a beautiful girl and his subsequent search for her, but what distinguishes the book is the power with which it evokes an almost mythic rural setting based on the author’s youthful idyll in Epineuil-leFleuriel. In 1913, Alain-Fournier began writing a second novel, Colombe Blanchet, which he never finished. The war cut his life and work short; in 1914, he was reported missing during the Battle of the Marne. Much of his work appeared after his death, and The Wanderer, which had enjoyed only a modest success during his lifetime, gained classic status in France and is the cornerstone of his literary reputation. Miracles, a collection of his poetry and prose, was published in 1924, and his correspondence with Rivie`re also appeared posthumously.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Arkell, David, Alain-Fournier: A Brief Life, 1986; Gibson, Robert, The Land without a Name: Alain-Fournier and His World, 1975; Gurney, Stephen, Alain-Fournier, 1988.
ALBEE, EDWARD
Albee, Edward (March 12, 1928- ) Playwright idely viewed as his generation’s groundbreaking playwright, American Edward Albee arrived on the scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s with intellectual plays about his changing times that gained initial traction Off Broadway. Fantastical characters, brutal realism, and experimental forms mark his plays. Perhaps best known for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which rather pointedly did not win a Pulitzer Prize in 1962 due to its controversial material, Albee weathered a dry spell—as least as far as critical successes go—from the late 1970s until 1993, when he emerged with an autobiographical account of his distant adoptive mother. Three Tall Women earned Albee his third Pulitzer Prize. Born in Washington, D.C. (or, according to some accounts, across the Potomac River in Virginia), Albee was adopted two weeks later by a wealthy couple with family roots in the theater business. During his lifetime, Albee has known he was adopted, which was unusual for his vintage. Reed and Frances Cotter Albee, he an heir to an interest in the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit, took the boy home to Larchmont, New York. They named him Edward Franklin Albee III, and proceeded to give him a life of propriety and affluence, from servants to prep schools to exposure to the theater, which he adored. What they didn’t give him, apparently, was the kind of intimacy that creates familial bonds. In an interview with the Academy of Achievement in 2005, Albee was direct: “I never felt comfortable with the adoptive parents. I don’t think they knew how to be parents. I probably didn’t know how to be a son, either. And I stayed pretty much to myself.” After limited success with college, Albee departed for Greenwich Village at about age twenty and never saw his father again. Seventeen years went by before he saw his mother again.
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In the Village of that era, Albee absorbed the artistic scene unfolding all around him, lived on a small inheritance from his grandmother, more or less did odd jobs (including delivering messages for Western Union), associated with artists, and wrote, which he’d done since he was a teenager. Albee’s first success came with The Zoo Story in 1959. Originally produced in Berlin, Americans first saw the middle-class Peter and Jerry, a drifter, meet on their park bench in 1960 at the Provincetown Playhouse in New York. Plays such as The Death of Bessie Smith followed, in which the action unfolds inside a white hospital while the black blues singer, who never appears, bleeds to death following a car accident. His work has been viewed as “America takes on the Theater of the Absurd movement” typified in European dramas by playwrights such as EUGE` NE IONESCO. These commentaries on modern themes resonated with audiences as the staid 1950s swirled into the fractious 1960s. Albee’s first full-length play also was his first to appear on Broadway. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the tale of hard-drinking George and Martha, their cocktail guests Honey and Nick, and the secrets laid bare by their shared evening of indulgence, won the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle prize for the year’s best play. It did not, however, win the Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer jurors recommended the play, but the board chose not to award a drama prize that year, back when work like Virginia Woolf was considered shocking. The 1960s were good to Albee; he continued to produce plays and won his first Pulitzer for A Delicate Balance, a more tempered tale of two torrid couples than that of George and Martha and Honey and Nick. In 1975 came his next Pulitzer, for Seascape, a fantas-
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tical tale of two couples who meet on the beach at Montauk in Long Island’s East Hampton. One pair is human, and one pair is lizard. They compare notes about life’s essentials, such as love. Although Albee continued to write, he encountered a drought of critical success with new plays from the late 1970s up until 1994. In 1965, after his father’s death, Albee had begun a reconciliation with his adoptive mother, an attempt that continued until her death in 1989. In 1994, his Three Tall Women, initially staged Off Broadway by the Vineyard Theater Company, unfolded around the death of his mother Frances. The character, age 92, ends up in a three-way conversation with two other characters who essentially embody her own 26- and 52-year-old selves. Even though his mother cut him out of her will, Albee’s play about her claimed her adopted son his third Pulitzer Prize. Later, he was a nominated finalist for two additional Pulitzers, most recently in 2003 for The Goat or Who is Sylvia? He, his works, or those associated with them have been nominated for seventeen Tony Awards, winning four. In 1996, Albee was awarded the National Medal of Arts and and was a Kennedy Center Honors honoree. In
2005, he was awarded a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He currently serves as Distinguished Professor of Theatre at the University of Houston, and his work both well-known and less-known continues to be performed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbotson, C.W., Masterpieces of 20th-Century American Drama, 2005; Amacher, Richard E., Edward Albee, 1982; Bigsby, C.W.E, Edward Albee: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1975; Bloom, Harold, Modern American Drama, 2005; Bryer, Jackson R. and Hartig, Mary C., Facts on File Companion to American Drama, 2003; Cohn, Ruby, Edward Albee, 1969; Gussow, Mel, Edward Albee: A Singular Journey: A Biography, 1999; Kolin, Philip C., American Playwrights Since 1945: A Guide to Scholarship, Criticism, and Performance, 1989; Sternlicht, Sanford, A Reader’s Guide to Modern American Drama; The New York Times “Edward Albee, Elder Statesman, Is in a State of Professional Reprise” by Mel Gussow, Dec. 1, 1993; “Critical Winds Shift for Albee, A Master of the Steady Course,” by David Richards, April 13, 1994. www.achievement.org. www.tonyawards.com. www.bookrags.com.
Allen, Woody (December 1, 1935– ) Director, Actor, Screenwriter, Playwright, Comedian, Musician oody Allen is perhaps the most prolific American independent filmmaker of the twentieth century. Stand-up comedy performances and gag writing gave his career a start, and he later began crafting quirky, intellectual films peppered with his distinctive wit. Allen often involves himself in the whole aspect of the film-
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making process, from writing the screenplays, directing the movies, and acting in the films. His native New York City has provided much of the inspiration for his work, as has religion, literature, and psychology. Although he draws from intellectual subjects and speculations
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for much of his work, he generally shuns the academic pretentiousness that often accompanies them. Allen was born Allen Stewart Ko¨nigsberg into a Jewish family of European descent in New York City. As a youth, he lived with his father Martin Ko¨nigsberg, his mother Nettea Cherrie, and his sister Letty in Flatbush, Brooklyn, for a time. His father was a jewelry engraver, and his mother was a bookkeeper. Allen attended Public School 99 and Midwood High School and was neither a poor student nor an overachiever. He was a clever personality around his fellow classmates, however, and he enchanted them with card and magic tricks. He preferred listening to jazz and going to the movies to doing his homework. Allen briefly attended New York University, studying communication and film, and later the City College of New York. Under his pen name of “Woody,” Allen began writing gags for agent David O. Alber, who subsequently sold them to newspaper columnists. When he was sixteen, he began writing for the comic actor Sid Caesar’s (1922– ) Your Show of Shows and started calling himself “Woody Allen,” a name he has used since then. Following his failed attempts at college, he started writing for the humorist Herb Shriner (1918–1970). When he was nineteen, he began writing scripts for several television shows— The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, and Caesar’s Hour among them. The same year, he married his first wife, Harlene Rosen, for what was by all accounts a disastrous relationship that turned ugly in public. As his scriptwriting expanded, his salary slowly increased. Switching gears in 1961, Allen took to the stage as a stand-up comedian, making his debut in the Greenwich Village club the Duplex in New York. Allen was an odd and non-stereotypical stage presence for a comedian but successfully delivered humorous satires of his own personal quirks with strength. The album Standup Comic and Nightclub Years 19641968 showcases some of his comic stage performances from the era. During this time, he
also expanded the number and types of media he wrote for, including the television show Candid Camera. Allen also began to write short stories for The New Yorker and other magazines. His plays from that era include the Broadway productions Don’t Drink the Water (1966) and Play It Again, Sam (1969), after which Life magazine featured him on its cover. Both productions were later adapted for the screen. In 1966, he married Louise Lasser, who costarred with him (even after their divorce) in Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972), and Stardust Memories (1980). Allen wrote the screenplay for his first film, the comedy What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), starring British comic actor Peter Sellers (1925–1980). His directorial debut came with What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), which took the unusual approach of redubbing a Japanese spy film with entirely new comic dialog pieces. In 1967, he appeared in the James Bond spoof Casino Royale. His earlier films employed slapstick comedy, notable in The Front (1976), a film about Hollywood blacklisting, in which he acted in the 1950s. Annie Hall (1977), however, kicked off a ten-year string of successes for Allen that employed more sophisticated humor and included Manhattan (1979), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Manhattan featured a musical score from G EORGE GERSHWIN, was filmed in black and white, and, as inferred by its name, affectionately treated the subject of New York. The film earned widespread critical acclaim. Hannah and Her Sisters, a film about the twisted and complex dynamics and affairs among three sisters with very different personalities, won three Academy Awards and was nominated for four more. Less successful among his films from this period were Interiors (1978), which was criticized as a poor imitation of Swedish director INGMAR BERGMAN’s style, and Stardust Memories (1980), which
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garnered the same criticism for imitating Italian director FEDERICO FELLINI. Although they never married, Allen carried on a romantic relationship with actress Diane Keaton (1946– ). She appeared in Allen’s successful 1970 Broadway stage work Play It Again, Sam and again in the 1972 film version. During and after her romantic relationship with Allen, Keaton starred in several other of his films, including Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), and Interiors (1978). Keaton also appeared in Annie Hall. The love of his life from 1980 to 1992 was actress Mia Farrow (1945– ), and she appeared in a number of his films. However, the two never married, and the relationship ended when Farrow found nude pictures Allen had taken of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, who is thirty-five years Allen’s junior. A public custody battle over their children that eventually ended in Farrow’s favor ensued. Allen continued his relationship with Previn after his breakup with Farrow, and the two married in 1997. Comedic elements are less prominent though still a factor in Allen’s films of the 1980s, such as Zelig (1983) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Along with The Purple Rose of Cairo, Allen made two other films about show business in New York— Broadway Danny Rose (1984), and Radio Days (1987). Other films from the 1980s include A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) and September (1987). Shadows and Fog (1992), a black-and-white thriller, features the music of KURT WEILL. Husbands and Wives (1992) explores the strained marriages of two couples who find themselves drifting apart and attracted to others. He followed in 1993 with the suspenseful comedy Manhattan Murder Mystery, which again starred Keaton as well as Anjelica Huston (1951– ) and Alan Alda (1936– ). Bullets Over Broadway (1994) carried a lighter tone, as did his first musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996). Actress Mira Sorvino (1967– ), daughter of actor Paul Sorvino (1939– ), won an Academy Award for Best
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Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in Allen’s comedy Mighty Aphrodite (1995). Allen returned to more somber themes with Deconstructing Harry (1997), about a writer who authored a book revealing secrets about his friends who later turn on him in revenge, and Celebrity (1998), about a man whose efforts to find celebrity always end in disaster. Sweet and Lowdown (1999) uses the fictional jazz guitarist Emmett Ray (played by Sean Penn, 1960– ) to parody jazz documentaries. Allen started out the turn of the century with a return to full-blown comedy in Small Time Crooks (2000). Although it was a box office success, his next few films were not. These include The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), Hollywood Ending (2002), Anything Else (2003), and Melinda and Melinda (2004). Allen seemed to recover with Match Point (2005), which earned widespread critical acclaim. Scoop (2006) was less successful though not a flop, and Cassandra’s Dream followed in 2007. His next film, Woody Allen Spanish Project, is scheduled for release in 2008. Although Allen has won numerous awards, he does not show his motion pictures in competition and has thus denied himself additional honors he might have won. He has won three Academy Awards and been nominated for twenty-one of them (though his first appearance to accept any of the awards came in 2002, when he urged directors to keep filming in New York City after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States). He has also received many awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). In 1997, he received the honorary BAFTA Fellowship for his work. Among Allen’s other interests are jazz music, and he is a proficient clarinet player who has performed publicly. Jazz often forms integral parts of his soundtracks. Woody Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band play often in Manhattan and sometimes elsewhere.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bailey, Peter J., The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen, 2001; Baxter, John, Woody Allen: A Biography, 1998; Benayoun, Robert, The Films of Woody Allen, 1986; Brode, Douglas, Woody Allen: His Films and Career, 1985; Girgus, Sam B., The Films of Woody Allen, 2002; Guthrie, Lee, Woody Allen: A Biography, 1978; Jacobs,
Diane, The Magic of Woody Allen, 1982; Lax, Eric, Woody Allen: A Biography, 2000; Meade, Marion, The Unruly Life of Woody Allen: A Biography, 2000; Palmer, Myles, Woody Allen: An Illustrated Biography, 1980; Pogel, Nancy, Woody Allen, 1987; Spignesi, Stephen J., The Woody Allen Companion, 1992; Yacowar, Maurice, Loser Take All: The Comic Art of Woody Allen, 1991; www.woodyallen.com.
Amis, Kingsley (April 16, 1922–October 22, 1995) Novelist, Poet, Critic, Teacher n the eyes of contemporary critics, the publication of Lucky Jim in 1954 established Kingsley William Amis as one of the “Angry Young Men,” British writers of the 1950s whose work protested against social rigidity and injustice. Amis wrote nineteen additional novels during his lifetime, none of which matched Lucky Jim’s success. All were marked by a critical and even cynical outlook, and by extensive use of parody and satire. He also wrote poetry and essays. Amis was born in London and grew up in the city’s suburb of Norbury. His father was not wealthy but did everything he could to further his son’s education. Amis studied at the primary school of St. Hilda’s and subsequently at Norbury College. At the latter, he published his first short story, “The Sacred Rhino of Uganda.” With a scholarship, he entered the City of London School, where he wrote for the school magazine. By this time, Amis had already acquired a reputation as a talented mimic, a tendency that would emerge in the parody and satire of his later work. In 1941, he entered St. John’s College, Oxford, where he formed a friendship with the poet and novelist PHILIP LARKIN. World War II put a temporary halt on his studies, and from 1942 to 1945 he served in the Royal Corps of Signals. After returning to Ox-
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ford, he met JOHN WAIN; he earned his degree in English in 1949. Although most famous as a novelist, Amis published poetry before he became successful in fiction. His first volume, Bright November, appeared in 1947. Many of these poems were written during his war service. Uncertainty after the war forms a major theme in Bright November, as does love. The object of his affections at this time was the subject of “Poem for Hilary,” Hilary Ann Bardwell, whom he married in 1948; he later married the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Critics included Amis in a group of poets they dubbed “The Movement,” in which they also included ELIZABETH JENNINGS, Larkin, and Wain. The Movement was not a formal group, but their poetry was popularized in the 1950s anthology New Lines. Their verse was straightforward and plain-spoken with tight form and little use of metaphor. Amis’s later collections of verse include A Frame of Mind (1953), A Case of Samples (1956), and A Look round the Estate (1963). The latter especially reflects the cynicism of his later years. His cynicism was both political (“On Goliath”) and religious. In poems such as “New Approach Needed,” Amis argued that Jesus was an inad-
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equate savior for mankind. His Collected Poems 1944–1979 was published in 1979. In 1949, Amis began his academic career, which lasted until 1963, with a teaching position at the University College of Swansea in Wales. He scored a major success with the publication of his first novel, the humorous Lucky Jim (1954), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1955. Jim Dixon is a young and disgruntled assistant lecturer at a British college. Although he is not always a sympathetic character in Amis’s portrayal, Dixon’s grievances are real. He detests having to publish and speak on hollow, boring subjects in order to keep his job in the History Department. He has an affair with a colleague, Margaret Peel. In the end, Dixon makes his final exit from the academic scene in triumph, free at last of its social pretentiousness. The novels The Uncertain Feeling and I Like It Here followed in 1955 and 1958. Take a Girl Like You (1960) explores the sexual tension between Patrick Standish and Jenny Bunn, two opposites. The protagonist of One Fat Englishman (1963) is the greedy and miserable publisher Roger H. St. John W. Micheldene. With The Green Man (1969), Amis toyed with the realm of the supernatural. Maurice Allington, landlord of an old inn, The Green Man, narrates the story of his confrontation with the ghost of Dr. Thomas Underhill, a seventeenth-century man suspected of murdering his wife. Amis experimented with fiction in several genres. The Anti-Death League (1966) is a spy thriller with a more serious tone than his previous novels. Using the pseudonym Robert Markham, he contributed Colonel Sun (1968) to the James Bond series. The Riverside Villas Murder (1973) is a detective story that unfolds around the murder of Christopher Inman. His murderer and former mistress, Mrs.
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Trevelyan, has an affair with the young and unwitting Peter Furneaux, who is helping Colonel Manton solve the mystery of Inman’s murder. In We Are All Guilty (1992), Amis examines the notion that society is responsible for an individual’s behavior. The delinquent Clive seriously hurts a night watchman when he breaks into a warehouse. Clive has a host of supporters all insisting that he cannot be held responsible for the crime, the only exception being a police sergeant. Amis’s other novels include The Egyptologists, co-written with Robert Conquest; I Want It Now (1968); Girl, 20 (1971), set in London during the 1960s; Ending Up (1974); Jake’s Thing (1978); Stanley and the Women (1984), which earned widespread condemnation from feminists and other critics; The Old Devils (1986), winner of the Booker Prize; The Folks That Live on the Hill (1990); and The Russian Girl (1994). Among Amis’s other works are the shortstory collection My Enemy’s Enemy (1962) and his Memoirs (1991). Amis’s son, Martin Amis, has also become a well-known novelist. Amis was knighted in 1990. Amis was a founder figure in both poetry and literature in the 1950s. The unpretentious style and use of traditional poetic devices in Amis’s verse helped form the foundation of the Movement poetry, and Lucky Jim was a central work among the Angry Young Men.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bradford, Richard, Kingsley Amis, 1989; Fussell, Paul, The Anti-Egotist: Kingsley Amis, Man of Letters, 1994; Gardner, Philip, Kingsley Amis, 1981; Jacobs, Eric, Kingsley Amis: A Biography, 1995; McDermott, John, Kingsley Amis: An English Moralist, 1989; Moseley, Merritt, Understanding Kingsley Amis, 1993; Salwak, Dale, Kingsley Amis, Modern Novelist, 1992.
´, IVO ANDRIC
Andric ´ , Ivo (October 9, 1892–March 13, 1975) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Poet he Serbo-Croat language author Ivo Andric´, best known for three novels published after World War II, explored the religious, ethnic, and historical elements of his native Bosnia in his short stories, novels, and poetry. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961. Andric´ was born into a Catholic family in Dolac, in what is now Bosnia, near Travnik. His father died of tuberculosis when Andric´, an only child, was two, and Andric´ then went to live with an aunt in Vis egrad. The Vis egrad landscape was the center of centuries-old ethnic and religious conflicts and would furnish the material for much of his writing. He attended school beginning at age 6, then moved to Sarajevo for high school and lived there with his mother. Although he disliked his later schooling, it was during his days as a student that he developed his interest in writing. In 1912 Andric´ enrolled at the University of Zagreb and then studied in a succession of universities in Vienna, Cracow, and later Graz, where he earned a doctorate. Along with many other students who opposed Austro-Hungarian rule, Andric´ was a member of the National Revolutionary Youth Organization and as a result spent part of World War I in prison. After his release in 1915 he spent the next two years interned in Bosnia. In 1918 Andric´ returned to Zagreb, where he helped found the journal The Literary South. Two early collections of poetry, Ex Ponto (1918) and Anxieties (1920), belong to this period. Although his literary reputation began to grow, the royalties from his work proved insufficient for a living. After the war he joined the Yugoslavian diplomatic service, a position that took him all over Europe between the
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two world wars. Andric´ wrote short stories during these years. His first, “The Journey of Alija Derzelez,” was published in 1920. The majority of these stories, like his novels, are set in the Yugoslavian landscape. In 1941 Andric´, then in Berlin, left the diplomatic service and returned to Belgrade after the German invasion of Yugoslavia. He wrote the three novels for which he is most famous during World War II. Bosnian Story (1945) is set in the period from 1807 to 1814, during the brief existence of a French consulate in Travnik that was established during the Napoleonic wars. In the story Andric´ explored the effect of the Western consulate on the Eastern cultures in Bosnia. The Bridge on the Drina (1945) is an epic chronicle spanning a period from the sixteenth century to the beginning of World War I. The stone bridge in the novel forms a symbolic center for the variety of religious and ethnic elements that inhabit the region. First built by the Ottoman Vezir in the sixteenth century, it serves as the focal point of all of the novel’s action and represents an established way of life until its destruction in World War I. The Woman from Sarajevo (1945) focuses on the character of Rajka Radakovic’, a neurotic Yugoslavian miser. In 1966 Andric´ married Milica Babic´, a costume designer. His other works include the unfinished novel Omer Pasha Latas, published posthumously; Signs by the Roadside, a series of philosophical essays and sketches; and Devil’s Yard (trans. 1962), a novella set inside a Turkish prison.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hawkesworth, Celia, Ivo Andric´: Bridge Between East and West, 1984; Popovic, Radovan, Ivo Andric´: A Writer’s Life, 1989.
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Angelou, Maya (April 4, 1928– ) Novelist, Poet, Actress, Director, Dancer, Singer aya Angelou is an American novelist and poet best known for her advancement of civil rights in causes in America and her series of autobiographical novels that began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969. In 1993, Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning ” at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration, an event that brought her widespread acclaim. Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a doorkeeper and dietician, and her mother was a realtor and a nurse. Almost from the beginning, Angelou endured a stormy childhood. Her parents divorced when she was three. She and her older brother (who gave her her nickname “Maya”) went to live with their grandmother, who operated a general store in Stamps, Arkansas. During her four-year stay in Arkansas, Angelou learned a wide variety of dance forms that would prove important to her later artistic career. Angelou returned to St. Louis to live with her mother when she was eight. The two environments in which the children were raised— in small-town Arkansas with a devout grandmother and in the big city of St. Louis with a less-than-pious mother—differed vastly. Her mother’s boyfriend sexually abused her, prompting her uncles to beat the man to death. The trauma of the incident took a devastating emotional toll on Angelou. Believing that her act of telling on the man caused his death, she ceased speaking at all for five years. Angelou once again went to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, where she found the courage to talk again. When she was fifteen, Angelou became one of the first African-Americans to work on San Francisco’s streetcars. While in San Francisco, she attended George Washington High School.
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She suffered another personal tragedy in 1940 when her father’s girlfriend assaulted her, and the incident prompted her to live homeless in a junkyard. Although she stayed only a month before obtaining a ticket back to San Francisco, her time in the junkyard with other homeless young people from different racial backgrounds profoundly changed her way of thinking. By age sixteen, Angelou was pregnant with her son, Guy Johnson. Johnson is a poet and the author of the novel Standing at the Scratch Line. Angelou began to sing at impresario Enrico Banducci’s Purple Onion nightclub in San Francisco and recorded an album for Liberty Records entitled Miss Calypso (1957). In 1969, Angelou published her famous autobiographical work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which takes its title from the last stanza of the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar’s (1872–1906) “Sympathy”: I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!
The book was the first in a series of autobiographical novels and describes Angelou’s life from her childhood until she was sixteen. Gather Together in My Name (1974) is another autobiographical work that picks up where I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings leaves off. With the time period starting at the age of seventeen, Angelou finds herself leading a difficult life and working in a variety of jobs to support her son—as a tap dancer, a madam, a prostitute, and a Creole cook.
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The 1976 novel Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas continues Angelou’s life story and addresses her experiences between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-seven. A large part of the work is dedicated to the revival of her dancing career, particularly her travels as she played a part in an international touring production of Porgy and Bess (1953–1954) sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. The poet Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877–1966) inspired the title of the novel The Heart of a Woman (1981), which picks up Angelou’s life story when she is in her thirties. Her intensifying involvement in the civil rights movement, raising her son Guy, a her turbulent love life, her artistic career (particularly her involvement with the Harlem Writers Guild), and her move from Los Angeles to New York are all prominent subjects. All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1997) delves further into her civil rights activism and participation in the civil rights movement. The novel details her visit to Ghana, a country with which she fell in love, and the experience of being an African-American woman in Africa. A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002) is the sixth volume of her autobiographical novels and chronicles her return from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X, only to be devastated by the news that he has been assassinated. The novel goes on to describe Angelou’s experiences with the six-day Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1965 and her work with civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose assassination devastates her once more. Aside from her novels, Angelou has written poetry, penned screenplays, and acted for stage and television. Her screenplay for Georgia, Georgia (1971) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 1973, she appeared in the Broadway production Look Away, delivering a performance that earned her a Tony nomination. In 1976, she directed an episode of the television series Visions, and in 1998 she directed
the film Down in the Delta, about a woman who sends her troubled daughter and her grandchildren away from big city life. While living in their ancestral home in rural Mississippi, they learn about their family history and the roots they came from. Angelou also portrayed Nyo Boto in the twelve-hour television series Roots (1977), based on author Alex Haley’s (1921–1992) African-American family history drama Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976). She has made several other minor film and television appearances. The following year, Angelou hosted a thirty-episode series entitled Humanities Through the Arts that examines music, literature, sculpture, painting, poetry, film, architecture, and other subjects. Angelou’s other writings include the poem Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (1996), with illustrations by the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988); the essay collection Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997); the colloquial recipe book Hallelujah! The Welcome Table (2004); Diversity Makes for a Rich Tapestry (2006); and Complete Collected Poems (2007); and numerous other volumes of poetry. Angelou has taught at several universities, including Radford University, the University of Ghana, the University of Kansas, and Wake Forest University. At Wake Forest, she was awarded a lifetime chair as the Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of American Studies. She has received a fellowship from Yale University and multiple honorary doctorates. In 1986, she received the Women’s International Center Living Legacy Award. In 1998, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. For “On the Pulse of Morning,” she won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. In 2000, she received the American National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington D.C. Talk show host OPRAH WINFREY honored Angelou, with whom she shares a close friendship, and other influential African-American women at her “Legends Ball” in 2005. In 2006, she began to host a regular XM Satellite Radio
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show on Winfrey’s channel. Angelou is fluent in six languages, including West African Fanti, and is a popular lecturer at universities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hagen, Lyman B., Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of Maya Angelou, 1997; King, Sarah E., Maya Angelou: Greeting the Morning,
1994; Lupton, Mary Jane, Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion, 1998; McPherson, Dolly Aimee, Order Out of Chaos: The Autobiographical Works of Maya Angelou, 1990; MongeauMarshall, Colette Simone, The Masks of Maya Angelou: Discovered, Discarded, and Designed, 1994; Shuker, Nancy, Maya Angelou, 1990; Walker, Leila Andrea, Touch Me, Life, Not Softly: The Poetry of Maya Angelou, 1994; www.mayaangelou.com.
Anouilh, Jean (June 23, 1910–October 3, 1987) Playwright, Director major figure in French theater, JeanMarie-Lucien-Pierre Anouilh wrote more than fifty plays in numerous styles. Noted for his penchant for experimentation and carefully crafted productions of social issues, he used his plays as vehicles for commentary and investigation but stopped short of philosophical presentation. Even when he incorporated historical and mythological episodes in his plays, they retained a modern spirit. Anouilh was born in Bordeaux, France, and moved to Paris with his family as an adolescent. He studied law and worked for a time in advertising before he entered the world of theater—as secretary to the actor and director Louis Jouvet. Influenced by Jouvet and by the experimental director Jacques Coupeau, Anouilh began to write his own plays. Le voyageur sans bagage (1937; Traveler without Luggage) marked Anouilh’s first popular success and offered a sharply critical look at post–World War I bourgeoisie. The protagonist, Gaston, has been suffering from amnesia since World War I. When his benefactor, the duchesse Dupont-Dufort, tries to find a home for him among the many who lay claim to him, she by chance chooses his real
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family. Gaston soon discovers, however, that his past is full of unpleasantness—theft, wronging his friends, and other misdeeds. He tries to reject his past and grabs at a fictional one when the opportunity presents itself. Like Gaston, many of Anouilh’s characters are restless, in search of something more than they have, on the verge of major decisions, or living in illusions—like Georges in Le rendezvous de Senlis. An unhappily married man, he falls in love with Isabelle and tries to create an ideal atmosphere by hiring actors to impersonate his parents. Isabelle uncovers the ruse but still loves him in the end. The heroine of La sauvage (Restless Heart; 1938), The´re`se Tarde, struggles to come to terms with the differences in background between herself and her lover, Florent, a rich piano player. During World War II, Anouilh served briefly in the military. He lived in Paris during the Nazi Occupation and, having a largely apolitical outlook, did not join the Resistance. The war years marked the period in his work during which he wrote several plays derived from Greek myth, all of which in fact addressed the problems of his own time. These include Medea, first performed in 1937, Eurydice (1942), and the tragedy Antigone (1942). Many con-
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sider Antigone, his story of the rebellious niece of Cre´on who defies her uncle’s orders and buries her brother, Polynice, among the finest of his works. The plot is based on the ancient tragedy by Sophocles, but Anouilh’s version clearly celebrates the Resistance. L’invitation au chaˆteau (1947; Ring ’Round the Moon), a fairy tale rife with comedy, switches gears entirely. The story concerns the identical twins Horace and Fre´de´ric, the latter of whom pursues the rich Diana. Horace, in love with Diana, concocts a scheme to pair his brother with Isabelle, a scheme that, after a few complications, finally works. The Waltz of the Toreadors (1952) is one of many farces by Anouilh to include the character of General Saintpe´. The life of the retired general, stuck in an unhappy marriage, is disturbed by the appearance of his longtime mistress Ghislane de Sainte-Euverte. The general has carried on his relationship with her by correspondence. Ghislane seeks to prove that the general’s wife is having an affair, and after a series of tragicomic turns, she ends up with the general’s son, Gaston. Flashback, one of Anouilh’s favorite devices, forms an integral part of two historical plays in which the heroes choose death rather than compromise their beliefs. The Lark (1953) presents the trial of Joan of Arc interspersed with flashbacks of her past. Becket, or, The Honor of God (1959) depicts the life
Thomas a` Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and twelfth-century martyr. Anouilh’s versatile technique and presentation style included comedies, tragedies, farces, and the come´die-ballet. His vivid characterizations, critical eye, and ability to weave tight, dramatic plots were a major force in French theater. The Trousers (1978) takes place in France when the Women’s Liberation Movement has come to power. The protagonist, Le´on, finds himself accused before the Committee of Liberated Women, and among his alleged crimes is fathering the child of his maid. When the baby is born black, proving he is not its father, the Committee drops the charge, but he is found guilty of other offenses against women and flees to Switzerland. Anouilh’s other plays include Thieves’ Carnival (1938); Ring ’Round the Moon (1947); Poor Bitos (1956); The Baker, The Baker’s Wife, and The Baker’s Boy (1968); Dear Antoine; or, The Love That Failed (1969); The Goldfish; or, My Father, This Hero (1970); Do Not Awaken the Lady (1970); and The Arrest (1975). He also wrote many film scenarios and translated other plays.
BIBLIOGRAPHY McIntyre, H. G., The Theatre of Jean Anouilh, 1981; Smith, Christopher Norman, Jean Anouilh: Life, Work, and Criticism, 1985.
Antonioni, Michelangelo (September 29, 1912–July 30, 2007) Director, Producer ichelangelo Antonioni began making his abstract and metaphorical films at roughly the same time FEDERICO FELLINI and ROBERTO ROSSELLINI embarked on their own film careers. Antonioni was influ-
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enced by the Neorealists, and he is best known for his films of the 1950s and 1960s. His cinematic style is characterized by the use of symbolic imagery and landscapes as well
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Michelangelo Antonioni (쑖 Roger-Viollet/The Image Works)
as sparse plot, and his films convey some of the century’s most compelling images of desolation and isolation. Antonioni was born in Ferrara, in northern Italy, and grew up in relative comfort and prosperity, a factor he has cited as a prime influence on his film career. As a child he designed puppets and the structures to go with them, and as an adolescent he began to paint. Antonioni attended local schools and later commuted to the University of Bologna, where he studied the Greek and Roman classics and economics. He began to go to the cinema and write harsh, outspoken film criticism, which was heavily edited by Fascist censors. By 1939, Antonioni had decided to try to make it in the cinema and moved to Rome. Success eluded him at first, and he worked in a series of odd jobs. After working for a while as an editor for the magazine Cinema, Antonioni was fired for political reasons. The magazine was run by the Fascist Entertainment Guild, of whom Vittorio Mussolini, son of the dictator, was director. Antonioni then studied
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briefly at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Antonioni got his start in film in the Neorealist movement. Among the early scripts he worked on was Rossellini’s A Pilot Returns (1942), and he later traveled to France to work with the French director Marcel Carne´ on his Les visiteurs du soir. In 1943, Antonioni began his first film, the short Gente del Po (1947; People of the Po), a documentary about fishermen who lived along the Po River. During this time Antonioni also worked as a translator to earn money and wrote film criticism for the underground paper Italia libera. He was unable to finish Gente del Po until after the war; then, until 1950, he worked on a series of other short documentaries. Cronaca di un amore (1950; Story of Love), Antonioni’s first feature film, brought some success. The story concerns Fontana, a Milanese industrialist; his wife, Paola; and her lover, Guido. When he looks into Paola’s past, Fontana discovers that Paola and Guido may be at fault in the death of Guido’s former fiance´e. Paola and Guido renew their affair,
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and she wants to kill Fontana. Fontana perishes in a car accident that may or may not have been set up, and his death separates Paola and Guido forever. Antonioni’s films are marked by their character studies and ambiguous plots, plots that are secondary to symbolic presentation. Obtrusive, metaphorical objects, long tracking shots, barren landscapes, and industrial scenes are all typical components of the bleak outlook he conveys. He has either written or co-written the majority of his screenplays, which depict alienation, isolation, corruption, and decadence in modern society. Le amiche (1955) concerns a circle of corrupt women in Turin. When Clelia arrives to help establish a branch of a fashion house, she becomes involved with the manipulative Momina and the suicidal Rosetta. When Rosetta’s lover, Lorenzo, breaks with her, she kills herself. Clelia blames Momina for her death and finally leaves Turin for Rome, abandoning her own lover as well. L’avventura (1959; The Adventure), Antonioni’s first international success, is the first in a trilogy of films. Anna, a passenger on a yacht, disappears on a cruise in the Lipari Islands. Among those who search for her are her lover Sandro and her friend Claudia, who fall in love and live in relative happiness until Claudia finds him with a call girl. L’avventura was the first of many Antonioni films to star Monica Vitti. La notte (1961; Night) and L’eclisse (1962; The Eclipse) completed the trilogy. Deserto rosso (1964; Red Desert) was Antonioni’s first color film, and he was so meticulous in his color choices that he had a field painted gray to achieve the effect he wanted. Vitti plays Giuliana, a despairing married woman in search of meaning and love. Antonioni places her against a bleak industrial landscape, ravaged by technological advance. In Blow-Up (1966), Antonioni’s first major English film, David Hemmings plays Thomas, an arrogant fashion photographer. One day in the park he takes photographs of a happy couple, one of whom is Jane (Vanessa Red-
grave). Jane will do anything to get the pictures back, and when Thomas develops them, he makes a startling discovery. In the background he has photographed a murder. Thomas makes blow-ups of his prints and goes to the park, where his discovery of the dead body proves his suspicions. He wonders about the details, but they are never brought to light, and he continues to live his corrupt existence. Zabriskie Point (1970), set in the turbulent atmosphere of 1960s counterculture, was Antonioni’s first American film. “Il filo pericoloso delle cose” (“The Dangerous Thread of Things”), an Antonioni short film, is one of three cinematic segments that comprises Eros (2004), which also contains a song by the Brazilian singer/composer Caetano Veloso entitled “Michelangelo Antonioni.” Buyers of the U.S. DVD release of Eros can also see Antonioni’s short film In Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (The Gaze of Michelangelo), in which the director acts. Antonioni’s other films include I vinti (1952); La signora senza camelie (1952–1953); Chung Kuo China (1972); The Passenger (1974), starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider; Identification of a Woman (1982); and Beyond the Clouds (1995). The Mystery of Oberwald (1980), adapted from JEAN COCTEAU’s play The Eagle Has Two Heads, was shot on videotape and employs experimental coloring and editing. Antonioni died in Rome on July 30, 2007, the same day that famed Swedish director, INGMAR BERGMAN, passed away. In 1994, Antonioni received an honorary award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizing “his place as one of the cinema’s master visual stylists.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Arrowsmith, William, Antonioni: The Poet of Images, 1995; Brunette, Peter, The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni, 1998; Leprohon, Pierre, Michelangelo Antonioni: An Introduction, 1963; Rifkin, Ned, Antonioni’s Visual Language, 1982; Rohdie, Sam, Antonioni, 1990.
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Arbus, Diane (March 14, 1923-July 26, 1971) Photographer merican photographer Diane Arbus was best known for her direct documentary style and unusual subject matter. Her controversial black-and-white photographs were visually remarkable with straightforward composition and subjects typically looking directly at the camera. In her most well-known works, Arbus included subjects such as twins, dwarfs, bag ladies in Times Square, nudists, people with physical abnormalities, and transvestites. Arbus’s images confronted their viewers, exposing them to a glimpse of life outside of the constraints of societal acceptance. Born Diane Nemerov, Arbus was the second child of David and Gertrude Nemerov, the wealthy owners of Russek’s department store on Fifth Avenue. Growing up in a privileged environment, Arbus was close to her older brother Howard, and attended the Ethical Cultural School in New York. At the age of fourteen, she met Allan Arbus, a nineteenyear-old college student working at her father’s department store. Despite her parents’ disapproval, they married in 1941, soon after she turned eighteen. During World War II Allan was sent to a military photography school in New Jersey. Arbus became interested in
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Banner publicizing the opening of the Diane Arbus exhibition. (쑖 James Marshall/The Image Works)
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photography and learned much on the subject from her husband until he was sent to Burma in 1944. The couple’s first child, Doon, was born the following year, on April 3, 1945. After her husband was discharged from the army, they worked together as fashion photographers, creating advertisements for Russek’s and Bonwit Teller, as well as fashion shots for Harper’s Bazaar. Arbus worked mainly as a stylist, while her husband took the photographs. In May 1947 the couples’ photographs appeared in Glamour magazine for the first time. Their signature was capturing action shots of models. Despite their growing success in the fashion industry, the Arbuses preferred to photograph friends and family members. In 1954, Arbus’s second daughter, Amy, was born. Feeling oppressed by the commercial nature of the fashion industry, Arbus decided to explore other avenues while her husband continued to work in fashion. She became interested in the photographs of Lisette Model and signed up for a course at the New School offered by Model. She was intrigued by the intimacy of Model’s images and studied with her from 1955 through 1957. With Model’s guidance, Arbus departed from the world of commercial fashion photography and instead used her lens to explore the outskirts of society from which she was sheltered as a child. Arbus brought to the public eye images and people that were not typically looked at or focused upon in mainstream society. In 1956 Arbus began to take her own photographs capturing images of children and strangers in Spanish Harlem. In the next few years she began to work as a portrait photographer, approaching strangers in the street and asking to photograph them. Arbus used a viewfinder at waist level, enabling her to talk to, and maintain eye contact with her subjects as she photographed them. Using straightforward
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composition Arbus used a flash in daylight to separate her subject from the background. She also wrote photo essays to accompany her work, which were published in magazines including Harper’s Bazaar and Esquire. Arbus separated from her husband in 1960, and published her first article in Esquire magazine that same year. Around this time, Arbus was greatly influenced by her visits to nudist camps in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and completed a series on the subject. She was awarded Guggenheim fellowships in 1963 and 1966 for her photojournalism work. In 1965, three of her photographs were included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA); two from her nudist series and one of female impersonators. Two years later her work was shown again at the MOMA and included thirty of her images. Arbus’s work was controversial, receiving either praise or dismay for the frankness of her images. In the late 1960s, she began teaching photography and was employed at Hampshire College and the Parsons School of Design. One of Arbus’s most famous, and most reproduced photographs is Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey (1967) which sold for $478,400 in 2004. This image depicts two sisters standing next to each other, wearing
identical dresses, one with a slight smile, and the other with a slight frown. In another wellknown piece, Child with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. (1962) a young, thin boy holds a toy grenade in one hand and forms the other hand into a claw-shape, wearing a frustrated grimace on his face. After suffering from depression for years, Arbus took her own life on July 26, 1971. Her first book of photography was published a year after her death. In 1972, MOMA exhibited a major retrospective of Arbus’s work, which traveled throughout the United States and Canada.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bosworth, Patricia, Diane Arbus: A Biography, 1995; Israel, Marvin, Diane Arbus: Monograph, 2005; Arbus, Diane, Diane Arbus Revelations, 2005; Arbus, Doon, Diane Arbus: Untitled, 2005. www.answers.com/topic/diane-arbus. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5229/is_ 2003/ai_n19144542. www.masters-of-photography.com:80/A/arbus/ arbus_articles1.html. http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/ aa110600b.htm
Armstrong, Louis (ca. August 4, 1900–July 6, 1971) Singer, Musician monumental figure and pioneer in American jazz, Louis Armstrong was undoubtedly one of the most famous and influential musicians in the genre in the twentieth century. His highly innovative, improvisational, spirited, and confident style influenced a generation of musicians both during his lifetime and after his death. He lent his gravelly voice and experimental instru-
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mentals to improvised soloing, a movement in jazz for which he is largely responsible, and enjoyed great success both as a soloist and an accompanist to many of his era’s most noted jazz musicians. Armstrong was born into severe poverty in New Orleans, Louisiana. The exact date of his birth is disputed. His father, a laborer, abandoned the family shortly after he was born.
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Louis Armstrong (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT&S Collection, LCUSZ62-118720)
His mother was a prostitute. Armstrong and his sister grew up in the impoverished Storyville section of New Orleans, the red-light district where he lived near music-filled clubs and dance halls. Despite his difficult circumstances, he learned to play music at a young age. He sang in a barbershop quartet and learned the coronet playing in the band at the Colored Waifs’ Home for Boys, to which he was sent for repeated misbehavior. After his release from the home, he frequented clubs around Storyville and learned the music of the time. Among the musicians he met in the course of his rounds was coronetist and bandleader Joe “King” Oliver (1885–1938), who became his mentor and friend, allowed him play time, and gave him an instrument. Armstrong eventually obtained positions playing in dance halls and brass bands on New Orleans riverboats and trains, and when Oliver left the popular trombonist Kid Ory’s (1886–1973) band in 1919, he took his place. He also played with pianist and bandleader Fate Marable (1890–1947).
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In 1918, Armstrong married Daisy Parker, a prostitute with whom he adopted his threeyear-old second cousin. The couple divorced in 1922, and Armstrong subsequently moved to Chicago. There he rejoined Oliver in the latter’s successful Creole Jazz Band, which played regular gigs at the Lincoln Gardens ballroom. In 1923, he made his first recordings playing second coronet to Oliver. Noteworthy among these was “Dipper Mouth Blues.” The following year he married Lillian (“Lil”) Hardin, who played piano for the band. Partly under his wife’s influence, he decided in 1924 to move to New York. There he played with the popular big band era Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, led by the pianist and bandleader Fletcher Henderson (1897–1952). Armstrong was less than comfortable with the disciplined rhythms the orchestra demanded of him, but during live performances he found outlets for the free-form improvisational solos that bewitched audiences and defined the unique style for which he is famous. By 1925, he had returned to Chicago and begun to record under his own name, completing approximately sixty songs, mostly for OKeh Records. Early popular tunes such as “Big Butter and Egg Man,” “Muggles,” “St. Louis Blues” (with blues singer Bessie Smith, 1892–1937), “Potato Head Blues,” “West End Blues,” and other recordings with soprano saxophonist and clarinetist Sidney Bechet (1897–1959) belong to this early period of his career. He recorded many of his songs at this time with band lineups known as the Hot Five and the Hot Seven. In 1928, he recorded his famous “Weatherbird” duet with pianist Earl Hines (1903–1983). His prowess on the coronet and the trumpet dominated the early era in his music, and his enormously successful vocal era was still yet to come. A switch from playing the coronet to the trumpet, partly encouraged by a recurring lip problem, accompanied his growing rise to fame. Around this time, he also recorded his first scat song, yet another medium in which
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he would prove his mastery. Scat performers sang improvisational pieces using nonsense syllables. Now, in addition to proving himself as a talented instrumentalist, Armstrong began to establish himself as an admired and respected vocalist. The scat song “Heebie Jeebies” became a major hit and brought Armstrong widespread fame. In 1929, Armstrong recorded a number of popular hits, including “When You’re Smiling” and “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” He again returned to New York the same year. There he played in the pit orchestra for the Broadway musical revue Hot Chocolates, the score of which included compositions by FATS WALLER such as the popular “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” In the 1930s, he recorded a series of vocal performances using the new RCA ribbon microphone, a bidirectional microphone that added warmth, clarity, and detail to vocalists’ recordings. In 1931, he recorded a version of “Stardust,” which became one of his biggest hits. He infused his innovative, interpretive vocal style into reworkings of such songs as “Lazy River” (1931). In 1930, Armstrong moved to Los Angeles. He subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe with a big band lineup characteristic of the Swing Era, which reached its height between the mid-1930s and the mid-1940s. In 1943 he made his permanent home in Queens, New York. By that time, he had married his fourth and last wife, Lucille. He continued to keep an aggressive and hectic touring schedule for years to come, often delivering more than three hundred performances a year. During the late 1940s, Armstrong’s band was pared down from more than a dozen players to a smaller entourage in keeping with the decline of the Swing Era. The new group was eventually dubbed the All Stars and featured, at various times, trombonist Jack Teagarden (1905–1964), Hines, drummer Sidney Catlett (1910–1951), clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Barney Bigard (1906–1980), and other top musicians of the day.
Armstrong recorded extensively during this time. He toured internationally, sometimes representing the U.S. State Department in Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe. Already having earned such nicknames as “Dippermouth,” “Satchmo,” and “Satch,” he was affectionately dubbed “Ambassador Satch.” During the last years of his life, particularly after his 1959 heart attack, Armstrong’s health waned, but he still continued to perform and record as he could. He recorded a number of notable albums in the 1950s, including Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954) and Satch Plays Fats (1955, consisting of all Waller tunes). With ELLA FITZGERALD, he made Ella and Louis (1956), Ella and Louis Again (1957), and Porgy and Bess (1957). Armstrong also recorded and popularized many other hit songs, including “What a Wonderful World,” “Mack the Knife,” and “Hello Dolly.” The last of these topped the pop charts in 1964, knocking THE BEATLES’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” from the number one spot. Armstrong was a tremendous influence on many musicians, the popular singer and actor BING CROSBY (1903–1977) being among the most notable of them. In addition to his live appearances and recordings, he appeared in dozens of films, including Pennies from Heaven (1936) with Crosby and Hello Dolly! (1969) with singer Barbara Streisand (1942– ). Armstrong died of a heart attack at age 69, shortly after he gave a performance at the Waldorf Astoria’s Empire Room. The City University of New York’s Queens College operates the Louis Armstrong House & Archives. Concerts, educational and archived materials available to the public for research, and a historic museum open to the public all form part of its offerings. While Armstrong became wealthy through his musical success, he was noted for his generosity to friends. He was also an avid supporter of the American civil rights movement and supported the efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Armstrong was posthumously award-
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Louis Armstrong, 1976; Jones, Max, Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, 1900–1971, 1988; McKissack, Pat, Louis Armstrong: Jazz Musician, 1991; Nollen, Scott Allen, Louis Armstrong: The Life, Music, and Screen Career, 2004; Pinfold, Mike, Louis Armstrong: His Life & Times, 1987; Storbe, Ilse, Louis Armstrong: The Definitive Biography, 1999.
ed the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972 and was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bergreen, Laurence, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, 1997; Bradbury, David, Armstrong, 2003; Brothers, Thomas David, Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, 2006; Collier, James Lincoln, Louis Armstrong; An American Success Story, 1985; Giddins, Gary, Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong, 2001; Iverson, Genie,
www.louis-armstrong.net. www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_armstrong_ louis.htm. www.satchmo.net.
Arp, Jean (September 16, 1887–June 7, 1966) Painter, Sculptor, Poet, Short-Story Writer, Essayist ean Arp assimilated the influences of German Expressionism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, forging his own abstract style marked by his treatment of curvilinear forms. Arp’s work in numerous styles—including stone sculpture, painted wood reliefs, torn paper creations, collages, and lithographs—contributed to the development of abstract art in the second half of the century. Arp was born in Strassburg, Germany, now Strasbourg, France. He began to draw at a young age. While studying at the Strasbourg School of Fine Art, Arp tired of “everlasting copying of stuffed birds and withered flowers.” During a 1904 visit to Paris he discovered modern art, and the following year he entered the Weimar Art School in Germany. After studying there from 1905 to 1907, he enrolled in the Acade´mie Julien in Paris in 1908. By 1911 Arp had associated himself with a number of modern artists, including WASSILY KANDINSKY. The same year, he helped organize an exhibition at Lucerne entitled Moderne Bund, featuring his own works as well as those of PABLO PICASSO, HENRI MATISSE, and others. While in Munich in 1912, Arp briefly
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involved himself in the activities of the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Arp moved to Paris in 1914, enabling him to meet avant-garde artists such as Picasso and ROBERT DELAUNAY as well as the writer Max Jacob. With the outbreak of World War I, he moved to Zurich, where with Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, and others he helped found the Dadaist movement. The Dadaists rejected traditional, representational forms of art and saw all aspects of existence as art. Inspired by the elementary forms embodied in his children’s blocks, Arp created what he termed his first “essential” picture in Zurich. Rebelling against traditional oil-on-canvas creations, Arp created and exhibited collages, tapestries, and fabrics. By 1917 the angular forms of his early works had given way to the curvilinear and biomorphic forms that characterized the remainder of his work. While in Switzerland, Arp also created his first painted wood reliefs. Works such as Plant Hammer (1917) and Birds in an Aquarium (1920) combine separate, sometimes painted, pieces of wood cut into ab-
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stract shapes. He returned to the medium throughout his career, and among his major works is a large wood relief for Harvard University’s Graduate Center (1950). Arp collaborated with other artists, such as KURT SCHWITTERS and MAX ERNST, and moved to Germany after the war. In 1921 he married the artist Sophie Tauber, and three years later they settled in Meudon, near Paris. In the mid1920s, he fell under the influence of the Surrealists in Paris, taking part in the first exhibition of Surrealist paintings at the Galerie Pierre in 1925. His Surrealist works, which Arp described as “interpretive,” bear titles such as Moon Frog and Navel Bottle. Arp worked in many media. His Mountain, Table, Anchors, Navel (1925) is an oil on cardboard with shapes cut from the picture. Many of his collages use string and other materials. Following his Surrealist period, Arp began to concentrate on the perfection of forms. He and his wife joined the Cercle et Carre´ (Circle and Square) group and in 1931 helped found the Association Abstraction-Cre´ation. During the 1930s he began to sculpt, primarily working in metal and stone. His smooth, abstract,
and organic forms bear some resemblance to the work of the English sculptors BARBARA HEPWORTH and HENRY MOORE. Among the works that reflect these qualities are Human Concretion (1935) and Stone Formed by the Human Hand, in Jura limestone. During World War II, Arp returned to Zurich, where Sophie died in 1943. He returned to Meudon after the war and continued to create his abstract works in various media. Among his later works is a large metal-on-cement piece for the Ciudad Universitaria in Caracas, Venezuela. Aside from art, Arp also created poetry, sketches, and essays in both French and German—he used the name Hans Arp when he wrote in German. Marcel Jean edited two collections of his writings: Arp on Arp: Poems, Essays, Memories by Jean Arp (1972) and Collected French Writings (1974).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Read, Herbert Edward, Arp, 1968; Read, Herbert Edward, The Art of Jean Arp, 1968; Soby, James Thrall, ed., Arp, 1958.
Ashbery, John (July 28, 1927– ) Poet, Professor, Editor, Critic ohn Ashbery is the prolific author of twenty-three volumes of poetry, plus fiction, plays and criticism. A member of “New York School,” he was central to American poetics in the post-World War II period. He has won almost every major American poetry award, and his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Ashbery is known for the elegance, originality, and obscurity of his poetry, as well as his uncompromising experimentalism. Indeterminacy is a key concept. He refuses finality
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and closure and rejects of traditional forms of linear narrative. The process, or journey, is more important than the object, or the destination. Ashbery favors the long poem, and his language mixes high and low culture to produce a poetry which embraces plurality. Playful yet rigorous, his poems use intricate form with arresting images and exquisite rhythms. Full of disjunction, non sequitur, and sudden shifts in tone and subject, Ashbery’s poetry can seem fragmented and oblique, but is ap-
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preciated as highly suggestive and dreamlike meditations. John Lawrence Ashbery was born on July 28, 1927, in Rochester, New York. He grew up in Rochester and spent most of his youth living with his grandparents. They left the city and moved to the country when he was seven years old and his grandfather retired from his post as professor at the university. He attended Deerfield Academy and felt out of place with the upper-class, WASP jocks. He went on to Harvard, where he met Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara. Along with James Schuyler and Barbara Guest, they later became known as the New York School of Poets. Not an official ”school,” they were a group of like-minded poets who rejected the serious, academic poetry written in America after the war. After graduating from Harvard University in 1949, Ashbery attended Columbia University and received a master’s degree in 1951. He stayed in New York City working as a copywriter and published his first book of poems, Turandot and Other Poems, in 1953. In 1955, he received a Fulbright scholarship and moved to Paris. The same year, he had a collection of poetry accepted by W. H. A UDEN who was then the editor of the Yale Younger Poets Series. The collection was published as Some Trees in 1956. The Tennis Court Oath (1962), produced during Ashbery’s time in Paris, was extremely experimental and not well received by critics. When his scholarship money ran out, he became an art critic and translator. He wrote art criticism for the New York Herald Tribune and Art News. Ashbery finally returned to New York after the death of his father in 1965 and worked as the executive editor of Art News. In this time, he published Rivers and Mountains (1966) and The Double Dream of Spring (1970). In 1972, he began teaching poetry and creative writing at Brooklyn College. Ashbery was Professor of English and codirector of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Brooklyn College (CUNY), 1974-1990, and Distinguished Professor, 1980-1990. Self-Portrait in a Con-
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vex Mirror (1975) was awarded the National Book Award for poetry, the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and the National Book Critics Circle prize. This was the first, and remains the only, time that one book has been awarded all three of the major American literary prizes. Houseboat Days (1977) was followed by A Wave (1984), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His subsequent volumes of poetry include April Galleons (1987), Flow Chart (1991), And the Stars Were Shining (1994), Can You Hear, Bird (1995), and Wakefulness (1998). His most recent volumes include Your Name Here (2000), Chinese Whispers (2002), Where Shall I Wander (2005), and A Worldly Country (2007). Ashbery also wrote a novel, A Nest of Ninnies (1969), with James Schuyler, and edited The Best American Poetry 1988. Other publications include Reported Sightings (1989), a book of art criticism; Three Plays (1978), a collection of plays; and Selected Prose (2004), essays on a variety of topics. He was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1980) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1983), and served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1988-1999. He delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard in 1989-1990, published as Other Traditions: the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (2000). Since 1990 he has been the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and divides his time between New York City and Hudson, New York. Ashbery’s awards include the the Bollingen Prize, the English Speaking Union Prize, two Ingram Merrill Foundation grants, the MLA Common Wealth Award in Literature, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the Frank O’Hara Prize, and the Shelley Memorial Award. He was a MacArthur Fellow from 1985-1990, and also received fellowships from The Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation. He holds honorary degrees from Southampton College of Long Island University, the University of Rochester (New York),
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Harvard University, and Pace University (New York). He was the first English-language poet to win the Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Poe´sie (Brussels, 1996). Other international recognition for his outstanding career achievement includes the Horst Bienek Prize for Poetry (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, 1991), the Ruth Lilly Prize for Poetry (Poetry magazine, Modern Poetry Association and the American Council for the Arts, 1992), the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for Poetry (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, 1992), the Robert Frost Medal (Poetry Society of America, 1995), , the Gold Medal for Poetry (American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1997), the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit (State of New York and the New York State Writers Institute, 2000), the Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts (Signet Associates, Harvard University, 2001), and the Wallace Stevens Award (Academy of American Poets, 2001). He was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by
the French Ministry of Culture in 1993, and he was named Officier of the Le´gion d’Honneur of the Republic of France by presidential decree in 2002. He was elected to foreign membership in the Italian Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ford, Mark, John Ashbery in Conversation with Mark Ford (Between the Lines), 2003; Herd, David, John Ashbery and American Poetry, 2000; Schultz, Susan, ed., The Tribe of John: Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry, 1995; Shoptaw, John, On the Outside Looking Out: John Ashbery’s Poetry, 1995. http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9009810. www.flowchartfoundation.org/arc/home/about_ john_ashbery/narrative_biography.htm. www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/238. www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?owner_id= 16. www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet. do?poetId=91.
Ashton, Frederick (September 17, 1904–August 18, 1988) Choreographer, Dancer, Director rederick William Mallandaine Ashton distinguished himself as the primary choreographer for England’s Royal Ballet from 1933 to 1970, producing original ballets such as Fac¸ade and A Month in the Country and choreographing other classics. Though not noted for his originality, he established himself as a respected veteran in the ballet world. Ashton danced minor roles himself and worked with leading dancers of his era, such as Dame MARGOT FONTEYN and RUDOLF NUREYEV. Ashton was the youngest son of a British diplomat; he was born in Guya-quil, Ecuador,
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and attended a Dominican school in Lima, Peru, where the family moved in his youth. When he was 13, he saw ANNA PAVLOVA dance in Lima, sparking his interest in the ballet. His family’s disapproval, however, prevented him from pursuing his interest until later. Beginning in 1919, Ashton spent several unhappy years as a student at Dover College in England. After his father’s suicide, Ashton’s mother moved to England. While Ashton worked in a merchant’s office and lived with her, he secretly took lessons from LE´´ONIDE MASSINE. His mother’s disapproval when she found out
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threatened to end his dancing career, but she relented when he fell ill from disappointment. Ashton continued to study with Massine until his departure from England and then studied under Marie Lambert. At the same time, he attended all the performances he could, among which were some of the final productions of SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes. Ashton’s debut as a dancer took place in 1925 at the Palace Pier in Brighton. He danced the role of Monsieur du Chic in Ashley Dukes’s The Tragedy of Fashion (1926) as well as choreographing the piece—one of his early choreographic efforts. The ballet portrays the story of a fashion designer (Monsieur du Chic), who commits suicide when his masterpiece fails to win approval. Ashton’s other early works as a choreographer include The Fairy Queen (1927), based on Henry Purcell’s opera; Dukes’s Jew Su¨ss (1929), based on writings by LION FEUCHTWANGER; Capriol Suite (1930); and Ashton’s own Regatta (1932). In 1933, Ashton joined the Vic Wells Ballet (eventually the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and then the Royal Ballet), where he would remain as primary choreographer until 1970. He continued to dance in secondary roles but distinguished himself primarily as a choreographer. In Ashton’s own Mephisto Valse (1934), with music by Franz Liszt, he danced the part of Mephisto. Other early Ashton ballets include Fac¸ade (1931), loosely based on poetry by EDITH SITWELL with music by WILLIAM TURNER WALTON; Mercury (1931); Pas de deux (1933); Les rendezvous (1933); Les patineurs (1937); Symphonic Variations (1946); and Sce`nes de ballet (1948) with IGOR STRAVINSKY’s music.
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In 1950, Ashton created the one-act Illuminations for the New York City Ballet. He tailored the 1963 ballet Marguerite and Armand to Fonteyn and Nureyev, the former of whom he worked with extensively. Over the years he also choreographed classics such as Cinderella (1948); MAURICE RAVEL’s Daphnis and Chloe¨ (1951), originally created for the Ballets Russes; Sylvia (1952); and Orpheus (1953). Ashton was an essentially optimistic individual, and he designed his ballets to bring out the beauty of the dance rather than to make strong statements. Many of his ballets have become part of standard repertoire. Ashton’s ventures into film were largely unsuccessful. He contributed choreography to Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and in 1970 choreographed and danced the part of Mrs. TiggyWinkle in Tales of Beatrix Potter. Among his later ballets are Ondine (1958); La fille mal garde´e (1960); The Dream (1964), a one-act ballet; Monotones (1965–1966), with music by ERIK SATIE; Jazz Calendar (1968); Enigma Variations (1968); Siesta (1972); A Month in the Country (1976), adapted from the Russian author Ivan Turgenev’s play; and Rhapsody (1981), with music by SERGEI RACHMANINOFF. His Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan (1975–1976) was written for the dancer Lynn Seymour. Ashton served as the Royal Ballet’s associate director from 1952 to 1963 and its director from 1963 to 1970. He was knighted in 1962. BIBLIOGRAPHY Kavanagh, Julie, Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton, 1996; Vaughan, David, Frederick Ashton and His Ballets, 1977.
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Astaire, Fred (May 10, 1899–June 22, 1987) Dancer, Choreographer, Singer, Actor he legendary American film and Broadway dancer Fred Astaire charmed the English-speaking world on stage and in the cinema with his captivating dancing, singing, and acting. He enjoyed a long and prolific career that spanned seventy-six years and is best known for his musical films and his association with Ginger Rogers. Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother was an American of German Lutheran ancestry, and his father was an Austrian Catholic immigrant. Astaire himself later became an Episcopalian. After his mother took him and his older sister Adele to New York in 1904, he found himself on stage at a young age, teaming up with his sister the following year for a vaudeville act.
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Fred Astaire (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-35642)
The pair’s first stage performance came in 1906. Astaire’s career began to take off in 1916, when he met the composer GEORGE GERSHWIN, who was to have a profound influence on his success. The following year, Astaire and his sister first appeared on Broadway in Over the Top. Fred and Adele gained popularity both in England and the United States during the 1920s and early 1930s, performing in New York and London in such shows as GEORGE GERSHWIN’S Lady, Be Good! (1924) and Funny Face (1927); Vincent Youman’s Smiles (1930); and The Band Wagon (1931). Adele’s marriage to Lord Charles Cavendish in 1932 ended her partnership with her brother, who was less popular than she but quickly gained acclaim on his own. The same year, with Claire Luce, Astaire appeared in COLE PORTER’S Gay Divorce. Hollywood producers began to show an interest in Astaire in the early 1930s. In spite of a famous failed screen test on which one official commented, “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Also dances,” DAVID O. SELZNICK signed Astaire to RKO Pictures in 1933. The same year saw his Hollywood debut (for MGM) in the popular musical film Dancing Lady, in which he costarred as himself with Joan Crawford. The year 1933 also marked his first appearance with Ginger Rogers, with whom he would make a total of ten films, in the wildly successful Flying Down to Rio. During the 1930s, the dynamic pair scored huge financial successes for RKO and enormous popularity for themselves in films such as The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), and Carefree (1938). They reunited for their final film together, The Barkleys of Broadway, in 1949.
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In 1939, Astaire left RKO to freelance and pursue new film opportunities. He worked with other stars, such as BING CROSBY (Holiday Inn, 1942, and Blue Skies, 1946), Rita Hayworth (You’ll Never Get Rich, 1941), and Paulette Goddard (Second Chorus, 1940). For many years Astaire worked with Hermes Pan on the choreography of his films, and their efforts gave dancing a prominent place in Hollywood musicals. An important element of Astaire’s technique was the use of a stationary camera that filmed an entire dance routine in a single shot. The dancers, he believed, should never leave the camera’s view. Astaire’s technique contrasted with the popular musicals of choreographer Busby Berkeley, who used a wide variety of camera techniques to spice up the filming of dance sequences. Also unlike Berkeley, Astaire shied away from using dance as side spectacle and made a concerted effort to weave the routines into the plot. In his films, Astaire typically appeared in both solo performances and partnered romantic and comedic dance routines. His impeccable mastery of dance technique was unmatched during the peak of his career, and he could render a variety of emotions light or serious with equal prowess. When it came to dancing, Astaire was a perfectionist who choreographed (or choreographed) his own routines and held rigorous, sometimes demanding rehearsals. Nevertheless, Astaire was widely respected offstage for his respect for and consideration toward fellow performers. Although singing was secondary to dancing for Astaire, he is responsible for popularizing many American solo tunes and duets, including songs from COLE PORTER, IRVING BERLIN, JEROME KERN, and GEORGE GERSHWIN. In 1946 Astaire briefly retired from filmmaking and devoted part of his time to horse racing. Along with golfing, horse racing was one of Astaire’s passions outside the studio, and his horse Triplicate won the 1946 Hollywood Gold Cup. The following year, he founded the Fred Astaire Dance studios, which he owned until
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1966 and which still exists. By 1948, however, he had returned to the screen, starring in Easter Parade with JUDY GARLAND and Ann Miller. He continued to star in musicals during the 1950s, including Let’s Dance (1950) with Betty Hutton, The Belle of New York (1952) with Vera Ellen, Silk Stockings (1957) with Cyd Charisse, Daddy Long Legs (1955) with Leslie Caron, and Funny Face (1957) with Audrey Hepburn. In 1959, Astaire delivered a critically acclaimed acting performance in the nuclear war drama On the Beach. Although he had announced his retirement from dancing, he appeared in four television musicals between 1958 and 1968 with Barrie Chase. The 1958 special An Evening with Fred Astaire won nine Emmy awards and was the first major broadcast to be prerecorded on color videotape. Finian’s Rainbow (1968) directed by C OPPOLA and costarring Petula Clark, was Astaire’s last major musical film performance. In the 1970s, Astaire accepted a number of acting roles, including appearances in The Towering Inferno (1974) and the television film A Family Upside Down (1978), costarring Helen Hayes, for which he won an Emmy. In 1979 he appeared in the popular science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica, and he delivered his final film performance in the adaptation of Peter Straub’s Ghost Story in 1981. Astaire received numerous Emmys, Golden Globe awards, and other recognitions throughout his career. Over the span of his career, his dance partners numbered twentyone. Renowned for his dancing, he was always an icon of style as well. His appearance in his early years was marked by his top hat, white tie, and tails. Pneumonia took the 88-year-old Astaire’s life in 1987, and he was buried in Chatsworth, California.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Adler, Bill, Fred Astaire: A Wonderful Life—A Biography, 1987; Carrick, Peter, A Tribute to Fred
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Astaire, 1984; Pickard, Roy, Fred Astaire, 1985; Thomas, Bob, Astaire: The Man, the Dancer, 1984.
www.fredastaire.com.
´ ngel Asturias, Miguel A (October 19, 1899–June 9, 1974) Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Diplomat, Short-Story Writer, Translator he Guatemalan writer Miguel A´ngel Asturias reached the height of his popularity in Latin American literature in the 1960s. His best-known works are his novels, beginning with the publication of The President in 1946. Asturias won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967. Asturias was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. His father was a magistrate, and his mother taught school. The family moved to the country for political reasons until 1908, when they returned to the city atmosphere. In 1922 Asturias helped found the Popular University, which offered free classes to those who could not afford an education. He took a degree in law from the University of San Carlos of Guatemala and moved to Europe in 1923. In Paris Asturias studied anthropology at the Sorbonne. He had already developed an interest in Indian culture—his dissertation for his law degree, “The Social Problem of the Indian,” earned a Ga´lvez Prize in Guatemala. While in Paris he helped translate French versions of the Maya Popol Vuh and Annals of the Cakchiquels into Spanish. His first major work was a book of Maya-inspired tales titled Legends of Guatemala (1930). Also important to his literary development was the influence of the Paris Surrealists, in particular the movement’s founder, ANDRE´ ROBERT BRETON. The Surrealists’ emphasis on the subconscious and the psyche formed one of the major elements in Asturias’s fiction, as did the Guatemalan political atmosphere.
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Asturias returned to Guatemala in 1933 and was rarely far from politics. In 1942 he was elected to the Guatemalan Congress, and in 1946 he began nine years of service as a diplomat, working mostly in Central and South America. When a new dictatorship arose in Guatemala in 1954, Asturias fled abroad. From 1966 to 1970 he served as Guatemala’s ambassador to France in Paris. His first novel, The President (1946), is about a Latin American dictator whose administration is rife with intricate intrigues and corruption. The title character was inspired by Manuel Estrada Cabrera, dictator of Guatemala from 1898 to 1920. Men of Maize (1949) incorporates many Maya legends into its three major subplots, whose characters are very loosely connected. In the first, local Indians refuse to cooperate with the forced commercialization of corn, their sacred crop. A guerrilla war erupts between government forces and Indian rebels, and the murder of the rebel leader brings a traditional Indian curse on the conspirators. In the second part, Marı´a Tecu´n has fled with her children from her husband, a blind man who raised her and later married her. He regains his sight after an operation and embarks on a years-long search for Marı´a. Eventually he is wrongly jailed and finds Marı´a when she comes to visit her son, who has also been unjustly imprisoned. In the third section, the Indian mail carrier Nicho Aquino arrives home to find his wife missing. After a complicated search for her, he learns that she
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slipped into a well and died. Nicho is contacted by a descendant of mountain spirits with whom he undergoes a psychic and spiritual journey. A trilogy of novels beginning with The Strong Wind (1950) explores the exploitation of Indian workers on banana plantations. The Strong Wind begins as a foreign fruit company (the U.S.-based United Fruit Company) is clearing hostile terrain in Guatemala. It was followed by The Green Pope (1954) and The Eyes of the Buried (1960). Asturias’s later novels include The Little Bejeweled One (1961), Mulata de tal (1963), Bad Thief (1969), and The Talking Machine (1971). Also among Asturias’s writings are a number of plays. The first two, Culculca´n and Soluna, draw heavily from Maya legends. La audencia de las confines (1957) is based on Bar-
tolome´ de Las Casas, the Spanish missionary known as the “Apostle of the Indians.” His other plays include Blackmail and the comedy Dry Dock. In addition to novels and plays, Asturias also wrote short stories and poetry. Among his volumes of short stories are Lida Sal’s Looking Glass (1967) and Weekend in Guatemala (1956), a collection of short stories about Castillo Armas’s invasion of Guatemala in 1954. His poetry anthology Sien de Alondra was published in 1949. Asturias contributed regularly to Latin American journals during his lifetime and was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1966.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Callan, Richard J., Miguel A´ngel Asturias, 1970.
Auden, W. H. (February 21, 1907–September 29, 1973) Poet, Playwright, Essayist, Critic, Librettist nfluenced by the poets T. S. ELIOT and WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, Wystan Hugh Auden began to write poetry in the early 1920s and became one of the twentieth century’s major poets. His early verse belongs with the work of a generation of Oxford-educated poets who rose to prominence in the 1930s and shared strong opposition to Fascism and a commitment to radical left-wing political ideals. Auden stands out among those poets for his ability to address the problems of England, then deep in the Depression, in verse that is irreverent, witty, and beautifully crafted. In the 1940s and onward, Auden cultivated a more personal and reflective style of poetry that is both simple and lyrical. Auden was born in York, Yorkshire, England and moved to Birmingham with his fam-
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ily when he was two. There his father worked as a medical officer for the city schools and a professor of public health at the University of Birmingham. His mother, too, was in the medical profession and worked as a nurse. At the age of eight he entered St. Edmund’s Preparatory School in Surrey, where he met his lifelong friend Christopher Isherwood. Five years later, he went to Gresham’s, a private school at Holt, Norfolk. Following his family’s interests, he studied science and biology and thought of becoming a mining engineer. However, Auden had other interests as well, such as acting in school plays and writing poetry. Through-out his life he was to retain a wide spectrum of interests. Auden’s first published poem appeared in a school periodical in 1922. Three years later he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, where
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Auden (right) and his longtime friend, Isherwood. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, Lot 12735-559, IX O 17)
he continued to study sciences but took many other classes as well. He enjoyed his English literature classes and attended some of J. R. R. TOLKIEN’s lectures on Old English—an important influence on his early poetry. At Oxford, Auden absorbed poetry of all sorts, including the modern verse of T. S. Eliot, and became a well-known poet at the university himself. For the time being, he rejected the Anglican tradition of his upbringing. His associates included fellow poets STEPHEN SPENDER, LOUIS MACNEICE, and C. DAY-LEWIS, all of whom shared during the 1930s a leftwing political outlook that manifested itself in their verse. Auden was the most active and self-confident poet and the acknowledged leader of the group. Spender handprinted a limited edition of Auden’s first collection of poetry in 1928, but soon Auden found a wider audience with Poems (1930). Along with the verse in The Orators (1932), the early poems are sometimes marred by obscurity, but the energy and force with which they expressed in poetic form the psychologi-
cal and economic ills of England created a strong impression, winning Auden an audience immediately. In them Auden assimilated an extensive range of influences, from Sigmund Freud to Anglo-Saxon verse, which influenced poems such as “The Wanderer,” whose opening line illustrates how Auden could capture both the music and the tone of Anglo-Saxon poetry: “Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.” “Miss Gee, a Ballad,” show Auden’s mastery of both popular ballad rhythms and Freud, with its picture of a repressed woman who dies of cancer. Wherever he traveled, Auden absorbed the landscape, and his poetry is filled with imagery from both cities and countryside. After graduating from Oxford, Auden traveled to Germany with Isherwood and fell in love with the German language. He returned to England in 1929 and taught that year in London. In 1930 he took a teaching position at the Larchfield Academy in Scotland, replacing the departing Day-Lewis. In 1932 he taught at Down’s School, Colwall. In the mid-1930s, Auden’s poetry grew increasingly political and social in nature as he embraced Marxism. Works such as the volume On This Island (1937) reflect not only a more political tone, but also a clearer, less obscure style. A 1937 journey to Spain (which inspired the poem Spain of the same year) signaled the beginning of his disillusionment with Communism and his return to his Anglican roots. Intending to drive an ambulance for the Loyalists during the civil war, he was shocked when he arrived in Spain to find all the churches closed. In spite of the political overtones of much of his verse from these years, Auden remained wary of politics. He treated other themes in his poetry as well, such as the role of the artist, in poems such as “The Novelist” and “Muse´e des Beaux Arts” (1938). In spite of his homosexuality, he married Erika Mann, daughter of the German novelist THOMAS MANN, for the sole purpose of obtaining for her a British passport to escape Nazi Germany in 1935.
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For the experimental Group Theatre in London, Auden wrote several plays, on most of which he collaborated with Isherwood. The Dance of Death, which he wrote alone, is a musical verse play and was first performed in 1934. Three joint efforts with Isherwood followed: The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Beginning in 1935, he wrote commentaries for documentary films for the General Post Office Film Unit in London, such as Coal Face (1935) and Night Mail (1936), both of which featured music scores by BENJAMIN BRITTEN. Two travel books date from the end of the decade as well. The first of these, Letters from Iceland (1937), followed a trip to that country with MacNeice. Auden remained fascinated with Iceland throughout his life, as he believed it the home of his paternal ancestors. The publication of Journey to a War (1939) followed a trip to China with Isherwood. In 1939 he and Isherwood moved to the United States, where he settled in New York and became a U.S. citizen in 1946. His poetry became increasingly nonpolitical and more reflective, shaped by his renewed interest in Christianity and by his avid reading of the works of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierke-gaard. It appeared in periodicals such as the New Yorker. His published volumes of verse from this time include Another Time (1940), which contains his well-known “September 1, 1939,” and The Double Man (1941), containing the poem “New Year Letter.” During the 1940s he wrote three major long poems, the Christmas oratorio For the Time Being (1944), Sea and the Mirror, and The Age of Anxiety (1947). For the last of these, which treats four figures in a Manhattan bar, Auden won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948. During his last years, Auden spent much of his time in Europe, passing summers first on the Italian island of Ischia and later at a farmhouse in Austria. With his then companion, Chester Kallman, an American poet, he wrote a number of opera librettos in collaboration with composers such as IGOR STRAVINSKY and
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HANS WERNER HENZE. With the former they created The Rake’s Progress in 1951; and with Henze they finished Elegy for Young Lovers (1961) and The Bassarids (1966). Auden’s later volumes of verse include The Shield of Achilles (1955), Homage to Clio (1960), About the House (1965), City without Walls (1969), and the posthumously published Thank You, Fog (1974). The title poem from the first of those volumes is one of Auden’s best. The sea-nymph Thetis comes to the smith of the gods for a shield for her son, Achilles, just as Homer tells the story in his Iliad. But in Auden’s poem, when Thetis looks over the smith’s shoulder for all the beauty Homer describes, There on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead,
and all the horrors of modern warfare. In general, however, the last poems carry a lighter, more personal tone than his earlier verse. In the 1960s he revised and arranged many of his poems and published them as Collected Shorter Poems 1927–57 (1967) and Collected Longer Poems (1969). Auden also edited works by others, such as An Elizabethan Song Book (1956) and The Collected Poems of St. John Perse (1972); wrote essays and reviews; and taught at many American universities and colleges. A volume of criticism, The Dyer’s Hand, was published in 1962. Auden returned to England to teach at Oxford in 1972. He received numerous awards during his lifetime, including the National Book Award for The Shield of Achilles. Auden’s body of poetry covers a wide variety of themes—treatments of landscape, psychological explorations, dedications to individuals (such as “Friday’s Child,” written in honor of the German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was hanged at the concentration camp in Flossenbu¨rg by the Nazis in 1945), the political and social poems of the thirties, love, and religion. He has been considered the most versatile and intellectual-
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ly vigorous of poets writing in English in this century, but perhaps too ready to alternate seriousness with flippancy to deserve to be called great. He himself seems to have seen himself not as a “great poet,” but in the tradition of the Roman poet Horace, and in one of his light later poems, “The Horatians,” it seems likely he imagines himself saying, with others in that tradition, that poets “can only/ . . . look at/ this world with a happy eye/ but from a sober perspective.” Auden did more than that, but even if he had only done that supremely well, surely he should be granted a kind of greatness.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Callan, Edward, Auden: A Carnival of Intellect, 1983; Carpenter, Humphrey, W. H. Auden: A Biography, 1981; Davenport-Hines, R. P. T., Auden, 1995; Fuller, John, W. H. Auden: A Commentary, 1998; Hecht, Anthony, The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W. H. Auden, 1993; Johnson, Wendell Stacy, W. H. Auden, 1990; Osborne, Charles, W. H. Auden: The Life of a Poet, 1979; Rodway, Allan Edwin, A Preface to Auden, 1984; Smith, Stan, W. H. Auden, 1985; Wright, George Thaddeus, W. H. Auden, 1969.
Awoonor, Kofi Nyidevu (March 13, 1935– ) Poet, Novelist, Diplomat he Ghanaian writer Kofi Awoonor is best known for his novel This Earth, My Brother and poetry that contrasts traditional African culture with European influences in West Africa. He has also held a number of prominent political posts as a representative of the government of Ghana. Awoonor was born in Wheta, Gold Coast (now Ghana), during the last years of the British colonial period. His family was of the Ewe people, and Ewe culture and customs are heavily incorporated into his work. His grandmother’s renditions of traditional Ewe oral poetry (dirge) helped shape the rhythms of his own verse. Awoonor earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Ghana at Legon in 1960. After graduating, he worked with the Ghana Film Corporation. His first book of poetry, Rediscovery and Other Poems, appeared in 1964 under the name George Awoonor-Williams. Poems such as “The Weaverbird” sharply criticize European colonialization in Africa. Awoonor likened European colonizers to the destructive weav-
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erbird, which invades a host tree and takes it over. The conflict between indigenous African culture and European culture is a primary theme in Awoonor’s poetry. He presents the latter as a destructive force on African traditional customs and criticizes Africans who fall under European influence. Elements of Ewe culture and folklore are woven into his poetry and combined with Western literary influences. For political reasons, Awoonor left Ghana in 1966. He subsequently earned a master’s degree in London and a doctorate in comparative literature from the State University of New York at Stonybrook in 1972. His volume of poetry Night of My Blood was published in 1971, and the collection Ride Me, Memory (1973) deals with his time in America. After lecturing in the United States, Awoonor returned to Ghana in 1975. Authorities arrested him for alleged involvement in an antigovernment conspiracy. He spent several months in prison and after his release taught at the University College of Cape Coast. His
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prison experience inspired the volume of poetry The House by the Sea (1978). Awoonor has also written two novels, the better known of which is This Earth, My Brother (1971). Its protagonist, Amamu, is a lawyer in postcolonial Ghana. Comes the Voyager at Last (1991) concerns an African American who travels to Ghana. Awoonor’s other works include the poetry collection The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook, Volume I (1992); The Breast of the Earth: A Survey of the History, Culture, and Literature of Africa South of the Sahara (1975), and
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The African Predicament: Collected Essays (2006). He has edited or coedited the literary journals Okyeame and Transition as well as the volume Messages: Poems from Ghana (1970). In the 1980s and 1990s Awoonor served in a number of political and diplomatic posts for Ghana’s government, including that of ambassador to the United Nations. BIBLIOGRAPHY Egudu, Romanus, Four Modern West African Poets, 1977.
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BACON, FRANCIS
Bacon, Francis (October 28, 1909–April 28, 1992) Painter, Decorator rancis Bacon’s pessimistic paintings stand out for their depictions of grotesque and savage figures in psychological and emotional torment. He set his human subjects in landscapes of loneliness, violence, and despair, all conveyed in eyecatching color. Bacon’s mature expressionistic style shows the influence of the German Expressionists of the early twentieth century, and his paintings are unique in the intensity of their violence. Bacon was born in Dublin to a father who trained racehorses. A local clergyman tutored him privately at home, and he briefly attended the Dean Close School in Cheltenham. His family moved frequently back and forth between England and Ireland. As a child Bacon suffered from asthma, an ailment that was to excuse him from military service during World War II. When he was 16, he left his parents for a life of drifting in Western Europe. In 1925 Bacon went to London, then on to Munich and Berlin in 1926. He supported himself by working at odd jobs and taking interior decorating commissions. Bacon went to Paris later that year and finally settled in London in 1929. Having been inspired by a Picasso exhibition he saw in Paris, he began to paint in watercolor. Bacon gradually moved away from interior design and devoted more of his time to painting. Bacon began to paint in oils, the medium for which he is best known. Single paintings appeared in exhibitions in 1933, and he held his first one-man show in London the following year. Few of his early paintings survive— he destroyed many of them in 1943. His works remained essentially unknown until 1945, when he attained recognition for his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) and Figure in a Landscape (1945). From 1947 to 1950 Bacon spent much of his time in Monte Carlo, dividing his time be-
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tween there and London. He began his series of heads in 1948. The first two works in the series depict distorted, skull-like heads against ominous backgrounds of black and gray. Above the open mouth of the sixth Head, the forehead disappears into the background. The grotesque forms of the Heads characterize most of the tormented, terrorized, or lonely figures in his body of work. Although the human figure appears in most of his work, his first portrait of a named individual came in 1951 with his depiction of the artist Lucian Freud. In 1956 he began a series of paintings on the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). Muriel Belcher, a friend and manager of the Colony Club in the Soho district of London, was the subject of a 1959 portrait and of Sphinx—Portrait of Muriel Belcher (1959). In 1964 he began a series of portraits of his friend Isabel Rawsthorne. His friend George Dyer was the subject of numerous portraits, including a triptych Bacon painted after his death (1972–1974). Bacon’s portraits were not portraits in any conventional sense—as in his Heads, the faces are contorted and evince great psychological and emotional pain. A portrait of Pope Innocent X by the Spanish painter Diego Vela´zquez (1599–1660) formed the basis for Bacon’s nightmarish Screaming Popes series, begun in 1949. His graphic red-and–orange triptych Three Studies for a Crucifixion (1962) also depicts violence within a religious framework. Most of Bacon’s paintings depict human figures, but he sometimes used animal subjects, as in his Study of a Baboon (1953). Bacon’s works gained increasing popularity in the 1950s. The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London held a major exhibition of his work in 1955. Three years later his work was exhibited in Turin, Italy. By the 1970s his work was well known in the United States
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and Europe. Among Bacon’s other paintings are a depiction of the screaming nanny from SERGEI EISENSTEIN’s Battleship Potemkin, numerous studies based on photographs by the American motion-picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), several self portraits, and his Orestia triptych (1981).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Davies, Hugh Marlais, Francis Bacon, 1986; Gowing, Lawrence, and Hunter, Sam, Francis Bacon, 1989; Peppiatt, Michael, Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, 1997.
Bakst, Le ´ on (February 8, 1866–December 28, 1924) Painter, Costume Designer, Illustrator, Clothing Designer est known for his vivid, elaborate scenery and costume designs for impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes, Le´on Bakst designed costumes for some of the most notable dancers of his era— VASLAV NIJINSKY, TAMARA KARSAVINA, and Ida Rubenstein. He contributed his provocative and sometimes erotic scenery to Sche´he´razade, Daphnis and Chloe, The Sleeping Beauty, and many other ballets presented to international audiences in the early twentieth century. Bakst was born Lev Samoylovich Rosenberg in Russia. The details of his birth and family name are somewhat confused. His year of birth has been given as 1866, 1867, and 1868, and it is unclear whether he was born in Grodno or St. Petersburg. His father’s original name had been Bakst, but he had changed it to Rosenberg. Bakst remained dedicated to his family’s Jewish faith throughout his life. Growing up, he was fascinated with the theater and began making toy theater models for his younger siblings, for whom he became responsible when his parents divorced. Concentrating on drawing and sculpture, Bakst studied art at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, where he met the future portraitist Valentin Serov. Bakst was expelled from the Academy after he painted a Pieta` that depicted biblical figures—the Vir-
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gin and the disciples—as Jewish peasants. In 1893 Bakst went to Paris, where he studied under the Finnish master Albert Edelfelt (1854–1905). Bakst’s early works mainly consist of portraits. Through his acquaintance with Dima Filosofov, he met Diaghilev, with whom he founded the journal Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) in 1899. During this time Bakst also gained the friendship of MARC CHAGALL and married (in 1903) Lubov Pavlovna Gritzenko, the daughter of millionaire Pavel Treiakov. Their marriage, however, was short-lived on account of his numerous affairs and his personal torment over having outwardly converted to Christianity in order to marry her. By 1903, Bakst was designing sets for Russian theaters, but he also worked as an illustrator and portraitist and would not devote his energies entirely to set design until after a successful Paris exhibition of his works in 1906. In 1908 he designed sets for the choreographer MICHEL FOKINE. For one of his early flamboyant and vivid Ballet Russes designs—Cle´opaˆtre (1909)—he created a large, elaborate chamber with columns and statues. Also among the Cle´opaˆtre creations was the costume for the young ballerina Ida Rubenstein’s lead role. The same year he contributed some costumes to Une nuit d’Egypte, but a greater
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success came the following year with Sche´he´razade (1910). Bakst’s scenery for the highly successful ballet employed curtains and carpets as well as erotic, shocking designs and vibrant color. For Le carnaval (1910) he designed lower-profile costumes. His work for Les Orientales (1910)—for which he designed costumes for Nijinsky and Karsavina—and Le Dieu Bleu (1912) carry an oriental flavor. In spite of his stormy relationship with Diaghilev, Bakst designed sets and/or costumes for numerous Ballets Russes productions, including The Firebird (1910), Le spectre de la rose (1911), Narcisse (1911), Tha-
Le ´ on Bakst (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-22745)
mar (1912), L’apre`s-midi d’un faune (1912), Daphnis et Chloe´ (1912), and La le´gende de Joseph (1914). Diaghilev, however, began to turn to the Paris avant-garde—PABLO PICASSO, HENRI MATISSE, and many others—for costumes and scenery. During his career as a stage designer, Bakst designed numerous costumes for Rubenstein’s appearances in ballets such as The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (1911), Salome´ (1912), and Arte´mis trouble´e (1922). He contributed designs to numerous other ballets, including Aladdin (1919), Moskwa (1922), Phaedre (1923), and Istar (1924). In spite of the work’s commercial failure, his extensive designs for a London production of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty (1921; again with the Ballets Russes) are often considered his best work. It includes elaborate curtains, many costumes, and designs for numerous scene changes. Aside from his work in the theater, Bakst also designed women’s fashions, a number of which appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. He visited the United States in 1922 and helped convert a Baltimore bowling alley into the Evergreen Theatre. His fascination with the female form manifested itself in his stage designs as well as in the many nude female figures he sketched and painted. Among his patrons was James de Rothschild, for whose townhouse he painted murals.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Levinson, Andre´, Bakst: The Story of the Artist’s Life, 1971; Schouvaloff, Alexander, Bakst: The Theatre Art, 1991; Spencer, Charles, Le´on Bakst, 1973.
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Balanchine, George (January 22, 1904–April 30, 1983) Choreographer, Dancer, Composer rained in the tradition of the St. Petersburg ballet, George Balanchine extended the classical principles of his background and was the most influential and active choreographic force in twentieth-century neoclassical ballet. After choreographing for SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes during the company’s final years (1925–1929), Balanchine settled in the United States and ultimately became the driving force behind the New York City Ballet for almost thirty-five years. Balanchine also choreographed for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. Balanchine was born Georgy Melito-novich Balanchivadze to Georgian parents in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a composer. In 1914 Balanchine entered the Imperial School of Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre, and after his first unhappy year there he made his stage debut as a cupid in The Sleeping Beauty in 1915. When the Soviets gained control of the government in 1917, the school closed and reopened the following year as the Soviet State School of Ballet. Balanchine remained at the school and in 1920 choreographed his first piece, danced to Anton Rubenstein’s Nuit (Night). The same year he choreographed the experimental ballet Le boeuf sur le toit (1920), by JEAN COCTEAU and DARIUS MILHAUD. He joined the Mariinsky Company following his graduation in 1921, but he began to move increasingly away from performing and toward choreography. At the same time he pursued musical interests, studying at the Petrograd Conservatory from 1921 to 1924. Around 1923 he began to choreograph for the experimental Young Ballet. In 1924, while on tour in Europe with the Soviet State Dancers, Balanchine decided not to return to the Soviet Union. The following year he joined Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris, replacing as ballet master
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Bronislava Nijinska. Barabau (1925) was his first work for the Ballets Russes, but his mature, distinctly neoclassical style did not emerge until Apollon Musage´te (1928). Le fils prodigue (The Prodigal Son, 1929) was also among the ten works Balanchine choreographed for the Ballets Russes before Diaghilev’s death in 1929. Notable, too, among these was Le chant du rossignol (The Song of the Nightingale, 1925), Balanchine’s first of many collaborative efforts with the composer IGOR STRAVINSKY, whom he deeply admired for many years. After the disbanding of the Ballets Russes, Balanchine worked in London, Paris, and elsewhere and choreographed, both in 1932, La concurrence and Cotillion. In 1933 he helped found and served as chief choreographer for Les Ballets, and while on tour with them he met the American Lincoln Kirstein. On Kirstein’s invitation, Balanchine moved to the United States the same year and helped organize the School of American Ballet and the American Ballet Company, which for many years was closely associated with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Among the many works he produced there were Serenade (1934), choreographed to music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Le baiser de la fe´e (The Fairy’s Kiss, 1937). On Your Toes (1936) was the first of more than two dozen Broadway musicals Balanchine choreographed. He also ventured into the world of Hollywood filmmaking, contributing choreography to films such as The Goldwyn Follies (1938) and Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). The American Ballet remained loosely together after severing its ties with the Met in 1938, and three years later it went on a major Latin American tour with Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan (founded 1936). After working with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo for two years
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(1944–1946), Balanchine rejoined Kir-stein, who founded the Ballet Society in 1946. Two years later it became the New York City Ballet. Balanchine was to remain artistic director and chief choreographer of this group until 1982, and to it he contributed more than 150 works. In 1963 the Ford Foundation awarded eight million dollars to the ballet and its affiliates. Balanchine’s prolific output spans a wide variety of styles and music. He worked often with Stravinsky’s music, presenting three Stravinsky Festivals between 1937 and 1982 and collaborating with him in 1962 on the television ballet Noah and the Flood. The famous Christmas ballet The Nutcracker (1954), for the New York City Ballet, is one of his best-known works. Among his other major productions were Liebeslieder Walzer (1960), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1962), Harle-
quinade (1965), Don Quixote (1965), Jewels (1967), Coppe´lia (1974), Vienna Waltzes (1977), and Dance in America (1968). In his approach to choreography, Balanchine was cool-headed, methodical, and intellectual. He was known for his keen sense of characterization, and his formal training in both music and dance enabled him to assimilate those different aspects of the production into his dance movements.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Buckle, Richard, George Balanchine, Ballet Master, 1988; Garris, Robert, Following Balanchine, 1995; Haggin, B. H., Discovering Balanchine, 1981; McDonagh, Don, George Balanchine, 1983; Scholl, Tim, From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival and the Modernization of Ballet, 1994; Taper, Bernard, Balanchine: A Biography, 1984.
Balthus (February 29, 1908–February 18, 2001) Painter, Costume Designer close friend of the Surrealist poet PAUL E´LUARD and the painter ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, Balthus (Count Balthasar Klossowski de Rola) began his painting career in the avant-garde atmosphere of Paris. His reclusive personality and desire for independence kept him from associating with particular schools of painting, and, though often mysterious, his landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and other subjects are unique examples of modern figurative painting. Balthus was born Balthasar Klossowski to Polish parents in Paris. His father was a stage designer, art historian, and painter, and both parents introduced him to the arts at a young age. At the beginning of World War I, Balthus’s parents took him to Berlin. They separated three years later, after which he lived in
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both Germany and Switzerland. When he was young, the poet RAINER MARIA RILKE urged him to publish a book of sketches about a lost cat, Mitsou, and contributed a preface to the work. Balthus also began to create stage designs around the age of fourteen. Rilke would support Balthus for the rest of his life. With his assistance and that of ANDRE´ GIDE, he settled in Paris in 1924 and studied painting. He began to paint in earnest, and his subjects are most often city scenes, landscapes, portraits (most of which are women), female nudes, interiors, and occasional still lifes. Balthus’s early portraits of women are often erotic. In 1933–1934 he provoked a controversy in Paris when he exhibited three such paintings—Cathy Dressing (1933), Alice
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(1933), and The Guitar Lesson (1934). During the same two years he completed a series of illustrations for Emily Bronte¨’s Wuthering Heights. He painted many nudes over his career, including Nude with Pink Jacket (1927), Large Reclining Nude (1965), Nude at Rest (1977), and Nude with a Guitar (1983–1986). Like the subjects of his portraits, they appear in a variety of positions—provocative, relaxed, or sleeping. Balthus’s great love of cats was not confined to his childhood Mitsou creations. They appear everywhere in his paintings, staring into mirrors, sitting passively by his female figures, or, as in his famous The´re`se (1938), drinking from a saucer of milk. The first painting in his Cat with Mirror series was begun in 1977, and Balthus pain himself as The King of Cats in 1935. The subjects of his portraits often look washed-out or somber. In much of his painting, Balthus uses muted, earthy browns, golds, and greens that convey a subdued atmosphere. Such is the tone of his portrait of Princess Maria Volkonka Aged Twelve (1945). Balthus also painted portraits of the Baroness Alain de Rothschild (1958) and the painters ANDRE´ DERAIN (1936) and JOAN MIRO´ with his daughter (1937–1938). Balthus’s landscapes show a variety of influences, including Chinese landscape painting. His Cherry Tree (1940) portrays a woman on a ladder picking cherries in an orchard. Some landscapes, such as the dark The Mountain (1943), convey a mysterious, brooding atmosphere. Others with the same kind of at-
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mosphere include The Farm (1958) and Landscape With Cows (1958). In the 1930s Balthus did a series of paintings on Moroccan subjects, including Garrison in Morocco (1933). Inspired by his future wife Setsuko, he painted a series of Japanese women in the 1960s and 1970s. He also painted numerous city scenes, among which is Le passage du commerce Saint-Andre´ (1954). Balthus also painted still lifes and contributed designs for the theater, including sets and/or costumes for productions of Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1934), Antonin Artaud’s 1934 production of The Cenci, a production of ALBERT CAMUS’s State of Siege (1948), and a production of Ugo Betti’s The Isle of Goats (1957). Balthus’s work began to gain international recognition in the 1950s. In 1956 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a major exhibition of his work, and retrospectives of his work were held in the United States and France in the 1980s. From 1961 to 1977 Balthus served as director of the French Academy in Rome. An obscure and secretive figure, he continued to live and work in France in his later years. In 2001, Balthus died at the age of 92 at his chalet in La Rossinie`re, Switzerland, near Gstaad.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Clair, Jean, ed., Balthus, 2001; Leymarie, Jean, Balthus, 1982; Roy, Claude, Balthus, 1996; Weber, Nicholas Fox, Balthus: A Biography, 1999.
BARAKA, AMIRI (LEROI JONES)
Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones) (October 7, 1934– ) Poet, Playwright, Novelist, Professor, Activist lso known as Imamu Amiri Baraka, he is best known as a founding member of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. He is the author of over forty books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism. He sees his art as a weapon of revolution, and his works affirm black life and black nationalism. Baraka was born Everett Leroi Jones in Newark, New Jersey, on October 7, 1934. His father, Colt LeRoy Jones, was a postal supervisor, and his mother, Anna Lois Jones, was a social worker. He attended Rutgers University for two years, and then transferred to Howard University, where he earned his BA in English. After serving in the U.S. Air Force from 1954 to 1957, he moved to the Lower East Side and joined a loose circle of Greenwich Village artists, musicians, and writers that formed the Beat movement. In 1958, he mar-
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Amiri Baraka (Courtesy of Amiri Baraka, photographed by Al Aronowitz)
ried Hettie Cohen and together they edited the avant-garde literary magazine Yugen. He also founded Totem Press, which first published works by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. In 1961, Jones published his first major collection of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, under the name Leroi Jones. He edited, with Diane Di Prima, the literary newsletter, The Floating Bear, from 1961 to 1963. Two plays he wrote in 1962, The Slave and The Toilet, reflected his increasing hostility toward and mistrust of white society. Blues People: Negro Music in White America, which he wrote, and The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America, which he edited and introduced, were published in 1963. He received critical acclaim for his play, Dutchman, when it was performed at Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on March 24, 1964. The controversial play depicts an encounter between a white woman and a black intellectual and exposes the suppressed anger and hostility of American blacks toward the dominant white culture. It went on to win an Obie Award (for ‘best Off-Broadway play‘) and was later made into a film. Following the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Jones divorced his wife and rejected his former life. He moved to Harlem and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. The company, which produced plays that presented the anger and experiences of black Americans for a black audience, only existed for a few months. He published prolifically during this period, including volumes of poetry, Black Art (1966) and Black Magic (1969). He also wrote several collections of essays, short stories, and an autobiographical novel, The System of Dante’s Hell (1965). He moved back to Newark and married African-American poet Sylvia Robinson (now known as Amina Baraka) in 1967. The
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same year, he also founded the Spirit House Players, which produced two of Baraka’s plays against police brutality: Police and Arm Yrself or Harm Yrself. In 1968, he became a Muslim and changed his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka. (‘Imamu‘ means ‘spiritual leader.‘) He led his own black Muslim organization, Kawaida. That year he also edited Black Fire: An Anthology of AfroAmerican Writing with Larry Neal, and his play Home on the Range was performed as a benefit for the Black Panther party. Baraka was chairman of the Committee for Unified Newark, a black united front organization, from 1968 to 1975. His play Slave Ship was widely reviewed, and his Great Goodness of Life became part of the successful ‘Black Quartet’ Off Broadway in 1969. He was one of the chief organizers of the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in 1972, which convened to organize a more unified political stance for African-Americans. Baraka founded and served as chairman of the Congress of African People, a national PanAfricanist organization with chapters in fifteen cities. Baraka adopted a Marxist-Leninist political philosophy and dropped the spiritual title ‘Imamu‘ in 1974. He and Amina Baraka edited Confirmation: An Anthology of AfricanAmerican Women (1983), which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka was published in 1984. The couple collaborated on The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues (1987).
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Baraka’s literary prizes and honors include the American Academy of Arts & Letters award, the James Weldon Johnson Medal for contributions to the arts, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York, and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has served as the Poet Laureate of New Jersey. He has taught poetry at the New School for Social Research in New York and literature at the University of Buffalo. He has also taught at Columbia University, San Francisco State University, Yale University and George Washington University. Since 1985 he has been a professor of Africana Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, and been named Professor Emeritus there. He and his wife live in Newark, New Jersey, and together they direct Kimako’s Blues People, a community arts space, and lead the word-music ensemble, Blue Ark: The Word Ship.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bernotas, Bob, Amiri Baraka, 1991; Harris, William J., The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: the Jazz Aesthetic, 1985; Watts, Jerry Gafio, Amiri Baraka: the Politics and Art of A Black Intellectual, 2001. http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9013264. www.amiribaraka.com. www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/445. www.imdb.com/name/nm0052893.
BARBER, SAMUEL
Barber, Samuel (March 9, 1910–January 23, 1981) Composer son of privilege who grew into a composer of tonal and lyrical works, Samuel Barber enjoyed enormous success for almost his entire career and saw his work performed by the great conductors and musicians of his era. His bestknown piece may be his popular Adagio for Strings, and he also earned two Pulitzer Prizes. Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, to a well-to-do family. His father was a prominent doctor, and his mother played piano. Barber had a sister, Sara, who performed
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Samuel Barber (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42491)
his first operetta with him, a childhood piece called The Rose Tree with a libretto by the family cook. Two well-placed musical influences were also members of the family: Barber’s aunt, Louse Homer, was a contralto with the Metropolitan Opera who performed as Enrico Caruso’s co-star. Her husband, composer Sidney Homer, focused on song, as did his nephew did in more mature years. The couple actively encouraged the boy’s interest in music. Barber learned piano as a young boy, attended West Chester High School, became the organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church, and entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia when he was fourteen. There, he studied piano and composition, as well as voice. The last of these proved later to be a blessing as his lyrical work unfolded; Barber himself was a good baritone and at one time briefly considered a singing career. He even performed recitals at Curtis and, in 1935, on NBC radio. His eight years at Curtis were spent studying music and meeting people who turned out to be very important to him over his life, both professionally and personally. He studied composition with Rosario Scalero, piano with Isabelle Vengerova, and conducting with Fritz Reiner. He also attracted the attention of Curtis founder Mary Curtis Bok, who took a personal interest in the young man’s career, and met fellow student and future composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who became his close personal friend and partner of decades. Ultimately, Menotti even contributed the libretto to Vanessa, the opera that earned Barber his first Pulitzer Prize, in 1958. Barber’s life unfolded on two continents, and the first of his trips abroad came after he won a Columbia University Bearns Prize for his Violin Sonata, in 1928. Additional travels came on the strength of a second Bearns
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Prize, for the overture for The School for Scandal (1931), which was his first major orchestral work. In the mid-1930s, he earned a Rome Prize and composed at the American Academy of Rome. In 1935, while in Italy, Barber met ARTURO TOSCANINI, who gave the already-successful young composer huge exposure in 1938 when he premiered his First Essay and Adagio for Strings with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The latter piece, which Toscanini also recorded, has undoubtedly become Barber’s best-known work and is still heard in films ranging from Platoon to The Elephant Man. Although young, Barber found success during the 1930s with his romantic, well-crafted pieces that made him a favorite of major conductors. In addition to Toscanini, Eugene Ormandy and Thomas Schippers were among those conducting his new works. Commissions or initial performances came from the likes of Leontyne Price and Vladimir Horowitz. Barber’s other significant pieces during the 1930s included the vocal piece Dover Beach (1931), based on the Matthew Arnold poem, which was recorded in 1935. Barber has been quoted as commenting on the maturity of the piece’s inspiration much later in his life, when he was seventy. In the 1940s, Barber began to develop a more modern, neoclassical style, perhaps influenced by IGOR STRAVINSKY. His Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for soprano and orchestra arrived after he read a James Agee piece in the Partisan Review. Commissioned by the soprano Eleanor Steber and premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1943, the piece suggests childhood in a small Southern town. That same year, the highly cultivated Barber and Menotti, aided by Mary Curtis Bok, bought a Mount Kisco, New York, home called Capricorn. This would become a meeting place for their artistic and intellectual social set, and their home until it was sold in
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1972. More inclined toward the country than the city, Barber could work in this haven. His output continued apace: he composed Medea in 1946 for dancer MARTHA GRAHAM, and The Piano Sonata in 1949 to celebrate the twentyfifth anniversary of the League of Composers. Vanessa was staged by the Metropolitan Opera as well as the Salzburg Festival. Experts consider the work to be primarily neo-Romantic and full of melody. In 1962 he wrote his Piano Concert No. 1, which premiered with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on September 24, 1962, and earned his second Pulitzer. Unfortunately, Barber’s success stumbled with his second opera, Antony and Cleopatra (1966), which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House but suffered badly from (and the music apparently overshadowed by) wildly overdone sets and production by FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI. Later, reworking by Barber and restaging by Menotti created a critical success at Julliard in 1975 and at the Menotti-founded Spoleto festivals in Charleston, South Carolina, and Italy. Later years were difficult for Barber; despite his love of the country he moved into New York City; his capacity for work suffered from his depression although he did continue to produce. By the late 1970s, he suffered from cancer and died in 1981.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hennessee, D.A., Samuel Barber: A Bio-Bibliography, 1985; Heyman, B.B., Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music, 1992; New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 2001; The New Grove 20th-Century American Masters, W.W. Norton & Company,1988; www.classical.net/music. www.pbs.org. www.pulitzer.org. www.rhapsody.com. www.schirmer.com.
BARDOT, BRIGITTE
Bardot, Brigitte (September 28, 1934– ) Actress ast as a sensuous, open, and amoral blonde, the French screen actress Brigitte Bardot skyrocketed to fame as an international sex symbol in the 1950s and 1960s. With Catherine Deneuve and JEANNE MOREAU, she was one of the leading French actresses of her day and broke contemporary sex taboos on screen before she retired in 1973. Bardot was born into a well-off family in Paris. Her father was an industrialist involved in liquid oxygen manufacturing as well as an amateur photographer who had his own cine camera and liked to film the family. Like most middle-class mothers, Bardot’s was intent upon molding her daughter into a respectable young woman. To this end she dressed Bardot well, made her up, and enrolled her in ballet lessons at the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse. During her school years she attended
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Brigitte Bardot (쑖 Lipnitzki/Roger-Viollet/The Image Works)
Hattemer, a private school, but academic study never interested her. Wearing a plaid dress and a ponytail, Bardot appeared on the cover of Elle (May 8, 1950), then the leading women’s magazine in France. A very attractive young woman, she went looking for notice and soon attracted the attention of Roger Vadim (assistant to the director Marc Alle´gret), who fashioned her into a blonde sex symbol. She appeared in the gossip magazine Paris-Match and in 1952, in spite of her lack of any formal training in acting, made her film debut in Jean Boyer’s lowbudget comedy Le trou normand (1952; Crazy for Love), set in a village inn in Normandy. Her outraged father took legal action to have portions of his bikini-clad daughter censored from her next film, Manina, la fille sans voile (1952), in which she played the leading role. The same year she married Vadim—the first of several husbands, who included Jacques Charrier and the millionaire Gunther Sachs. In 1954 she traveled to Italy and made two films, Tradita and Helen of Troy, the latter a film in Technicolor directed by the American Robert Wise. In the early 1950s she made her only stage appearance in JEAN ANOUILH’s L’invitation au chaˆteau. The sensuous and expressive Bardot appeared in film after film, including RENE´ CLAIR’s first color film, Les Grandes Manoeuvres (1955). Before their marriage ended, she starred in two pictures directed by Vadim, Et Dieu cre´a la femme (1956; And God Created Woman) and Les bijoutiers du claire de lune (1958; English title The Night Heaven Fell). Cast as Juliette Hardy in the former, she plays an attractive, blossoming orphan who marries and ultimately gives in to the strong sexual desires that lead her away from her husband. Breaking contemporary standards against nudity in film, And God Created Wom-
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an was a sensation in the United States and established Bardot as an international sex symbol. In the 1960s Bardot appeared in several more serious roles, starring in Henri-Georges Clouzout’s La verite´ (1960; The Truth) and LOUIS MALLE’s Vie prive´e (1961; A Very Private Affair). In JEAN-LUC GODARD’s Le Me´pris (1963; Contempt), she acted the part of Camille Javal, wife in a failing marriage to a writer under contract to rewrite a screenplay of a Fritz Lang film. Bardot’s other notable films include Malle’s musical comedy Viva Maria! (1965; with Moreau), Henry Koster’s Dear Brigitte (1965), and Godard’s Masculin-Fe´minin (1966; Masculine Feminine). In spite of her divorce from Vadim, she continued to work with him throughout her film career in such productions as Si Don Juan e´tait une femme (1973; If Don Juan Were a Woman).
After making her final film, L’histoire tre`s bonne et tre`s joyeuse de Colinot TrousseChemise (1973; The Good and Happy Tale of Colinot Lifter-of-Skirts), she retired from acting and devoted herself to political causes. She established the animal-welfare organization Foundation Brigitte Bardot in 1976. Her autobiography, Initials B.B., was published in 1996. The controversial A Scream in the Silence, widely criticized for its negative depiction of Muslims, appeared in 2003. A French court convicted Bardot of inciting racial hatred and fined her the following year.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Frischauer, Willi, Bardot: An Intimate Biography, 1978; Haining, Peter, The Legend of Brigitte Bardot, 1983; Roberts, Glenys, Bardot, 1984, Singer, Barnett, Brigitte Bardot: A Biography, 2004.
Barlach, Ernst (January 2, 1870–October 24, 1938) Sculptor, Playwright, Illustrator lthough he dissociated himself from formal art movements, Ernst Barlach began to sculpt in the climate of the German Expressionists in the early 1900s. He is best known for his monumental human figures, often carved from wood, and was one of only a few sculptors to produce large works in that medium. Barlach also sketched, painted, and wrote plays. Barlach was born in Wedel, Holstein, Germany. His father was a doctor and came from a family full of amateur painters, so Barlach was exposed to the visual arts at a young age. He studied at the School of Applied Art in Hamburg and from 1891 to 1895 attended the Academy of Art in Dresden. The following year he lived in Paris, where he studied brief-
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ly at the Acade´mie Julien and executed a number of sketches. The earliest influence on Barlach’s style was the Art Nouveau movement, which emphasized sinuous, flowing lines and work in the decorative arts. Living in Wedel and Berlin, he worked in ceramics, and he taught at the Trade School of Ceramics in Hoehr in 1904–1905. However, Barlach distanced himself from formal association with any particular school, and in his later life chose to live in provincial towns away from the cities where artistic movements thrived. The catalyst for the development of his mature style as a sculptor was a trip to Russia in 1906, during which he was deeply moved by the Russian peasantry and developed an ad-
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miration for Russian wood carvings. Scenes from the peasant culture dominate his sketches from that period and provided subject matter for sculptures such as Russian Beggar Woman (1906), a ceramic depiction of a seated female figure leaning over with her head to her knees. Barlach’s mature sculptures are characterized by their massive size and their rough, chiseled surfaces. He often worked in wood but also cast bronze and ceramic sculptures. Barlach’s figures are heavily clothed male and female depictions, often in motion (as in The Avenger, 1914), with strong expressions on their faces (Horror, 1923), or playing instruments (The Flute Player, 1936). He reached the height of his popularity as a sculptor in the 1920s and 1930s; during the same period he completed World War I memorials and religious figures. Barlach’s work was not immune to the Nazi censorship that followed their rise to power in 1933. His Das
Wiedersehen (1926; The Reunion) was included in the famous Degenerate Art exhibit in 1937, and his work was removed from German museums during the Nazi era. Aside from sculpting, Barlach wrote seven plays, poetic dramas he sometimes illustrated himself. Der tote Tag (1912; The Dead Day) relates the story of a mother who stifles her son and tries to prevent him from maturing. She also hampers his efforts to find his father, who, as it later turns out, is a God-figure. Other plays include Der Findling (1922; The Foundling) and Die Suendflut (1924; The Deluge), winner of the Kleist Prize. Barlach’s studio in Gu¨strow, Germany, was later converted into a museum. Many of his works are held at the Ernst Barlach House in Hamburg.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Chick, Edson M., Ernst Barlach, 1967; Werner, Alfred, Ernst Barlach, 1966.
Baroja y Nessi, Pı´o (December 28, 1872–October 30, 1956) Novelist, Short-Story Writer ı´o Baroja was the leading novelist of the Generation of ’98 in Spain. When he died in 1956, his body of work included more than 100 novels and volumes of short stories, including his monumental 22volume series Memoirs of a Man of Action (1913–1928). Baroja was of Basque ancestry, born in San Sebastia´n, Spain. His father was a mining engineer who kept a large library and encouraged his sons to read and write. The family was relatively prosperous and in 1879 moved to Madrid, where Baroja attended the Instituto de San Isidro. From 1887 to 1890 Baroja studied medicine at the University of Madrid.
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After graduating he briefly worked as a municipal doctor in Cestona. In 1896 he returned to Madrid to manage his aunt’s bakery, a position in which he remained until 1902. Baroja’s first writings were published in Spanish periodicals. He was a member of the Generation of ’98, a term that applies loosely to a group of Spanish writers whose work is often characterized by advocacy of liberalization and reform, a negative outlook, and deep roots in regional Spanish culture. Other members of the Generation of ’98 include MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO, ANTONIO MACHADO, and Baroja’s friend Azorı´n.
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Baroja’s first book, a collection of short stories titled Somber Lives, was published in 1900. The House of the Aizgorri (1900) was inspired by the author’s visit to a distillery. In the novel Baroja depicted the downfall and final destruction of a distillery in the town of Arbea. The distillery symbolizes the town’s decadence, embodied in the corrupt members of the Aizgorri family. His other early novels include The Lord of Labraz (1903) and Zalacaı´n the Adventurer (1909), one of Baroja’s own favorites. Eleven trilogies belong to Baroja’s body of work. The most famous, The Struggle for Life, was published in 1904 and is set in the slums of Madrid. Baroja described the squalid conditions in which prostitutes, criminals, beggars, and other down-and-outs lived in Spain’s capital city. The character of Manuel Alca´zar, who eventually abandons his life and odd jobs among the city’s social outcasts to marry into the bourgeoisie, appears in all three novels. The trilogy Agonies of Our Time (1926–1927) reflects Baroja’s own travels to Germany, Holland, and Denmark and is partially set in those countries. The author painted a dim picture of post–World War I Europe, including its political and philosophical trends. Its main character is Jose Larran˜aga, a well-traveled, forlorn, and pessimistic intellectual. In the trilogy, Baroja was critical of theologians, political leaders, and philosophers, all of whom offer no hope of improvement. Another theme present in the trilogy is Larran˜aga’s failed relationships with women—a German girl, Nelly, and his cousin Pepita. A man’s inability to form a lasting relationship with a woman is a prominent theme in Baroja’s body of work, stemming from his own romantic troubles (he never married or found lasting love).
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The experiences Baroja gained through his travels around the world and his conversations with other people often worked their way into his stories. Baroja wrote in an abrupt style and drew from the tradition of the Spanish picaresque novel. His protagonists are usually weak-willed or flawed in some way, and the author’s outlook is decidedly pessimistic and cynical. Baroja also targeted established religion, evident in portrayals of faithless priests in novels such as Friar Beltra´n’s Nocturne (1929). The American novelist ERNEST HEMINGWAY was heavily influenced by Baroja and visited him just before Baroja’s death in 1956. The massive series Memoirs of a Man of Action (1913–1928) consists of more than twenty volumes. The central character is a nineteenth-century rebel, Eugenio Aviraneta Ibargoyen Echegaray y Alzate, a nephew of Baroja’s great-great-grandfather. Baroja’s ancestor in many ways resembles himself—he opposes religion and looks much older than his age. Through the series Aviraneta matures from something of an idealist who lacks the will to act toward his aims to a full-fledged man of action. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 spurred Baroja to flee to Paris, where he would live for the next four years. During his residence in France, he completed the novels Susana (1937) and Laura (1937). His brief attempts to involve himself in politics were unsuccessful; he failed in his runs for councilman in 1909 and Congress in 1918. In 1934 he was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy. His other works include the essays collected in Yesterday and Today (1939) and Strolls of a Solitary Man (1955).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Patt, Beatrice P., Pı´o Baroja, 1971.
BARRAULT, JEAN-LOUIS
Barrault, Jean-Louis (September 8, 1910–January 22, 1994) Director, Actor, Producer ean-Louis Barrault and his wife, Madeleine Renaud, established an internationally famous repertory company, Compagnie M. Renaud–J.L. Barrault. Barrault acted in, directed, and produced many of the company’s productions, bringing a unique blend of classic theater and the work of modern and avant-garde playwrights to the public. He is also noted for his contributions to the art of pantomime. Barrault was born in Le Ve´sinet, France. His father, a chemist who worked in a mental asylum, loved politics and espoused a socialist ideology. Typhus took his life during World War I, when Barrault was eight. His mother
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Jean-Louis Barrault (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, Lot 12735105, IV KK 16)
remarried, and Barrault attended a local school. As a student, he liked to learn but often found himself in trouble with the teachers for his disruptive behavior. After considering several professions, Barrault entered the world of theater. He studied under Charles Dullin and learned pantomime under the actor and mime E´tienne Decroux. Early on Barrault was introduced to the works of Paul Claudel and other playwrights of all schools, a variety that was to mark his career. The influences on him were both classical and contemporary, from William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes to modern playwrights such as Claudel, JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, and EUGE´ NE IONESCO. The work of the Russian actor-director KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY also had a significant influence on Barrault, as did the Surrealists. At the The´aˆtre de l’Atelier, Barrault acted in productions such as Volpone and Richard III. His first independent project came with his adaptation of WILLIAM FAULKNER’s As I Lay Dying (1935), and it was followed with works by Cervantes and others. He had soon founded his own company. With the encouragement of Jacques Coupeau, Barrault joined the Come´die-Franc¸aise in 1940. His first production with the group, Le Cid, was followed by one of his many Hamlets. Among his many acting and directing roles with the group are Claudel’s The Satin Slipper and his final role, Moron in Molie`re’s La Princesse d’Elide. The Come´dieFranc¸aise provided Barrault with the chance to make his most important acquaintance, that of his future wife, Madeleine Renaud. Renaud and Barrault founded their own repertory company at the The´aˆtreMarigny, the Compagnie M. Renaud–J.L. Barrault. The company’s first production, ANDRE´ GIDE’s translation of Hamlet, was followed by Pierre Marivaux’s False Confessions. In 1947, Bar-
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rault adapted FRANZ KAFKA’s The Trial with Gide, and he would later produce Kafka’s The Castle. Barrault aimed to draw half of his material from classics and the other half from modern plays. The company performed the works of avant-garde playwrights such as Sartre, Ionesco (Rhinoceros, 1960), JEAN ANOUILH, JEAN COCTEAU (Bacchus), and ALBERT CAMUS as well as Shakespeare and the nineteenth-century Russian playwright Anton Chekhov (The Cherry Orchard). The company’s diverse material ranged from melodramas to operettas, a variety that helped propel the group to international fame. Barrault was involved in production, direction, and acting. In 1950, the group embarked on its first tour of South America. Two years later it first performed in North America, in New York and in Canada. In 1960, the company embarked on a tour of major cities around the world. In 1959, Barrault moved his company to the Ode´on, later renamed the The´aˆtre de France, where he served as director until 1968.
Among his productions there were works by SAMUEL BECKETT, JEAN GENET’s The Screens in 1966, and his final production there, Claudel’s Teˆte d’Or in 1968. Barrault also served as director of the The´aˆtre des Nations (1965–1967, 1972–1974) and the The´aˆtre D’Orsay (1974). Barrault’s acting career was not limited to the stage. His first role in film, which he secured with the help of Gide’s nephew, came in 1936 with Les beaux jours. His other films include Droˆle de drame (1937), Farinet ou l’or dans la montagne (1937), and La ronde (1950). In his best-known film role, he played the mime Deburau in Marcel Carne´’s Les enfants du paradis (1945). Barrault’s other works include the books The Theatre of JeanLouis Barrault (1959), and Memories for Tomorrow: The Memoirs of Jean-Louis Barrault (1974).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barrault, Jean-Louis, Memories for Tomorrow: The Memoirs of Jean-Louis Barrault,1974.
Barrie, J. M. (May 9, 1860–June 19, 1937) Playwright, Novelist he Scottish playwright James Matthew Barrie created Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, one of the most popular childhood characters of all time. In his novels and plays, Barrie portrayed both the idyllic happiness of the child’s world and the erosion of that happiness in adulthood. His many plays were produced in London alongside the works of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, JOHN GALSWORTHY, and other playwrights of his day. The son of a weaver, Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Forfarshire, Scotland. The happiness of his early childhood ended at the age
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of 6, when his older brother, David, died in a skating accident. His death traumatized Barrie as well as his mother, to whom he maintained a strong attachment for the rest of her life. His biography of her, Margaret Ogilvy, was published in 1896. In 1868, Barrie moved to Glasgow to live with an older brother and studied at the Glasgow Academy, the first in a series of schools he would attend. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and in 1883 began to contribute to the Nottingham Journal. Two years later, Barrie moved to London and worked as a freelance writer, contributing to, among other publications, the St.
BARRIE, J. M.
James Gazette. His first major book, Auld Licht Idylls, was published in 1888, followed by A Window in Thrums (1889). The stories are set in Thrums, a Scottish town based on Barrie’s native Kirriemuir. In the novel The Little Minister (1891), a Scottish minister falls in love with a gypsy and must deal with his congregation’s reaction. The story was dramatized in 1897. Other novels followed before Barrie turned his efforts primarily to the theater. In Sentimental Tommy (1896), a 5-year-old boy, Tommy Sandys, lives with his impoverished mother in London. His mother dies when he is 11, and Aaron Latta, her former lover, raises Tommy and his sister, Elspeth. At the age of 15, the budding writer Tommy leaves Thrums. Tommy and Grizel, its sequel, was published in 1900, the last of Barrie’s novels. By this time Barrie had already begun to write plays and had some early successes
J. M. Barrie (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-29248)
with productions of Ibsen’s Ghost (1891) and Walker, London (1892). His unhappy marriage to the actress Mary Ansell began in 1894, and in 1897 he met Sylvia Llewellyn Davies. Davies’s five sons were the first to hear Barrie’s now famous Peter Pan stories. The Little White Bird (1902) contained some of the tales, but more successful was the play Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. In this classic fantasy, Peter Pan persuades three ordinary children, Wendy, John, and Michael, to learn to fly and to come away with him to the Never Land, where he is the captain of the Lost Boys (lost by careless nursemaids and brought to the Never Land by the fairies) and leads them in battles with the Indians and pirates who also inhabit the island. The world of a child’s imagination becomes a place one can fly to, leaving the burden of having to grow up into a boring adult behind, and Barrie’s feeling for this world allowed him to make this his best work. The play, first produced at the Duke of York’s Theatre on December 27, 1904, was later published as a book, and much later made into an animated film by Walt Disney (1953). Barrie’s marriage ended when his wife left him in 1900, and his life was further complicated by the death of Sylvia Davies. Barrie practically adopted her sons, two of whom were killed, one in World War I and one in a drowning. After his divorce, he lived near two of the major figures in theater of his day, Shaw and HARLEY GRANVILLE-BARKER. Peter Pan embodies the spirit of childhood wonder, love of adventure, and innocence, but, unsurprisingly, the themes of Barrie’s adult plays are less positive; he tends to portray the adult world as corrupt and disordered. The Admirable Crichton (1902), a four-act play, demonstrates the absurdity of the class structure in England. Lord Loam, owner of a house in Mayfair where the typical elements of class hierarchy are in place, plays a game with his household in which class distinctions are removed. The butler, Bill Crichton, emerges as the leader of the group during the game, played out on a desert island. Crichton
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not only possesses the practical knowledge needed for survival, he is successful when his entrepreneurial spirit is allowed to flourish. His return to the role of servant when the game is over has an almost tragic impact. The role of women is the theme of two other Barrie plays, What Every Woman Knows (1908) and The Twelve-Pound Look (1910). In the latter, Kate, working for her ex-husband, Harry, discloses the reason she left him. It was not, as Harry had presumed, that she had found another man. Kate believed Harry took away her freedom and, when she could type well enough, she felt confident enough to leave him. In his plays, Barrie employed elaborate stage effects, which posed complications in more than one instance. The difficulty of the scene changes from Lord Loam’s house to the desert island nearly resulted in its failure to open, and the flying children in Peter Pan also posed problems. His final play, The Boy David (1936), is an adaptation of the story of the
early years of the biblical David before he became king. AUGUSTUS JOHN designed an elaborate set for the original production, but it failed to win much acclaim. Barrie’s work came to be seen as embarrassingly sentimental and whimsical, and he is for the most part only remembered as the author of Peter Pan. Barrie’s other plays include Quality Street (1901); Alice Sit-By-The-Fire (1905); Pantaloon (1905); Rosalind (1912); The Will (1913); A Kiss for Cinderella (1916); Dear Brutus (1917); Mary Rose (1920); and Shall We Join the Ladies? (1921). He was made baronet in 1913 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1922. Barrie became chancellor of the University of Edinburgh in 1930.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Birkin, Andrew, J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys, 1979; Jack, Ronald D. S., The Road to the Never Land: A Reassessment of J. M. Barrie’s Dramatic Art, 1991; Ormond, Leonee, J. M. Barrie, 1987.
Barto ´ k, Be ´ la (March 25, 1881–September 26, 1945) Composer, Pianist, Teacher e´la Barto´k was Hungary’s most accomplished composer of the twentieth century. After starting out primarily as a pianist, he embarked on a prolific career as a composer, forging his own style, which combined traditional tonality with elements of Hungarian folk music. His lifelong study of regional music resulted in the publication of thousands of East European and North African folk songs previously known only in local oral traditions. Barto´k was born in Nagyszentmiklo´s, Hungary (now Sıˆnnicolau Mare, Romania). Both parents were musically talented and exposed him to music as a boy. His father died when
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he was 7, and his mother taught him to play the piano. Barto´k was composing when he was not yet 10, and his first recital at age 11 featured his own composition, The Course of the Danube. While he finished his primary education, he studied music under La´szlo´ Erkel and Anton Hyrtl. At age 18, Barto´k enrolled in the Budapest Academy of Music. Although he had been accepted at the renowned Vienna Conservatory, he broke with tradition and chose to study in Budapest. Barto´k’s decision was influenced by one of his role models, the composer Erno¨ Dohna´nyi, who also studied in Budapest, and his choice corresponded with a resurgence of
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Hungarian nationalism in the late nineteenth century. Barto´k’s course of study in Budapest was primarily based on the work of German composers, and he showed the most promise as a pianist. Early in his composing career he was influenced by the German composers Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and RICHARD STRAUSS as well as the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. However, Barto´k was swept up in the nationalistic fervor then emerging in Hungary, and even his first major compositions have a distinct Hungarian flavor. The music of his symphonic poem Kossuth (1904) draws from Strauss, but its subject is the nineteenth century Hungarian nationalist Lajos Kossuth, who failed in his 1849 attempt to establish an independent Hungarian republic. Kossuth proved popular with the Hungarian public and brought Barto´k his first taste of fame abroad. With his lifelong friend and fellow composer Zolta´n Koda´ly, Barto´k conducted extensive research on Hungarian folk songs beginning in 1905. The two composers recorded them, transcribed them for piano, and incorporated their rhythms, melodies, and other peculiarities into their own work. The investigation of Magyar, Romanian, North African, and Turkish folk music was a lifelong interest for both composers, and by Barto´k’s death in 1945, they had produced numerous volumes containing thousands of folk songs. Ba´rtok frequently spent summers traveling to remote regions of Eastern Europe and Morocco to collect folk songs. In 1907 Barto´k began teaching piano at the Academy, replacing his old piano teacher Istva´n Thoma´n. Around this time he also developed an interest in the work of the French impressionistic composer CLAUDE DEBUSSY. In 1908, he completed Violin Concerto No. 1. for the woman he was then involved with, the violinist Stefi Geyer. The following year he married Ma´rta Ziegler, and they had one son, Be´la. Barto´k taught piano at the Academy until 1934 and composed six volumes of teaching pieces entitled Mikrokosmos (1926–1939).
Barto´k’s six string quartets are often considered his best works. He composed the First String Quartet in 1908. The Second String Quartet (1915–1917) followed his 1913 trip to North Africa and incorporates elements of the region’s folk music. The musically diverse, one-movement Third String Quartet (1927) and the five-movement Fourth String Quartet (1928) are marked by their dissonant harmonies. His Fifth String Quartet appeared in 1934 and his Sixth String Quartet in 1939. After Barto´k and his first wife divorced in 1923, he married the pianist Ditta Pa´sztory. Their son, Pe´ter, was born in 1924. In addition to his activities as a composer, teacher, and collector of folk music, Barto´k toured Europe and the United States extensively as a pianist. Fleeing the German occupation of Hungary, he and his wife moved to the United States in 1940. Columbia University hired him as a research assistant, and he was able to continue his study of folk music. Among Barto´k’s stage works are the oneact opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1911), the one-act ballet The Wooden Prince (1914–1916), and the one-act pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin (1918–1919). His piano works include Allegro Barbaro (1911), Romanian Dances from Hungary (1915), and Out of Doors (1926). Aside from his research on folk music, Barto´k’s chief contributions to music were his variations of traditional tonality. His music is often characterized by driving, asymmetrical rhythms, modality, and the innovative use of chromatic scales as well as counterpoint and polyphony. Although Barto´k was influenced by the work of Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg, he did not use the atonality characteristic of their compositions. Barto´k’s other works include Symphony in E-Flat (1902); Piano Concerto No. 1 (1926), Piano Concerto No. 2 (1930–1931), and Piano Concerto No. 3 (1945), finished by Tibor Serly; Piano Quintet (1903–1904); Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938); Sonata No. 1 (1921) and Sonata No. 2 (1922), both for violin and piano; the
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choral work Cantata Profana (1930); Concerto for Orchestra (1943), originally performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the orchestral works Transylvanian Dances (1931) and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936); Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937); Sonata for Solo Violin (1944); and Village Scenes (1924), consisting of five songs. He died of leukemia in 1945.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gillies, Malcolm, ed., The Barto´k Companion, 1993; Griffiths, Paul, Barto´k, 1984; Stevens, Halsey, The Life and Music of Be´la Barto´k, 3d ed., 1993.
Baryshnikov, Mikhail (January 28, 1948– ) Dancer, Director, Choreographer, Actor he Latvian-born dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov was the world’s most famous male dancer in the 1970s and 1980s and is frequently praised for his graceful leaps and the naturalness with which he executes difficult roles. His vitality, strength, and grace have carried him through hundreds of leading roles for ballet companies in the Soviet Union and the United States. Baryshnikov was born in Riga, Latvia, to Nikolai Baryshnikov and Alexandra Kiseleva. His mother abandoned the family when he was 12, soon after he had enrolled in a ballet school in Riga. From the start, Baryshnikov loved the ballet and excelled as a student. In 1963 he entered the Vaganova School, which was a stepping stone to the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. For the next three years he studied dance under Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin, who taught in the classical Russian tradition. Baryshnikov joined the Kirov ballet in 1966; his first role was as a peasant in a production of Giselle. He quickly became the ballet company’s star. In addition to solo performances, in which he was allowed a measure of creativity, he played leading roles in Gorianka (1968) and Vestris (1969), choreographed for him by Leonid Yakobson. Baryshnikov’s other performances with the Kirov ballet included
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Adam, opposite Irina Kolpakova’s Eve, in a 1971 production of The Creation of the World, Albrecht in Giselle (1972), and roles in Don Quixote and The Sleeping Beauty. Although Baryshnikov was popular in the Soviet Union, the rigid demands of the guardians of politically acceptable theater stifled his creativity. After a series of performances in Canada in 1974 he defected to the West and eventually settled in the United States. He joined the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) the same year. With his first major role at the ABT, again as Albrecht in a production of Giselle, Baryshnikov became a sensation among ballet-goers in the United States. In a period of four years, he danced more than forty roles for the company and choreographed versions of The Nutcracker (1976) and Don Quixote (1978). Other productions in which he starred at the ABT are Petrouchka, Alexander S. Pushkin’s The Queen of Spades; Le spectre de la rose, and TWYLA THARP’s Push Comes to Shove. In 1978 Baryshnikov joined the New York City Ballet Company and worked extensively with the Russian-born choreographer GEORGE BALANCHINE. His more than twenty roles for the company include the poet in La sonnambula and the harlequin in Harlequinade.
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From 1980 to 1989 he served as the artistic director for the ABT. Aside from ballet, Baryshnikov received an Oscar nomination for his role in the movie The Turning Point (1977), costarring Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft. He has appeared in other movies, White Nights (1985), That’s Dancing! (1985), and Dancers (1987), and starred in a Broadway production of FRANZ KAFKA’s The Metamorphosis (1989). In 1990, with the choreographer MARK MORRIS, Baryshnikov founded the White Oak Dance Project, a modern dance company with which he continues to perform. Baryshnikov received an honorary degree from New York University in 2006. Later that
year he toured Spain and the United States with the Hell’s Kitchen Dance, sponsored by the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation, which was formed in 1979. In 2005, the foundation opened the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fraser, John, Private View: Inside Baryshnikov’s American Ballet Theater, 1988; Smakov, Gennady, Baryshnikov: From Russia to the West, 1981; www.baryshnikovdancefoundation.org.
Basie, Count (August 21, 1904–April 26, 1984) Pianist, Organist, Bandleader, Composer ne of the most highly regarded jazz musicians of the twentieth century, Count Basie enjoyed a career that spanned almost fifty years. His superb leadership bolstered the careers of some of the twentieth century’s most notable American musicians, including Lester Young and Joe Williams. Basie’s music, fashioned from the Kansas City jazz scene, included such classics as “One O’Clock Jump” and “Every Day I Have the Blues.” Basie was born William James Basie in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Harvey Lee Basie, worked as a coachman for a well-off family and later as a groundskeeper and handyman for local families. Basie learned the piano from his mother when he was young but preferred the drums. As a teenager, Basie started to play the piano more seriously, and before he was twenty he had moved to Harlem. There he met FATS WALLER, who tutored him informally and taught him to play the organ. Soon, Basie be-
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gan to tour, first with the Keith circuit, then with the Columbia Burlesque and the Theater Owners Bookers Association (TOBA) vaudeville circuits. His extensive touring schedule involved accompanying, directing, and playing the piano. In 1927, Basie found himself stuck in Kansas City, where he performed in silent film theaters. The following year, he joined Walter Page’s (1900–1957) Blue Devils. After playing briefly with other bands, he joined Bennie Moten’s (1894–1935) Kansas City Orchestra, which consisted in part of Blue Devils veterans Basie had played with earlier. With Moten’s unexpected death in 1935 after a failed tonsillectomy, the band forged on under Buster Moten, but Basie left to form his own group. Basie’s band, now called the Barons of Rhythm, consisted of some of Moten’s veterans, including the jazz tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Lester Young (1909–1959) and jazz drummer Jo Jones (1911–1985). The group had a successful career at the Reno
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Club in Kansas City and soon began to attract national attention. In 1936, they began a series of radio broadcasts, which caught the ears of the Decca Record Company. Renamed The Count Basie Orchestra and relocated to New York City, the group soon found itself at the forefront of the big bands during the swing era. Along with “One O’Clock Jump” (1937), Basie’s orchestra scored hits with such tunes as “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” (1938), and “Taxi War Dance” (1939). Basie’s band continued to play in New York until 1950, when it fell apart for financial reasons. Undeterred from performing, Basie continued to lead a reformed, smaller group that featured appearances from such notables as jazz drummer Buddy Rich (1917–1987), trumpeter and fluegelhornist Clark Terry (1920– ), and baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff (1923–1957). In 1952, Basie again put together a larger group that toured extensively. The year 1954 marked the beginning of his European tours, during which other famous musicians such as FRANK SINATRA often accompanied him. Sinatra collaborated with Basie on such recordings as Sinatra-Basie (1962), It Might As Well Be Swing (1964), and Frank Sinatra with Count Basie & the Orchestra Sinatra at the Sands (1966). Basie fell ill in his later years but still continued to perform, even from a wheelchair. He led his band until his death from pancreatic cancer in 1984. His autobiography was published in 1985. Basie had elevated his orchestra, by the 1950s, to one of the foremost backing bands for the best jazz vocalists of the time. Some of the jazz and blues era’s most famous singers owe part of their career successes to Basie,
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including BILLIE HOLIDAY, Joe Williams (1918–1999), Big Joe Turner (1911–1985), and ELLA FITZGERALD. Among his highly successful collaborations with Fitzgerald are her 1963 album for Verve Ella and Basie!, one of her most famous recordings for which Quincy Jones wrote the arrangements, and successful performances with Basie’s orchestra in the 1970s. His body of recordings is extensive and includes Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings (1956) and the 1957 album One O’Clock Jump. He also appeared in films, including Jerry Lewis’s Cinderfella (1960; as himself) and Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles (1974). Basie received numerous honors and awards, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 1981 and a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002. He was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007. National Public Radio listed “One O’Clock Jump” in its one hundred most important musical works of the twentieth century. After Basie’s death, Thad Jones and later Frank Foster continued to direct his band. Some of his former band members have performed as the Countsmen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Basie, Count, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, 1985; Dance, Stanley, The World of Count Basie, 1985; Horricks, Raymond, Count Basie and His Orchestra: Its Music and Its Musicians (1971); Morgenstern, Dan, and Bradley, Jack, eds., Count Basie and His Bands (1975). www.countbasie.com. www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_basie_ count.htm.
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Bax, Arnold (November 8, 1883–October 3, 1953) Composer rnold Edward Trevor Bax, to give him his full name, was a member of a generation of composers in England who attained popularity between World War I and World War II. After establishing himself with several symphonic poems, Bax went on to compose seven symphonies and many piano and chamber works. Bax composed in the neoromantic style characteristic of English music from that time period and is especially noted for his lush chromatic harmonies. Influenced by the Irish Renaissance in the early 1900s, he also wrote poetry and short stories. Bax was the eldest of four children and was born in London. He was particularly close to his brother, Clifford Bax, who became a writer. His father was a barrister and an active member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, and he extensively researched the Bax family history. Bax’s mother was organized, active, and very attentive to social status. As a boy he attended the preparatory school of Argyll House, and later, when his family moved, Heath Mount in Hampstead. At home the young Bax was exposed to much literature and loved to read. Among his other hobbies were painting, drawing, and doing crossword puzzles. His great passion, however, was music, to which he was introduced in part by his paternal grandfather. Bax learned to play the piano at a young age. By the time he was 13, he was accompanying a choral society. In 1900 he entered the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied the piano and began to compose seriously. At that time, the academy was under the direction of Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie, who disliked modern trends in music. Bax composed a number of works performed at the school, including a Celtic Song Cycle (1904). He won the Gold Medal for piano in 1905.
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Upon the completion of his studies the same year, Bax, enamored with the Romantic works of Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and RICHARD STRAUSS, went to Dresden for a short period of time. He next went to Ireland, where he fell in love with the country, its legends, and the literature of the Irish Renaissance. Bax absorbed the poetry of WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS and, with his brother Clifford, frequented the circles of Æ, JAMES STEPHENS, and other figures of the literary revival then going on in Ireland. Under the pseudonym Dermot O’Byrne, Bax published verse and short stories while in Ireland. Some of the latter appeared in the Irish Review and were later collected as Children of the Hills. Although not as interested in the occult and esoteric doctrines as Yeats, Bax absorbed from the Irish myths and legends a certain sense of spirituality that manifests itself in his music. Irish folk songs also exerted an influence on his subsequent compositions. In 1909 he wrote the symphonic poem In the Fae¨ry Hills (1909), based on a section of The Wanderings of Oisin. In 1910 Bax went to Russia with a Ukrainian woman and there immersed himself in the social life of St. Petersburg. When his affair with her ended, he returned to England and in 1911 married Elsa Sobrino, the daughter of a Spanish concert pianist. Having seen SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes in London, he composed the ballet score Tamara (1911) and dedicated it to the dancer TAMARA KARSAVINA. Bax would later compose The Truth about the Russian Dancers, based on a scenario by J. M. BARRIE, for the Ballets Russes (1920). The years 1916–1917 saw major triumphs in his career, with three symphonic poems, The Garden of Fand, Tintagel, and November Woods. In 1917 he also completed his Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra,
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which was given its premiere by pianist Harriet Cohen. Cohen, with whom Bax developed a close relationship, performed many of his subsequent works and premiered four of his piano sonatas. Between the two world wars, Bax completed seven symphonies. A talented pianist, he wrote many works for the piano as well as more than thirty chamber works. Among the latter are his Nonet for winds, strings, and harp (1931) and several string quartets. Bax did not write for the opera but composed many songs. Among these are Five Irish Songs (1922), settings of poems by JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE. Bax’s music is often described as Romantic and impressionistic. He did not care for the
atonal music of modern composers such as ARNOLD SCHOENBERG and relied on the chromatic harmony characteristic of nineteenthcentury music. His work has a spiritual quality and effectively evokes scenes from nature, particularly his much beloved sea. Bax received the Gold Medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1931. He was knighted in 1937 and became Master of the King’s Musick in 1941. The universities of Oxford and Durham awarded him honorary degrees.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Foreman, Lewis, Bax: A Composer and His Times, 1983; Scott-Sutherland, Colin, Arnold Bax, 1973.
Beatles, The Musicians
Harrison, George
McCartney, James Paul
(February 25, 1943–November 29, 2001)
(June 18, 1942– )
Lennon, John Winston
Starr, Ringo
(October 9, 1940–December 8, 1980)
(July 7, 1940– )
our men from working-class backgrounds in Liverpool, England—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr—elevated rock music from pop entertainment to art with innovative albums such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). The musical experimentation and philosophical lyrics of their later work had a profound impact on much of the rock music that followed it in Britain and the United States. The group that became known as The Beatles began when Lennon and McCartney started working together in 1957; Harrison also joined their band later that year. Along with drummer Tommy Moore and bassist Stu Sut-
cliffe, they formed The Beatles in 1959. Pete Best replaced Moore in 1960. The group that became famous ended up with Lennon on rhythm guitar, Harrison on lead guitar, and McCartney playing bass. Ringo Starr (real name Richard Starkey) replaced Best on drums in 1962. The Beatles began performing covers of American rock-and-roll songs by singers who had influenced them—Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, and others—in Liverpool and Hamburg. EMI’s Parlophone released their first single, “Love Me Do,” in 1962. It and every subsequent Beatles record was produced by George Martin. Their next two singles, “Please Please Me” and “From Me to You,” both released in
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1963, reached top positions on the charts. These and other early Beatles hits such as “She Loves You” (1963), “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1963), and “Can’t Buy Me Love” (1964), were written by Lennon and McCartney, as were most of the Beatles’ later songs. Their early albums include Please Please Me (1963), With the Beatles (1963), Meet the Beatles (1964), and Help! (1965). “Beatlemania” soon swept the United States, and in 1964 the Beatles landed in New York to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. Along with their “rival” band THE ROLLING STONES, who also caused a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1960s, the Beatles were part of the British Invasion. Unlike the Rolling Stones, the Beatles disliked the raucous mobs of screaming fans that attended their concerts and followed them around. They increasingly preferred studio art to stage entertainment. Beginning with Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1965), their music began to evolve from simple pop songs toward more complex musical and lyrical arrangements, evident in such songs as “Nowhere Man” (1965) and “Eleanor Rigby” (1965). The years 1966 and 1967 marked a turning point for the Beatles. In 1966, the band gave its last performance in San Francisco and ceased touring, devoting more time to composing albums in the studio. Lennon remarked to a reporter that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus Christ,” provoking an uproar in the United States. Brian Epstein, who originally discovered the Beatles and had managed them since 1961, died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills in 1967. Around this time Lennon also began his high-profile relationship with Yoko Ono, which caused a significant amount of tension among the Beatles. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) was the Beatles’ most experimental album to date. It is considered one of the first concept albums, an album in which all the songs combine to form a whole work of art. Psychedelic songs such as “Lucy in the Sky
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with Diamonds” incorporated electronic sounds and landmark studio production techniques. The music also reflects their experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Harrison in particular developed an interest in Indian mysticism, and the sitar also began to figure in the Beatles’ music, as did orchestral arrangements. The famous Sgt. Pepper’s album cover features the faces of figures as diverse as Bob Dylan and Karl Marx. The songs of Magical Mystery Tour (1967), such as the psychedelic “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “I Am the Walrus,” evidence the Beatles’ continuing musical experimentation. The Beatles (1968), better known as the White Album, was a double record and featured songs such as “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da” and the hard-driving “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” one of Harrison’s most powerful contributions to the band’s body of work. The White Album was the first to be released on the Beatles’ newly formed record label, Apple Records, and it reflected a growing divergence of interests among the individual band members. Their popular single “Hey Jude” also reached the top of the charts in 1968. The albums Yellow Submarine and Abbey Road, both released in 1969, are less cohesive than Sgt. Pepper’s and the White Album. More and more the Beatles drifted apart. Although Lennon and McCartney continued to write most of the band’s songs, they worked less closely than they had before. The release of Abbey Road sparked a “Paul is dead” rumor, and people combed the album for evidence to support it. Let It Be (1970) was the Beatles’ final album. The Beatles disbanded in 1970 amidst a series of personal and financial quarrels. Each of them subsequently pursued his own work. Lennon recorded a series of solo albums, the most famous of which is Imagine (1971), before his 1980 death at the hand of an assassin in New York. McCartney formed the band Wings and later recorded his own albums, including the Celtic-flavored orchestral work Standing Stone (1997) and Driving Rain (2001). Harrison recorded solo albums as well
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as two records as a member of the Traveling Wilburys, who also include musicians BOB DYLAN, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and the nowdeceased Roy Orbison. Starr has played drums for many other artists. A popular threevolume Beatles Anthology was released in 1995–1996, featuring a new song written by Lennon and recorded by McCartney, Harrison, and Starr, “Free as a Bird.” The Beatles’ influence on rock music was monumental. In an era when most bands covered material written by other artists, they wrote their own songs and helped pave the way for other musicians to do so. Their unprecedented experiments with electronic music and studio production in albums such as Sgt. Pepper’s opened new musical paths for other artists to explore. Sgt. Pepper’s also popularized the concept album, used by other bands such as The Kinks, The Moody Blues, and Pink Floyd. For the first time, people began to consider rock music not just mere pop entertainment, but serious art. Among the many honors the Beatles have received are the Grammy Trustees Award in 1972 and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Queen Elizabeth II
named all of them Members of the Order of the British Empire in 1965, but Lennon relinquished his award in 1969. The Queen knighted McCartney in 1997. Along with albums, the Beatles made several films: A Hard Day’s Night (1964), Help! (1965), and Magical Mystery Tour (1967). The German artist Heinz Edelmann created the animated movie Yellow Submarine in 1968. A highly successful compilation album entitled 1, featuring all of the Beatles’s numberone hits in both England and the United States between 1962 and 1970, was released in 2000. Harrison, suffering from lung cancer, died at the age of fifty-eight in 2001. BIBLIOGRAPHY Davies, Hunter, The Beatles, 1968; Kozinn, Allan, The Beatles, 1995; Frontani, Michael R., The Beatles: Image and the Media, 2007; Harry, Bill, The British Invasion: How the Beatles and Other UK Bands Conquered America, 2004; McKeen, William, The Beatles: A Bio-Bibliography, 1989; Miles, Barry, and Badman, Keith, The Beatles Diary, 2001; Spitz, Bob, The Beatles: A Biography, 2005; Tobler, John, The Beatles, 1984; Turner, Steve, A Hard Day’s Write: the Stories Behind Every Beatles Song, 1994.
Beauvoir, Simone de (January 9, 1908–April 14, 1986) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Essayist, Philosopher, Playwright, Journalist ith JEAN-PAUL SARTRE and ALBERT CAMUS, Simone Lucie-ErnestineMarie-Bertrand de Beauvoir (as she was christened) was a leading proponent of existentialist thought in the World War II era. Having gained international acclaim as a philosopher, novelist, and advocate of feminism, she was at the forefront of the feminist move-
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ment in the 1960s and 1970s. Her treatise on the role of modern women, The Second Sex, has become a staple of feminist literature. Beauvoir was born in Paris. Though the family had been well-off, its fortunes declined soon after her birth. Her mother, a devout Catholic, was overbearing and favored her over her younger sister. Beauvoir shared her father’s religious skepticism and by the age of 14 had become an atheist. As a child she liked
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to read and write, producing her first written works at the age of 7. Beginning in 1913 she attended the Cours Adeline De´sir, a Catholic school. Beauvoir earned a degree in literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1927. After studying at the E´cole Normale Supe´rieure and the Sorbonne, she earned her degree in philosophy in 1929. During her studies Beauvoir met the existentialist philosopher Sartre. They maintained a lifelong, open love affair but lived together only briefly. Beauvoir began to teach in 1931, took a position at the Lyce´e Molie`re in Paris in 1936, and continued to teach until 1943. That year saw the publication of her first novel, L’invite´e (1943; She Came To Stay), a fictional account of the triangular relationship she and Sartre had with a young woman, Olga Kosakiewicz. Through the character of Franc¸oise, she explored her own feelings of jealousy toward the second woman, even though Beauvoir did not violate her philosophical acceptance of her open relationship with Sartre.
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Beauvoir and Sartre spent World War II in Paris. In 1945 they began to edit the review Le Temps Modernes. Both actively participated in the French Resistance, which forms the backdrop of her next novel, Le Sang des autres (1945; The Blood of Others). In Tous les hommes sont mortels (1946; All Men Are Mortal), Beauvoir explored the existentialist question of immortality in a tale set during the Italian Renaissance and afterward. The protagonists are the actress Re´gine and Fosca, who claims he is immortal. Having rejected her own belief in God, Re´gine erroneously comes to believe her love for Fosca will replace God and render her immortal. Beauvoir published many nonfiction works as well. Her philosophical work Pour une morale de l’ambiguite´ (The Ethics of Ambiguity) appeared in 1927. She is perhaps best known for her feminist treatise Le deuxie`me sexe (1949; The Second Sex). Using various disciplines such as history, biology, and economics, she attempted to define the role of modern women. In her view, the earliest Western philosophers established women as “the other,” paving the way for patriarchal societies. The novel Les mandarins (1954; The Mandarins) derives from the experience with the Resistance she and Sartre shared during World War II. Although Beauvoir has denied the allegations, many critics believe she based several of the main characters on herself, Camus, and Sartre. The Mandarins is a portrait of postwar intellectuals as they try to redefine their roles as philosophers and political activists after participating in the Resistance. Beauvoir involved herself in numerous political activities after the war, embracing the causes of Algerian liberation in the 1950s and abortion rights in the 1970s. With Sartre she visited Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1960. In 1974 she became president of the French League of Women’s Rights. In her later life Beauvoir began to explore the dilemmas of middle and old age. La femme rompue (1968; The Woman Destroyed)
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consists of three stories about women struggling in middle age. The nonfiction works Une mort tre`s douce (1964; A Very Easy Death) and La vieillesse (1970; Old Age) recount her mother’s death from cancer and explore the treatment of the elderly. Beauvoir wrote many autobiographical works, including Me´moires d’une jeune fille range´e (1958; Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter), La force de l’aˆge (1960; The Prime of Life), La force des choses (1963; Force of Circumstance), and Tout compte fait (1972; All Said and Done). La ce´re´monie des adieux (1981; Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre) recounts Sartre’s last years. Among her other works are the play Les bouches inutiles (1945; Who Shall Die?); the short-story collection Quand prime le spirituel (1979; When Things of the Spirit Come First); the volume of letters Lettres au Castor et a` quelques autres (1983); and the travel books La Longue Marche: Essai sur la Chine (1957; The Long March) and
L’Ame´rique au jour de jour (1948; America Day by Day). In 1973 she began writing a column in Le Temps Modernes. The following year, she became president of the League of Women’s Rights, and in 1975 she won the Jerusalem Prize.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Appignanesi, Lisa, Simone de Beauvoir, 1988; Ascher, Carol, Simone de Beauvoir: A Life of Freedom, 1981; Bair, Deirdre, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography, 1990; Brosman, Catharine Savage, Simone de Beauvoir Revisited, 1991; Evans, Mary, Simone de Beauvoir, 1996; Fallaize, Elizabeth, The Novels of Simone de Beauvoir, 1988; Francis, Claude, Simone de Beauvoir: A Life, A Love Story, 1987; Keefe, Terry, Simone de Beauvoir, 1998; Mahon, Joseph, Existentialism, Feminism, and Simone de Beauvoir, 1997; Moi, Toril, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman, 1994; Vintges, Karen, Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir, 1996.
Beckett, Samuel (April 13, 1906–December 22, 1989) Playwright, Novelist, Critic he Irish writer Samuel Barclay Beckett (who wrote in French as well as English) is best known for plays such as Waiting for Godot, which present unflinchingly the absurd dilemma of the powerless individual consciousness trying to make sense of the world, exploring, as Beckett himself said, “impotence, ignorance, . . . that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something . . . incompatible with art.” Beckett also wrote several novels that explore the same zone. In 1969, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, “for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man ac-
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quires its elevation.” It is in such paradoxical terms that Beckett’s work is often praised, for revealing the destitution of humanity in the modern world, yet also for finding in that destitution, as one critic put it, “an ironically sorrowful joy,” or, as another put it, “affirming beneath all affirmation.” Beckett was born into a middle-class Protestant family in Foxrock, County Dublin, Ireland. His mother in particular was devout and pious, and his relationship with her was troubled throughout his life. The young Beckett enrolled in school in Dublin and later, when he was 14, in the Portora Royal School in what is now Enniskillen, in Northern Ireland.
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Beckett later studied at Trinity College in Dublin, where he earned a degree in Romance languages. After his graduation he taught briefly in Belfast before moving to Paris in 1928. Beckett gained the friendship of fellow Irish writer JAMES JOYCE, then in Paris. Joyce became a primary influence on his early work. Two years later Beckett returned to Ireland to teach, and he subsequently traveled around Europe. After his return to Paris in 1937, he suffered a serious stab wound and was visited frequently by Joyce during his recuperation. Beckett, who joined the French Resistance during World War II, fled Nazi–occupied Paris during World War II when the Gestapo arrested other members of his group. For the rest of the occupation he worked in the unoccupied portion of France. After a brief return to Ireland in 1945, he again settled in Paris. A prominent figure in Beckett’s work, particularly as it matured, is the person trapped in an absurd world, confused about the meaning of his existence, and suffering from the belief that all actions amount to no more than
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exercises in futility. His early work includes the poem Whoroscope (1930), about the French philosopher Rene´ Descartes, an essay on MARCEL PROUST entitled Proust (1931), and More Pricks Than Kicks (1934), a collection of ten stories about an Irish intellectual, Belacqua Shuah. The novel Murphy (1938) concerns a Mr. Willoughby-Kelly, who finds himself physically attracted to a prostitute, Celia. Celia’s demand that he get a job destroys their plan to marry. Watt (1953), written during World War II, showed the beginnings of what became Beckett’s mature style and was the first of his novels to create a pervasive atmosphere of absurdity. Its protagonist, Watt, fights for his sanity while performing routine work in the home and service of a mysterious Mr. Knott, whom neither he nor the reader ever meets. After the war Beckett began writing in French, most notably his trio of novels Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953). (Since Beckett did his own translations, only the English version of the title is given here.) Beckett’s most famous work is perhaps the play Waiting for Godot. Roger Blin directed its first production at the The´aˆtre de Babylone in Paris in 1953, and it became the first of Beckett’s works to win significant international recognition. The story takes place on a deserted road (represented by a bare stage), where two tramps, Vladimir (called Didi) and Estragon (called Gogo), wait in vain for an ambiguous figure named Godot, encountering only a rich (and cruel) man and his slave. Most of the play shows them finding ways to kill time—“We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?” The play gained instant recognition as a portrayal of the human condition in the twentieth century, where God seems absent and materialism dominant, but part of its appeal also lies in its humor, and in the obscure sense it creates that somewhere more meaning exists. Along with EUGE` NE IONESCO and other French playwrights, Beckett is often associated with the Theater of the Absurd, although
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he thoroughly disliked this label and did not consider his work a part of the movement. Absurdist plays are characterized by minimal dialogue, undeveloped characters, illogical situations and plots, and other elements aimed at depicting the irrationality of existence. Among Beckett’s other plays from the 1950s and the 1960s is the one-act Endgame (1957), in which the characters try in vain to fill time with repetitions of the meaningless routines that seem to offer them some identity, but in the end give in, remaining unmoving and silent. The main character in Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) is a bitter old writer who makes annual recordings about the previous year on his birthday. In the story he listens to the tape he made on his thirty-ninth birthday and records a new one, again trying in vain to convince himself that his life has some meaning. In Play (first performed 1963), three characters find themselves eternally trapped in a love triangle. The story continues on and on with no resolution and, to emphasize its repetitiveness, is performed exactly the same way twice. Beckett also wrote several plays that feature women as their main characters. In Happy Days (1961), an optimistic, complacent middle-aged woman, Winnie, sinks into the ground, her optimism apparently unshaken by this strange occurrence. In Not I, the only thing illuminated on stage is a mouth reciting in a female voice. Beckett wrote this play and two others, That Time (1976) and Footfalls (1976), for the actress Billie Whitelaw. Whitelaw also starred in a London production of Rockaby (1981), a monologue. In 1961 Beckett married Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil, his longtime companion. He
accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 but, shunning the publicity, sent a representative to Stockholm to receive it for him. In the early 1980s he completed a trio of novels, collected as Nohow On in 1996. The first of these, Company (1980), incorporated many childhood memories and was followed by Ill Seen Ill Said (1981) and Worstward Ho (1983). His other works include Echo’s Bones (1935), the radio play All That Fall (1957), How It Is (1961), Stories and Texts for Nothing (1967), The Lost Ones (1972), Stirrings Still (1986), the unfinished novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women (written in the early 1930s and published in 1992), and the threeact play Eleutheria (written just after World War II and published in 1995). The plays from the 1950s and 1960s, especially Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape, Endgame, and Happy Days, are the ones that are generally considered classics. His later work, though still evocative, is so stripped down or obscure that it has had less impact. The last work, Stirrings Still, a brief and sometimes inaccessible yet beautiful and haunting play, has been seen as a fitting epitaph for Beckett, especially its first sentences: “One night as he sat at his table head on hands he saw himself rise and go. One night or day. For when his own light went out he was not left in the dark.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bair, Deirdre, Samuel Beckett: A Biography, 1978; Cronin, Anthony, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, 1996; Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, 1996.
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Beckmann, Max (February 12, 1884–December 27, 1950) Painter, Graphic Artist, Teacher eeply affected by the bloodshed he witnessed during World War I, the German Expressionist painter Max Beckmann rose to prominence with his tormented, grotesque depictions of the horrors he witnessed. As was the fate of many artists and intellectuals of his time in Germany, the Nazis confiscated hundreds of his works and forced him into exile when they rose to power in 1932. Beckmann’s best-known works are his massive allegorical triptychs and his numerous self-portraits, and all are infused with a disturbing and profound sense of disquiet and uneasiness. Beckmann was born in Leipzig, Germany. His father was a prosperous flour merchant. As a youth he studied at the Braunschwig gymnasium, but he was more interested in pursuing the artistic ambitions that emerged early in his life, and he particularly admired the Dutch painter Rembrandt (1606–1669). Beckmann studied at the Weimar Academy from 1900 to 1903. There he absorbed the conservative classical influence of the Academy, studying under Hans von Mare´es. In 1904 Beckmann moved to Berlin and began to paint under the influence of German Impressionists such as Lovis Corinth. Two years later he joined the Berlin Secession, an avantgarde movement opposed to the dominant traditional representational art. After Beckmann met the Norwegian expressionist painter EDVARD MUNCH, he too began to develop the expressionistic style for which he is best known. During World War I he served in the medical corps, an experience that led to a mental breakdown and to a pronounced change in the tone of his work. Beckmann’s depictions now grew violent and grotesque as he investigated relationships between volume and space. Heavy brush strokes, contorted lines, and bold, vibrant color recur in his paintings from
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this era, as in The Descent from the Cross (1917) and The Night (1918–1919). The emaciated Christ figure being lowered from the cross in the former is as shocking a scene as the violent, brutal depiction of murder in the latter. Unlike contemporaries such as GEORGE GROSZ, Beckmann never aimed at direct political and social statement but kept his commentary to an individual level. The Dream (1921) depicts a veteran and amputee, cradling a large fist under one of his half cut-off arms, on a ladder blowing a trumpet while an indifferent blond girl looks on. All of these canvases are crowded with disturbing figures interacting in atmospheres pervaded with an overwhelming spirit of chaos. At this time Beckmann was also experimenting with graphic art,completing an early series of lithographs entitled Hell. He did most of his work in graphic arts during his years in Germany, with the notable exception of his later series Day and Dream (1946). For much of his graphic art he worked in drypoint, a technique that involves scratching a metal plate. Beckmann’s work grew in popularity in Germany during the 1920s, leading to his appointment as a professor at the Sta¨del School of Art in Frankfurt, many exhibitions in Germany, and a gold medal for artistic achievement from the city of Du¨sseldorf. His fortunes changed, however, with the rise of the National Socialists. The Nazis declared Beckmann’s art “degenerate” in 1932 and over the next several years confiscated some six hundred of his works. Around this time Beckmann had begun the first of his nine allegorical triptychs. The vividly colored Departure (1932–1933) is filled with the violence and death of his earlier work, with such depictions as a man with amputated hands—seated, with the bloody stubs of his arms tied above his head—and a wom-
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an facing execution. Other paintings from this period include View of Genoa (1927), in which a dark shadow hanging over the city contrasts with the vibrant green of the water; Girls with Playful Dogs (1933), a depiction of two young women and five dogs in the park that offers a high-contrast interplay of color; and Journey on the Fish (Man and Woman) (1934). Having been forced from his professorship and increasingly in fear of his life, Beckmann fled with his wife to Amsterdam in 1937. He worked there for ten years, completing his noted triptychs The Actors (1942) and Blindman’s Bluff (1945). The colorful, busy scenes in the latter begin in the left panel with a crowd of figures who seem lost in uneasy thought. The frenzied figures in the center panel are wildly playing harps, horns, and other instruments, while a blindfolded man dominates the right panel. The triptych Beginning (1946–1949), completed after he settled in the United States, depicts his childhood and schooling. Beckmann taught for three years at Washington University in St. Louis and then moved
to New York. By this time he had developed his own expressionistic style and symbolic vocabulary, and the violence and tension of his earlier canvases toned down in his later work. The moral, self-searching bent in his work is nowhere more evident than in the approximately eighty self-portraits he is known to have produced. Beckmann often depicted himself in costume, wearing tuxedos, sailor’s caps (Self-portrait in Sailor Hat, 1926), or clown’s uniforms. Self-portrait with Cigarette (1923) depicts the artist sitting pensively and holding a cigarette in his raised right hand, with a dark shadow cast over the right side of his face. Other self portraits include Self-portrait with Red Curtain (1923) and Self-portrait with Green Curtain (1940).” Beckmann put the finishing touches on his final triptych Argonauts (1949–1950) the day he died.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Haftmann, Werner, A. Hentzen, and W. S. Lieberman, German Art of the Twentieth Century, 1957; Lackner, Stephan, Max Beckmann, 1977.
Beecham, Thomas (April 29, 1879–March 8, 1961) Conductor colorful personality, popular with the English public, Sir Thomas Beecham conducted the major international orchestras of his day and was responsible for founding several of them. He was an outspoken critic of the state of English music in his day, and introduced international musical figures such as Feodor Chaliapin to the British public. Beecham enthusiastically promoted the work of composer FREDERICK DELIUS, about whom he later wrote a biography.
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Beecham was born into a wealthy family in St. Helens, Lancashire, England. His father, one-time mayor of St. Helens, was fond of music. Beecham studied at the University of Oxford and was largely self-taught in the music field he later entered. In 1899 he made his first public appearance as a conductor with the Halle´ Orchestra, with which he was to work until the end of World War II. Six years later, Beecham debuted in London conducting the Queen’s Hall Orchestra. In 1906 he conducted with his New Symphony Orchestra.
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Beecham conducted both orchestras and operas. In 1910 he embarked on a sequence of operas, and following World War I he founded the British National Opera Company. In 1911 he introduced impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes to London audiences. Beecham was responsible for popularizing the talents of a number of noted figures in his day, including Delius and the Russian singer FEODOR CHALIAPIN.
Sir Thomas Beecham (쑖 G. Macdomnic / Lebrecht / The Image Works)
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Known for his strong opinions about the deficiencies of British music and his sharp wit, Beecham would go to great lengths to emphasize a point. In 1935, to prove the weight an Italian name carried with England’s opera-going public, he announced with fanfare the arrival of a newly discovered Italian operatic soprano, Lisa Perli, who was to sing Mimi in an upcoming production of La Bohe`me. Perli was in fact the experienced singer Dora Labette, who as an Italian earned rave reviews she had not previously received from critics. In 1928 Beecham conducted the New York Philharmonic, substituting for ARTURO TOSCANINI. The following year he conducted Delius’s major compositions at Queen’s Hall. In 1932 he founded the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1933 he became artistic director at Covent Garden. Beecham spent much of World War II conducting in Australia, Canada, and the United States, where he conducted the Seattle Symphony from 1941 to 1943 and the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera in New York (1942–1944). After the war ended, he returned to England and founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. A great champion of Delius and JEAN SIBELIUS, Beecham also included in his repertoire many eighteenth-century composers. He conducted from memory and gave interpretive and instinctual, rather than strict, renditions of music. He was knighted in 1916 and made a Companion of Honor in 1957. In 1917 he succeeded to his father’s baronetcy. Beginning in 1910, Beecham recorded many works. He published two books, the autobiography A Mingled Chime (1943) and the biography Frederick Delius in 1959.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Blackwood, Alan, Sir Thomas Beecham: The Man and the Music, 1994; Cardus, Neville, Sir Thomas Beecham: A Memoir, 1961.
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Behrens, Peter (April 14, 1868–February 27, 1940) Architect, Painter, Graphic Artist, Designer, Typographic Designer rained as an artist, Peter Behrens was an influential force in the development of modern architecture in Germany, particularly in the application of his functional geometric style to industrial design. He employed and was a direct influence on a generation of younger modern architects that included LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE, Bauhaus founder WALTER GROPIUS, and LE CORBUSIER. Behrens also designed furniture, appliances, cutlery, decorative objects, and typefaces. Behrens was born in St. Georg, Hamburg. His father was a prosperous landowner from Holstein, and both parents died before he was 15. As an adolescent, having inherited a sizable sum of money from his parents, he went to live with a guardian. Behrens attended school in Altona before entering the Gewerbeschule in Hamburg. In 1886 he enrolled at the Kunstschule (Art School) in Karlsruhe (1886), and he subsequently studied privately under Ferdinand Bru¨tt in Hamburg and Hugo Kotschenreifurt in Munich. In 1889 he married Lilli Kra¨mer. Behrens started out as a painter and graphic artist influenced by the tradition of Realism and by the Impressionists. In 1892 he exhibited his Zecher bei gelbem Lampenlicht (1893; Toper by the Yellow Lamplight) in the Munich Secession, and in 1894–1895 he painted numerous landscapes. Behrens also began to design woodcuts influenced by the Japanese printmakers and the Art Nouveau movement then blossoming in Germany. Sturm (1896), one such large woodcut, depicts a massive bird flying in front of trees blowing in a turbulent wind. Toward the end of the decade, Behrens began to devote himself increasingly to the applied arts, designing ceramics, porcelain, fabrics, glass, and carpets. Many of his designs were manufactured commercially, including tea sets, dishes, and vases. In 1900 the grand
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duke of Hessen invited Behrens to Ku¨nstlerkolonie, a new art colony in Darmstadt. There Behrens designed his own home the following year. Around the same time, Behrens designed his first interiors. In 1900 he created a dining room for his friend Otto Erich Hartleben. Three of his interiors formed part of the German section at the First International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts in Turin in 1902. The following year he designed another dining room for the poet Richard Dehmel. These and other early designs were heavily influenced by the curvilinear forms, undulating lines, and decorative focus of the Art Nouveau movement. Behrens took a post as director of the artsand-crafts school in Du¨sseldorf in 1903. Commissions for larger projects soon followed—a private home for the industrialist Gustav Obenauer in 1905, a concert hall in Cologne (1906), and a crematorium at Delstern (1906–1907). During this time he had also begun to develop the first of several typefaces he created, which include Behrens-Schrift (1902), Kursiv (1906–1907), and Behrens Media¨val (1914). In 1907 Emil Rathenau, general director of the large manufacturing company Allgemeine Elektricita¨ts Gesellschaft (AEG), put Behrens to work designing for all aspects of the company’s operation. The years 1907–1914 marked his most intense involvement with the AEG, and during that time he designed everything from factory complexes and workers’ housing to clocks, kettles, fans, and a particularly successful arc lamp. Behrens also designed the company’s logo, a special typeface for AEG, and its stationery. As his career progressed, Behrens moved increasingly away from the Art Nouveau influence toward the International Style advanced by Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, and Le Corbu-
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sier. His New Ways (1923–1925), a privately commissioned house in England, was one of the earliest examples of the use of modern architecture for private dwellings in that country. Among his later works are the Catholic Community House at Neuss (1907); the head office for the Mannesmannro¨hren-Werke in Du¨sseldorf (1911–1912); the administrative building for the Continental Rubber Company in Hannover-Vahrenwald (1911–1920), which was destroyed during World War II; the German embassy at St. Petersburg (1911–1912), which shows influences of classical architec-
ture; The Gasgesellschaft (1911–1912), or Gasworks—a large industrial complex marked by its series of cylindrical towers; the offices for the Dyeworks Ho¨chst (1920–1924); the Frankfurter factory for the Austrian Tobacco Administration at Linz (1930); and the Ring der Frauen pavilion (1931), a white, flatroofed building composed of circular elements.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Windsor, Alan, Peter Behrens: Architect and Designer, 1981.
Belloc, Hilaire (July 27, 1870–July 16, 1953) Poet, Novelist, Critic, Journalist, Essayist he massive output of the French-born British writer Joseph-Pierre Hilaire Belloc includes more than 150 novels, volumes of poetry, biographies, and histories as well as countless articles and essays that appeared in journals over his lifetime. Belloc’s broad knowledge extended to history, politics, religion, and literature. His writing was heavily colored by his devout Catholic belief, and his confrontational manner made him one of the most controversial figures in England in the first half of the twentieth century. Belloc was born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France. His mother, Elizabeth Parkes, was English and a supporter of women’s suffrage. She knew many prominent literary figures and was the great-granddaughter of Dr. Joseph Priestley, the Englishman-turned-American who discovered oxygen. Belloc’s father, a lawyer, died when he was two, a blow from which his mother never really recovered. She eventually moved the family to England, and
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Belloc studied at the Oratory School in Birmingham. After considering several professions, Belloc determined to pursue journalism and began to submit reviews to the Pall Mall Gazette. He was drafted into the French Army and served for a year. Upon his release, he entered Balliol College, Oxford. He was successful academically there, receiving first class honors in history and serving as the president of the debating society. However, Belloc’s intentions of pursuing an academic career were frustrated when he was denied a fellowship on repeated occasions. Unable to gain a teaching position, he decided to write. In 1896, he married Elodie Hogan, an American for whom he had twice journeyed across the United States before she agreed to become his wife. Elodie’s death in 1914 was a devastating blow for Belloc. His first book of verse, Verses and Sonnets, was published in 1895 and largely ignored. His other volumes of serious poetry include Verses (1910) and two volumes entitled Sonnets and
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Verse (1923 and 1938). Belloc’s serious poetry is classical in form, incorporates his historical knowledge, and treats themes of love, religion, the poor, landscape, and death. Belloc’s light verse, much of it for children, was more successful in terms of popularity. The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts (1896), a collection he intended as moral verse written with an appealingly lighthearted ferociousness and illustrated by Belloc’s friend Basil T. Blackwood, proved to be very popular upon its publication. It was followed by other volumes such as The Modern Traveller (1898), The Moral Alphabet (1899), Cautionary Tales for Children (1907), More Peers (1911; for adults), and New Cautionary Tales (1930). Around the turn of the century, Belloc moved to London, where he became fast friends with G. K. CHESTERTON and his brother, Cecil. Belloc and Chesterton, dubbed
Hilaire Belloc (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-41972)
“Chesterbelloc,” held a then–unpopular stance in opposing England’s role in the Boer War and imperialism in general. The two also embraced an economic vision they called “distributivism,” which aimed to limit concentrations of power and wealth to small, localized areas. They objected to both socialism and capitalism, the former of which concentrates power in a central government and the latter of which leaves control in the hands of a few wealthy capitalists. Belloc’s career in politics lasted only a few years. He became a British subject in 1902 and in 1906 began four years of service as a representative for Salford in Parliament. Belloc ran as a Liberal but soon found himself at odds with the party. Disgusted by the corruption he saw in politics and under too much stress from the demands his office placed on him, he retired. During World War I, he contributed popular military essays to the journal Land and Water. Several of Belloc’s satirical novels dating from this period reflect his view of the political corruption he saw. These include Mr. Clutterbuck’s Election (1908), about a man who buys a seat in Parliament; A Change in the Cabinet (1909); and Pongo and the Bull (1910). Along with The Postmaster-General (1932), these novels reflect Belloc’s belief that money and power ruled Britain’s democracy. He saw the party system as a sham, with leaders from supposedly opposing parties in collusion with one another in the interests of money and power. Outside the political realm, Belloc satirized academics, journalists, and capitalists in his novels. Lambkin’s Remains (1900), an indictment of the academic world inspired by his troubles at Oxford, was followed by a satire on journalists, Caliban’s Guide to Letters (1903). The main character of The Mercy of Allah (1922) is a wealthy and unscrupulous capitalist, Mahmoud. In Emmanuel Burden (1904), Burden, the owner of a hardware store, finds himself the victim of the wiles of the financier I. Z. Barnett. Barnett desires to control the store to
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enable him to exploit a colony in Africa. Barnett’s powers of manipulation at first succeed on Burden but do not work on his smarter friend Abbott, whose business Barnett is also after. Belloc wrote novels in other styles, including the historical novel The Girondin (1911), set during the French Revolution; The Haunted House (1927); the love story Belinda (1928); The Man Who Made Gold (1930); and The Hedge and the Horse (1936). Chesterton illustrated many of his novels. Belloc was never a stranger to public controversy, but he carried on his most heated war of words with H.G. WELLS. In particular he objected to the progressive, evolutionary vision of humanity Wells laid out in his Outline of History. The quarrel produced several volumes of argumentation and rebuttal from both sides, culminating in Belloc’s A Companion to Mr. Wells’s “Outline of History” (1926). Belloc wrote many historical and biographical works in an engaging, nonacademic style. He was a lifelong, devout Catholic, and his Catholic worldview influenced both his historical perspective and his contemporary observations. In spite of frequent criticism from the academic world, he refused to use footnotes or write in a scholarly manner. His
works on the French Revolution include Danton (1899), Robespierre (1901), Marie Antoinette (1909), and The French Revolution (1911). Among his other historical works are his four-volume History of England (1925–1931) and biographies of many French and English monarchs. Belloc’s political writings include The Party System (1911), co-authored with Cecil Chesterton, which attacked the party system in England. In The Servile State (1912), he argued that Britain’s subjects were handing over their freedoms to the welfare state. His later political writings include The House of Commons and Monarchy (1920) and An Essay on the Restoration of Property (1936). Belloc’s pilgrimage on foot from Toul, in the northeast of France, to Rome provided the subject matter for The Path to Rome (1902), his best-known travel book. His other works include the essay collections Hills and the Sea (1906), On Nothing (1908), and On Something (1910) as well as books of literary criticism. He received an honorary doctorate of laws from Glasgow University in 1920.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Markel, Michael H., Hilaire Belloc, 1982; Wilson, A. N., Hilaire Belloc, 1984.
Bellow, Saul (June 10, 1915–April 5, 2005) Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright, Essayist est known for his novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Saul Bellow was an esteemed CanadianAmerican author who investigated internal human matters such as spiritual struggle and isolation as well as the corruption of modernday American culture. Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.
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Bellow was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, now part of Montreal, to Russian-Jewish emigrants who fled St. Petersburg in 1913. Due to poor documentation, some controversy exists as to whether he was born on June 10 or July 10, but the author identified his birthday as being in June.
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When Bellow was nine, his parents moved the family to the Chicago slums. Both before and after his birth, his father eked out a living in a number of ways—importing Egyptian onions and Turkish figs, bootlegging, working in a bakery, and delivering coal. Bellow’s mother, a very religious woman, hoped he would pursue a rabbinical or musical career. The religious orthodoxy of his upbringing, however, was disagreeable to the budding author. The city of Chicago would serve as the setting for much of his writing. After spending much of his childhood there, he attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, from which he graduated in 1937 with honors in sociology and anthropology. Of his studies, he said in his Nobel lecture in 1976, “I was a very contrary undergraduate more than forty years ago. It was my habit to register for a course and then to do most of my reading in another field of study. So that when I should have been grinding away at ‘Money and Banking,’ I was reading the novels of Joseph Conrad.” Bellow completed a year of graduate work in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In the 1930s, Bellow participated in the Chicago branch of the WPA’s Writer’s Project, dominated by radical leftists. At this time, Bellow was a Trotskyist, though his leftist persuasion would give way to a more conservative outlook in his later years. Trotsky, by that time in exile in Mexico City, was assassinated with an ice ax the day before Bellow and a friend were set to meet him. While pursuing his writing career, he supported himself with teaching and editorial jobs. After being rejected for army service due to health reasons, he served in the merchant marine during World War II. During that time he finished Dangling Man (1944), his first novel, which explores the spiritual and emotional struggles of a potential draftee in Chicago. The Victim followed three years later. In 1948, Bellow won a Guggenheim fellowship, after which he spent a short time in Paris. There he commenced work on the pi-
caresque novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953), which established his reputation as an author, became one of his most famous works, and earned a National Book Award in 1954. The novel’s protagonist is a restless traveler trying to come to terms with his place in a degraded society. Upon his return from Paris, Bellow lived in New York for ten years before he again settled in Chicago in 1962. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he served as a professor on the Committee on Social Thought for more than thirty years. Bellow also taught at numerous other universities over the span of his career, including the University of Minnesota, New York University, the University of Puerto Rico, Bard College, Princeton University, and Boston University. Despite his success as an author and professor, Bellow sometimes chose to live in highcrime areas that he believed were vital settings for his writing. He did, however, travel extensively during his lifetime. His next major novel, Seize the Day (1956), explores themes of isolation, societal corruption, human desperation, and search for meaning in life that are common to Bellow’s writing. In Henderson the Rain King (1959), a wealthy Connecticut violinist and pig farmer, Eugene Henderson, travels to Africa in the midst of a midlife crisis. In 1964, Bellow enjoyed his biggest commercial success to date with the publication of Herzog, which also won a National Book Award and the International Literary Prize in 1965. Dismay, depression, and thoughts of revenge toward his ex-wife and an old friend who have engaged in a love affair consume the protagonist, Moses Herzog. Herzog, a college professor, passes much of his time in isolation, writing emotionally charged letters he never sends and plotting the murder of his exwife. When the moment of truth arrives, he sees his old friend bathing his daughter and discovers he cannot carry out his murderous plans. Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970) was Bellow’s next major work, and it again won a National
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Book Award in 1971. In the novel, he explored the degradation of society through the later years of the life of an elderly New York man who seeks to find moral value in human existence. The difficult plight of the artist in what Bellow considered modern-day, materialistic society is the primary theme of Humboldt’s Gift (1975). Bellow based the main character, Von Humboldt Fleisher, on his friend and fellow poet/writer Delmore Schwartz. For the novel, Bellow received a Pulitzer Prize in 1976. That same year, Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The press release stated of his works, “The structure is apparently loose-jointed, but for this very reason gives the author ample opportunity for descriptions of different societies; they have a rare vigour and stringency, and a swarm of colourful, clearly-defined characters against a background of carefully observed and depicted settings, whether it is the magnificent fac¸ades of Manhattan in front of the backyards of the slums and semi-slums, Chicago’s impenetrable jungle of unscrupulous businessmen intimately intertwined with efficient criminal gangs, or the more literal jungle in the depths of Africa, where the novel, Henderson the Rain King, the writer’s most imaginative expedition takes place.” Bellow’s later works include The Dean’s December (1982), More Die of Heartbreak (1987), A Theft (1989), The Bellarosa Connection (1989), The Actual (1997), and Ravelstein (2000). Aside from his novels, Bellow also published a number of short stories, including those collected in Mosby’s Memoirs (1969), Him with His Foot in His Mouth (1984), and Collected Stories (2001). His play The Last Analysis was produced unsuccessfully on Broadway in 1964, and three short plays col-
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lected as Under the Weather were also produced on Broadway two years later. Among his essays is “To Jerusalem and Back” (1976), written after his trip to Israel. He frequently contributed to a variety of magazines. Although literary critics consider him one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished writers, Bellow was not particularly prolific as a novelist. Outside of writing, he pursued many other interests, including teaching, reading, sports, and music. He corresponded heavily with other noted poets and writers, including Schwartz, Ralph Ellison, Robert Penn Warren, and John Berryman. His personal life was turbulent, marked by five marriages, four divorces, and numerous relationships with women. In 1993, after long residing in Chicago, Bellow moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, where he died in his home at the age of 89 in 2005. Among his numerous other awards are the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres (1968), the B’nai B’rith Jewish Heritage Award for “excellence in Jewish literature,” (1968), the Democratic Legacy Award of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (1976), and the National Medal of Arts (1988).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Atlas, James, Bellow: A Biography, 2000; Bloom, Harold, ed., Saul Bellow: Modern Critical Views, 1986; Bradbury, Malcolm, Saul Bellow, 1982; Gussow, Mel, and McGrath, Charles, “Saul Bellow, Who Breathed Life Into American Novel, Dies at 89,” The New York Times, April 6, 2005; Hyland, Peter, Saul Bellow, 1992; Tanner, Tony, Saul Bellow, 1965; Wasserman, Harriet, Handsome Is: Adventures with Saul Bellow, 1997. www.saulbellow.org.
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Bennett, Arnold (May 27, 1867–March 27, 1931) Novelist, Playwright, Screenwriter, Critic noch Arnold Bennett wrote more than thirty novels, and is particularly noted for his straightforward portrayals of lower-class people in the Five Towns, the region formerly known as the Potteries in England. Bennett’s narratives carry a realistic and subdued tone and generally treat the lives of unremarkable individuals. He also wrote plays, essays, articles, and books of practical advice. Bennett was the eldest of nine children born in Burslem, Staffordshire, England, in the Five Towns, a region with a centuries-old
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Arnold Bennett (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-06360)
tradition of pottery making. His childhood was marked by the abnormally high expectations his parents, and particularly his father, held for him. He studied at the Infants’ Wesleyan School and when he was 10 entered the Endowed School. Bennett was an exceptional student at these and at the last school he was to attend, the Newcastle Middle School in Newcastle-under-Lyme. At the age of 16, under pressure from his father, he quit school to work as a clerk in his father’s office. In 1889, Bennett moved to London, where he continued to work as a clerk before he became an assistant editor of the magazine Woman, to which he contributed advice to women under the pseudonym “Gwendolyn.” His first published story, a parody, appeared in Tit-Bits and won a small award. After the publication of his first novel, A Man from the North (1898), Bennett conclusively decided to devote himself to writing. Other novels followed and were published serially, including The Ghost about Carl Foster, about a medical student who goes to London and gets wrapped up with the musical comedy stars Rosa and Alresca. Carl, in love with Rosa, is haunted by the ghost of Rosa’s dead lover. The Grand Babylon Hotel appeared in 1902, and The Gates of Wrath was published the following year. Bennett, who loved everything French, was influenced by French Realists such as Gustave Flaubert. With a few exceptions, he used the omniscient narrator to tell his stories. Death is an ever-present force in his narratives, propelling characters into new situations or providing final ends to their tragic histories. His characters are average people in average situations—there is little of the bizarre, abnormal, or fantastic in his stories. Bennett’s commentary is subtle. Anna of the Five Towns (1902), one of Bennett’s most acclaimed novels, is the first to
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unfold completely in his favorite setting. In the story, the heiress Anna Tellwright’s life is anything but remarkable, except perhaps for the brief period of time covered in the book. She becomes engaged to Henry Mynors, who promises to give her a routine and uneventful life as a husband, and submits to her fate as his wife at the end of the novel. Bennett moved to France in 1903 and married the actress Marguerite Soulie in 1907. Their marriage proved to be relatively unhappy and ended in 1921. Even before he arrived in Paris, he had begun to devour the works of literature he had missed when he quit school to work for his father. The varied cultural atmosphere of Paris suited his taste, but he returned to England in 1912. He purchased a yacht, the Velsa, the same year and memorialized it in From the Log of the Velsa (1914). Love and sexual themes form the center of many of Bennett’s novels. In Lenora (1903), the return of Arthur Twemlow causes upheaval in the lives of Lenora Stanway, her Victorian husband John, and their daughters. The end result is John’s suicide and Lenora’s liberation, as she is now free to be with Arthur, with whom she has fallen in love. Sacred and Profane Love (1905), one of Bennett’s most controversial novels, is narrated in the first person by Carlotta, a young woman in her twenties. In the story Bennett covers her sexual awakening and maturity, beginning with her first sexual encounter at age 21. The Old Wives’ Tale (1908), another of the works many critics consider among Bennett’s best, depicts the tragic lives of Constance and Sophia Baines. Both girls fall in love and get married, Sophia to the salesman Gerald Scales and Constance to Samuel Povey. Povey dies and Scales deserts Sophia. Circumstance brings the two aged women back together, until the news of the demise of Sophia’s husband kills her as well. Constance outlives her for a few years. In Buried Alive (1908), Bennett showed a penchant for humor. The protagonist, a middle-aged artist, Priam Farll, suffers greatly from the death of his valet, Henry Leek. Leek
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served as his link to a world from which Farll hid, in spite of the success of his paintings. Farll takes advantage of Leek’s death by pretending he is the one who has died. He marries Alice Challice, who had formerly pursued Leek as a potential husband. Farll begins to paint again to support his family, and the public uncovers his real identity. Bennett later adapted Buried Alive as the play The Great Adventure (1913). Clayhanger (1910), a serious work, is the first volume in Bennett’s trilogy The Clayhanger Family (1905). The protagonist Edwin Clayhanger leaves school as an innocent and naive young man and goes to work in his overbearing father’s print shop. He wins the friendship of the wealthy Orgreaves and at their home falls in love with Hilda Lessways. His intentions of marrying her are frustrated by his father’s reaction when he asks for a raise and by Hilda’s marriage to another man. After many years, when Edwin’s father has died, he meets Hilda again and plans to marry her. The trilogy’s succeeding volumes, Hilda Lessways (1911) and These Twain (1916), deal with Hilda’s life and their marriage, respectively. Bennett’s later novels are diverse. For the setting of Riceyman Steps (1923), he chose Clerkenwell, a lower-middle-class area in London. Lord Raingo (1926) offers a portrait of a prosperous, middle-aged man seeking a new direction in his life. Imperial Palace (1930) is a lengthy novel set in a luxury hotel and marked by its incorporation of many characters and episodes. Among Bennett’s plays are What the Public Wants (1909), staged on the West End; The Honeymoon (1910), about a couple arguing about their honeymoon; The Love Match (1922); and Body and Soul (1922). Many of his novels were also adapted as plays. Bennett’s greatest success in the theater came with Milestones, co-written with Edward Knoblock. The play ran for a year at the Royalty Theater beginning in 1912. The story of Milestones carries on for three generations before reaching a positive resolu-
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tion. John Rhead breaks with his longtime partner Samuel Sibley over the question of building iron ships. Gertrude, John’s sister, also ends her engagement to Samuel. A quarter of a century passes and finds John pushing his daughter, Emily, into an unhappy marriage in spite of her love for another man. In another twenty-five years, Emily adopts the same attitude toward her own daughter, Muriel, who becomes the first in the family to follow her own heart. Bennett’s other works include the novel Helen with the High Hand (1910); Piccadilly,
a film script that ALFRED HITCHCOCK directed as Punch and Judy in 1929; the three-volume The Journals of Arnold Bennett, 1896–1928 (1932–1933); and many books of essays, criticism, and practical advice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Broomfield, Olga R. R., Arnold Bennett, 1984; Drabble, Margaret, Arnold Bennett: A Biography, 1974; Squillace, Robert, Modernism, Modernity, and Arnold Bennett, 1997.
Berg, Alban (February 9, 1885–December 24, 1935) Composer SCHOENBERG and two of his students, Alban Maria Johannes Berg and ANTON VON WEBERN, comprise the Second Viennese School in twentieth century
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music and were the major early composers in Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method. In his mature years, Berg, who along with Schoenberg was first influenced by the late Romantics, imbued the system Schoenberg formulated to bring structure to atonal music with a greater sense of expression and flexibility than did either Schoenberg or Webern. Berg was born into an upper-middle-class Catholic family in Vienna, Austria. His father was a merchant and died when Berg was 15. Living in Vienna, Berg gained exposure to a variety of cultural influences in his youth. At home, too, he was exposed to his mother’s music and painting and his siblings’ musical interests. He at first aspired to be a poet and was to maintain a lifelong interest in literature. However, in his teens he began to compose music. After failing his matriculation in 1903, Berg unsuccessfully attempted suicide. Berg’s eldest brother, Charley, took some of his work to Schoenberg in 1904. Schoenberg, impressed by Berg’s work, initially took him on as a student free of charge, giving him his first formal instruction. Through Schoen-
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berg he met another important influence on his work, his lifelong close friend and fellow composer Anton von Webern. At the time Berg studied with him, Schoenberg was experimenting with atonality, in which a work lacks a definite key, and working toward the development of his twelve-tone composition style. Berg faithfully defended Schoenberg’s controversial work when it brought heated criticism. His own early work, such as the Seven Early Songs (1905–1908) was also influenced by late Romantic composers such as Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), RICHARD STRAUSS, and Richard Wagner (1813–1883). Mahler’s widow, Alma, supported Berg’s career throughout his life. The single-movement Piano Sonata (1907–1908), influenced by the late Romantics, was Berg’s first major work to see public performance. With his String Quartet (1910), Berg moved permanently into atonal composition. His early work Five Orchestral Songs (1912), a setting for verse by the Viennese poet Peter Altenberg, formed part of a 1913 concert that included works by Schoenberg, Webern, and Mahler. A riot instigated by musical opponents broke out during the performance. In 1911 Berg married Helene Nahowski. Fragile health and asthma plagued him for most of his life, often hampering his ability to work. World War I also interrupted Berg’s composing career, and his work in the war ministry from 1915 to 1918 further compromised his health. Before the war he had begun his operatic masterpiece Wozzeck, with libretto based on the German dramatist Georg Bu¨chner’s Woyzeck, and he completed it in 1921. Berg wrote Wozzeck’s score in “atonal style,” although the work is not atonal in a strict sense, and dedicated it to Alma Mahler. It premiered at the Berlin State Opera in 1925, conducted by Erich Kleiber. The expressionistic opera’s unique combinations of vocal and instrumental elements, along with the use of “speech song” (in which the line between speech and song is blurred), helped make the
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opera an international success. The plight of the protagonist, a soldier who suffers at the hands of the leaders of society, was close to Berg’s heart. It was one of the few atonal operas to gain widespread acceptance, and the work’s popularity stabilized Berg’s fragile financial situation. The Chamber Concerto for violin, piano, and thirteen wind instruments (1925) was written for Schoenberg’s fiftieth birthday and was Berg’s first major work to use serialism. Lyric Suite for String Quartet (1926) was partly inspired by Berg’s affair with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin and was the first of his major works to depart from less structured atonality to Schoenberg’s more systematic approach, the twelve-tone method. In this system, a composer forms a row of twelve tones from the notes of the chromatic scale, and the composition is written from each tone in sequence. Berg’s later works combine the twelve-tone system with other styles. The rise of Nazism in Germany in 1933 was costly to Berg’s career. Authorities labeled his music “degenerate” and forbade its performance. Equally distressing to Berg was the expulsion of Schoenberg, who was Jewish and was then teaching in Berlin, from Germany. Schoenberg moved to the United States in 1933, and Berg never saw him again. Berg’s last major works were his unfinished opera, Lulu (1937), drawn from two plays by Frank Wedekind, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, and his Violin Concerto. The composer Friedrich Cerha finished Lulu after Berg’s death, and it was not performed until 1979. The violinist Louis Krasner commissioned the Violin Concerto, which Berg shaped into a requiem for Manon Gropius. Gropius was the daughter of Alma Mahler and her second husband, the architect Walter Gropius, and died in her teens. Berg dedicated the concerto “to the memory of an angel.” Berg was elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1930. His work became better known after his death than it had been during his lifetime, and his mastery of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone style after 1925 influenced many
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later twentieth-century composers. He died of septicemia in 1935. Among his other works are Four Songs (1909), Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano (1913), Three Orchestral Pieces (1915), and Der Wein (1929), a concert aria written for the Viennese soprano Ruz ena Herlinger and orchestra using poetry by Charles Baudelaire.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Carner, Mosco, Alban Berg: The Man and the Work, 2d ed., 1983; Monson, Karen, Alban Berg, 1979; Redlich, H. F., Alban Berg: The Man and His Music, 1957.
Bergman, Ingmar (July 14, 1918–July 30, 2007) Director, Screenwriter he Swedish filmmaker Ernst Ingmar Bergman was the most successful Scandinavian director in world cinema. In his extensive body of films, most written and directed by himself, he weaved unique symbolic dreamscapes that explore themes of life, death, loss of faith, religion, sexuality, hopelessness, and childhood. Although he is primarily known for his work in the cinema, he also enjoyed a long and successful career as a theater director in Sweden and Germany. Bergman was born in Uppsala, Sweden, and moved to Stockholm with his parents. His mother and father (a Lutheran pastor) were strict disciplinarians and subjected Bergman and his siblings to sometimes cruel punishments. The emotionally painful events of his childhood were to resurface in many of his films. Bergman attended Palmgren’s School as a youth. After a brief period serving in the military that resulted in partial deafness, he enrolled in Stockholm University, where he studied literature, history, and art. Bergman’s career in the arts began in the theater. At the university he devoted much of his time to writing, directing, and acting for the student theater. He staged plays by MAURICE MAETERLINCK, Shakespeare, August Strindberg, and many others as well as his
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own, such as The Death of Punch (1942). Bergman later became a trainee director at the Ma¨ster Olofsga¨rden Theatre and at the Sagas Theatre. A meeting with Carl-Anders Dymling, head of the Svensk Filmindustri, began Bergman’s film career. He joined the Filmindustri as a scriptwriter, and the first of his scripts to see production was Frenzy (1944; American title Torment), directed by Alf Sjoeberg. Following its success, Bergman soon began writing and directing his own films. His first, Crisis, appeared in 1945, followed by Prison (1949; American title The Devil’s Wanton). From 1952 to 1959 Bergman served as director of the Malmo¨ municipal theater and continued to stage plays. In the film Sawdust and Tinsel (1953; American title The Naked Night), Harriet Andersson plays the mistress of a circus owner. This film made considerable use of one of Bergman’s trademark cinematic techniques, facial close-up shots. Dream sequences and visions also play a significant role in his body of films. A Lesson in Love (1954), Journey into Autumn (1955; American title Dreams), and Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) followed; the latter, which examines the love, troubles, and sexuality of four couples during
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a summer night, became his first international success. Set in medieval Europe, The Seventh Seal (1957) is considered one of Bergman’s masterpieces. Like many of his films beginning around this time, it examined conflicts between good and evil, faith and disbelief, and life and death. It began as a play Bergman wrote entitled Wood Paintings and was partially inspired by church murals he frequently gazed upon as a youth. The actor Max von Sydow played a knight, Antonius, who comes face to face with Death as a living character. Wild Strawberries (1957), a circular story based in part on Bergman’s childhood, is an examination of the passage of time and human failures. An elderly professor faced with death recalls events from his childhood that he believes led to his failures later in life. A few years later, Bergman filmed a trilogy that examined questions of religion, love, and doubt. The first, Through a Glass Darkly (1961), centers on four family members who grapple with belief in God. Its successor,
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Winter Light (1963), paints a picture of hopelessness and disbelief. A minister loses his faith and can offer little consolation to a suicidal parishioner who comes to him for help. In the third film, The Silence (1963; originally entitled God’s Silence), two very different sisters and a son of one of them find themselves stranded in a city that speaks a language they cannot understand. Outside there is a war in progress; inside the sex-obsessed Anna and intellectual Ester compete for the affections of Anna’s son, Johan. The chaotic world outside is framed in words they cannot understand and appears devoid of meaning. The sexual scenes in the movie provoked bitter attacks that almost resulted in its being banned in several countries. Bergman bought a country home on the island of Fa˚ro¨ and filmed a series of projects there, including Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1968), The Shame/ Shame (1968), and A Passion/The Passion of Anna (1969). The Rite/The Ritual (1969) is a psychological portrait of two actors and an actress subjected to a torturous inquisition when authorities accuse them of staging an obscene show. The Touch (1971) was his first film both in English and in color. The color red dominates the story of a woman dying of cancer in Cries and Whispers (1972), which earned an Oscar for cinematography. Bergman filmed a television version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute in 1974. Face to Face (1976), blurring the distinction between reality and dreams, portrays the shattering of a psychiatrist’s sanity after an attempted rape. Autumn Sonata (1978), filmed in Oslo, Norway, stars INGRID BERGMAN as a concert pianist and treats the strained relationship with her daughter. Fanny and Alexander (1983), won four Academy Awards. Bergman retired from the cinema for a number of years but in 2000 wrote the screenplay for the Swedish film Faithless, a story about adultery directed by Liv Ullman (1938– ). He subsequently directed several films for television, including After the Rehearsal (1983), The Blessed Ones (1985), and Saraband (2003). Bergman died in
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his sleep on July 30, 2007, the same day that Italian director, MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI, passed away. Bergman’s films earned numerous awards, including several Academy Awards and prizes from the Cannes Film Festival. The Magic Lantern, his autobiography, was published in 1988. His other films include Waiting Women (1952), Summer with Monika/Monika (1952), The Magician (1958), So Close to Life/Brink of Life (1958), The Virgin Spring (1960), The Devil’s Eye (1960), Now About All These Women/All These Women (1964), Hour of the
Wolf (1966), Scenes from a Marriage (1974), Paradise Place (1977), The Serpent’s Egg (1977), and From the Life of the Marionettes (1980).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bergman, Ingmar, Images: My Life in Film, 1994; Bergman, Ingmar, The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography, 1988; Cowie, Peter, Ingmar Bergman: A Critical Biography, 1982; Marker, LiseLone, and Marker, Frederick J., Ingmar Bergman: A Life in Theater, 1992, Vermilye, Jerry, Ingmar Bergman: His Life and Films, 2002.
Bergman, Ingrid (August 29, 1915–August 29, 1982) Actress nown for her aura of intelligence, charm, beauty, and sensitivity to her characters, the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman appeared in more than sixty films, plays, and television dramas in the United States, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, and Britain. Her most famous films include Casablanca, Gaslight, and Anastasia. A high-profile affair with and subsequent marriage to the Italian film director ROBERTO ROSSELLINI in the early 1950s led to a series of unsuccessful films before she returned to Hollywood in 1956. Bergman was an only child born in Stockholm. Her father was an unsuccessful painter who also owned a camera shop. After the successive deaths of her mother when she was two and her father and aunt when she was 12, Bergman went to live with an uncle. She studied at the Lyceum School for Girls and, with the reluctant agreement of her uncle, was able to win a scholarship to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, where she enrolled in 1933. Soon afterward she met her first husband, the dentist Peter Lindstrom.
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With Lindstrom’s encouragement she decided to pursue a career in film. Her first break came when she visited a film studio and attracted the attention of a director. Bergman debuted on screen as the maid Elsa in Munkbrogreven (The Count of the Monk’s Bridge, 1935). Branningar (Ocean Breakers) featured her as a fisherman’s daughter who becomes pregnant during an affair with a guilt–ridden minister. Over the next five years she made ten films in Sweden, among which are En kvinnas ansikte (A Woman’s Face, 1938) and Intermezzo (1939). In 1938 she also made a film for Universum Film AG in Germany. Impressed by her performance in Intermezzo, DAVID O. SELZNICK brought her to the United States for a Hollywood remake of the film in 1939. The new film, Intermezzo (A Love Story), which also starred Leslie Howard, featured Bergman as a piano teacher who has an adulterous affair with Swedish violinist Holger Brandt (Howard). Her performance earned her international stardom. The
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Ingrid Bergman (쑖 Alinari Archives / The Image Works)
following year Bergman appeared as Julie in a Broadway production of Liliom. Over the next several years Bergman starred in a series of highly successful films that elevated her to superstardom. After appearing in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), she starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in the World War II–era classic Casablanca (1942). The following year she played Maria in a film version of ERNEST HEMINGWAY’s For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). Her performance in Gaslight (1944) won her first Academy Award for best actress, and Saratoga Trunk and The Bells of St. Mary’s followed in 1945. In 1945 and 1946 she made two films with ALFRED HITCHCOCK, Spellbound and Notorious, the latter costarring Cary Grant. Bergman also made Under Capricorn with Hitchcock in England in 1948. Her lead-
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ing role in Joan of Arc, a part she had long wanted to play, was less successful. In a famous letter to Rossellini, Bergman offered to act in one of his films if he was interested. The unsuccessful Stromboli (1950) was the immediate result of the letter. Her subsequent affair with Rossellini resulted in the birth of a son, a divorce from Lindstrom, and the temporary alienation of her American audience. Selznick’s initial public portrayal of Bergman as a wholesome and respectable figure contributed to the scandal that ensued. Bergman and Rossellini married in 1950, and two years later she gave birth to twin daughters, Isabella (now a well-known actress herself) and Isotta. The two made a series of films together that were, in general, unsuccessful. These include Europa ’51 (1952; The Greatest Love, 1954), made in France; Un viaggio in Italia (1954; Journey to Italy, 1955), filmed in Italy; and Fear (1955), filmed in Germany. In 1955 she also appeared in JEAN RENOIR’s Paris Does Strange Things. Bergman returned triumphantly to Hollywood after her divorce from Rossellini, starring in the title role of Anastasia (1956), for which she won another Academy Award. She married her third and final husband, the Swedish theater impresario Lars Schmidt, two years later. Bergman continued to make films in the United States, including The Inn of Sixth Happiness (1958), The Yellow RollsRoyce (1964), and Cactus Flower (1969). Her portrayal of a Swedish missionary in a film version of AGATHA CHRISTIE’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974) won her an Academy Award for best supporting actress. Among her notable later roles were her portrayal of a concert pianist in INGMAR BERGMAN’s Autumn Sonata (1978) and her final role, that of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in the television play A Woman Called Golda (1981). For the latter she was posthumously awarded an Emmy for outstanding actress in a mini-series. In addition to her high-profile screen career, Bergman occasionally acted on stage. Her plays include Hedda Gabler (Paris, 1962);
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A Month in the Country (England, 1965); GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (London, 1971); and The Constant Wife (New York, 1975). Bergman also appeared in the television plays The Turn of the Screw (1959), Hedda Gabler (1963), and The Human Voice (1967). She died of cancer on her sixty-seventh birthday. Her autobiography, My Story, was published in 1980.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bergman, Ingrid, My Story, 1980; Leamer, Laurence, As Time Goes By: The Life of Ingrid Bergman, 1986; Quirk, Lawrence J., The Complete Films of Ingrid Bergman, 1970; Spoto, Donald, Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman, 1997; Taylor, John Russell, Ingrid Bergman, 1983.
Berlin, Irving (May 11, 1888–September 22, 1989) Songwriter, Composer aving entertained millions of people with his music over the course of his lifetime, Irving Berlin ranks as one of the most remembered and prolific songwriters in U.S. history. Part of the Tin Pan Alley-Broadway songwriters who flourished around the turn of the twentieth century, he was one of the few who wrote both music and lyrics. His body of work includes more than 1,500 published songs known for their memorable melodies, including such classics as “God Bless America,” “White Christmas,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” He also wrote Broadway and Hollywood films scores. Berlin was the youngest of eight children, born Israel Isidore Baline to an AshkenaziJewish family in Mogilev, in what is now Belarus. Fleeing Russian persecution of Jews, the family moved to the United States in 1893, where Berlin’s father, a cantor, certified kosher meat until his death in 1896. After only two years of attending school, the young Berlin was forced to look for work at a young age and took odd jobs such as selling newspapers and playing music and singing on the streets. Later on, he worked as a singing waiter at Pelham’s Cafe´ in Chinatown, where he was
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asked to cowrite a song for the cafe´ to compete with a rival’s. The result was “Marie from Sunny Italy,” which was published in 1907 and earned Berlin less than thirty-eight cents. He adopted his name when it was misprinted as “I. Berlin” on the sheet music. Berlin enjoyed some musical successes with early songs such as “Oh How That German Could Love” that were published as sheet music, recorded, or used in vaudeville or stage shows. In 1910, he performed his own music in the revue Up and Down Broadway. It was not until the following year, however, that he scored a big hit. The popular ragtime dance tune “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” jumpstarted his career as a major Tin Pan Alley writer. Many artists have recorded the song over the years, rendering it an American classic. In 1914, Berlin finished Watch Your Step (1914), a full-length musical comedy for the stage that starred the husband-and-wife dance team Vernon (1887–1918) and Irene Castle (1893–1969). Stop! Look! Listen! followed in 1915. During this time, Berlin also wrote for operettas and revues such as Ziegfeld Follies (1911).
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During World War I, Berlin served in the U.S. Army. He put together a musical revue entitled Yip Yip Yaphank (1918) while stationed at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York. It was for this show that Berlin composed what is perhaps his most famous song, “God Bless America.” However, he decided not to use it, and it remained unreleased until years later. It is to this day one of the most popular songs in American history. Singer Kate Smith (1907–1986) delivered a famous rendition of the song in Michael Curtiz’s (1886–1962) film This Is the Army (1943). Following his discharge from the military, Berlin formed Irving Berlin Music, Inc., thus enabling him to retain control of his own music. Shortly thereafter, he built the Music Box Theatre, where he could stage productions of annual revues highlighting his latest songs and revues. The new theater’s inaugural show was The Music Box Revue of 1921. In addition to staging his own revues, Berlin wrote for other revues and Broadway pro-
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ductions, such as The Cocoanuts (1925). The Broadway show was a light musical comedy with a cast featuring, among others, the MARX BROTHERS. Face the Music (1932), produced after somewhat of a dry spell, was a political satire cowritten with playwright Moss Hart (1904–1961). Another Berlin-Hart collaboration, As Thousands Cheer, followed a year later and was crafted from newspaper articles. “Heat Wave,” “Supper Time” (a song about the lynching of an African-American man originally performed by blues singer Ethel Waters, 1896–1977), and several other popular songs emerged from the revue. Louisiana Purchase (1940) was a satire of a Southern politician based on the controversial Louisiana Democrat Huey Long (1893–1935). Not wishing to confine himself to the New York entertainment scene, Berlin also began to write for Hollywood. The Jazz Singer (1927), an early Hollywood talkie that emerged at the beginning of the sound film era, featured Berlin’s song “Blue Skies.” Top Hat (1935) was the first of a series of distinctive film musicals Berlin pioneered that featured popular performers (such as BING CROSBY, FRED ASTAIRE, JUDY GARLAND, and Ginger Rogers, 1911–1995) and light romantic plots. Top Hat introduced the songs “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails” and “Cheek to Cheek.” Other films in the same vein include Follow the Fleet (1936), On the Avenue (1937), Holiday Inn (1942), Blue Skies (1946), and Easter Parade (1948). It was Holiday Inn, starring Astaire and Crosby, that propelled the American favorite “White Christmas” (performed by Crosby) onto the song scene. For more than half a century, Crosby’s version of “White Christmas” held the record for the best-selling single in any category. In 1942, in the middle of World War II, Berlin launched an all-soldier revue entitled This Is the Army, which was followed by a film version the next year. “God Bless America” was included in the score this time around, rendering it an enduring American classic. Berlin donated many of the proceeds from the
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revue to the military. He often performed for troops near dangerous battle zones, and U.S. President Harry S. Truman awarded him the Medal of Merit. Following the war, Berlin staged Annie Get Your Gun (1946), which blossomed into his longest-running musical at more than 1,100 performances. Produced by the famed songwriting duo RICHARD RODGERS (1902–1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), the show was based on the life of Ohio-born sharpshooter Annie Oakley (1860–1926) and popularized the song “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” Call Me Madam, starring Ethel Merman (1908–1984), followed in 1953. Both shows were adapted into less successful films. Berlin exited Broadway with Mr. President in 1962. Disillusioned by new trends in music such as the advent of rock and roll, Berlin wrote little in his later life. Berlin made no secret of his political conservatism, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower used his song “I Like It” during his campaign. His personal life was not without its difficulties. He married his first wife, Dorothy Goetz, in 1912. Tragically, she contracted pneumonia and typhoid fever during their ho-
neymoon and died six months later. Her death inspired his song “When I Lost You.” In 1926, Berlin married Ellin Mackay, an Irish-American Catholic heiress whose outraged father disinherited her for marrying a non-Catholic. Berlin’s earnings ended up more than compensating for the financial loss from her own family, which saw its own fortunes turned to nothing during the Great Depression. Berlin was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1968. He died of a heart attack at the age of 101 in New York City and was buried in The Bronx in New York.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barrett, Mary Ellin, Irving Berlin: A Daughter’s Memoir, 1994; Bergreen, Laurence, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, 1990; Freedland, Michael, Irving Berlin, 1974; Hamm, Charles, Irving Berlin: Songs from the Melting Pot, the Formative Years, 1907-1914, 1997; Jablonski, Edward, Irving Berlin: American Troubador, 1999; Leopold, David, Irving Berlin’s Show Business: Broadway, Hollywood, America, 2005; Whitcomb, Ian, Irving Berlin and Ragtime America, 1988.
Bernstein, Leonard (August 25, 1918–October 14, 1990) Conductor, Composer, Pianist, Teacher eonard Bernstein attained international acclaim as the longtime conductor of the New York Philharmonic and was the first American conductor to achieve worldwide fame. Bernstein’s flamboyant and exuberant conducting style charmed millions around the world and paved the way for other American conductors to take their work to European audiences. Bernstein was also an accomplished composer, equally comfortable
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with classical works and Broadway music scores. A talented pianist, too, he frequently performed his own works. Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to middle-class Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. His father, a businessman, disapproved of his musical ambitions when he was young but later resigned himself to his son’s direction. After hearing a piano performance when he was young, Bernstein deter-
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mined to go into music. His parents acquired a piano in 1928, and he began to take piano lessons. Bernstein attended the Garrison and Boston Latin Schools, graduating in 1934. Following the completion of his studies there, he entered Harvard University, where he studied music most notably under the composer and theorist Walter Piston (1984–1976). Before he graduated, he conducted Aristophanes’ (456 B.C.– 386 B.C.) The Birds and directed and performed in the American composer MARC BLITZSTEIN’s (1905–1964) The Cradle Will Rock. After finishing his work at Harvard, Bernstein studied conducting under the Hungarian conductor Fritz Reiner (1888–1963), piano under the Russian-American pianist Isabella Vengerova (1877–1956), and orchestration with the American composer Randall Thompson (1899–1984) at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In 1940, he began to study at Tanglewood, the summer institute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under famed conductor SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY. Koussevitzky would conduct Bernstein’s performance of his own Symphony No. 2 (The Age of Anxiety) in 1949. In 1942, he went to work for Harms-Remick music publishers. In addition to conducting, he began to compose works such as the Clarinet Sonata (1941–1942). Appointed by the Polish conductor Arthur Rodzinski, he became assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and on November 14, 1943, filled in for the ailing BRUNO WALTER to
Leonard Bernstein (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LCUSZ62-127784)
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make his professional conducting debut. As luck would have it, the Carnegie Hall performance was slated for national radio broadcasting. Bernstein garnered positive reviews, including a front-page write-up in The New York Times. While his conducting career took off overnight, he collaborated with the American dancer and choreographer JEROME ROBBINS on the ballet Fancy Free (1944) and scored a major success with the Broadway hit musical On The Town the same year. Over the course of his career, Bernstein wrote many successful ballets, Broadway shows, and operas. He again worked with Robbins on the ballets Facsimile (1946) and Dybbuk (1975). His Broadway hits include Wonderful Town (1953), Candide (1956), and West Side Story (1957). West Side Story, in which he collaborated with Robbins, STEPHEN SONDHEIM, and the American playwright Arthur Laurents (1918– ), remains one of his most enduring works. The 1961 film version, directed by Robbins and Robert Wise (1914–2005), won ten Academy Awards. Bernstein’s final Broadway show was the musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976). His two operas, the one-act Trouble and Tahiti and its sequel A Quiet Place, premiered in 1952 and 1983, respectively. In 1945, Bernstein was appointed Music Director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra, where he remained until 1947. In the years after World War II, he began to find successes in the international arena. In 1946, he conducted in London and at the International Music Festival in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The same year, he conducted the American premiere of BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S opera Peter Grimes, and in 1949 he conducted the world premiere of the Turangalıˆla-Symphonie by OLIVIER MESSIAEN. Upon Koussevitzky’s death in 1951, Bernstein became head of the orchestral and conducting departments at Tanglewood. The same year, he married Chilean actress Felicia Cohn Montealegre (1922–1978) and conducted the New York Philharmonic in the world
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premiere of American composer CHARLES IVES’S Symphony No. 2. Ives had written the piece years before, but it had not been publicly performed until then. Though the composer died just three years later, Bernstein subsequently devoted a great deal of time and effort promoting Ives’s work and the work of other American composers, notably AARON COPLAND. In 1953, Bernstein became the first American to conduct an opera at Milan’s La Scala, an honor he repeated at the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Royal Concertgebouw. In the early 1950s, he also headed the Creative Arts Festivals at Brandeis University and taught there as well. Bernstein’s Jewish heritage directly inspired a number of his major works, such as his Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah (1943), which received the New York Music Critics’ Award. In 1947, he conducted in Tel Aviv for the first time, and from that point on, he maintained close ties with Israel. He returned to Tel Aviv a decade later to conduct the inaugural concert of the Mann Auditorium, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra premiered his Symphony No. 3: Kaddish (1963). In 1958, Bernstein attained the position for which he is most famous, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, where he remained until 1969 and conducted nearly a thousand concerts. After his departure, Bernstein was awarded the title of Laureate Conductor and returned many times as a guest conductor. A large portion of Bernstein’s nearly five hundred recordings are with the New York Philharmonic. From 1958 to 1972, Bernstein delivered a popular series of fifty-three televised Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic for CBS. He devoted a number of these to Copland’s work. In 1959, he took the New York Philharmonic on a European tour. During the 1960s, Bernstein revived interest in the work of the Bohemian-Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) by conducting and recording all of his symphonies, again with the New York Philharmonic. In
1966, he made his debut at the Vienna State Opera conducting LUCHINO VISCONTI’S production of Giuseppe Verdi’s (1830–1901) Falstaff. Bernstein took the Charles Eliot Norton Chair as Professor of Poetry in 1973 at Harvard University, where he delivered a series of six lectures later collectively titled “The Unanswered Question” and televised on PBS. In December 1989, he conducted the Berlin Celebration Concerts during the dismantling of the Berlin wall on both sides of it. He conducted his last performance at Tanglewood on August 19, 1990, with the Boston Symphony playing BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S Four Sea Interludes and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Bernstein died from cancer five days after retiring and is buried in Brooklyn, New York. Bernstein was especially noted for interpretations of works of Mahler, Copland, the German Romantic composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH, GEORGE GERSHWIN, JEAN SIBELIUS, and his own works. Over the course of his career, he published several works on music, including The Joy of Music (1959), Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts (1961), The Infinite Variety of Music (1966), and Findings (1982). He recorded extensively for Columbia Masterworks and later for Deutsche Grammophon. Bernstein took a keen interest in promoting the works of young composers. In 1982, he helped found the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. He taught master classes at Tanglewood and was responsible for creating a number of international music festivals. His countless awards include the Kennedy Center Honors in 1980. The following year, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Many music festivals are still held around the world in honor of his work. He received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1985 and won eleven Emmy Awards during his career. A number of universities bestowed honorary degrees on him, and he received many international honors.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Burton, Humphrey, Leonard Bernstein, 1994; Gradenwitz, Peter, Leonard Bernstein: The Infinite Variety of a Musician, 1987; Myers, Paul, Leonard Bernstein, 1998; Peyser, Joan, Bernstein: A Biography, Revised and Updated,
1998; Secrest, Meryle, Leonard Bernstein: America’s Maestro, 1991; www.leonardbernstein.com. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ bernstein_l.html.
Betjeman, John (August 28, 1906–May 19, 1984) Poet, Journalist n his poetry, Sir John Betjeman combined traditional forms with modern subject matter, creating poems that are at times sentimental and nostalgic and at times mildly satirical. He is chiefly remembered for verse rich with the images he admired—the landscape and topography of England’s towns and countrysides as well as the ritual and customs of the Anglican Church—and the musical quality he created with his manipulation of meter and rhyme, which, combined with his enormous popularity during his lifetime, led to his appointment as poet laureate in 1972. Betjeman was the only child of a successful businessman and his wife, a dedicated Christian Scientist. His father’s family boasted a long line of inventors, and his grandfather’s invention of the Tantalus proved particularly profitable. This tendency did not manifest itself in Betjeman, who disappointed his father when he refused to involve himself in the family business. His childhood was relatively tranquil until his parents hired a cruel nurse to care for him, who, according to Betjeman, inflicted permanent damage to his psyche with her stories and threats of hell. At the Highgate Junior School, Betjeman found himself a pupil of the American poet T. S. ELIOT, to whom he gave a volume of his early poetry. Eliot apparently never commented on the verses. From Highgate Betjeman
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moved on to the Dragon School in Oxford and later Marlborough College, where he gained the friendship of LOUIS MACNEICE. After finishing his studies at Marlborough, he attended Magdalen College, Oxford, and studied under C. S. LEWIS. Betjeman’s lackadaisical work habits and indulgence in sensual pleasure conflicted with the academic discipline Lewis demanded, and the two mutually disliked one another. Betjeman began to write poetry in his youth. He worked to mold words to bring out sound, rhythm, and musicality using traditional form and meter. Frequent excursions around England, during which he carefully observed topography and architecture, provided him with the many images of railways, towns, and countrysides that recur throughout his poetry. Although he was never an outstanding student, he devoured books of poetry and literature and involved himself in Oxford’s literary scene. Another important influence on Betjeman’s verse was his reception into the Anglican Church, to which he grew increasingly devoted with age. Betjeman counted among his friends the staunchly Catholic EVELYN WAUGH, who tried his best to convert him. Waugh did not shake Betjeman’s devotion, but he was more successful with Betjeman’s wife, the independent and multitalented Penelope Hester
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Chetwode. Betjeman’s stormy marriage to her eventually broke up. After working briefly as a cricket master, Betjeman took a job writing for the Architectural Review in 1931. Throughout the decade, he continued to work as a journalist. Betjeman’s first books of poetry, Mount Zion (1933) and Continual Dew (1937) are his least serious works. Some of the poems amount to mild satires of middle-class attitudes and behaviors, while others evoke his fascination with the customs of the church. Old Lights for New Chancels (1940) and New Bats in Old Belfries (1945) are notable for their evocations of the English landscape—towns, railways, chapels, and rural settings. Some of the poems are religious in nature and reflect Betjeman’s continual preoccupation with death, but they lack any strong philosophical attitude. In his poems, Betjeman is sentimental about the old, dying order giving way to modern society. “Middlesex,” part of A Few Late Chrysanthemums (1954), which many critics consider his finest volume of verse, mourns the proliferation of suburbs that destroy the countryside. Death is again a repeated theme in the collection, and in particular Betjeman’s own sense of guilt stemming from his father’s death. His later volumes of poetry include Collected Poems (1958), High and Low (1966), A Nip in the Air (1974), Church Poems (1981), and Uncollected Poems (1982).
Summoned by Bells (1960), his autobiography in blank verse, treats his life from his childhood to his days at Oxford. In addition to poetry, Betjeman wrote extensively on architecture, travel, and topography. His first book on architecture, Ghastly Good Taste, was published in 1933, and among his others is A Pictorial History of English Architecture (1972). Vintage London (1942), English Cities and Small Towns (1943), the Collins Guide to English Parish Churches, First and Last Loves (1952), London’s Historic Railway Stations (1972), and a number of travel guides are among his other works. Critical assessment of his works has generally held the collections of the 1940s and 1950s in highest regard. If he did not capture the universal admiration of critics in his later life, he found immense popularity with the English public and became a popular television personality in England. His charming personality off the air was marked by a number of odd quirks, among which was his lifelong attachment to his childhood teddy bear, Archibald. He was knighted in 1969 and in 1972 succeeded CECIL DAY-LEWIS as poet laureate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Taylor-Martin, Patrick, John Betjeman: His Life and Work, 1983.
Bing, Rudolf (January 9, 1902–September 2, 1997) Impresario ften described as “autocratic” and “imperious,” Sir Rudolf Franz Josef Bing was the general manager of New York’s Metropolitan Opera from 1950 to 1972. Under Bing’s management, the Met grew into
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one of the most internationally prestigious opera houses and attracted top stars from all over the world. Bing was born in Vienna, and his father was a successful Austrian industrialist. At home
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he was exposed to musical influences, and as an adolescent he nursed ambitions to sing. Bing took voice lessons and later attended the University of Vienna. He found his calling, however, when he went to work for a bookstore. When the store expanded its sphere of operation to include concert and opera management, Bing became involved in the business that was to become his career. In 1927 Bing moved to Berlin and began working for various agencies casting singers for operas. With Carl Ebert, he managed the Charlottenberg Opera in Berlin (1931). When the rise of National Socialism forced him from Germany, Bing settled in England and in 1935 was given the post of general manager at the Glyndebourne Opera Company. During World War II he worked in a department store. Following the war (1947), Bing helped found the Edinburgh Festival, which afterward grew into a successful and popular annual music event. In 1950 he became general manager at the Met, where his controversial reign lasted more than two decades. As a manager Bing was uncompromising and involved himself in every aspect of the theater’s operation—securing performers and conductors, choosing the shows, and overseeing with meticulous care the costumes and scenery. Bing was notorious for his high-profile feuds with soprano Maria Callas (whom he fired in 1968) as well as with many other figures, including the conductor George Szell and the Danish tenor Lauritz Melchior. On the other hand, it was Bing who broke the longstanding racial barrier, when he secured the
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African-American contralto Marian Anderson for the role of Ulrica in Un ballo in maschera in 1955. While under Bing’s management, the theater moved from Thirty-ninth Street to the Lincoln Center in 1966. Under Bing’s leadership, the Met attracted the world’s most renowned opera stars and conductors,—including singers ELISABETH SCHWARZKOPF, Callas, RENATA TEBALDI, JOAN SUTHERLAND and conductors HERBERT VON KARAJAN, GEORG SOLTI, and LEONARD BERNSTEIN. He was sometimes criticized for staging too many Italian romantic operas and too few modern works, but he knew what the audience liked. Prior to his departure from the Met, he appointed James Levine, who had debuted as a conductor at the Met in 1971, principal conductor. Bing was knighted in 1971 and published two memoirs, 5,000 Nights at the Opera (1972) and A Knight at the Opera (1981). Although Bing lived to the age of 95, the last fifteen years of his life were tragic ones. Following his wife’s death in 1983, his mental health deteriorated. Suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, he married a younger widow with a history of mental illness and began giving her large sums of money. In 1987 his guardian Paul Guth succeeded in having him declared incompetent and freezing his assets, and his marriage was annulled because he could not remember having wed his bride. He died of respiratory failure in 1997.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bing, Sir Rudolf, 5,000 Nights at the Opera, 1972; Bing, Sir Rudolf, A Knight at the Opera, 1981.
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Blackburn, Thomas (February 10, 1916–August 13, 1977) Poet, Novelist, Playwright, Teacher, Critic homas Blackburn’s early volumes of poetry, published during the 1950s, coincided with the emergence of poets such as KINGSLEY AMIS and JOHN WAIN, who were seen by critics as belonging to a group dubbed “The Movement,” but Blackburn did not follow them in their plainspoken style and avoidance of metaphor. Influenced by the Irish poet WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, Blackburn used strong imagery derived from legends and myths in his early works. His later poetry was intensely personal and addressed his own experiences and dilemmas. Blackburn was born in Hensingham, Cumbria, England. His father, a rigid and excessively strict clergyman, had a profound impact on Blackburn’s psychology. After studying at a public school, he began to study law at the University of Cambridge. Law was his father’s choice, but it did not suit Blackburn. He turned to alcohol, an addiction that would trouble him for the rest of his life, and suffered a nervous breakdown. As part of his recovery, Blackburn underwent psychoanalysis. In addition to pursuing an interest in Freud and Jung, he devoured the writings of poets and philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to William Blake. Upon his recovery, he studied English at the University of Durham, from which he graduated in 1940. His first marriage to Joan Arnold did not last, and in 1945 he married the painter Rosalie de Me´ric. During World War II, Blackburn, a pacifist, worked for the London Stretcher Party and elsewhere. Blackburn’s first major volume of poetry, The Holy Stone, was published in 1954, along
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with several others during that decade. As mentioned above, his early poetry shows the heavy influence of Yeats, and much of it employs mythological imagery and traditional form. Blackburn’s 1960 poem “The Sediment” won a Guinness Award. Later collections include A Smell of Burning (1961), A Breathing Space (1964), and Selected Poems (1976). For much of his adult life, Blackburn taught at various schools around England— Marylebone Grammar School in London, the University of Leeds, the College of St. Mark and St. John, Chelsea, and Whitelands College, Putney—and was noted for his enthusiastic teaching style. In his later life, Blackburn maintained he had experienced a series of visions and dreams. A significant experience occurred in a Welsh cottage, and after the vision he believed he had died. Post Mortem (1977) was written after this occasion. The posthumous Bread for the Winter Birds followed in 1980. Among Blackburn’s other works are the radio play A Place of Meeting, produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1956; Robert Browning (1967); The Price of an Eye (1961), a collection of criticism; the musical drama The Judas Tree (1967), with music by Peter Dickinson; his autobiography, A Clip of Steel (1969); and the novel Feast for the Wolf (1971).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Blackburn, Thomas, A Clip of Steel: A Picaresque Autobiography, 1969; MacVean, Jean, ed., The Adjacent Kingdom: Collected Last Poems, 1988.
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Blackwood, Algernon (March 14, 1869–December 10, 1951) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Writer of Children’s Books lgernon Henry Blackwood’s mysterious tales of the supernatural and occult have made him something of a cult figure among readers of fantasy and horror fiction. His high–impact, suspenseful, and emotional tales influenced other writers in the genre, such as the American H. P. Lovecraft. In the later years of his life, he became a popular storyteller in British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio and television. Blackwood was born into an upper-class family in Shooters Hill, Kent, England. When he was a child, the family moved to Crayford, which provided settings for some of his stories. The family moved again to a house near Beckenham, also in Kent. Blackwood’s father, Sir Arthur Blackwood, was the dominant influence on his young life. The elder Blackwood was Permanent Secretary of the Post Office and had experienced a profound religious conversion after fighting in the Crimean War. A devout Christian and lay preacher, he first stimulated his son’s interest in spirituality, though his son’s spirituality did not take a direction of which he approved. The younger Blackwood’s imagination was further fired by his father’s love of the outdoors, travel, and telling ghost stories. Education was less pleasant for Blackwood. He attended a series of rigid private schools, one of which was the School of the Moravian Brotherhood at Ko¨ningsfeld in the Black Forest region of Germany, another locale that later provided settings for his fiction. In 1888 he entered the University of Edinburgh to study agriculture in hopes of establishing himself as a farmer. However, agriculture failed to capture his interest, and he preferred to spend his time investigating spiritualism. When he was twenty, he went to Canada, where he wrote for the Canadian Methodist Magazine.
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Blackwood’s interest in spiritualism began with the discovery of Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms among his father’s books. For the elder Blackwood, the book was evidence of a disturbing trend, but his son was impressed when he read it. Blackwood read the writings of Madame Blavatsky and became a theosophist. He also met the psychic researcher Frank Podmore and with him investigated his first haunted house. It was an interest for the rest of his life, and his stories, such as “The Empty House,” include many haunted-house tales. By 1890 Blackwood had abandoned his formal studies and moved to Canada, where he wrote for the theosophist magazine Lucifer and helped found the Theosophical Society’s branch in Toronto. When a farm venture failed, he moved to New York and worked as a reporter. A number of experiences there, including interviews with criminals and experimentation with morphine, contributed to his future work. After a brief interlude searching for gold in Minnesota, Blackwood returned to New York and worked for the New York Times. Blackwood’s North American days, recounted in his Episodes Before Thirty (1923), came to an end when he returned to England in 1899 and helped establish a dried milk company. His first book of short stories, The Empty House (1906), received widespread critical acclaim. The second volume, The Listener (1907), contains one of his most famous stories, “The Willows.” John Silence (1908) introduced his most popular character, the psychic detective of the title, and was his most successful volume up to that date. Later collections include The Lost Valley (1910); Pan’s Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories (1912); Incredible Adventures (1914), containing the novellas “A Descent Into Egypt,” “The Regeneration of Lord Ernie,” and
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“The Damned,” as well as two other stories; The Wolves of God, And Other Fey Stories (1921); Tongues of Fire and Other Sketches (1924); and Shocks (1935). For a time Blackwood was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, stimulus for his novel The Human Chord (1910). In it, Robert Spinrobin is working for the retired minister Philip Skale. Skale has a group of people who, with training, hope to be able to speak the name of Jehovah and gain power over Him. Blackwood also developed a firm belief in past lives, and he later came to believe that he was a reincarnated American Indian. Reincarnation and past lives form the primary focus of two novels published in 1916, Julius Le Vallon: An Episode (1916) and The Wave: An Egyptian Aftermath (1916) as well as Karma: A Reincarnation Play (1918). During World War I, Blackwood wrote war propaganda stories and worked as a British spy in Switzerland. He traveled widely around Europe and continued his inquiries into mystical matters, visiting the mystic George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1872–1949) in France in the
1920s. Among Blackwood’s novels, The Centaur (1911), about the spiritual quest of the reporter O’Malley, is one of his most popular and was his own favorite. This novel was heavily influenced by the theories of the German psychologist and physicist Gustav Fechner (1801–1887). Others include Jimbo: A Fantasy (1909); The Education of Uncle Paul (1909); A Prisoner in Fairyland (1913); The Extra Day (1915); The Garden of Survival (1917); The Promise of Air (1918); The Bright Messenger (1921), sequel to Julius Le Vallon; and Dudley and Gilderoy: A Nonsense (1929). Blackwood wrote less frequently in his later years but gained popularity for the stories he read on BBC radio and television productions. His other works include children’s books, such as Sambo and Snitch (1927), Mr. Cupboard (1928), and The Fruit Stoners (1934), as well as plays.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ashley, Mike, Algernon Blackwood: A Bio-Bibliography, 1987.
Blais, Marie-Claire (October 5, 1939– ) Novelist, Poet, Playwright he Quebec-born novelist Marie-Claire Blais conveys in her work a pessimistic view of contemporary violence and social oppression, the forces that shape her characters and determine their destinies. She often sets her novels in rural and urban Quebec but has also used American and French backdrops for her work. She is the first novelist to write so intensely of the “dark side” of modern life in Quebec. Blais was born in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, and was the eldest of five children.
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Her father was an engineer, but the large family strained his income. As a young child Blais nursed an ambition to write, beginning her first novel at the age of nine. She was sent to secondary school at the Convent of St. Roch but quit to go to work. For several years Blais worked in a series of secretarial jobs. Her break as a writer came as a result of taking night classes at Laval University, where she met two figures who would prove important to the development of her career. The first of these was literature professor
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Jeanne Lapointe, who took a special interest in promoting and encouraging female authors. Father Georges-Henri-Le´vesque, who founded the School of Social Sciences at Laval, was directly responsible for selling Blais’s first novel to a publisher. The resulting work, La belle beˆte (Mad Shadows), appeared in 1959 and attracted the attention of several prominent critics. Mad Shadows tells of contemporary violence and social oppression, the principal concern in nearly all the rest of her writing. This particular story is a sordid tale of jealousy, murder, and violence that unfolds on a farm in rural Quebec. There live the widowed Louise and her two children, the intelligent but unattractive Isabelle-Marie and her handsome but dull brother Patrice. Isabelle-Marie, driven by the rejection she encounters because of her looks and jealous of their mother’s preference for Patrice, is determined to destroy him, first by starving him and then by plunging his attractive face into boiling water. She falls in love with a blind neighbor, who also rejects her when he recovers his sight. Eventually she destroys the sources of her oppression—murdering her mother, burning the farm, driving her brother to suicide, and killing herself. Having moved to Montreal the same year she finished Mad Shadows, Blais followed with the stories Teˆte blanche (1960) and Le jour est noir (1962; The Day Is Dark). She received a grant to study in France (1961) and, with the encouragement of critic Edmund Wilson, a Guggenheim Fellowship that enabled her to study in the United States. For the rest of the decade she lived on Cape Cod, where she formed friendships with the antiwar activist Barbara Deming and the artist Mary Meigs. Under Deming’s influence, Blais grew increasingly concerned with the United States’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel (1965; A Season in the Life of Emmanuel), perhaps Blais’s best-known work, depicts the deaths of the children in a large Quebec farming family. Central to the story is the tragic and sym-
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bolic fate of the aspiring poet Jean Le Maigre, one of the children, who is sent to a monastery, contracts tuberculosis, and dies. David Sterne (1967), her next novel, unfolds amidst the climate of the Vietnam War and reflects Blais’s antiwar sentiment more strongly than any of her other work. Blais left Cape Cod in 1969 and moved to France with Meigs. A year earlier she had begun her semiautobiographical trilogy—Manuscrits de Pauline Ar-change (1968; Manuscripts of Pauline Ar-change), Vivre! Vivre! (1969; To Live! To Live!), and Les Apparences (1970; The Appearances), published collectively in English as The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange (1970). Like Blais, the protagonist is a girl who overcomes her social circumstances in Quebec and becomes a successful writer. Several other novels followed before she returned to Quebec in 1975, including Le Loup (1972; The Wolf), Un Joualonais sa Joualonie (1973; St. Lawrence Blues), and Fie`vre et autres textes dramatiques (1974; Fever and Other Dramatic Texts). In Une liason parisienne (1976) Blais took aim at Paris literary culture. Le sourd dans la ville (1979; Deaf to the City), among her more successful novels, was later adapted for film by Mireille Dansereau. With Pierre, ou la guerre du printemps 81 (1984; Pierre, or the War of the Spring of 1981), Blais attempted to reconstruct her vision of the twentieth-century climate of violence in the mind of protagonist Pierre, who is a clear product of his surroundings. As an adolescent Pierre joins a motorcycle gang. Blais reveals his consciousness through interior monologue largely constructed from news snippets she spent months gathering. In two novels, L’Nuits de l’Underground (1978; Underground Nights) and L’ange de la solitude (1989; The Angel of Solitude), Blais has explored lesbian themes. L’exe´cution (1968; The Execution), staged at the Montreal at the The´aˆtre du Rideau Vert, was the first major production of Blais’s plays. A two-act study of violence and the cor-
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rupting influence of power, the story concerns three boys who murder a schoolmate. Her other dramatic works include L’oce´an (1977; The Ocean); Sommeil d’hiver (1984; Sleep of Winter); and L’ile (1988; The Island). Blais’s other works include L’insoumise (1966; The Fugitive),Visions d’Anna (1980), The Exile and the Sacred Travellers (2000),
Dans la foudre et la lumie`re (2001; Thunder and Light), and The Collected Radio Drama of Marie-Claire Blais (2007). Her autobiographical Parcours d’un e´crivain: Notes ame´ricaines, appeared in 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Green, Mary Jean, Marie-Claire Blais, 1995.
Blake, James Hubert “Eubie” (February 7, 1883-February 12, 1983) Composer, Arranger, Songwriter, Pianist ianist and composer Eubie Blake was present soon after the birth of jazz and went on to live a full century, long enough to ensure that future generations would remember the music he and his contemporaries created. In all, he composed more than 300 songs. Four years before his death, his work was immortalized in the Broadway musical Eubie! Blake was born James Hubert Blake in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of two freed slaves and the first of their ten children to live past infancy. His father, John, worked as a stevedore, and his mother, Emily, was a church-going washerwoman. By age four, the boy was playing piano. He also learned the organ, an instrument his parents purchased for their home. Despite his mother’s opposition, he also took to the ragtime syncopation heard in neighborhood bars and brothels. By 15 he was secretly playing in a bordello and soon thereafter composed his first well-known song—a composition called “Sounds of Africa,” whose title was subsequently changed to “Charleston Rag.” His long hands meant he could reach an impressive octave and a half on the keyboard,
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thus facilitating his bass-heavy style. In 1915, he met singer Noble Sissle (1889–1975), who became Blake’s lyricist. They achieved an immediate hit with “It’s All Your Fault,” sung by Sophie Tucker, and went on to perform together in vaudeville. A propitious meeting with another black musical duo, Floureny Miller and Aubrey Lyles, led to a groundbreaking achievement: Shuffle Along, the 1921 “black musical” Broadway hit that crossed racial boundaries in audience appeal. Blake served as musical director, Sissle wrote lyrics, and Miller and Lyles created the libretto. The musical ran for 504 performances, launched the careers of Josephine Baker and Florence Mills, and helped to create legitimacy for black musicals at a time of deep racial pain and division in the United States. Shuffle Along also produced the Sissle and Blake hit “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” adopted years later by presidential candidate Harry Truman, and songs such as “Honeysuckle Time.” They followed with a second Broadway hit in 1923, called Runnin’ Wild, which launched the dance, the Charleston.
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Sissle left the partnership in 1927 and Blake went on to collaborate with lyricist Andy Razaf, including his hit, “Memories of You,” for the Broadway show entitled Lew Leslie’s Black Birds of 1930. In 1938, Blake’s wife Avis, whom he’d married in 1910, developed tuberculosis. She was 58 when she died. Blake went on to lead a USO entertainment unit during World War II, married his second wife, Marion Gant Tyler, in 1945, and even enrolled at New York University to study composition. He graduated at age 67. A resurgence of interest in ragtime led to yet another chapter in his career: that of elder early-jazz statesman. He began appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and other popular such TV shows that broadened his appeal to a new generation, established Eubie Blake Music, his record and publishing company in 1972, saw the Thompkins Theater in New York renamed the Eubie Blake Theater, and gave bravura performances. In 1976 he
saw his Broadway show Eubie! premiere. A celebratory concert was held in honor of his one hundredth birthday which Blake was unable to attend because he was sick with pneumonia. Five days later he died, the last of the original ragtime players.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Krasner, David, A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre Drama and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance 1910-1927, 2004; Levin, Floyd, Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians, 2000; New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 2001; Stewart, Jeffrey C., 1001 Things Everyone should know about African American History, 1996, A Main Street Book. www.eubieblake.org www.imdb.com. www.loc.gov. www.mdhs.org/eubieblake/subs/06.html.
Blasco Iba ´n ˜ ez, Vicente (January 29, 1867–January 28, 1928) Novelist, Essayist, Playwright, Politician, Short-Story Writer he Spanish author and member of the Generation of ’98 Vicente Blasco Iba´n˜ez is most famous for his novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In addition to his prolific literary output, Blasco Iba´n˜ez was a politician, editor, agitator, and influential orator in his lifetime. Blasco Iba´n˜ez was born in Valencia, Spain, to Aragonese parents who owned a small grocery store. He studied at the Colegio Levantino and later at the University of Valencia, where he earned a law degree. In his youth he loved to tell stories and write, and he completed his first novel at the age of 14. At age 16 he moved to Madrid, and until 1892 he wrote numerous romance novels.
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Blasco Iba´n˜ez involved himself heavily in politics from the time he was a teen-ager. He was a born leader, often speaking before political groups in Madrid and Valencia and stirring pro-tests on the university campus. For the duration of his life he remained staunchly antimonarchist, and his vocal advocacy of a Spanish republic repeatedly landed him in jail and sent him into exile. He suffered injuries in several duels over political issues. In 1890 Blasco Iba´n˜ez was exiled to Paris, where he wrote his History of the Spanish Revolution (1870–1874). Having returned to Spain the following year, he married his cousin Marı´a Blasco del Cacho and founded the Republican political paper El Pueblo. In 1898
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he was elected to the first of six terms in the Spanish Parliament as a representative of the Republican Party. Blasco Iba´n˜ez’s novels fall into several categories. The early novels are set in his native Valencia, depict the lives of the middle and lower classes, and employ elements of Naturalism and Symbolism. His first major work in this style is Rice and a Carriage (1894). In Among the Orange Trees (1900), the weakwilled Rafael replaces his father in the legislature after the latter’s death. While engaged to another woman, he falls in love with the experienced and world-weary Leonora, generating a scandal that forces them to flee the area. They are pursued by Don Andre´s, who convinces Brull to return to his respectable life and marry a woman he does not love. Reeds and Mud (1902), another major “Valencia” novel, is set around an inhospitable lake. The story revolves around the family of
Vicente Blasco Iba ´n ˜ ez (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-29613)
the veteran fisherman Tı´o Paloma. Paloma, a hardworking and proud man, tries to train his grandson, Tonet, to fish. Tonet, however, is lazy and prefers to indulge in sensual pleasure. He has an ongoing affair with Neleta, who marries a tavern owner in his absence. Upon her husband’s death, Neleta inherits his money on the condition that she remain single, but she is pregnant with Tonet’s baby. After giving birth to the child in secret, Tonet plans to abandon the baby on a doorstep but instead throws the child into the lake. Tonet’s dog retrieves the corpse, and Tonet commits suicide. Other Valencia novels include The Mayflower (1895), The Cabin (1898), and So´nnica the Courtesan (1901). Beginning with The Cathedral (1903), Blasco Iba´n˜ez incorporated strong elements of social and religious protest and set his novels outside of Valencia. He used characters to relate his own philosophy in a didactic manner, as in The Cathedral’s Gabriel Luna. Luna, an atheist and antimonarchist, returns to Toledo after a life of turmoil. When he tries to convert others to his political and religious ideas, they misinterpret his intentions and plan to steal jewelry from the cathedral. One of them kills Gabriel when he tries to stop them. The Intruder (1904), The Wine Cellar (1905), and The Horde (1905) also belong to this group of novels. The Naked Maja (1906) begins Blasco Iba´n˜ez’s series of psychological novels. One of his most noteworthy works of this period is Blood and Sand (1908). The subject of the psychological study is Juan Gallardo, a champion bullfighter whose bravado has elevated him from poverty to stardom. Gallardo, married to another woman, has an affair with Don˜a Sol, who proves to be the ruin of his career. When she leaves him the weakened Gallardo suffers a series of mishaps in the ring before a bull mortally wounds him. Blasco Iba´n˜ez lived in Paris during World War I. There he wrote a series of war novels, including his most famous work, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916). The story takes place in France, and it and his other war
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novels reflect his strong support for the Allies in the war. The story served as the basis of a successful Hollywood film starring Rudolph Valentino. The Argonots (1914) and Mare Nostrum (1918) are also among his war novels. Blasco Iba´n˜ez’s later novels include a number of works about Spain and Spanish figures, such as The Pope of the Sea (1925) and At the Feet of Venus (1926). His other works include The Judge (1894), his only play; the travel books In the Land of Art (1896), Orient (1907), Argentina and Its Grandeurs (1910), and A Novelist’s Tour of the World (1924–1925); the essay collection Mexican
Militarism (1921); the short-story collections Valencian Stories (1896) and The Condemned Woman (1908); The Dead Command (1909); The Enemies of Women (1919); Alfonso XIII Unmasked (1924); In Search of the Great Khan (1929); The Knight of the Virgin (1929); and The Phantom with Wings of Gold (1930). He became a member of the French Legion of Honor in 1906 and was awarded an honorary doctorate from George Washington University in 1919.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Day, A. Grove, and Knowlton, Edgar C., V. Blasco Iba´n˜ez, 1972.
Bliss, Arthur (August 2, 1891–March 27, 1975) Composer leading English composer, Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, to give him his title and his full name, absorbed the influences of the avant-garde French composers in his early works but was also influenced by the British composer EDWARD ELGAR. Bliss, noted for his experimental combination of music and voice, produced a varied output including choral symphonies, operas, cantatas, ballet music, and film scores. Bliss was born in London and inherited the love his mother—who died when he was four—had of music and the piano. His father, an American with many relations in New England, sent him to school as a young boy and enrolled him in dancing lessons with a Mrs. Wordsworth. Bliss studied at the preparatory school of Bilton Grange, followed by the Rugby School. At the latter he developed a love for the music of Elgar, then England’s leading
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Arthur Bliss (쑖 Lebrecht Music & Arts / The Image Works)
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composer, and visited him on several occasions. Following his graduation from Rugby in 1909, Bliss continued to study the piano and began to play the viola. From 1910 to 1913 he studied music at Cambridge, and in 1913–1914 he attended the Royal College of Music, where he studied under Charles Villiers Stanford. Service in World War I interrupted Bliss’s music career, and his brother was killed in combat. Following the war Bliss joined the Catholic Church, and he married Trudy Hoffmann in the United States in the1920s. Bliss began to compose in earnest after the war, pursuing an experimental style in works such as Rhapsody (1919), for solo voices and chamber ensemble, Madam Noy (1920), which he dubbed “a Witchery Song,” and Rout (1920), for chamber orchestra and voice. Other early works include his Meˆle´e Fantasque (1921), Introduction and Allegro (1926), and Hymn to Apollo (1926). In A Colour Symphony (1922; revised 1932), Bliss devised the four movements to suggest the colors purple, red, blue, and green. In 1930 Bliss completed a major choral symphony, Morning Heroes (1930), based on the theme of war in general and World War I specifically. In the first movement, a soldier prepares to leave his home to go to war. The second movement describes the arming of a city as war approaches. In the third movement, Bliss addresses the thoughts and emotions of a soldier and the wife he has left. The final two parts of Morning Heroes depict battle scenes and World War I, incorporating texts by the poet WILFRED OWEN. In 1935 Bliss finished the first of three film scores, Things to Come (1935; a film based on H. G. WELLS’s novel). Men of Two Worlds and Welcome the Queen followed in 1945 and 1954. Bliss also composed music for theatrical productions such as As You Like It and The Tempest. Bliss’s full-length opera The
Olympians (1945), a collaborative effort with J. B. PRIESTLEY, was produced by PETER BROOK in 1949 at Covent Garden. He wrote numerous cantatas, including The Beatitudes (1962), for the opening of the cathedral at Coventry; Mary of Magdala (1963); The Golden Cantata, written for the Cambridge Quincentenary in 1963; The World is Charged with the Grandeur of God (1969); and Shield of Faith (1974). Ninette de Valois, the choreographer, dancer, and founder of the Royal Ballet, choreographed the first of Bliss’s ballets, Checkmate (1937), an allegorical game of chess. The production featured an all-star cast, with FREDERICK ASHTON as Death, ROBERT MURRAY HELPMANN as the Red King, and MARGOT FONTEYN as the leader of the Black Pawns. Helpmann choreographed two additional ballets by Bliss, Miracle in the Gorbals (1944) and Adam Zero (1946). The latter Bliss designed as an allegory of the stages of life. In his later work, Bliss was less daring with his musical experimentation. Among his more conservative compositions are Conversations for chamber orchestra (1920); quintets for oboe (1927) and for clarinet and strings (1932); the pastoral Lie Strewn the White Flocks (1929); Music for Strings (1935); a Piano Concerto (1938); Meditations on a Theme by John Blow (1955); The Lady of Shallot (1958); Tobias and the Angel (1960), a television opera adapted from the apocryphal book of Tobit; and the song cycle Angels of the Mind (1968), one of numerous works that incorporated the poetry of Kathleen Raine. Bliss was knighted in 1950 and three years later became Master of the Queen’s Music, a position in which he wrote ceremonial music. In 1963 he received the Gold Medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bliss, Arthur, As I Remember, 1989; Craggs, Stewart R., Arthur Bliss: A Sourcebook, 1996.
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Blitzstein, Marc (March 2, 1905–January 22, 1964) Composer erhaps best known now for the popular “Mack the Knife,” composer Marc Blitzstein was a man of his times who started out believing in art for art’s sake but moved left and henceforth devoted himself to creating music accessible to all society. Blitzstein is remembered for essentially creating opera in its American vernacular form. He was born Marcus Samuel Blitzstein in Philadelphia to affluent parents of Russian Jewish descent. The musically talented child performed a Mozart piano concerto by age seven and skipped two grades in school early on. His parents separated when he was young. For a time, he lived with his mother and sister in Venice, California, where his piano studies continued. Upon his return to Philadelphia, he entered the University of Pennsylvania at age sixteen, briefly, then went on to study piano with Liszt and Tchaikovsky student Alexander Siloti, after which he continued on to the Curtis Institute of Music. At age twenty-one, he debuted professionally by playing Liszt’s E Flat Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Europe beckoned during this era, and Blitzstein studied in Berlin with ARNOLD SCHOENBERG and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Blitzstein went down the road of the intellectual e´lite when he was young, denouncing composers such as KURT WEILL for his massappeal work and creating strongly rhythmic pieces such as the Piano Sonata (1927) and Piano Concerto (1931) that otherwise reflected Boulanger’s influence. Time and circumstances, however, came to change Blitzstein’s attitude about his work, and he came to view “art for art’s sake” as an e´litist viewpoint that did nothing to advance society. He also began to contribute to leftist journals such as the New Masses. He met novelist Eva Goldbeck at the MacDowell Colony in 1928, and despite being gay, went on to
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marry her on his twenty-eighth birthday, March 2, 1933. The two carried on an intense relationship, she being as politically aware as he and devoted to communism. His Romantic Piece for Orchestra and String Quartet are both dedicated to Eva, who suffered from breast cancer and died May 26, 1936, of anorexia nervosa. Blitzstein was devastated. Work became his salvation, and a political opera proposed earlier to him by Bertolt Brecht resulted in The Cradle Will Rock (1936), one of Blitzstein’s best-known full works. Originally funded via the Federal Theater Project, the pro-union play was directed by Orson Welles and famously opened amidst much controversy. Opening night was set for June 16, 1937. Government troops locked the cast and crew out of the WPA Theater amidst a larger controversy: the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal’s major post-Depression works programs, was the FTP’s parent agency and the focus of growing controversy and funding cuts. The cuts came down only days before The Cradle Will Rock was slated to open. With guards at the doors, Welles went on his own attack, in search of a theater that would host the play and ways around union rules that, ironically, held back the participation of the orchestra and other unionized performers. Welles was successful. The play opened at the Venice, the audience gathered, and Blitzstein himself took to the piano in place of an orchestra. Actors remained in the audience— going on stage would have broken actors’ union rules—and Blitzstein began. Famously, as the lead actress playing Moll froze, Blitzstein sang her part, and she began to sing with him. The ice was broken. The show went on. In 1939, Blitzstein met the young LEONARD BERNSTEIN and the two formed a close bond. When the U.S. entered World War II, Blitzstein joined the US Army Eighth Air Force,
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and served as London-based music director of an American station. In 1943, he premiered a piece entitled Freedom Morning at Royal Albert Hall, and then he auditioned for, and received the commission for, Airborne Symphony, which was performed in New York in 1946 with Orson Welles narrating and LEONARD BERNSTEIN conducting. Three years later came the opera Regina, adapted from LILLIAN HELLMAN’s The Little Foxes and now Blitzstein’s most-performed composition. Also still performed is Blitzstein’s adaptation of Kurt Weill and Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, originally produced in 1952 at Brandeis University under Bernstein. The piece produced perhaps Blitzstein’s bestknown work, the pop hit “Mack the Knife.” As Brecht wrote to Blitzstein: “I consider your adaptation of Threepenny magnificent and think highly of you.” Tougher times followed. Subpoenaed to appear before the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, a victim of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt, Blitzstein appeared in a closed meeting, admitted his Communist Party membership that had ended in 1949, and refused to name names. He was spared public testimony. A decade later, he became a
member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. A meeting with writer Bernard Malamud led to Blitzstein’s final efforts: two one-act operas, Idiots First and The Magic Barrel, adapted from Malamud’s stories. In addition, a commission from the Ford Foundation led to Blitzstein’s efforts on behalf of an opera about Sacco and Vanzetti, a subject he had tackled more than 25 years prior. None were ever completed. Deciding to spend the winter in the Caribbean, Blitzstein left for Martinique in November 1963. In January, he apparently met three sailors in a bar and was beaten. He died of his injuries the next day.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gordon, Eric A, Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein, 2000; Lehrman, Leonard J., Marc Blitzstein: A Bio-Bibliography, 2005; New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 2001. www.americancentury.org/cradleguide.htm. www.classical.net. www.marcblitzstein.com. www.threepennyopera.org.
Blok, Alexander (November 28, 1880–August 7, 1921) Poet, Dramatist principal exponent of Symbolism in Russia before the 1917 revolution, Aleksander Aleksandrovich Blok (to give him his full Russian name) established himself as his country’s leading Symbolist poet. He was a contemporary of the Acmeist poets ANNA AKHMATOVA and OSIP MANDELSTAM, who rejected the lyrical, metaphorical qualities of Symbolists like Blok in favor of plainspoken verse. Blok later supported the Bol-
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shevik uprising and devoted his efforts to writing politically and socially oriented poetry. Blok was born into a wealthy, cultivated family in St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a law professor of German (Holstein) ancestry at the University of Warsaw and separated from his mother before he was born. Blok went to live with his mother’s family, which was full of distinguished scientists and
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intellectuals. At the age of five he began to write his own verse. Blok attended gymnasium (high school) before entering the University of St. Petersburg to study law. He later abandoned law and earned a degree in philology in 1906. The primary influences on Blok’s early poetry were the image of the “Eternal Feminine” or “Sophia” principle propounded by the poet Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900) and the poetry of the French Symbolists, such as Paul Verlaine. The heavenly Sophia, whom Solovyov viewed as the embodiment of eternal divine wisdom and spiritual beauty, is the central figure in his first volume Stikhi o prekrasnoy dame (1904; Songs to the Beautiful Lady). In 1903 Blok married Liubov Men-de-leyeva, an actress and the daughter of the chemist D. I. Mendeleyev. Initially a happy union, the marriage inspired much of his verse from the period, verse in which Liubov came to embody the Lady Beautiful. Blok’s other principal concerns were the musicality and rhythm he worked feverishly to perfect. The focus of Blok’s poetry, however, soon turned to social ills, political upheaval, human suffering, and Russia’s role in the future of the world. Neznakomka (1906; The Unknown Woman) retained the mystical quality of Verses About the Lady Beautiful, but Gorod (1904–1908; The City) and Snezhnaya Maska (1907; Mask of Snow) addressed his new concerns. Blok wrote many poems full of religious imagery during a visit to Italy in 1909. Although not a political activist, Blok embraced the cause of the Bolsheviks and supported the 1917 uprising. His support for the Bolsheviks amounted to a rejection of his own upper-class background, but neverthe-
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less the peasants on the family estate burned and destroyed his property. Blok went to work for the new Bolshevik government as an editor and writer. Much to his dismay, the authorities instructed him to write propagandistic pieces and began to attack his poetry. True, he was given the congenial task of editing the works of Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841), but then the authorities rejected his introduction to them, and he was further discouraged. Although rife with despair, his later poetry retains flickers of hope. Rodina (1907–1916; Homeland) and Skify (1918; Scythians) are political works, the latter depicting Russia’s experiment in Communism as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Blok seemed to view the violence of the revolution as a necessary means to a good end in the ballad Dvenadtsat (1918; The Twelve, 1920). The poem depicts the mission of twelve Red Army men: “To get the bourgeoisie / We’ll start a fire, a worldwide fire, and drench it in blood. / The good Lord bless us!” Blok’s disillusionment with the Bolshevik system and the vision of disintegration that accompanied it manifest themselves in his latest works, among which is the narrative poem Vozmezdiye (1910–1921; Retribution). Blok also wrote plays. Destitute and nearly starving, he fell ill and died in 1921.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Chukovskii, Kornei, Alexander Blok as Man and Poet, 1982; Forsyth, James, Listening to the Wind: An Introduction to Alexander Blok, 1977; Vogel, Lucy E., Alexander Blok: The Journey to Italy, 1973.
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Boccioni, Umberto (October 19, 1882–August 16, 1916) Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist
“Antigrazioso.” Sculpture by Umberto Boccioni (쑖 Alinari Archives / The Image Works)
hile F. T. MARINETTI led Italy’s Futurist movement in the written word, Umberto Boccioni was Futurism’s foremost visual artist. Boccioni and the Futurists were primarily concerned with conveying the motion, velocity, and dynamism of the modern age. In accordance with these ideals, Boccioni’s Futurist paintings and sculptures depict violent, dynamic, and abstract forms in vivid color. Boccioni was born in Reggio di Calabria, Italy. His father worked for the government and frequently moved the family around, resulting in an erratic early education for Boccioni. During his youth Boccioni developed a love for literature. Sometime around 1898 he moved to Rome, where he studied under the portraitist Giacomo Balla (1871–1958). Balla
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worked in the style of the Divisionists, who, like the Pointillists of France, applied small strokes of pure pigment to the canvas that when viewed from a distance seem to combine. From Balla Boccioni acquired his predilection for using complementary colors. At this time he painted mostly semirealistic landscapes and portraits, such as his Campagna romana (1903; Roman Landscape), Self Portrait (1905), and numerous portraits of women. From 1903 to 1906 he exhibited with the Societa` degli Amatori e Cultori. His paintings also appeared in exhibitions with a group calling themselves the “Salon des Refuse´s,” made up of artists whose paintings had been rejected for the Societa`’s exhibitions.
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Not fully satisfied with Balla’s style, Boccioni sought new directions in his art. By 1907 he was using bolder color and had moved to Venice, where he fell under the influence of the more theoretical Divisionism embraced by Gaetano Previati (1852–1920). The avantgarde artistic trends in Europe—Expressionism, Symbolism, and Cubism—also interested Boccioni, and under their influence he began to experiment with his style. Works such as Mourning (1910) belong to this experimental period, during which he began to use distorted forms and more violent colors. The same year, Boccioni exhibited more than forty of his creations in Venice. In 1910 Boccioni met Marinetti, and with others such as Luigi Russolo and Carlo Carra` he continued to formulate the ideals of the Futurist movement that Marinetti had already begun. After Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto (1909), which appealed to literary concerns, Boccioni signed his name to the provocative Manifesto of the Futurist Painters (1910), which called for a destruction of the art of the past. Its more theoretical sequel, Technical Manifesto of the Futurist Painters (1910), insisted that “motion and light destroy the material nature and look of solid bodies.” The Futurist artists called for depictions of technology, machinery, and other representations of modern society, in dynamic and violent forms. Riot in the Gallery (1909), a depiction of chaos and mayhem, had already demonstrated Boccioni’s new move toward dynamic motion and light. The City Rises (1910–1911) is a violent picture with the barely recognizable forms of humans and horses in frenzied motion. The composer and pianist Feruccio Busoni, whose portrait Boccioni painted in 1916, later purchased The City Rises in London. A disgruntled observer vandalized Boccioni’s violently colored The Laugh (1911) at a Milan exhibition. His was not the only criticism of the new Futurist aesthetic. Ardengo Soffici vehemently attacked the Futurists in
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the Florence review La Voce, after which Boccioni provoked a physical fight with him. Undaunted by criticism, Marinetti and the Futurists sought to extend Futurism to the rest of Europe. Boccioni and others visited France in 1911 and held an unsuccessful exhibition in Paris the same year. He took from Paris a deeper appreciation of PICASSO’s Cubism, which influenced his later paintings to a certain extent. The Futurists subsequently exhibited in most of Europe’s major cities. Boccioni’s other works include his States of Mind (1911–1912), which depicts dynamic swirls and planes of deep blue-greens and other vibrant colors; Elasticity (1912); Abstract Dimensions (1912); Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913); and his most famous work, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913). All of these works demonstrate his concern with complementary colors, intersection of force lines and planes, and portrayal of velocity and motion. Boccioni extended his painting theories to sculpture. In 1912 he published the Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, in which he advocated the combination of glass, wood, electric lights, cement, and other unconventional materials. He also sought to combine multiple subjects into single sculptures, as in his Head + House + Light (1912). Development of a Bottle in Space (1913), a bronze sculpture, attempts to shows the emergence of a bottle. A number of his sculptures were exhibited in Paris in 1913. Futurist theorists eventually extended their ideas to all aspects of the culture, including politics. Like Marinetti, Boccioni embraced an extreme nationalism that glorified war and violence. He volunteered to fight in World War I and lost his life after falling off a horse in 1916. His other works include etchings and the book Pittura, scultura futuriste (1914; Futurist Painting and Sculpture).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Coen, Ester, Umberto Boccioni, 1988; Golding, John, Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity
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in Space, 1972; Taylor, Joshua Charles, The Graphic Work of Umberto Boccioni, 1961.
Bonnard, Pierre (October 3, 1867–January 23, 1947) Painter, Graphic Artist, Illustrator ierre Euge`ne Fre´de´ric Bonnard, known for his brilliantly colored, luminous paintings, got his start as an artist with a group of painters known as the Nabis (see MAURICE DENIS), whoplaced heavy emphasis on decorative elements and used flat areas of color and curvilinear forms. In the early 1900s he was associated with Intimisme, a style so named because its adherents painted intimate domestic scenes. Bonnard was born in Fontenay-aux-Roses, France. He entered school in 1877 and studied at two different lyce´es. According to the wishes of his practically-minded father, he studied law and went to work in a government office in 1888. While working there, he attended the E´cole des Beaux-Arts, and in 1889 he achieved his first success in the realm of art when he sold a poster for La France Champagne. Bonnard soon devoted himself to art, trying unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome and then entering the Acade´mie Julien. There he met Maurice Denis, E´DOUARD VUILLARD, and others who would form the core of the Nabis during the 1890s. Denis, a devout Catholic and the leader of the group, saw his art from a religious perspective, but Bonnard’s outlook was secular. With the Nabis, nevertheless, Bonnard shared a devotion to the decorative arts and a style influenced by the sinuous lines of the Art Nouveau movement in Germany, and by the work of the French Postimpressionist Paul Gauguin. In 1890 Bonnard shared a studio with Denis, Vuillard, and later the artist
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Aure´lien Lugne´-Poe¨ in Montmartre. Another influence on his work at this time was his interest in Japanese prints, evident in such works as Partie de Croquet (Croquet Party, 1892). He exhibited at the Salon des Inde´pendants in 1891; he was to show his work there often in the future. In addition to painting scenes from Montmartre and from everyday life, Bonnard created posters, stained glass, screens, and scenery for the theater. Following their work with the Nabis, both Bonnard and Vuillard were associated with the Intimists, who focused on interpreting domestic interiors. Throughout his life, Bonnard’s subject matter was confined to a handful of subjects—landscapes, still lifes, lighted domestic scenes (The Dining Room, 1913), and everyday scenes indoors and out. Oil lamps recur frequently, as in La lampe, 1895–1896, as do nudes on lavish beds (Siesta—The Artist’s Studio, 1908–1910). He contributed illustrations to many books and periodicals, including his brother-in-law Claude Terrasse’s Petites sce`nes familie`res and Petit solfe`ge illustre´ (1893), the avantgarde review La revue blanche, the Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine’s Paralle`lement (1900), and an edition of Octave Mirbeau’s La628-E-8 (1908). The Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard published his lithograph series Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris (Aspects of Paris Life, 1899). The exploration of color and mood was Bonnard’s principal focus as a painter. Many of his works are difficult to date due to his
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habit of returning to them over long periods of time to add color to the surface. In 1910 Bonnard, as many other painters had done, discovered the south of France and began to paint scenes from that sunlit area, such as his seascapes at Cannes and Saint-Tropez on the Riviera. From 1915 until the end of the 1920s he painted many nudes, including a long series of nudes in baths, among which is La sortie de la baignoire (Getting Out of the Bath,
1930). Self-portraits appeared from time to time as well, showing the artist with somber, serious expressions on his face. In 1925 he married his longtime model and companion Maria Boursin.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hyman, Timothy, Bonnard, 1998; Royal Academy of Arts, Pierre Bonnard, 1966; Watkins, Nicholas, Bonnard, 1994.
Borges, Jorge Luis (August 24, 1899–June 14, 1986) Poet, Short-Story Writer, Essayist, Teacher he Argentinean short-story writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges introduced the Spanish literary style known as Ultraı´smo to Latin American literature; he is best known, however, for the popular fantastic short stories he wrote in his later career, which made him one of Latin America’s most beloved and widely read authors of the twentieth century. Borges was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into a middle-class Argentinian family. His father’s family had some British ancestry, and he had a long line of ancestors on his mother’s side who had made names for themselves in Argentinian history. Borges learned both English and Spanish as a child. His father was a teacher with intellectual interests and an extensive library of English literature, which became the primary influence on Borges’s career. Borges was tutored at home until he was nine and then attended a public school. Although he was a gifted student, his classmates ridiculed him and rendered his days as a student intolerable. In 1914 Borges went to Geneva to study at the Colle`ge de Gene`ve, where learned French, German, and Latin. When Borges graduated in 1919 he moved with his family to Majorca, and then to Spain
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in 1920. In Spain he met ultraist writers, a group who used forceful, unconventional imagery and complex metrical schemes in their poetry. Borges returned to Buenos Aires in 1921 and, with other writers, founded the ultraist literary magazine Prisma. Although he would later reject the ultraists, his early poetry employed ultraist imagery. His first book of poetry, Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923), celebrated his native Buenos Aires. Other volumes soon followed, such as The Moon Opposite (1925) and San Martin Notebook (1929). Borges also wrote a number of essays, helped found several literary journals, and completed a biography of the poet Evaristo Carriego (1930). A Universal History of Infamy (1935) collected his early short stories. Among them is “Streetcorner Man,” one of his most popular early stories. A gang member, Jua´rez, is challenged to a duel and flees from his challenger, Francisco Real. Francisco dies from wounds in another duel, probably with the narrator, who is a friend of the dishonored Jua´rez’s. At this point in his literary career, Borges followed fairly conventional narrative style and did not yet employ the complex symbolic language he used in his later stories.
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In 1937, Borges, not yet successful enough to support himself with the earnings from his writing, took a position at the Miguel Cane´ Library, a job that he found thoroughly monotonous. His experiences at the library served as the basis of his short story “The Library of Babel” (1941) a nightmarish depiction of a sort of overwhelming universal library that appeared in his Fictions (1945). In 1938, shortly after the death of his father, Borges scraped his head against a newly painted window. He suffered blood poisoning from the accident and nearly died. The hallucinations he experienced during his shaky recovery as well as his mother’s reading aloud of C. S. LEWIS’S Out of the Silent Planet, had a profound effect on his future stories, which began to take on a more fantastic atmosphere. A fictional account of the accident appears in Borges’s short story “The South,” also published in Fictions. In addition to the aftereffects of his accident, Borges continued to suffer from another physical ailment, a worsening hereditary blindness that had plagued his father. Nevertheless, during this time he cowrote a series of detective stories using the pseudonym H. Bustos Domecq. The stories appeared as Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi (1942). Borges became director of the National Library in 1955 and the following year became a professor of English and American literature at the University of Buenos Aires. Around the same time he lost nearly all of his sight and had to dictate his writings, which began again to include poetry, to others. Still a relatively
unknown writer, he won the Formentor Prize in 1961 (along with the Irish dramatist SAMUEL BECKETT), giving him his first international fame. Among Borges’s later stories, “The God’s Script,” published in The Aleph (1949), is a fine example of the fantastic nature of his stories. In the story, a Mayan priest is jailed by a Spanish conquistador. With a jaguar in the cell beside him, the priest tries to figure out why his god (the Wheel, or the universe) has been defeated. As he languishes in his cell, he has a vision and is united with the god. He finally gains the ability to read a secret inscription on the jaguar’s skin, but he determines to go to his grave without uttering the secret of universal understanding he has attained. At the age of 67 Borges married his first wife, Elsa Astete Milla´n, but their marriage lasted only three years. His other works include the essays in Other Inquisitions, 1937–1952 (1952); Extraordinary Tales (1955); Dreamtigers (1960), a collection of poetry and prose; Personal Anthology (1961); Labyrinths (1962); The Book of Imaginary Beings (1967); Dr. Brodie’s Report (1970); and The Book of Sand (1975). Borges died from liver cancer in Geneva.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barnstone, Willis, With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires: A Memoir, 1993; Rodrı´guez Monegal, Emir, Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography, 1970; Thomas di Givanni, Norman, ed., The Borges Tradition, 1995.
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Boulez, Pierre (March 26, 1925– ) Composer, Conductor
Pierre Boulez (쑖 Philippe Gontier / The Image Works)
s a composer Pierre Boulez contributed to the development of serialism, an outgrowth of ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’s twelve-tone system by extending it to tonal color, rhythm, and other musical elements when it had been previously applied primarily to harmony and melody. Like Germany’s KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN, he experimented with the use of electronic instruments and sounds in musical composition. Boulez has also enjoyed a successful career as a conductor of the modern repertoire and has recorded extensively. Boulez was born into a Catholic family in an apartment above a pharmacy in Montbrison, France. His father, more devoted to the
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Church than was his mother, was an engineer and a technical director in a steel manufacturing plant. At the age of seven Boulez entered the Institut Victor de la Prade, a Catholic seminary and high school. He received a classical education and excelled as a student, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics. At the age of six he began taking piano lessons, and his talent as a musician soon became apparent. Boulez first heard orchestral music on a radio his father brought back from the United States. As a teenager he rejected Catholicism and came into increasing conflict with his father, who wanted him to go into engineering.
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Boulez next studied mathematics and music at the Colle`ge de Saint-E´tienne, and then at the University of Lyon. At the latter he heard his first live orchestra and attended his first opera—a production of Boris Godunov. With the support of his sister, he finally summoned the courage to defy his father and chose music as a career. In 1944–1945 he studied harmony under OLIVIER MESSIAEN at the Paris Conservatoire. Messiaen’s varied musical interests—which included Gregorian chants and birdsong—and his teaching style, which fostered an atmosphere of freedom and experimentation, suited Boulez’s temperament better than did the narrowness and discipline of the strict academic teachers. In the meantime, he earned money playing the ondes martenot, an electronic keyboard instrument. Much as he enjoyed Messiaen, however, Boulez felt the need of something more; he studied Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique under one of the composer’s students, Rene´ Leibowitz, in 1945–1946. After breaking unhappily with Leibowitz, Boulez in 1948 became director of JEAN-LOUIS BARRAULT’s Renaud-Barrault Company at the The´aˆtre Marigny. There he inaugurated in 1954 a series of chamber concerts, Les Concerts du Petit-Marigny, later called the Domaine Musicale. For the most part, the concerts presented the works of modern composers such as Schoenberg, ANTON VON WEBERN, ALBAN BERG, and IGOR STRAVINSKY. Boulez’s compositions at this time, such as his Le Visage Nuptial, a setting of verse by the French poet Rene´ Char that Boulez composed after a stormy love affair, have a violent and disturbing tone. Schoenberg’s twelvetone system applied to pitch, but Boulez and other composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen extended his work to rhythm and tonal color. His Sonatine for flute and piano (1946) employs the twelve-tone system. His popular and aggressive Second Piano Sonata (1948) was a significant piece in the development of serialism.
In the 1950s Boulez began to devote himself more to conducting. Treating mostly the works of modern composers, he has conducted CLAUDE DEBUSSY, Stravinsky, and many of his own compositions. In 1958 he went to work for the Southwest Radio Symphony Orchestra in Baden-Baden, West Germany. From 1967 to 1972 he served as principal guest conductor at the Cleveland Orchestra in Ohio. Boulez also worked with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, where he became music director in 1971. After resigning this position in 1977, he returned to Paris to direct the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique. In 1995 he became principal guest conductor at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Boulez has recorded numerous works, particularly of modern composers, with the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic. Boulez, who has always expressed what he thinks of the work of others, maintained a tense but respectful relationship with Stockhausen as they introduced new elements into music. Boulez’s most significant serialist works include Polyphonie X (1951); Le marteau sans maıˆtre (The Hammer without a Master, 1954) for voice and six instruments, another setting of Char’s verse; Pli selon pli (Fold According to Fold; first performed 1960), incorporating the poetry of the French Symbolist poet Ste´phane Mallarme´; and the Third Piano Sonata, which uses elements of chance, and is thus an example of what is called aleatory music. In Structures, Book I (1952), for two pianos, a partial collaboration with Messiaen, Boulez used a twelve-tone series from Messiaen’s work. Boulez scored some of his work for electronic instruments as well. Additional works include Structures, Book II (completed 1961), for two pianos; E´clat (1965) for chamber orchestra of fifteen instruments; Domaines (1968) for solo clarinet and twenty-one instruments; Rituel (1975), for orchestra; and
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Re´pons (first performed 1981), for chamber orchestra, six solo instruments, and computer. His writings include Penser la musique aujourd’hui (1964; Thinking of Music Today), Releve´s d’apprenti (1966; Raised from Apprenticeship), and Par volonte´ et par hasard (1975; By Choice and by Chance). Boulez has won the Sonning Award (1985), the Grawemeyer Award (2001), and the Glenn
Gould Prize (2002) and is still active as a conductor and composer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Peyser, Joan, Boulez, 1976; Peyser, Joan, To Boulez and Beyond: Music in Europe Since The Rite of Spring, 1999; Stacey, Peter F., Boulez and the Modern Concept, 1987.
Bourdelle, E´mile-Antoine (October 30, 1861–October 1, 1929) Sculptor or thirteen years an assistant to the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), E´mile-Antoine Bourdelle created large, monumental sculptures that combine influences of Rodin’s Romantic works with those of ancient Greek and Romanesque art. Giving his sculptures fragmented, rough surface textures, he imbued his subjects with expressiveness and sensitivity. Bourdelle was born into a working-class family in Montauban, France. At the age of fifteen he won a scholarship to the E´cole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, where he studied sculpture. In 1884 he went to the E´cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, also working in the studio of John-Alexandre- Joseph Falguie`re (1831–1917). More important than his academic training in shaping his sculpting style, however, were the Romanesque art he saw in Toulouse and his years (1893–1906) working as Rodin’s assistant. His early figures, such as the smooth-faced, wide-eyed boy of Head of a Montauban Boy (1886), lack the rough-hewn surfaces of his mature work. In 1889 he executed several Adam figures cast in bronze, depicting the guilt-ridden biblical figure conscious of his sin. From Bourdelle’s earliest years, the com-
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poser Ludwig von Beethoven was a recurring subject in Bourdelle’s work. Beethoven (1903) depicts the head of the composer, and five years later he executed a Hand of Beethoven. The full-length Draped Figure of Beethoven (1910) and a Mask of Beethoven (1925) were only two of the more than twenty likenesses of the composer Bourdelle executed over his career. In spite of his work for Rodin, Bourdelle turned away from the naturalistic style of the great sculptor and forged a style that draws from classical Greek and Romanesque sources. His mature work is marked by its rough, uneven surfaces and human figures in dramatic, expressive poses. In 1900 he completed his major work Head of Apollo, which recalls ancient Greek sculpture and marked a turning point in his style. A decade later, Bourdelle achieved his first major success with a bronze Hercules the Archer, the subject of numerous other sculptures by him. Male and female nudes form another core in Bourdelle’s subject matter. Small Boy (1905) depicts the nude subject of its title standing upright with his back arched. The nude in The Cloud (1905–1907) is a plump female figure lying on her back. Other nudes in-
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clude the Crouching Bather (1906–1907) and the walking Young Bacchante (1907). Among Bourdelle’s many portraits is Sculptress Resting (1905–1908), which depicts his wife leaning on her right arm to support herself and staring into the air. In 1914 he completed a life-sized bust of the Alsatian surgeon Dr. Koeberle´. A life-sized portrait of Isadora Duncan (1927–1928) depicts the famed American dancer in flowing costume, her arms raised expressively in the air. In spite of the success of Bourdelle’s monumental sculptures, he found it difficult to escape the shadow of his better-known teacher Rodin. His other works include Noble Burdens (1911), an eight-foot-high sculpture of a
mother holding a baby; reliefs for the The´aˆtre des Champs-E´lyse´es; Apollo and His Thought (1912); the Dying Centaur (1914), a piece that depicts the death of paganism; the Monument to the Fighters of Montauban (1893–1902); and the massive Monument to General Alvear at Buenos Aires. He also taught, converting his studio into the Acade´mie de la Grande-Chaumie`re.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cannon-Brookes, P., E´mile-Antoine Bourdelle: An Illustrated Commentary, 1983; National Gallery of Canada, Antoine Bourdelle, 1861–1929, 1961.
Bowen, Elizabeth (June 7, 1899–February 22, 1973) Novelist, Short-Story Writer lizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen is best known for her poignant treatment of the lives of young, British upperclass women in novels of manners. She created a series of young female protagonists, who, through the experiences narrated, begin their transformations from innocent youth to mature adulthood. Bowen also wrote short stories and essays. Bowen, of the Anglo-Irish gentry, was an only child born in Dublin. As a young girl she divided her time between the family estate, Bowen’s Court, near Kildorrey, County Cork, and Dublin. Her father, a barrister in Dublin, suffered a nervous breakdown when she was 7, and her mother took her to southern England to live. Bowen attended Downe House School in Kent and later the London County Council School of Art. When she was 13, her mother died of cancer, the disease that took her own life many years later.
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The short story “Breakfast,” written when Bowen was 20, marked the beginning of her literary endeavors. Her first collection of stories, Encounters, was published in 1923, the same year she married Alan Charles Cameron, secretary for education of the Oxford School System. The Hotel (1927), Bowen’s first novel, written after a winter stay at a hotel in Bordighera, introduces the first of her many young female protagonists who find themselves in conflict with their surroundings when they are on the verge of adulthood. The 22-yearold, inexperienced Sydney Warren goes to the hotel of the title to visit a cousin but does not fit in with the other guests. The exception is the self-interested Mrs. Kerr, who seems more sophisticated than the others Sydney meets. Sydney rejects, accepts, and then rejects again a marriage proposal from James Milton, an older Anglican minister. She begins to un-
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derstand Mrs. Kerr’s selfish motivations, a realization that forms part of her new maturity. Bowen’s next novel, Joining Charles, was published in 1929. Like Sydney Warren, the central character of The Last September (1929) is an inexperienced young woman. During her last months at an Irish country house in Danielstown, the 19-year-old orphan Lois Farquar begins to move into adulthood with the self-knowledge she gains from her illfated relationship with the English officer Gerald Lesworth. Lois’s story unfolds against the backdrop of the troubles that plagued Ireland in the early part of the century. The Death of the Heart (1938), one of Bowen’s most acclaimed novels, is divided into three sections based on a phrase from the baptismal ceremony of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer—“The World,” “The Flesh,” and “The Devil”—the three things the godparents must renounce on behalf of the infant who is being baptized. The story unfolds around the emotional quest of Portia Quayne, a 15-year-old orphan who goes to live with her half-brother Thomas and his wife, Anna. Bowen worked for the Ministry of Information during World War II and served as an airraid warden. The war forms the backdrop of The Heat of the Day (1949), set during the bombing of London. Stella Rodney is older and more experienced than Bowen’s previous protagonists. Harrison, who is attracted to her, comes to her with the news that her lover, Robert Kelway, has been giving secrets to
the Germans. Robert initially denies the charge, but, as it turns out, his spying stems from enmity toward England and his almost inhuman mother. Bowen’s husband, Cameron, died in 1952, after which Bowen moved to Bowen’s Court, the family home she had inherited in 1930. She sold the home in 1960 and returned to England. Her other novels include To the North (1932); The House in Paris (1935); A World of Love (1955); The Little Girls (1964); and Eva Trout, or The Changing Seasons (1969). The title story of her collection The Demon Lover, and Other Stories (1945; published in the United States as Ivy Gripped the Steps) is one of her best-known, and among her other short-story collections is A Day in the Dark, and Other Stories (1965). Bowen’s other works include the autobiographical Bowen’s Court (1942); Collected Impressions (1950); A Time in Rome (1960); Afterthought: Pieces About Writing (1962); and Pictures and Conversations (1975). She was made Commander of the British Empire in 1948 and Companion of Literature in 1965. Both Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford awarded her honorary doctorates of letters. Bowen also lectured widely in the United States and England.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Austin, Allan E., Elizabeth Bowen, rev. ed., 1989; Craig, Patricia, Elizabeth Bowen, 1986; Lassner, Phyllis, Elizabeth Bowen, 1990.
Brancusi, Constantin (February 21, 1876–March 16, 1957) Sculptor major contributor to the development of modern abstract sculpture, Constantin Brancusi raised himself from illiteracy and a peasant background to
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become one of the most influential artists in Paris. His works employ ovoid (egglike) and
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other organic shapes and include lengthy series on particular themes, among which are birds in flight, female faces, and tall columns. Brancusi was born Constantin Brıˆncusi into a peasant family in Hobita, Romania. He did not attend school and only later taught himself to read and write. In his childhood he was occupied with tending his family’s flocks, during which time he learned to carve tools and designs in wood. Romanian peasant carvings, with which he had intimate familiarity, influenced his later sculpture. Brancusi was a restless child and at the age of 9 ran away to Tirgu-Jiu, in the Oltenia region. There he worked for a dyer until his mother came to retrieve him. Two years later Brancusi ran away permanently, taking a job at an inn in Slatina. He subsequently worked in a restaurant in Craiova, where he remained for several years. Brancusi never abandoned his love for wood carving and during this time is said to have constructed a violin from an orange crate. At some point his woodwork impressed an industrialist, who sent him to the Craiova School of Arts and Crafts in 1894. At the School of Arts and Crafts, Brancusi primarily studied woodworking. From 1896 to 1898 he traveled, went to Vienna, and earned a living as a woodworker. In 1898 he won a sculpture contest that enabled him to study at the Bucharest School of Fine Arts. The same year, he sculpted a clay bust of Gheorghe Chiu, a revolutionary hero and well-known political figure who helped found the School of Arts and Crafts as well as a bust of the emperor Vitellius. While Brancusi studied there, the curriculum at Bucharest was modeled on the E´cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In spite of his increasing disillusion with formal academic strictures, the school purchased some of his sculptures, such as the ´ corche´ (1902), and bestowed upon him a E number of awards. Brancusi sympathized with a group of students who rebelled against the academic strain in art. In 1903 a Bucharest military hospital gave him his first commission—to sculpt a bust of
General Carol Davila. After completing military service, he developed an interest in the work of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). He lived in Munich until 1904 and then journeyed (largely on foot) to Paris. There he studied at the E´cole des Beaux-Arts under Antonin Mercie´ and washed dishes at a restaurant to support himself. Brancusi’s early sculptures, such as Pride (1905), the bronze head of a girl, are representational pieces and show the influence of Rodin. Brancusi had his first exhibitions in Paris in 1906. The following year, he was commissioned to sculpt a funeral monument for a Romanian landowner. Brancusi exhibited two well-received works at the Tinerimea Artistica exhibition, an annual show that featured the works of emerging talents. Around 1908, however, Brancusi began to move away from strictly representational sculpture. He abandoned modeling (in which a sculpture is rendered by building up materials) and began to carve directly. His first version of The Kiss (1908) is a symmetrical, abstract stone interpretation of two lovers kissing in an embrace. Sleeping Muse (1908), an abstract depiction of a woman’s face, is another recurring theme in his work. In 1909 he formed a friendship with AMEDEO MODIGLIANI, who under his influence began a series of sculptures. Brancusi was soon using ovoid shapes as the basis of his sculpture. He devoted almost as much attention to the bases of his works as he did to the actual figures. With Maiastra (1912), he began his long series of abstract depictions of birds in flight, a theme to which he would return for nearly thirty years. One of his bird sculptures generated a legal battle with U.S. customs officials, who believed the abstract piece was a secret industrial part. The case was resolved in his favor. In 1912 he won the first prize for sculpture at the Bucharest Salon, and the following year he exhibited five works in several American cities. Among these was his popular bust Mademoiselle Pogany.
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Brancusi finished the first of his famous Columns, which consist of repeated rhomboid or pyramidal shapes, in 1918. Two decades later one of his columns, a one-hundredfoot-tall sculpture in cast iron, was placed in a public garden in Tirgu Jiu with two other works, Gate of the Kiss, and Table of Silence. The sculpture Princess X (1920) generated a public scandal. A polished bronze piece, it depicts a human in a phallic form. His other sculptures include The New-Born (1915); The Beginning of the World, also known as his sculpture for a blind man; and The Fish (first version 1922). In the 1930s the Maharajah of Indore commissioned him to create a temple, but the Maharajah’s death prevented the realization of the project. Although he rendered many of his sculptures in bronze or stone, Brancusi often returned to wood carving, sometimes creating wood versions of future sculptures. He completed his first major wood sculpture, The Prodigal Son, in 1914. From 1917 to 1930 he made The Cups, a series of wood carvings. Brancusi also made furniture, utensils, and other objects from wood.
Brancusi earned world fame for his abstract sculptures during his lifetime and influenced a generation of younger abstract sculptors that included HENRY MOORE and BARBARA HEPWORTH. His first one-man show came in 1926, when the Brummer Gallery in New York held a major exhibition of his work. He lived and worked in Paris, where he formed friendships with many of the city’s avant-garde artists, literary figures, and musicians. Among them was the composer ERIK SATIE, who inspired him to design a costume for a ballerina in his ballet Gymnope´dies. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York held a major exhibit of his work in 1955. Upon his death, Brancusi left his workshop and its contents to the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Balas, Edith, Brancusi and Rumanian Folk Traditions, 1987; Geist, Sidney, Brancusi: A Study of the Sculpture, 1967; Miller, Sanda, Constantin Brancusi: A Survey of His Work, 1995.
Brando, Marlon (April 3, 1924–July 1, 2004) Actor he American actor Marlon Brando won two Academy awards and is best known for his performances in director ELIA KAZAN’s A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, as well as for his memorable portrayals of mob boss Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972) and Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S adaptation of JOSEPH CONRAD’S Heart of Darkness. Brando’s brusque and outspoken personality both put him at odds with the Hollywood film industry
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and proved conducive to playing rebellious figures that redefined the American acting style. Brando was born in Omaha, Nebraska. His father manufactured insecticides and chemicals, and his mother was an amateur actress. As the child of two alcoholics, Brando’s early years were lonely ones. After his parents separated in 1935, he and his two siblings went with their mother to Santa Ana, California. His mother and father reconciled in 1937, and they settled in Libertyville, Illinois. His moth-
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er was interested and active in theater, nurturing Brando’s interest in acting, and even mentored a young Henry Fonda (1905–1982). Brando’s rebellious personality showed itself from his childhood. He was expelled from high school, after which he was sent to Shattuck Military Academy in Fairbault, Minnesota. He became active in theater there but was less successful in his relationships with superior officers. In 1943 he was put on probation for talking back to an officer. After violating his probation by leaving campus, he was expelled altogether. Although he was permitted to return the following year, Brando chose to take a job digging ditches instead. With the itch to act, however, Brando eventually moved to New York, where he studied at the American The-
Marlon Brando (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-94221)
atre Wing Professional School, New School Dramatic Workshop, and the Actors’ Studio. At the New School Dramatic Workshop, he studied under Stella Adler, who was a disciple of the famed Russian theater director KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY. His stage debut came in 1944, when he played Jesus Christ in GERHART HAUPTMANN’S Hannele’s Way to Heaven. In Sayville, New York, Brando appeared in a number of roles before his 1944 Broadway debut as the son of Norwegian immigrants in the English playwright John Van Druten’s (1901–1957) I Remember Mama. A subsequent Broadway performance in Truckline Cafe´ earned Brando critical acclaim, and his 1947 portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S A Streetcar Named Desire brought him commercial success as well. At the Actors’ Studio, Brando had studied the Method form of acting, which called on the actor or actress to discover the character from within. The Method style helped shape Brando’s enigmatic screen persona, which was characterized by controlled movements and dialog as well as a brooding demeanor combined with a certain charisma. His film debut came in 1950 when he portrayed a paraplegic in The Men, but his real success began the following year when he again portrayed Kowalski in ELIA KAZAN’s film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, bringing his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. A number of memorable roles followed in quick succession—as a Mexican revolutionary in Viva Zapata! (1952), as Marc Antony in Julius Caesar (1953), as Napoleon in Desire´e (1954), and as the dockworker Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954), for which he won an Oscar. The innate streak of rebellion and volatility in Brando shined through his role as motorcycle rebel Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1954). Brando’s portrayal of Strabler inspired other “rebel” roles both in film and in rock and roll stars such as ELVIS PRESLEY. Teen boys imitated him, he mesmerized teen girls, and his performance was the catalyst for booming sales of leather jackets, boots, and
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motorcycle accessories that became hallmarks of the rebel image he defined. Brando continued in a series of successful roles, starring as Sky Masterson in Damon Runyan’s (1884–1946) musical Guys and Dolls (1955), the Okinawan interpreter Sakini in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), and a sensitive Nazi officer in The Young Lions (1958). His role in Sayonara (1957) earned him an Oscar nomination. Brando’s 1960s films were less successful, especially in critics’ eyes, and include Mutiny on the Bounty (1962, as Fletcher Christian), One-Eyed Jacks (1961), The Ugly American (1963), Bedtime Story (1964), CHARLIE CHAPLIN’S A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), John Huston’s (1906–1987) Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), and Burn! (1969). While filming Mutiny on the Bounty, Brando fell in love with Tahiti and took out a 99year lease on part of the island of Tetiaroa. The film proved to be a difficult one to make, as Brando stretched out the production and the budget—actions he increasingly brought to the sets of frustrated directors and producers. His reputation as a difficult actor to work with had significantly damaged his career by this point, but his portrayal of mob boss Vito Corleone in Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) rejuvenated his notoriety once again. Coppola fought Paramount studios to cast Brando in the role, for which the actor later earned an Academy Award for Best Actor. Brando, in typical temperamental fashion, refused the Oscar on the basis of his disapproval of Hollywood portrayals of Native Americans. The Italian director Bernardo Bertolluci’s (1940– ) Last Tango in Paris (1973) brought Brando’s next major role, for which he again received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In spite of his convincing, bonechilling role as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, Coppola and Brando encountered difficulties shooting the film. Brando, who was receiving a million dollars a week, failed to show up slim and having read Heart of Darkness as he was asked to do. As
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a result, Coppola shot him mostly as a shadowy figure, and Brando improvised much of the dialog. Brando played Superman’s father Jor-El in the first Superman film and shot scenes for the sequel. However, his exorbitant financial demands put him at odds with the studio, and the shots for the sequel were never included in the original production. Brando’s later films include Dry White Season (1989), The Freshman (1990), Don Juan DeMarco (1995), and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). In his final film, The Score (2001), he costarred with Robert De Niro. The number of Brando’s screen appearances waned in later years. His long reputation as an actor who was overly demanding, was difficult to work with, and refused to memorize his lines hampered his ability to get new roles, as did his increasing obesity. Always the subject of controversy, Brando was known for public outbursts that sometimes turned violent, comments some considered insensitive, and also as something of a political activist. His marriage to actress Anna Kashfi in 1957 produced one son, Christian Brando, who in 1990 shot and killed his half-sister Cheyenne’s lover, Dag Drollet. The younger Brando was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in prison, and Cheyenne committed suicide five years later. After divorcing Kashfi, the elder Brando married the Mexican actress Movita Castenada, in 1960. In 1962 he married the Tahitian Tarita Triipia—a marriage that lasted ten years—after filming Mutiny on the Bounty, in which she played Brando’s love interest. Brando, a longtime political activist, promoted Native American Civil Rights, was an active proponent of the establishment of a Jewish state in the 1940s, and opposed racial segregation. He has been criticized for making anti-Semitic remarks, specifically statements that Jews run Hollywood, first in a 1979 interview for Playboy and again in 1996 on the Larry King Live show.
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Brando wrote the autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me in 1994. He died of respiratory failure at the age of 80 on July 1, 2004. Part of his ashes were scattered in Tahiti, and part of them in Death Valley.
Peter, Brando: The Biography, 1994; McCann, Graham, Rebel Males: Clift, Brando, and Dean, 1991; Ryan, Paul, Marlon Brando: A Portrait, 1991; Shickel, Richard, Brando, 1999; Shipman, David, Marlon Brando, 1989; Thomson, David, Marlon Brando, 2003.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bly, Nellie, Marlon Brando: Larger Than Life, 1994; Bosworth, Patricia, Marlon Brando, 2001; Downing, David, Marlon Brando, 1984; Manso,
Braque, Georges (May 13, 1882–August 31, 1963) Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist ith PABLO PICASSO, Georges Braque pioneered the development of Analytical and Synthetic Cubism in the early twentieth century and was an influential force in the development of modern abstract art. After brief periods of impressionistic and Fauvist landscape painting, he turned to Cubism, still lifes, and more abstract forms. His period of energetic experimentation lasted until the early 1920s and included new developments in form, style, and texture. Braque was born in Argenteuil, France, and moved with his family to Le Havre in 1890. His father and grandfather owned a successful house-painting business, and both were amateur painters. Braque often accompanied his father when he painted, and his father sought to train him in the family business. He attended a local school, where he excelled in athletics and learned to play the flute. When he was 15, he enrolled in a night class at an art academy in Le Havre. In 1899 Braque was apprenticed to a painter and decorator, and he eventually moved to Paris. From his apprenticeship Braque acquired decorative skills that manifest themselves in his later paintings, such as his ability to imitate wood grains and marble surfaces. After
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serving in the military for a year, he determined to paint for a living—an ambition his family supported. From 1902 to 1904 he studied in Paris at the Acade´mie Humbert, and he also studied briefly at the E´cole des BeauxArts. At the Louvre in Paris, he developed an admiration for Egyptian and Greek art. The French Impressionists, however, were the dominant influence on Braque’s early painting style.Then in 1905 he saw the exhibition of the Fauves (or “wild beasts,” so named for their bold use of color) at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. Under the influence of HENRI MATISSE, ANDRE´ DERAIN, and other Fauves, Braque intensified the colors in his own paintings. La Ciotat (1907) is a lyrical landscape with deep blue sky, hills, and trees. At this point in his career, Braque concentrated on Fauvist landscape, as in Landscape at L’Estaque (1906) and Le Mas (1906). Around 1907 Braque discovered the works of Paul Ce´zanne (1839–1906), from whom he adopted a focus on geometric forms. The loose, free forms of his Fauvist paintings evolved into more strict geometric shapes, as in View from the Hoˆtel Mistral, L’Estaque (1907). Houses at L’Estaque (1908) is a composition of geometric shapes and angular
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planes in pale greens and yellows, and it and other paintings directly anticipated the development of Analytical Cubism. Braque slowly gained a reputation as a painter and in 1907 sold a number of his works after an exhibition at the Salon des Inde´pendants. The same year he began his association with art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who had his own gallery and ardently promoted the Cubist works of both Braque and Picasso. Kahnweiler exhibited a number of Braque’s works in his gallery in 1908, after which Paris critic Louis Vauxcelles commented disparagingly on the “cubes” Braque used as the basis of his forms. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire introduced Braque to Picasso at the latter’s studio in Montmartre. Braque’s initial reaction to Picasso’s famous proto-Cubist painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) was a negative one, but the two painters soon developed a strong friendship and began working closely together. Critics still debate exactly what each artist contributed to Cubism, but one of Braque’s most certain contributions came in the development of geometric forms. By 1909 Braque and Picasso were well into the development of the first phase of Cubism, which the painter JUAN GRIS called Analytical Cubism. In Guitar and Fruit-dish (1909), The Mandolin (1910), and other paintings of the period, Braque used low-key browns, oranges, blues, greens, and grays. Lighting from different sources highlights the sharply fragmented surfaces of Analytical Cubism. During the early phase of Cubism, the subjects of Braque’s paintings moved increasingly away from landscapes toward still lifes. Still Life with Musical Instruments (1910–1911) is one of many Cubist still lifes from this period. Fruit, musical instruments, and bottles recur throughout his work for the rest of his career. Mandolin, Glass, Pot and Fruit (1927) depicts such objects in earthy browns, blues, and greens. He painted numerous works, such as Violin and Glass (1910–1911), in oval shape. In a further effort to move away from traditional representation,
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Braque used stenciled letters in The Portuguese. Around 1910 or 1911, Braque created his first engravings, among which is Fox (1911). In what was to become the first papier colle´, Braque in 1912 affixed pieces of wallpaper to the drawing Fruit Dish and Glass. Both he and Picasso began to combine other nontraditional elements with painting in their collages. Glass, Bottle, and Newspaper (1913) combines newspaper clippings, simulated wood grain, and other items. In 1912 Braque married Marcelle Lapre´ and settled in a house at Sorgues, near Avignon. He contributed to the early development of Synthetic Cubism, abandoning severe geometric shapes for looser forms, as in Still Life with Playing Cards (1913). He served in World War I as an infantry sergeant and received both the Le´gion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre. In 1917 Braque suffered a serious head injury from shrapnel at Carency, from which it took him months to recover. During his recuperation he published (1917), with the assistance of Pierre Reverdy, a collection of aphorisms as Thoughts and Reflections on Painting in the review Nord-Sud. As Spanish nationals, both Picasso and Gris were exempt from military service during the war. Braque was incapacitated for a time while they continued to develop Synthetic Cubism, but upon his recovery he immersed himself in the new developments. Synthetic Cubist paintings, such as his The Musician (1917–1918), substitute broader planes and brighter colors for the fragmented surfaces and muted tones of Analytic Cubism. During this time Braque also experimented with texture, mixing foreign elements such as ash, metal filings, and sawdust into his paints and incorporating his skill imitating wood and marble surfaces. In the 1920s, after moving away from Cubism, Braque continued to paint still lifes, some with tall, vertical shapes. In 1923 and 1925, he accepted commissions from ballet impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV for Ballets Russes productions of Les Faˆcheux and
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Ze´phyre et Flore, both based on works by Molie`re. He would return to set design in 1949, when he created for the French actor and director Louis Jouvet the scenery for a production of Molie`re’s Tartuffe. The rest of Braque’s output is marked by his series of paintings on single subjects. These include series of canephores (1922–1926); gue´ridons, or small tables (1928–1929); sixteen etchings to illustrate Hesiod’s Theogony (1932); billiard tables (1944–1952); and studio interiors (1949–1956). As World War II approached, Braque worked on a death-infused Vanitas series in which the dominant objects are skulls, crosses, and rosary beads. His relatively limited output of sculpture also dates from the
World War II era. During the last years of his life, Braque was too ill to work on large-scale paintings and created jewelry designs, some of which were exhibited in Paris in 1963. Braque achieved international fame during his Cubist years and in 1937 won the Carnegie Prize. Major retrospectives of his work have been held around the world. In 1961 he became the first living artist to have his work exhibited at the Louvre.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cafritz, Robert, Georges Braque, 1982; Mullins, Edwin, The Art of Georges Braque, 1968; Rubin, William, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, 1989; Zurcher, Bernard, Georges Braque, Life and Work, 1988.
Brecht, Bertolt (February 10, 1898–August 14, 1956) Playwright, Theorist, Director, Poet ertolt Brecht worked out the theory of “epic theater,” a mode of presentation that establishes distance between the audience and the characters in a play, and became one of the most influential theater directors in the twentieth century. Brecht’s plays carried a strong anti-capitalist bent and established him as a prominent anti-Nazi voice after his exile from Germany in 1933. Brecht was born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht in Augsburg, Germany, the first child of middle-class parents. His mother came from a Protestant background, and his father’s family was Catholic; the couple raised their children as Protestants. Although rebellion came naturally to Brecht in school, he excelled in his studies. At age 15, he helped establish a literary magazine, The Harvest, which printed some of his own stories. He frequently wrote poetry; both his stories and his poetry tended toward morbid themes. In 1917,
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in order to avoid being drafted, he moved to Munich to study medicine. German Expressionism influenced Brecht’s earliest plays, as did the works he was fond of reading by RUDYARD KIPLING, the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), the fifteenth-century French lyric poet Franc¸ois Villon (c. 1431–1463), the French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), and the German playwright Frank Wedekind (1864–1918). His first play, Baal (1918), is a provocative and anarchistic drama written in poetic style. Its hero, Baal, is a bisexual murderer who callously uses both men and women. A Manual of Piety (1927) collected Brecht’s often sexually explicit poetry and songs. In 1924, Brecht moved to Berlin, where he remained until 1933. Working with the German composer KURT WEILL, he wrote the musical The Threepenny Opera in 1928, based on The Beggar’s Opera (1728) by John Gay. Like
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his “Epic opera,” Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany (1930), also with Weill’s music, it painted a dark picture of capitalism and the bourgeois mentality. Brecht also began to write “exemplary plays,” which broke with all traditional theatrical form and attempted to teach audiences. Brecht’s opposition to Hitler forced him into exile in 1933. He lived in Scandinavia until 1941, when he moved to the United States. Brecht wrote prolifically in his exile. In Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1941; Mother Courage and Her Children), a mute daughter of a brutal businesswoman, Anna Fierling, sacrifices her life to warn her village of impending attack. Leben des Galilei (1943; Galileo) portrayed the famous inventor of the telescope as a thief who stole the idea for his instrument from one of his students. When he discovers on his own that the earth is round instead of flat, the Catholic hierarchy forces to him to publicly renounce his discovery, which it considers heretical. Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (1943; The Good Woman of Setzuan) portrays a Chinese woman, Shen Te, who remains determined to act morally in the
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midst of corruption and evil influences. Throughout the play, she is vexed by her evil male cousin, Shui Ta, who, as it turns out, is only herself in disguise. In writing his plays, Brecht frequently had uncredited help from others. Nevertheless, the plays remain essentially Brecht’s, and they represent the first great examples of epic theater as he was later to define it. Among Brecht’s later plays are Der authealtsame Autsteig des Arturo Ui (1947; The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui), a metaphorical look at Hitler’s rise to power that suggests people could have prevented it. Written in the postwar period when East and West were vying for control of Germany, Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis (1948; The Caucasian Chalk Circle) depicts the struggle for a child, Michel, between a wealthy mother and Michel’s maid, Grusha. Grusha saves the child when the mother deserts it, but later the mother goes to court to regain her child, claiming to be motivated by mother love. It is obvious, however, that the mother’s only interest in her son is the inheritance she can claim if she gains custody of him. Presiding over the dispute is a judge, who despite his drunkenness, cowardice, and corruption, can see the obvious truth. He orders Michel placed in the middle of a chalk circle and has the two women pull on his arms. The mother pulls hard, while Grusha tugs gently to spare the child from pain. Grusha, having proved her love, is awarded custody. The final song draws the Marxist moral—land should go to those who will make it productive, whether they have legal title to it or not, as the child should go to the woman who loves him. As his career and ideology progressed, Brecht developed elaborate ideas about theater and the presentation of drama. He viewed the theater as a platform for interpreting history and teaching audiences from a Marxist perspective. From his viewpoint, drama needed a style of delivery compatible with the perspective of social/historical evolution fundamental to Marxist thought. He sought to divide the audience from the characters, and
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thus from the illusion that the actors portrayed reality. Instead of identifying with the characters, audiences were encouraged to look at them critically and to think about the ideas the author is expressing, creating what Brecht called the “alienation effect.” Certain devices helped achieve the separation between audience and performer—actors delivered their lines in monotonous voices, wore masks, were interrupted by authorial commentary in some form, or spoke in asides. Lights illuminated the entire stage rather than just the action. In 1948 Brecht moved to Zu¨rich, and in 1949 he traveled to East Berlin and subsequently formed his own theater company, the
Berliner Ensemble. His wife, Helene Weigel, played lead female roles in the company’s productions. He won the Stalin Peace Prize in 1955 and died of a heart attack the following year. Brecht’s Marxist ideology is out of fashion, but his plays are still performed because of their dramatic power, and his way of staging them has had enormous influence on contemporary directing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ewen, Frederic, Bertolt Brecht: His Life, His Art, and His Times, 1967; Fuegi, John, The Lies and Life of Bertolt Brecht, 1994; Jones, David Richard, Great Directors at Work: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook, 1986.
Brendel, Alfred (January 5, 1931– ) Pianist, Teacher, Essayist lthough his vast repertoire extends from modern composers such as ARNOLD SCHOENBERG to eighteenthcentury works, the Austrian pianist Alfred Brendel is best known for his interpretations of the piano works of the nineteenth-century composers Ludwig von Beethoven, Franz Liszt, and Franz Schubert. His performances of Schubert’s piano sonatas helped rekindle widespread interest in them. Brendel was born in Wiesenberg, Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. When he was three his family moved to Yugoslavia. Three years later he began to study the piano, and in his youth he often entertained the guests at his father’s hotel by playing the piano and singing. Brendel studied the piano under Sofia Dezelic, Ludovika von Kaan, and later Eduard Steuermann and Edwin Fischer. Aside from his studies, Brendel was influenced by the many performances he attended of such musicians as ARTUR SCHNABEL and the
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French pianist Alfred Cortot. He made his debut as a professional pianist in Graz, Austria, in 1948 and the following year won a prize at the Concorso Busoni at Bolzano. From that time onward Brendel performed regularly in Austria. His American debut came in 1963, and since then he has toured the world extensively, performing in the major cities and international festivals. He settled in London in 1971. Brendel has also taught and written essays, which are collected in the volumes Musical Thoughts and Afterthoughts (1976) and Music Sounded Out (1990). His books One Finger Too Many and Cursing Bagels were published in 1999 and 2004, respectively. Among the many honors he has received are the Gramophone Award, Grand Prix of the Liszt Society, and the Sonning Award. His extensive body of recordings includes Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas. Brendel continues to rec-
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ord, and Decca released his latest recording, Brendel Plays Beethoven, in 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brendel, Alfred, Cursing Bagels, 2004; Brendel, Alfred, One Finger Too Many, 1999; Brendel, Alfred, Translations Into English, 1999. www.deccaclassics.com/artists/brendel/int.htm.
Breton, Andre ´ Robert (February 19, 1896–September 28, 1966) Poet, Novelist, Critic, Essayist he French writer Andre´ Breton founded the Surrealist movement in Paris in 1924 with his Surrealist Manifesto. He devoted his adult life to defining the movement’s principles, creating Surrealist literary works, and promoting the work of other Surrealist writers and painters. Breton was born in Tinchebray, France, the only child of a seamstress and a police official. Throughout his childhood and adulthood he found himself at odds with his domineering mother, and he generally retained unhappy memories of his childhood. After his family moved to Pantin, an industrial suburb of Paris, Breton attended both Catholic and public schools and usually excelled in his studies. Several influences in Breton’s early life would affect his literary career. He grew up in a mixed religious atmosphere—his father was an avowed atheist and his mother was a devout Catholic. In 1907 he enrolled in what is now the Lyce´e Chaptal, where, in spite of his waning interest in school, he developed his fondness for poetry, particularly French Symbolist poets such as Stephane Mallarme´ and Arthur Rimbaud. A 1910 trip to Germany inspired his interest in German Romantic literature. He was encouraged by PAUL VALE´ RY, who read and critiqued his writings. After his graduation Breton enrolled in medical school. During World War I he served in several military medical positions, includ-
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ing a post at a psychiatric hospital. His interest in mental illness, coupled with his interest in Sigmund Freud’s theories on the subconscious, played a direct role in his literary work. With Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon, Breton founded the literary review Litte´rature in 1919, around the same time that he joined the Dadaists. The Dadaists, who originated in Zu¨rich, were a nihilistic group of antiartists who disliked Western culture and rejected traditional art forms. Breton became interested in automatic writing, in which one writes down thoughts as they come to mind. With Soupault he wrote Magnetic Fields (1920), one of the major pieces of automatic writing of the time. Automatic writing would become one of the characteristics of the Surrealist movement, which Breton initiated in 1924 with his Surrealist Manifesto. Breton and other Surrealists sought to merge the conscious and unconscious worlds. They considered the subconscious of prime importance in creative activity and believed rational thought inhibits creativity. Other prominent Surrealists included MARCEL DUCHAMP, JOAN MIRO´ , JEAN ARP, MAX ERNST, and, until his expulsion from the movement, the Spanish painter SALVADOR DALı´. Breton’s novel Nadja, a surrealistic account of his encounters with a young woman, appeared in 1928. With the poet PAUL E´LUARD
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he cowrote The Immaculate Conception (1930). The same year he published a second Surrealist manifesto. In The Communicating Vessels (1932), Breton likened the relationship between dreams and consciousness to the balance achieved between a liquid connected with a gas in an experiment. Along with other Surrealists, Breton joined the Communist Party in the early 1930s, but he became disillusioned with the leadership of Joseph Stalin. With his wife, Jacqueline, he traveled to Mexico in 1938, where the exiled Bolshevik Leon Trotsky was staying. Breton stayed with the painter DIEGO RIVERA and his wife, the painter FRIDA KAHLO, and spent time talking and traveling with both Rivera and Trotsky.
Breton spent part of World War II in the United States, where he successfully promoted Surrealism. He returned to France in 1946. His other prose works include The Lost Steps (1924), Legitimate Defense (1926), Surrealism and Painting (1926), Mad Love (1937), Arcanum 17 (1944), and The Key to the Fields (1953). His poetry includes the love poems collected in The Air of Water (1934); Poems (1948); and Constellations (1959), written to accompany works by Miro´.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Browder, Clifford, Andre´ Breton, Arbiter of Surrealism, 1967; Caws, Mary Ann, Andre´ Breton, 1971; Polizzotti, Mark, Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre´ Breton, 1995.
Britten, Benjamin November 22, 1913–December 4, 1976) Composer, Conductor, Pianist ith his thoroughly British–flavored music, Edward Benjamin Britten was one of England’s foremost composers after the death of Sir EDWARD ELGAR. His massive and varied body of music includes the opera Peter Grimes, the choral work War Requiem, The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, and many other vocal and instrumental compositions. Britten also enjoyed a successful career as a pianist and conductor. Britten was born on St. Cecilia’s Day (worth noting because St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music), in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England; he was the youngest of four children and inherited his interest in music from his mother. With the full encouragement of his father, a dentist, she was an amateur singer and a member of the Lowestoft Choral Society. Britten took his first piano lessons from her when he was 5, the same age at which he
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composed his first work. From 1928 to 1930 he attended Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk. Throughout his childhood, he actively composed plays, symphonies, tone poems, and other works, parts of which would later reappear in compositions such as his Simple Symphony (1934). Britten excelled in the schools he attended, but they afforded him little opportunity to pursue his interest in music, so he took private lessons. The most significant of his teachers was the viola player and composer Frank Bridge. Bridge’s perfectionistic style and strict attention to technique were lasting influences on Britten, as were his efforts to expose his young pupil to contemporary music. In 1930, Britten won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied piano with Arthur Benjamin and composition under John Ireland, and won the Ernest Farrar Prize for composition.
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Benjamin Britten (쑖 Nigel Luckhurst / Lebrecht / The Image Works)
The year 1935, when Britten met the poet W. H. AUDEN, marked the beginning of several years of collaboration between the two men. Auden worked with Britten or contributed text to several of his works, including the song cycle Our Hunting Fathers (1936), On This Island (1937), and the opera Paul Bunyan (1941). Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia (1942) used Auden’s text and honored his martyred patron saint. Both men worked at the General Post Office’s film division, collaborating on the short films Coal Face and Night Mail. Britten was homosexual; he originally met his lifelong companion, the tenor Peter Pears, in 1934 and established a permanent relationship with him in 1937. From then on, they traveled and performed together, and Britten composed many works specifically for Pears. From 1939 to 1942 they lived in the United States. Upon their return to England, they were exempted from military service as conscientious objectors. Britten’s lifelong pacifism is evident in his choral work War Re-
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quiem (1962), which incorporates the Latin Mass for the Dead and poetry by WILFRED OWEN. Paul Bunyan (1941), Britten’s first opera, was completed in the United States and has largely been forgotten. Much more successful was Peter Grimes (1945), with libretto by Montagu Slater based on George Crabbe’s poem “The Borough.” The main character of Britten’s psychological study is an introverted fisherman driven to suicide, and Britten tailored the role for Pears. The Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes are often performed separately. The richly colored The Rape of Lucretia (1946) was the first of Britten’s “chamber operas,” or smaller scale operas, written for the English Opera Group that he and Pears helped found. A comedy, Albert Herring (1947) followed. Britten and Pears also helped found the Aldeburgh Festival, where there is now a center that hosts classes and performances, in 1947. Gloriana (1953), which Britten wrote for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, was first per-
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formed at Covent Garden. The opera was based on the relationship between Elizabeth I and Lord Essex and featured choreography by JOHN CRANKO. Britten’s other operas include Billy Budd (1951), with libretto by Eric Crozier and E. M. FORSTER based on Herman Melville’s tragic novella; The Turn of the Screw (1954), based on Henry James’s classic ghost story; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1960), a version of William Shakespeare’s fantastic comedy; Death in Venice (1973), based on THOMAS MANN’s story of love and corruption. Although Britten familiarized himself with and admired the work of contemporary composers, his varied music is largely traditional and English. In both music and subject matter, he most often drew from British poets, playwrights, novelists, and composers (particularly the seventeenth-century English composer Henry Purcell [1659–1695]). Outside of England, Britten admired the composers ALBAN BERG, Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH as well as European literary figures such as Mann and the nineteenth-century French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud. Noye’s Fludde (1958) was based on a fifteenth century miracle play about Noah and the ark. (Medieval miracle plays retold biblical stories for a popular audience, often bringing in touches of humor.) Between 1964 and 1968, Britten composed three “church parables,” Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966), and The Prodigal Son (1968), all three with libretto by William Plomer. English influences did not dominate completely: Britten’s interest in Japanese Noh theater is particularly evident in Curlew River.
Among Britten’s many vocal works and song cycles are Les Illuminations (1939), for high voice and strings, a setting of poems by Rimbaud; Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (1940), for solo voice and piano; Ceremony of Carols (1942), for harp and treble voices; The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (1945); Winter Words (1953), a setting of Thomas Hardy’s verse; and Songs and Proverbs of William Blake (1965). Britten’s most famous instrumental works are the Simple Symphony (1925), for strings; Sinfonietta (1932), for chamber orchestra; the Spring Symphony (1949), for chorus, boys’ choir, and orchestra; three string quartets, several concerti, and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945). The latter uses Purcell’s music to introduce the listener to each of the instruments of the orchestra. Symphony in D Major for Cello and Orchestra (1963) and several cello suites were written for the Russian cellist MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH, whom Britten met in 1960. Britten was made a Companion of Honor in 1953, was awarded the Order of Merit in 1965, was made a life peer in 1976, and won several international awards. His other works include Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937); five canticles (1947–1974); the score for Cranko’s ballet The Prince of the Pagodas (1956); and arrangements of other composers’ music.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Evans, Peter, The Music of Benjamin Britten, 1979; Holst, Imogen, Britten, 3d ed., 1980; Kennedy, Michael, Britten, 1981; Oliver, Michael, Benjamin Britten, 1996; Palmer, Christopher, ed., The Britten Companion, 1984.
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Brodsky, Joseph (May 24, 1940–January 28, 1996) Poet, Essayist, Playwright oseph Brodsky’s lyrical and meditative poetry first became known through samizdat, the clandestine literature that began to be circulated in the Soviet Union in the 1950s. When the Soviet authorities expelled him from the country in 1972, Brodsky settled in the United States and wrote poetry, essays, and plays in Russian and English. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity.” Brodsky was born Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky in Leningrad, now once again St. Petersburg. His father was a commercial photographer who lost his job more than once because he was Jewish. The family lived in a cramped, communal apartment and often survived from income brought in by his mother. Brodsky quit school when he was 15 and began the first of a long series of odd jobs. Meanwhile, he developed an interest in poetry and began to write. Brodsky learned Polish and English, enabling him to read and earn money translating the works of poets such as John Donne and Czeslaw Milosz. The then aged poet ANNA AKHMATOVA, though her style differed dramatically from Brodsky’s, served as an important source of inspiration to him. Brodsky involved himself with the Leningrad literary scene, and his poetry began to appear in samizdat publications such as the journal Sintaksis. Among his early poems are “Isaac and Abraham” and “The Great Elegy to John Donne,” both written in 1963. Brodsky’s poetry is personal, elegiac, and lyrical, full of metaphor and wordplay. Though his verse is entirely apolitical and cannot be called dissident literature, its emphasis on the personal and the spiritual conflicted with the aims of Socialist Realism, the style Soviet authorities demanded (see MAXIM
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GORKY). Brodsky was arrested on several occasions, although he never actually served a sentence. The most serious incident occurred in 1964, when he was arrested and charged with “social parasitism.” Brodsky was found guilty and sentenced to five years of hard labor in Siberia, a region with which he was familiar firsthand. However, a transcript of his trial smuggled to the West demonstrated to the world the absurdity of the proceedings. Under pressure from other writers in the Soviet Union and abroad, Soviet authorities commuted his sentence. Brodsky’s troubles were not over once he was released. He continued to publish poetry and gained increasing popularity, especially in the West. His first collection, Short Poems and Long Poems, was published in the United States in 1965. A Halt in the Wasteland followed in 1970. Brodsky was denied permission to attend international writers’ conferences on multiple occasions. In May 1972, he was given a visa and told to leave the country. Several of Brodsky’s friends who remained in the Soviet Union were subsequently arrested for publishing his work. Abroad, Brodsky found a friend in the English poet W. H. AUDEN, who secured money for him to go to the United States. He immediately obtained a position as poet-in-residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (1972–1980) and subsequently taught literature at Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts. Brodsky gave poetry readings and lectured widely in the United States until his death in 1996. In the United States, Brodsky loved the spirit of individualism he believed Americans embodied. Although he sometimes wrote in English, he usually wrote in Russian and translated his works. His later volumes include A Part of Speech (1980) and To Urania (1988). So Forth: Poems (1998), his final col-
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lection, contains poems of a deeply personal nature, including meditations on death, life, and nature. Among Brodsky’s other works are the essay collections Less Than One (1986), On Grief and Reason: Essays (1994), and Watermark (1992), the last of which consists of Brodsky’s observations on the spirit, scenery, and architecture of Venice; the plays Democracy! and Marbles; and Homage to Robert
Frost (1996), a volume to which he contributed with SEAMUS HEANEY and DEREK WALCOTT. Brodsky was poet laureate of the United States from 1991 to 1992.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Heaney, Seamus, The Singer of Tales: On Joseph Brodsky, 1996; Polukhina, Valentina, Joseph Brodsky: A Poet for Our Time, 1989.
Brook, Peter (March 21, 1925– ) Director, Producer oted for both his Shakespeare productions in England and his experimental modern productions based in France, Peter Stephen Paul Brook (to give him his full name) has enjoyed a varied and successful career in the theater. His experimental approach to the theater incorporates mysticism, humanism, and the ideas of several modern directors. Brook has also directed films. Brook was born in London and studied at Gresham’s School and at the University of Oxford. He entered the theater as a teenager, directing a production of Dr. Faustus at the Torch Theatre when he was 18, and quickly established himself as one of England’s foremost directors. After directing at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre he worked as a director at the Royal Opera House from 1947 to 1950. Abandoning opera, he began to direct some of Britain’s leading actors in Shakespearean plays. Over the next several years he directed both Shakespearean and modern plays, including Vicious Circle (1945), with ALEC GUINNESS; Venice Preserv’d (1953) with Paul Scofield and JOHN GIELGUD; Titus Andronicus; The Winter’s Tale; Men Without Shadows; and King Lear (1962).
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Brook helped introduce the works of modern French playwrights such as JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, JEAN GENET, and JEAN COCTEAU to England. Under the influence of experimental dramatists such as Antonin Artaud, BERTOLT BRECHT, and Jerzy Grotowski, he explored many possibilities in the presentation of plays. In 1964 he embraced Artaud’s concept of the Theater of Cruelty, reworking traditional spatial arrangements and downplaying dialog, with which he was able to experiment at the LAMDA Theatre. Many of Brook’s productions from the 1960s carry strong political elements, including his international success, Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade (1962). US sharply criticized American involvement in the Vietnam war. A more lasting influence on Brook’s outlook, however, was an interest in Eastern spiritual traditions that took him to India, Africa, and Afghanistan. Assisted by two instructors— Jane Heap and then Madame Jeanne de Salzmann—he delved into the writings of the Russian-born mystic George Gurdjieff (1866–1949). Brook began to develop his own ideas on the theater, which he has elaborated in volumes such as The Empty Space (1968), The
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Shifting Point, 1946–1987 (1987), and The Open Door: Thoughts on Acting and Theater (1995). In contrast to theorists like GORDON CRAIG he does not grant equal status to all elements of production. The individual actor, he asserts, is the most powerful force on the stage. Music, scenery, and costumes are minimized. A director, in Brook’s view, is the primary force behind the presentation of a play. Brook has also written extensively on the utilization of space on the stage. Feeling restricted in his ability to experiment freely in England, Brook moved to France in 1970. In 1968 he had founded the International Centre of Theatre Research, where he spent much of his time working with actors to develop alternative acting techniques and expressive body movements. Brook has consistently sought modes of expression that transcend the language barrier and speak in universal terms to audiences. In 1971, working with the poet T ED HUGHES, he created an entirely new language in the play Orghast, performed at the Shivaz Festival. In Paris he ran the Bouffes du Nord theater, where he used an international cast of actors to put his ideas on the theater into action. The Man Who (produced 1993) ranks among his most successful later works. Derived from Oliver Sacks’s book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, the play concerns a group of patients with mental and neurological disorders. Four actors portray numerous doctors and patients. Among the latter are a man suffering with Tourette’s Syndrome, a man who is unable to recognize common objects, and a man trapped in a chair. Mahabarata (1985) was perhaps Brook’s most ambitious production. A nine-and-a-half-
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hour marathon spectacle, it premiered in a limestone quarry in the south of France. The play recreates the Indian epic poem depicting the familial war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, written between 300 B.C. and 300 A.D. Brook conceived the idea for the production in 1973; it required twelve years of research, actor training, and visits to India. He directed a film version in 1989. Among Brook’s other productions are Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (1974) in Paris; Ubu Roi (1977) in Paris; Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1979) in England; SAMUEL BECKETT’S Happy Days; La trage´die de Carmen; Je suis un phe´nome`ne, a play that examines the psyche of a man with a photographic memory; Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1987); Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1988); The Ilk, an examination of an African tribe; Pe´lleas and Me´llisande (1992); and Qui est la`? (1996). He has also directed numerous motion pictures, including The Beggar’s Opera (1953), Lord of the Flies (1963), Tell Me Lies (1968), King Lear (1971), a film based on Gurdjieff’s autobiography, Meetings with Remarkable Men, La trage´die de Carmen (1984), and television film The Tragedy of Hamlet (2002). His Memoirs relate the formative influences on his life and theatrical ideas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hunt, Albert, Peter Brook, 1995; Jones, David Richard, Great Directors at Work: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, and Brook, 1986; Jones, Edward Trostle, Following Directions: A Study of Peter Brook, 1985; Kustow, Michael, Peter Brook: A Biography, 2005, www.peterbrook.net.
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Brooke, Rupert (August 3, 1887–April 23, 1915) Poet upert Chawner Brooke was the most idealistic and traditional of a generation of English World War I poets that included WILFRED OWEN and SIEGFRIED SASSOON. His most famous compositions are his wartime sonnets, written in 1914 not long before his death. Brooke was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, and attended the Hillbrow preparatory school and Rugby School, where his father was housemaster. He earned praise for his poetry as early as 1904, when his “The Pyramids” was recognized in a school contest. The following year, he won a scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, where he studied classics and English literature over the next several years. Brooke was handsome, charming, romantic, and, to those who knew him, deeply emotional. The time at King’s College was important to the development of many aspects of his character. One of his primary interests was in the dramatic arts, and he shared with a group of other students an interest in Elizabethan drama. In 1907 Brooke and his acquaintances formed the Marlowe Dramatic
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Rupert Brooke (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
Society (named for the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe), of which he became president. Among the plays in which he acted was a 1907 production of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (as Mephis-tophilis). He wrote his dissertation, John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, in 1911. Brooke’s years at Cambridge were also marked by the development of his socialist political philosophy. He joined the Cambridge Fabian Society (see GEORGE BERNARD SHAW) in 1907 and became its president in 1909. During this time Brooke met or associated with many literary and intellectual figures, including Shaw, H. G. WELLS, Leonard Woolf (the husband of the writer Virginia Woolf), E. M. FORSTER, and the biographer and critic Lytton Strachey. He would later break with Woolf, Forster, Strachey, and the rest of the Bloomsbury Group (see VIRGINIA WOOLF), objecting to their tendency toward homosexuality and to Strachey for personal reasons. In 1910, Brooke moved to the Vicarage in Grantchester, the backdrop for one of his most famous poems, “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester” (1912). In 1910 he also temporarily assumed his father’s position at Rugby following the latter’s death. Brooke’s first book of poetry, Poems, was published in 1911 and contained “Dining-Room Tea” and “The Fish.” Brooke’s verse shares the lyrical and romantic character of Georgian poetry, incorporating images from nature and filled with emotion. His strong political beliefs rarely appear as direct statements. In spite of his comparatively small output, he is considered one of the major Georgian poets of the early twentieth century. In the atmosphere of a failing love affair in 1912, Brooke suffered a nervous breakdown and went to Cannes to recover. His only play, Lithuania (1912), was written the same year. Its dark story takes place in Lithuania, where
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a family plots the murder of a wealthy stranger who has come to them in search of shelter. The murdered stranger, it turns out, is a long lost son who has returned with money. Lithuania received little attention, and it was performed initially only in Chicago. Working for the Westminster Gazette, Brooke traveled to the United States, Canada, and the South Seas in 1913. He stayed for a period of time on the island of Tahiti, where he had an affair with a Tahitian woman who appears as Mamua in his poem “Tiare Tahiti.” “The Great Lover,” “Heaven,” and other poems were also written during this period. With the exhaustion of his funds in 1914, Brooke returned to England and obtained a commission in the Royal Naval Division. He fell ill in Egypt in 1915, died of blood poisoning, and was buried on the island of Skyros. The five poems that made Brooke famous, the war sonnets, were written in 1914 and
were first published in New Numbers. The sonnets express a melancholy idealism quite different from the work of other war poets of his generation—perhaps at least partly because Brooke never actually saw combat. In “The Soldier,” last and most popular of the sonnets, Brooke wrote: “If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is forever England.” Many of Brooke’s poems also appeared in Edward Marsh’s Georgian Poetry, 1913–1915, and several collections of his work were published following his death.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Laskowski, William E., Rupert Brooke, 1994; Lehman, John, Rupert Brooke: His Life and His Legend, 1980; Read, Mike, Forever England: The Life of Rupert Brooke, 1997.
Bunin, Ivan (October 22, 1870–November 8, 1953) Poet, Novelist, Short-Story Writer lthough the poetry and prose of the Russian author Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin belongs primarily to the twentieth century, he rejected modern trends in literature; he has more in common with the classic Russian authors of the nineteenth century. In 1933 Bunin became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, “for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing.” Bunin was born in Voronezh, Russia, into an old and established but declining Russian noble family. His father was a jovial man fond of drinking and gambling, whereas his mother was pious and melancholy. From the latter Bunin gained his first taste of literature. The
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family moved to a more rural atmosphere, his father’s estate at Yelets, in 1874. After being tutored by Nikolay Romashkov, a constant stimulus to Bunin’s imagination in his childhood, he entered the gymnasium in Yelets at age eight. He wrote his first poem there, but he was a poor student and quit after four years. His elder brother, confined to the family estate for radical political activity, tutored him further. During this time Bunin read classic Russian authors and began to teach himself English. Bunin’s first writings were poems and short stories. His first published poem, “At the Grave of S. Ya. Nadson,” lamented the death of the poet Semyon Nadson; it was published in the literary journal Native Land in 1887. In
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1889 he began working as an editor’s assistant for the Oryol Messenger, a position that enabled him to publish his short stories and other writings. Much of his early poetry and prose expresses sorrow and loneliness and is steeped in the struggles of Russian provincial life. Bunin’s preoccupation with death is evident in all his work. Although he associated himself with Symbolists and members of other modern literary movements early in his career, he never joined them and generally disliked modern trends in literature. In 1892 he moved to St. Petersburg, where he developed acquaintances with some of Russia’s leading literary figures, including the writer MAXIM GORKY, a staunch supporter of his work. In style and in subject matter, however, Bunin’s work owes more to Realism and its great nineteenth-century Russian exponents, such as Leo Tolstoy, whom he met in Moscow in 1894, and the playwright Anton Chekhov. The first volume of Bunin’s poetry was published in 1891. The structure and imagery in his poetry is simple and traditional. The collection Under the Open Sky appeared in 1898, and the most noteworthy volume from his early years is Falling Leaves (1901), which was widely praised by his contemporaries. Bunin’s first collection of short stories, To the Edge of the World, was published in 1897. Like his poems, his early stories are simple. They generally deal with the Russian provincial gentry and peasantry, and plot plays a less important role than emotion and landscape. Two journeys in the early 1900s made a lasting impact on Bunin’s philosophy and work. After a 1903 trip to Constantinople, he developed an intense interest in the Middle East and its spiritual traditions. A 1911 journey to Singapore, Ceylon, and Egypt kindled his interest in Buddhism and the Buddha. Although he continued to write poetry and prose set in Russia, such as the sketches in God’s Tree
(1931), he also used Middle Eastern, Far Eastern, and other settings. His work also began to acquire a more philosophical bent. One of his most famous short stories, “The Gentleman of San Francisco,” appeared in 1915; it concerns the sudden death of a wealthy, spiritually bankrupt American businessman traveling in Europe. Love, passion, and romance dominate Dark Avenues (1949), his final volume of short stories, largely written during World War II. For the most part, Bunin distanced himself from politics. The violence associated with the 1905 and 1917 revolutions as well as World War I took an emotional toll on him. He and his wife, Vera Muromtseva, whom he met in 1907, moved to Odessa in 1918. Two years later, with the Red Army’s capture of Odessa imminent, they fled to Constantinople and eventually settled in France. For the rest of his life, he divided his time between Paris and his villa in southern France. Bunin’s longer works of fiction include The Village (1910), centered around the Russian peasantry, and Mitya’s Love (1925), about a man driven to suicide by his obsession with a woman who ultimately rejects him. The semiautobiographical The Life of Arsenyev (1930) consists of five parts and traces the development of a sensitive poet’s philosophy, experience, and art. A sequel, Lika, followed in 1939. Aside from writing, Bunin also gained fame as a translator. His translations of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Byron’s Cain, and other works, along with his own poetry, earned him three Pushkin Prizes from the Russian Academy. He was elected to the Academy in 1909. His other works include Tolstoy’s Liberation (1937); On Chekhov (published posthumously); and his memoirs, The Accursed Days (1926) and Memories and Portraits (1950).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Connolly, Julian W., Ivan Bunin, 1982.
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Bun ˜ uel, Luis (February 22, 1900–July 29, 1983) Director
Luis Bunuel (쑖 Charles Gatewood / The Image Works)
nown for surrealistic films that savagely attack bourgeois values and religion and explore his erotic interests, the Spanish-born filmmaker Luis Bun˜uel was one of the most controversial directors of the twentieth century. Bun˜uel was the eldest of seven children, born in Calanda, Spain. His father was a successful businessman and a veteran of the Spanish-American War, and his mother came from an upper-middle-class family. Bun˜uel, athletic and a top student, attended Jesuit schools in Zaragoza before he entered the University of Madrid at the age of 17. At the university he studied music and entomology and, more importantly for his artistic interests, gained the friendship of the Surrealist
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painter SALVADOR DALı´ and the poet FEDERICO GARCı´A LORCA. In 1920 Bun˜uel founded a film club at the university. He moved to Paris in 1925 and studied at the Academy of Cinema. Bun˜uel became an assistant director and by 1928 was able, working closely with Dalı´, to direct his first movie, Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog), a short, surrealistic film filled with disconnected bizarre sequences, such as donkeys in pianos, and sexual imagery. Working again with Dalı´, he directed L’aˆge d’or (1930; The Golden Age), a film highly critical of Catholic clergy, high society, and government officials, who appear as skeletons in the movie. Before a long dry spell in his filmmaking career, Bun˜uel directed one more film, Las
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Hurdes (1932; Land Without Bread), a documentary about peasant life in Las Hurdes, an impoverished region of northern Spain. Early on and throughout his career, Bun˜uel contributed little in the way of technical innovation to film; he was primarily known for his shocking, controversial messages and the surrealistic atmosphere of his movies. Back in Spain, Bun˜uel produced several films for his native country’s budding film industry. During the Spanish Civil War, he worked for the Republican side and made propaganda films such as Madrid 1936 (1937). After moving to the United States in 1938 he worked with Hollywood producers as an adviser, and later in New York, but he made no more films of his own until he moved to Mexico in 1947. His first significant Mexican film, The Great Madcap (1949), is a comedy about an alcoholic millionaire whose family convinces him that he has lost all of his money. In it Bun˜uel returned to one of his favorite themes— mockery of values held by the bourgeois and the wealthy. The more serious The Forgotten (1950) is a disturbing psychological portrait of two young boys who grow up in the brutal environment of a Mexico City slum. ´ l (1951; This Strange Passion), filmed In E in Mexico, Bun˜uel explores the neuroses of a middle-class man. Francisco is successful in his career but unmarried and still a virgin at 40. He lures a beautiful woman, Gloria, away from her lover and marries her, but his neuroses begin to consume him as soon as they marry. Gloria lives in terror of his fits of jealousy and paranoia, which culminate in his attempt to strangle a priest. Francisco eventually enters a monastery. The protagonist of Ensayo de un crimen (1955; The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz) is similarly disturbed. A repressed memory buried inside the outwardly respectable Archibaldo de la Cruz reemerges as a criminal obsession. As a child he witnessed the bloody death of his nurse, which gave him acute pleasure. He resolves to re-create that moment of excitement by murdering a woman, but every attempt to kill a vic-
tim fails. The police refuse to arrest him after he confesses his failed desires, and the exasperated Archibaldo loses his obsession. Bun˜uel’s antireligious sentiment comes through in Nazarı´n (1958), based on a novel by the Spanish writer Benito Pe´rez Galdo´s. Father Nazarı´n lives his life working and proselytizing among sinners after being ejected from the priesthood. His actions parallel those of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, but Bun˜uel depicts his attempts to comfort the suffering and disseminate love as futile and sometimes even harmful. The 1961 film Viridiana (1961), shot after Bun˜uel returned from Mexico to Spain, carries a similar antireligious message. It starred the Mexican actress Silvia Pinal and was banned by Spanish censors. Viridiana (the name of a Catholic saint) is a girl who plans to enter a convent. Her uncle’s untruthful claim that he raped her ruins her aspirations for sainthood. She loses her innocence and eventually renounces her vows. The Franco government originally financed the film but later suppressed it. Viridiana won the golden palm at the Cannes Film Festival. Back in Mexico in 1962, Bun˜uel filmed The Exterminating Angel (1962), a black comedy in which a group of dinner-party guests find themselves strangely unable to leave. The force that keeps them there is nothing concrete, but some intangible psychological pull. Le Journal d’une femme de chambre (1964; The Diary of a Chambermaid) is an anti-Fascist film. A young girl, Ce´lestine (JEANNE MOREAU), finds herself trapped in a bizarre, perverted world when she quits her city job to become a chambermaid for a family in provincial France. Belle de Jour (1967), based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, is an erotic drama about a middle-class housewife, Severine (Catherine Deneuve), who pursues her sexual fantasies in a brothel during the day. Her escapades destroy her husband, Pierre (Jean Sorel), who is a hardworking, kind, and loving surgeon. Bun˜uel’s other films include an adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1952);
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Simo´n del desierto (1965; Simon of the Desert); Tristana (1970); The voie lacte´e (1970; The Milky Way); the comedy Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972; The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), about three wealthy couples who fail at every attempt to eat dinner together, which won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film of the year; The Phantom of Liberty (1974); and his
final film, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). Bun˜uel’s autobiography, My Last Sigh, was published in 1983.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Aranda, J. Francisco, Luis Bun˜uel: A Critical Biography, 1976; Buache, Freddy, The Cinema of Luis Bun˜uel, 1973; Durgnat, Raymond, Luis Bun˜uel, 1968.
Burgess, Anthony (February 25, 1917–November 22, 1993) Novelist, Critic, Composer, Translator he English novelist and critic Anthony Burgess produced a large volume of literature and criticism marked by his skillful use of language and pointed satire. He is best known, however, for one of his own least favorite works, A Clockwork Orange, popularized by American director STANLEY KUBRICK’s film version. The novel reached classic status in English literature and depicts, in a slang Burgess invented, the exploits of a young, violent criminal and society’s attempts to rehabilitate him. Burgess was born John Burgess Wilson in Harpurhey, Manchester, England. His father, a bookkeeper and pianist, raised him as a Catholic. His mother, a dancer, died of the Spanish flu when Burgess was a child. He studied languages and English literature at Bishop Bilsborrow Primary School, Xavarian College, and Manchester University. After serving in World War II, Burgess held several posts in the field of education. He taught at Birmingham University from 1946 to 1950 and worked for the Ministry of Education for two of those years. From 1950 to 1954 he taught at the Banbury Grammar School. His subsequent post as a civil servant in Malaya (now Malaysia) and Borneo provided the
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experience and material for The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy (1964). Wishing to leave his wife some money, Burgess began writing in earnest when a doctor misdiagnosed him with a terminal brain tumor. Burgess’s adeptness with multiple languages enhances the sharp, witty writing that characterizes his satiric commentaries on twentieth-century society. In the futuristic The Wanting Seed (1962), world leaders desperately try to bring overpopulation under control. The comic character of F. X. Enderby, a poet, appears in several of Burgess’s novels, including Inside Mr. Enderby (1963), Enderby Outside (1968), and Enderby’s Dark Lady (1984). Like Burgess himself, Enderby is an artist forced to confront the pop culture of the 1960s. Burgess’s other early novels include One Hand Clapping (1961), Honey for the Bears (1963), and Venus (1964). A Clockwork Orange (1963), Burgess’s least favorite of his own works, ironically became his most popular novel. Its protagonist and narrator, Alex, is a teenage criminal who speaks in a slang-ridden language Burgess invented, Nadsat. Alex’s brutal crimes send him to jail, and he becomes a guinea pig in a scien-
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tific rehabilitation experiment. Kubrick produced a highly successful film from Burgess’s novel but, to Burgess’s disgust, omitted the author’s ending, which finds Alex maturing out of his criminal behavior. Some of the story’s characters reappear in The Doctor Is Sick (1966), about a doctor who is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Burgess’s later novels include Napoleon Symphony (1974), Earthly Powers (1980), The End of the World News (1983), The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985), Any Old Iron (1989), and A Dead Man in Deptford (1993). Byrne: A Novel (1995) was Burgess’s last work, a satiric “novel in verse.” Its main character, Michael Byrne, is an Irish Don Juan and artist who disappears in Nazi Germany.
His nonfiction books include Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader (1965); biographies of DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE, William Shakespeare, and ERNEST HEMINGWAY; and his own two- part autobiography. In addition, Burgess composed music, translated, and wrote television scripts, including a translation and adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic Cyrano de Bergerac.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Burgess, Anthony, Little Wilson and Big God: Being the First Part of the Autobiography, 1986; Coale, Samuel, Anthony Burgess, 1981.
Burton, Richard (November 10, 1925–August 5, 1984) Actor, Director he Welsh-born actor Richard Burton first made his name in the theater and became an international star with his role as Mark Antony in the 1963 film Cleopatra. Burton’s turbulent off-screen life was marked by five marriages—two of them to Elizabeth Taylor—numerous affairs, and alcoholism. He is best known for his skillful portrayals of Shakespearean characters, but appeared in many other roles as well. Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in Pontrhydyfen, Wales. He was the twelfth of thirteen children of an alcoholic miner and his wife. After his mother’s death when he was 2, he went to live with an older sister. Burton attended the Eastern Infants School and became the first member of his family to win a scholarship to the Port Talbot Secondary School. At school he was an above-average, physically active student with a streak of rebellion. During his student years, two teach-
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ers, Meredith Jones and Philip Burton, played a formative role in his life. The latter took Richard into his home, tutored him, and helped him obtain a scholarship to the University of Oxford. Richard eventually adopted Burton’s name. Aside from the school productions in which he appeared, Burton acted his first role as Glan in a 1943 production of The Druid’s Rest. His first success in the theater came with his role as a clerk in Christopher Fry’s comedy The Lady’s Not for Burning (1949) at the Globe Theater in London. In 1948, Burton obtained his first film role in The Last Days of Dolwyn, a story about the flooding of a Welsh town. He appeared in several other films before he acted in his first American cinema part, Philip Ashley in My Cousin Rachel (1952). In The Robe (1953), the first film to be shown in CinemaScope, Burton played the
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Richard Burton (쑖 Jewish Chronicle Ltd / HIP / The Image Works)
Roman officer Marcellus Gallio. He rocketed to international fame with his role as Mark Antony in Cleopatra (1963), less for his performance than for his highly publicized offscreen affair with his costar, Elizabeth Taylor. Burton and Taylor married in 1964, divorced a
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decade later, remarried in 1975, and divorced once and for all in 1976. Among the eleven films they made together are the film versions of EDWARD ALBEE’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966); The Comedians (1967); Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (1968), with
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Burton codirecting and playing Faustus and Taylor as Helen of Troy; and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (1967). Burton delivered a number of performances as prominent historical figures, including Alexander in Alexander the Great (1956); Thomas a` Becket in Becket (1964); Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days (1970); Leon Trotsky in The Assassination of Trotsky (1971); and the German composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) in Wagner (1983). His other noteworthy films include versions of JOHN OSBORNE’s play, Look Back in Anger (1959); TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’s play, The Night of the Iguana (1964); The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), based on a novel by JOHN LE CARRE´ ; and Peter Shaffer’s play, Equus (1977). Burton’s final role in film was O’Brien in an adaptation of GEORGE ORWELL’S Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). Throughout his film career, Burton continued to perform in the theater, appearing in
several of Shakespeare’s plays in London and on Broadway. His 1964 portrayal of Hamlet in JOHN GIELGUD’s Broadway production was one of his most popular roles, as was his King Arthur in Camelot (1960 and 1980). He delivered his last stage performance in New York in NOE¨ L COWARD’S Private Lives (1983), opposite Taylor. Burton’s television roles include Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1958) and Winston Churchill in Walk with Destiny (1974). He also recorded radio plays and poetry readings on record. A brain hemorrhage took his life in 1984. BIBLIOGRAPHY Alpert, Hollis, Burton, 1986; Bragg, Melvyn, Richard Burton: A Life, 1988; Junor, Penny, Burton: The Man Behind the Myth, 1985.
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Caballe ´ , Montserrat (April 12, 1933– ) Singer ontserrat Caballe´ contributed her warm and powerful soprano voice to many roles in the world’s major opera houses, mastering French, Italian, and German repertoire. She is particularly noted for her skill in interpreting Verdi and Donizetti. She recorded her work extensively and gave recitals of Spanish songs and other music, and, like her contemporaries LUCIANO PAVAROTTI, JOSE´ CARRERAS, and ENRICO CARUSO, she has dabbled in popular music. Caballe´ was born Maria de Montserrat Viviana Concepcio´n Caballe´ y Folch into a family of modest means in Barcelona, Spain. The Spanish Civil War raged in the background of her early childhood. Caballe´ attended a local school but showed little interest in her studies. More fascinating to her was the music she heard on the radio or on her parents’ records,
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Montserrat Caballe (쑖 Clive Barda / ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
and she was prone to burst into singing at home. Among the voices she listened to was that of Conchita Badı´a, under whom she later studied privately. Her first trip to the opera (for a performance of Madame Butterfly) came when she was seven. Caballe´ next studied at the Conservatorio del Liceo in Barcelona, where her most important instructor was Eugenia Kemmeny. Kemmeny, who was an accomplished athlete as well as a soprano, stressed the cultivation of emotion, breathing, and muscular development. She called her controversial methods “respiratory gymnastics,” and her exercises stuck with Caballe´ for many years. Nevertheless, during her final exam, for which she sang three arias, Caballe´ fainted. It was not the last time—she was to collapse on several more occasions during her singing career, whether from nerves or from her later diagnosed hypoglycemic condition. Caballe´ also studied under Badı´a and Napoleone Annovazzi, for whose orchestra she sang in 1954. From 1956 to 1959 she sang at the Basel Opera, finding her first success as Mimı´ in La Bohe`me. At Basel she sang many roles she would repeat throughout her career—Elvira in Don Giovanni, Jaroslavna in Prince Igor, the title roles in Aı¨da and Tosca, and the title role in RICHARD STRAUSS’s Salome, one of her particular successes. In 1959 she joined the Bremen Opera, where she sang, among other roles, Violeta Vale´ry in Guiseppi Verde’s La Traviata and the title role of Madame Butterfly. During this time Caballe´ also began to make guest appearances at major opera houses around the world. In 1964 she debuted in Mexico City in Jules Massenet’s (1842–1912) Manon. She married the tenor Bernabe´ Martı´ the same year. The next year saw her American debut and a performance in Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia at
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Carnegie Hall in New York. Her other roles include the Countess in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro; Marschallin in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier; and Marguerite in Gounoud’s Faust, which she sang for her debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Aside from her opera roles, Caballe´ has also performed recitals of Spanish songs and other music. Sometimes overshadowed by her older and more high-profile contemporaries Maria Callas and RENATA TEBALDI, she remained more open to modern music than did they. Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the British rock band Queen and a fan, collaborated with her on “Barcelona,” later adopted as a theme song of the Barcelona Olympics. Caballe´ recorded an operatic recital for Vergara in 1964 and made many other recordings. Among these are Salome´; EMI’s first recording of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele; La Bohe`me for RCA with PLA´ CIDO DOMINGO; sev-
eral works by GIACOMO PUCCINI; the first recording of Verdi’s I vesperi siciliani as well as numerous other Verdi works; and many Spanish songs. Caballe´ still performs regularly, largely in Germany. In 2002, she took on the role of Catherine of Aragon in Camille Saint-Sae¨ns’s (1835–1931) Henri VIII. Two years later, she appeared in the title role in Massenet’s Cle´opaˆtre, and in 2007, she played The Duchess of Crackentorp in La fille du re´giment at the Vienna State Opera. Caballe´ married the tenor Bernabe´ Martı´ in 1964. Her daughter, Montserrat Martı´ (Montsita), is also a soprano and the two occasionally perform together.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Pullen, Robert, and Taylor, Stephen, Montserrat Caballe´, 1994; www.montserratcaballe.com.
Calder, Alexander (July 22, 1898-November 11, 1976) Sculptor merican sculptor Alexander Calder is best known for his unique wire renderings and for his invention of suspended, moving sculptures known as mobiles. His early works consisted of three-dimensional wire sculptures, and he later worked with sheet metal and wood. Calder was born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, in 1898 into a family of artists. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a sculptor, and his mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a painter. Throughout his childhood, Calder’s creative talents were nurtured and he was encouraged to create art. As a child he had his own art studio and presented his parents with works of art as gifts.
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After graduating from high school, Calder studied at the Stevens Institute of Technology and earned a mechanical engineering degree in 1919. In the years after graduation, Calder held several jobs in the engineering field. However, while working as a fireman in a ship’s boiler room, Calder witnessed a simultaneous fiery sunrise and full moon sharing the same sky at opposite horizons. It was after this experience, at age 24, that Calder decided to become a professional artist. Calder moved to New York in 1923 and began classes at the Art Student’s League. In 1925 he was employed as a freelance illustrator for the National Police Gazette and was sent to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus for two weeks to illustrate the
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Alexander Calder (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ6242501)
circus. Calder was fascinated by the aesthetics and mechanics of the circus, which became a lifelong interest and the subject of many of his sculptures. He moved to Paris in 1926 and created the Cirque Calder, a unique piece of circus miniatures made from materials including wire, leather, wood, rubber, and textiles. The piece included circus performers, animals, and props that were manipulated by Calder in performances. Calder first performed the Cirque Calder for a group of friends and peers in Paris, and with growing success he presented the piece, typically lasting about two hours, to audiences in Paris and New York. Calder was granted his first solo gallery show in 1928 at New York’s Weyhe Gallery. The show included wire sculpture portraits of
acquaintances, celebrities, and animals. Calder was celebrated for his unique style of “drawing” with wire. With the success of this show, he continued to show his work at other galleries in New York, Paris, and Berlin. His first solo exhibition in Paris was held at the Galerie Billet in 1929. In his travels he became acquainted with Louisa James (a grandniece of writer Henry James) and they married in January of 1931. In the early 1930s Calder became inspired by the abstract works of painters JOAN MIRO´ and PIET MONDRIAN. The next period of Calder’s life began a movement towards abstract art and the creation of hanging, kinetic sculptures called mobiles. Termed by influential writer and artist MARCEL DUCHAMP, the word “mobile” is derived from the French word for “motion.” In Calder’s earlier sculptures he utilized motors, cranks, and levers to create movement. He soon abandoned this technique, however, in favor of balanced pieces that moved independently when blown by the wind. Calder also created “stabiles,” immobile, freestanding, abstract pieces made from bolted steel. In 1933 Calder and Louisa settled in Roxbury, Connecticut, and had two daughters, Sandra (b. 1935) and Mary (b.1939). In the late 1930s he began to construct outdoor sculptures. These large-scale pieces constructed from sheet metal and bolts included Devil Fish (1937) and Big Bird (1937), which were exhibited at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. During World War II metal supplies for art were scarce, and Calder began to use small pieces of carved wood connected with wire to create a series of “constellations.” In 1938 the first retrospective of Calder’s work was held at the George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery in Springfield, Massachusetts, and in 1943 Calder was honored with another major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In 1949 Calder completed his largest mobile, International Mobile, for the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Calder created mostly large-scale commissioned
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sculptures. In 1957 the Port Authority of New York funded Calder to build a mobile for the International Arrivals Building of Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport). Calder’s largest piece, El Sol Rojo, was created in 1968 for the Olympic games in Mexico City. La Grande Vitesse (1969) is remarkable for being the first public piece to be commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts. The abstract red steel sculpture stands 43 feet high, 54 feet long, and 30 feet wide in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In the 1960s Calder narrated several films of his work including Le Cirque Calder (1961) and Mobiles (1966), both filmed by Carlos Vilardebo. In 1966 Harvard University awarded Calder with an honorary Doctor of Arts degree. Three years later, the Stevens Institute of Technology awarded Calder an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree on the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation. The Calders were active in the anti-Vietnam War movement and sponsored two ads in The New York Times. The first, in 1966, was on behalf of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and the second, in 1972, called for the
impeachment of Richard Nixon. Calder was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal in 1975. One month before Calder’s death in 1976, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York opened a major retrospective entitled Calder’s Universe. The show traveled to fifteen cities in the United States and Japan.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander Calder, 1898-1976 (Hardcover) by Marla Prather (Author), Alexander S.C. Rower (Contributor), Arnauld Pierre (Contributor)Publisher: Yale University Press (March 30, 1998); The Essential Alexander Calder by Howard Greenfeld (Hardcover—May 1, 2003); Calder’s Universe by Jean Lipman (Hardcover —Feb 1999). http://www.calder.org http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ database/calder_a.html http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9018639/ Alexander-Calder http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/calder/realsp/ roomenter-foyer.htm
Calvino, Italo (October 15, 1923–September 19, 1985) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Writer of Children’s Books talo Calvino emerged as a writer in the vein of the Italian Neorealists and later evolved his own blend of fantasy and realism. He achieved fame as a writer with three allegorical fantasies written in the 1950s, and his fiction is sometimes compared to the work of the Argentinean writer JORGE LUIS BORGES. Calvino was born to Italian parents in Santiago de las Vegas, Cuba. His parents, both botanists, were in Cuba doing research and returned the family to Italy shortly after his
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birth. Calvino spent his youth on the family farm in the Mediterranean town of San Remo, where he studied at local schools. When he reached university age, he enrolled in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Turin, where his father taught. With the Nazi occupation of Italy, Calvino left school and joined a group of partisans in resistance to the Germans. His wartime experience provided the material for his first novel and a number of early short stories.
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When the war ended Calvino joined the Communist Party. Nevertheless, he returned to the University of Turin and decided to study literature. He finished his degree with a dissertation on JOSEPH CONRAD and began contributing stories to periodicals. Around this time he met Giulio Einaudi, who later published the majority of his writing. The immediate postwar years marked the period of his most intense political activity, as he involved himself with the Communist Party and contributed to the Communist periodical L’Unita`. Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947; The Path to the Nest of Spiders), Calvino’s first novel, belongs to the Italian Neorealist style, which expressed itself most forcefully in the cinema (see ROBERTO ROSSELLINI). Narrated by an adolescent boy named Pin, the story is based on Calvino’s experiences with the partisans during the war. Pin, like many of Calvino’s characters, is an innocent, politically unaware youth who essentially joins the partisans by accident, and he knows little of the cause for which he fights. Calvino’s short-story collection Ultimo viene il corvo (1949; Adam, One Afternoon, and Other Stories) follows in the same vein. During the 1950s Calvino turned to writing fantastic allegories and established himself as a writer of international stature. Il visconte dimezzato (1951; The Cloven Viscount) was the first in a trilogy of fantasies that brought him international fame. The protagonist of the story is Medardo, a seventeenth-century nobleman. A cannon shot divides Medardo into two halves during a war with the Turks. Medardo’s evil half returns home to the horror of everyone, eventually engaging his good half in a duel over a woman. The two halves of Medardo reconcile after the confrontation. The second fantasy, Il barone rampante (1957; The Baron in the Trees), depicts a nobleman, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo`, who as a boy climbs into the trees and never comes down. As penance, a Sister Theodora narrates the third fantasy, Il cavaliere inesistente (1959;
The Nonexistent Knight), about a knight who does not really exist beneath his armor. I racconti (The Tales), a collection of Calvino’s stories, appeared in 1958. During this time Calvino continued to write political commentary, although he left the Communist Party in 1957. He traveled to the Soviet Union in the 1950s and contributed a number of articles to the Soviet magazine ABC. From 1959 to 1966 he coedited a leftist journal with Elio Vittorini. After the 1950s, Calvino’s political writings declined, and he devoted his energies more and more to literature. Calvino returned to a realistic mode to some extent in later works such as La giornata d’uno scrutatore (1963; The Watcher), a novel that reflects his own disillusionment with the Communist Party. Set during the Italian election of June 1953, the story revisits the political climate of the Resistance era through the Communist poll-watcher Amerigo Ormea. The Watcher, like many of Calvino’s later works, is more experimental in structure than his earlier works, which follow traditional narrative styles. A collection of children’s stories, Marcovaldo, appeared in 1963, and Calvino married the Argentine translator Chichita Singer the following year. He spent much of his adult life in Rome and in Paris, where he lived for sixteen years. His later works of fantasy include Le cosmicomiche (1965; Cosmicomics) and the tales in Ti con zero (1967; T Zero). Narrated by a mysterious figure known as Qfwfq whose thoughts are presented using stream-of-consciousness technique, Cosmicomics relates Calvino’s vision of the evolution of the universe. Other works include La speculazione edilizia (1957; Building Speculation); Il castello dei destini incrociate (1969; The Castle of Crossed Destinies); Le citta` invisibili (1972; Invisible Cities), built around Marco Polo’s voyage to Kublai Kahn’s empire; Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore (1979; If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler); and Mr. Palomar (1983). His essay collection Una pietra sopra:
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Discorsi di letteratura e societa` (1980; The Uses of Literature) consists of pieces that previously appeared in Il Menabo`. Calvino died of a stroke at the age of 61.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Adler, Sara Maria, Calvino: The Writer as Fablemaker, 1979; Cannon, JoAnn, Italo Calvino: Writer and Critic, 1981; Carter, Albert Howard III, Italo Calvino: Metamorphoses of Fantasy, 1987; Weiss, Beno, Understanding Italo Calvino, 1993.
Camus, Albert (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) Novelist, Dramatist, Essayist, Philosopher he French-Algerian existentialist writer Albert Camus examined what he believed was the absurdity, futility, and meaninglessness of life in his novels, essays, and plays, facing the crumbling of all the old systems of belief, yet searching for the possibility of creating an authentic existence. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, which the French controlled until 1962. His father lost his life in World War I when he was less than a year old, and he was raised primarily by his impoverished mother. His elementary school teacher, Louis Germain, recognized him as an exceptional student and helped him further his education. Camus attended the University of Algiers and studied philosophy. In 1930, he suffered the first of several severe bouts with tuberculosis. From 1930 to 1940 Camus associated himself with young leftist intellectuals in Algeria. He founded and was involved in all aspects— directing, producing, acting, writing—of the Worker’s Theater, the theater with which he hoped to bring quality drama to the working classes. In 1934 he married Simone Hie´, whose addiction to drugs contributed to the
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end of their marriage two years later. The first of Camus’s published writings, a collection of essays entitled L’Envers et l’endroit (The Wrong Side and the Right Side), appeared in 1937. In it Camus explored the contrasts between the beauty and pleasures of earthly existence and the horror and inevitability of death, introducing questions that would preoccupy his thoughts for the rest of his life. A second collection of essays, Noces (Nuptials), was published in 1939 and explores similar themes. In 1940 Camus married his second wife, Francine Faure, and wrote a controversial essay on the condition of Muslims in French Algeria. He moved to Paris and became friends with JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. After being rejected from military service on account of his health, he became involved in the Resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during World War II (usually referred to simply as “the Resistance”) and edited the underground newspaper Combat. The French government awarded him the Medal of Liberation for his efforts in 1946. Camus’s first published novel, L’Etranger (1942; The Stranger), is set in Algeria and involves a murderer who is convicted of shooting an Arab. The murderer, Meursault, receives the death sentence less for his crime than for the fact that he remains indifferent to
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Albert Camus (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
cares others believe should worry him. In an essay entitled Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942; The Myth of Sisyphus), originally titled L’absurde,
Camus examined the question of whether an absurd life is worth living. In Greek mythology, the god Zeus sentenced Sisyphus to spend
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eternity pushing a rock up a hill and watching it roll back down. Camus likened the futility of Sisyphus’s toil to the struggles of people who go through life only to die. Nevertheless, he concluded, “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Camus developed similar themes in his novel La Peste (1947; The Plague), and plays such as Cross Purpose (1944) and Caligula (1945). In his early years, the basis of Camus’s philosophy was the conviction that death renders life and existence meaningless and absurd. He struggled to extract happiness from this absurd life, and in fact he believed it was possible to do so. As he grew older, he embraced a philosophy of personal rebellion, in which one accepts the absurd and stands up against it in the face of absurdity. In the 1951 essay L’Homme re´volte´ (The Rebel), Camus rejected Marxism and Stalinism as well as Christianity
and proposed individual moral rebellion as a solution to the absurd man’s problem. Because Camus rejected political and social rebellion in The Rebel, many leftist intellectuals, including Sartre, sharply criticized him. Camus’s other works include the novels La Chute (1956; The Fall) and Happy Death, his first novel, not published until after his death; the play L’Etat de sie`ge (1948; State of Siege); L’Exil et le royaume (1957; Exile and the Kingdom), a collection of short stories; and the essay collection L’Ete´ (1954; Summer), which recalled some of the exuberance of Noces and other early essays. He died in a car accident on the way to Paris in 1960.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bre´e, Germaine, Camus, 1959; King, Adele, Albert Camus, 1964; Lottman, Herbert R., Albert Camus: A Biography, 1997.
Capote, Truman (September 30, 1924–August 25, 1984) Writer merican writer Truman Capote is as well known for his high-society lifestyle as for his “journalistic” novels, exemplified by his highly successful novel In Cold Blood. Capote’s small volume of work also includes the book Breakfast at Tiffany’s as well as several short stories and screenplays. Capote’s fame and extravagant lifestyle took their toll on the writer; at the height of his career he spiraled into a depression and substance abuse problem that choked off his literary output and ultimately killed him at the age of 59. Born in New Orleans in 1924, Capote had a troubled childhood. He was abandoned by his mother at a very early age and was raised by aunts and cousins in Monroeville, Alabama.
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Capote described himself as a lonely child and said he started writing seriously at the age of eleven. One of his childhood friends included the writer Harper Lee. The two remained friends throughout the course of Capote’s life, and she portrayed him as the character Dill in her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In his mid-teens Capote moved to New York City to live with his mother and stepfather. He did not like his New York school so he dropped out of high school and at the age of seventeen got a job at The New Yorker magazine. Soon he was writing stories for several different magazines. Capote’s short story “Miriam” caught the attention of publisher Bennett Cerf, and the young Southern writer signed his first contract with Random House.
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He won the prestigious O. Henry award in 1946 for his short stories. Capote published his first book, Other Voices, Other Rooms, in 1948. The book received critical acclaim for Capote’s elegant prose, and surprised many people with a cover shot of Capote himself in a suggestive pose. The book’s treatment of homosexual themes was loosely based on Capote’s own experiences. Other Voices was followed in 1951 by a novella called The Grass Harp. Capote’s other 1950s work, though scant, included the screenplay for the 1954 movie Beat the Devil in collaboration with director John Huston. During this period he also completed a few more journalistic works such as “The Muses are Heard.” The New Yorker article recounts the Everyman’s Opera production of Porgy and Bess in the Soviet Union. The popularity of his first book catapulted Capote into a new level of high society. At first he claimed he was “researching” a new novel—and, indeed, these experiences formed the basis of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958). The success of both the book and the film version (starring Audrey Hepburn) confirmed Capote’s social standing as well as his literary talent. For his next project, Capote wanted to experiment with his craft. He became interested in a new genre he termed the “non-fiction novel.” A real-life crime, the murder of a Kansas farming family, caught Capote’s attention. He spent six years researching the book,
Truman Capote (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LCUSZ62-119337)
which detailed both the plight of the killers and the impact of the crime on the small, rural town where it occurred. Capote witnessed the capture, trial and execution of the killers and came to know the townspeople. Capote would call the non-fiction novel In Cold Blood. “I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry,” Capote said of the project. In Cold Blood was an instant success upon its 1966 release; the first edition sold out immediately. Capote was launched to the heights of fame and wealth. At the pinnacle of his social life and literary career, Capote threw his Black and White Ball. The masked ball, held at the Plaza Hotel in New York, is known as the “Party of the Century.” All members of New York high society were there. The legacy of the Black and White Ball endures as strongly as that of Capote’s literary works. Capote thought his next project would be his greatest masterpiece. Instead, it was his undoing. The novel called Answered Prayers was to be a social criticism of his upper-crust circle. In Answered Prayers, Capote made no effort to disguise the identities of the real society characters he was describing. When Esquire magazine published the first few chapters of the novel in 1975, most of Capote’s friends abandoned him, feeling targeted and betrayed by his unflattering portrayal of them. Capote had been shunned by the very society that once toasted him. Though he often said he was still working on Answered Prayers, he produced no more work at the end of his life. He sank into a depression that eventually led to drug and alcohol abuse. He died of heart failure in 1984. The total body of Capote’s work includes only thirteen volumes, including short stories like “A Christmas Memory” (1956) and “The Thanksgiving Visitor” (1968), and articles like “The Muses are Heard.” Capote wrote the book and lyrics for a Broadway musical
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called House of Flowers, which flopped. In addition to Beat the Devil, Capote also wrote the screenplay for the movie The Innocents (1960), based on the Henry James novel. He was originally hired to write the screenplay for the 1974 movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, but was taken off the project (director FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA wrote the script instead). Truman Capote is remembered for his stylized prose, flamboyant lifestyle, and the promise of a talent that some people think he never fulfilled. The New York Times’ obituary of Capote said, “. . . in the view of many of his
critics. . . he failed to join the ranks of the truly great American writers because he squandered his time, talent and health on the pursuit of celebrity, riches and pleasure.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Clarke, Gerald, Capote—A Biography, 1988; Parks, Ande, Capote in Kansas, 2005; Waldmeir, Joseph J., and Waldmeir, John C., The Critical Response to Truman Capote, 1999. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ capote_t.html. www.capotebio.com.
Capra, Frank (May 18, 1897-September 3, 1991) Director merican director Frank Capra is known for movies about optimism and American values, in which the idealistic hero triumphs over corruption. Capra’s popularity peaked in the 1920s and 1930s, when his films spoke to American sentiments of patriotism and populism, but the postwar public saw his work as increasingly irrelevant, and Capra refused to change his style. Frank Capra was born in Sicily, Italy, but immigrated to Los Angeles with his family at the age of six. He graduated from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California (then called the Throop College of Technology), in 1918. While at college, Capra developed an interest in literature and originally thought he wanted to be a writer. He enlisted in the army and spent the First World War serving in the Coastal Artillery in California. Capra’s interest in the movie industry was first piqued when he was an extra on John Ford’s film The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1918). He spent many years looking for work, often
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unsuccessfully, holding odd jobs and gambling to make money. In 1924 he was hired as a gag-writer by Hal Roach, then a few months later moved to the studios of Mack Sennett. He worked on motion picture shorts as a property man, film cutter, and writer of film titles. Capra’s directing career began with Harry Langdon comedies such as Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1924), The Strong Man (1926), and Long Pants (1927). The filming of this last movie saw a deterioration of the relationship between Capra and both his wife and his boss, resulting in divorce and a falling-out with Harry Langdon. The beginning of his association with Columbia Pictures in 1928 marked a turning point in Capra’s career. At Columbia Capra became the most successful Hollywood director of his time. He also helped launch the storied production studios into its big success. Capra turned out a succession of popular films for Columbia, like The Power of the Press (1928) with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; Platinum Blonde (1931), which helped launch
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Jean Harlow to stardom; and Lady for a Day (1933), which earned Capra his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Platinum Blonde was the first example of what would become a typical Capra-esque hero: the character Stew Smith, a reporter who simultaneously satirizes and desires high society. Capra’s The Younger Generation (1929) would become the first sound film when the scenes were re-shot with dialogue. The 1930s are called Capra’s “golden period.” Starting with American Madness (1932), Capra’s Depression-era films were both recognized for the director’s skill and box-office hits. Capra’s work became more stylized in the 1930s after he deemed it necessary to quicken the pace of his films. In a dramatic departure from the early talkies, where characters entered and exited the frames and took turns speaking, Capra’s new style featured faster, more realistic and overlapping dialogue and choppier jumps between scenes. The sentimentality of Capra’s films, often derisively deemed “Capra-corn,” truly started with Lady for a Day (1933), based on a story by Damon Runyan. The movie received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Capra set out to make a movie that would intentionally appeal to the Academy voters, The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933). The film depicts an American woman in love with a Chinese man at a time when interracial marriage was still a highly taboo topic in America. General Yen was not nominated. Capra switched tacks completely with It Happened One Night (1934), the first movie to win an Oscar in each of the five major categories: Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay. Capra also won best director Oscars for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), the story of a good-hearted man who inherits a windfall, and You Can’t Take it with You (1938). Other popular films from Capra’s “golden period” of the 1930s include Broadway Bill (1934) and Lost Horizon (1937). In 1935 Capra became president of the Academy during an era of labor relations battles. In a period of high tension among the
guilds, the studios, and the workers, Capra pulled the Academy out of the labor relations field. This move may well have saved the Academy and the Oscars from ruin. One of Capra’s most popular and enduring works is Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which an idealistic young senator faces a corrupt system in Washington. After Mr. Smith Capra left Columbia and made the independent film Meet John Doe, in which Gary Cooper plays a baseball player turned populist hero. Also in 1941 Capra directed a film called Arsenic and Old Lace, though the film was not released until 1944. During the Second World War Capra became a propagandist for the army, creating a series of documentaries called Why We Fight. The documentaries are an endorsement of American values as well as Capra’s own humanistic, individualistic philosophy. Why We Fight even did its part to improve race relations, with the film The Negro Soldier. Capra left Columbia and produced his first postwar efforts out of his own studio, Liberty Films. Liberty, which he ran along with director John Ford, was responsible for Capra’s last masterpiece, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946.) The movie was nominated for the Best Picture, Director and Actor Oscars, but did not receive any attention at the box office. It’s a Wonderful Life only rose to popularity in the 1970s, when it was played for television audiences during the holiday season. Now recognized as one of Capra’s greatest works, the movie ranked number 11 in the American Film Institute’s 1999 list of the 100 greatest films of all time. It’s a Wonderful Life marked the beginning of the end of Capra’s career. His gentle, sentimental style seemed outdated in a rapidly changing postwar America. With State of the Union (1948), a Spencer Tracy-KATHARINE HEPBURN comedy, Riding High (1950), and Here Comes the Groom (1951), both starring BING CROSBY, Capra never saw the success of his prewar days. He spent most of the 1950s making children’s science documentaries, before turning
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out his final two efforts: A Hole in the Head (1959) with FRANK SINATRA, and Pocketful of Miracles (1961), with Bette Davis, all typical of Capra’s earlier work. Rather than change his approach to filmmaking to suit modern times, Capra simply retired. He wrote a noted autobiography, The Name Above the Title, that was also a biting criticism of the studios for which he had worked. His final recognition came in 1982, with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Capra died in September of 1991 in California. Capra is remembered for com-
bining inventive filmmaking with themes of populism and messages of hope that spoke to Depression-era audiences.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Capra, Frank. The Name Above the Title: an Autobiography, 1997; Raymond Carney, American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra, 1996; McBride, Joseph. Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, 2000. www.school.eb.com/eb/article-9020171. www.filmreference.com/Directors-Bu-Co/ Capra-Frank.html.
Caro, Sir Anthony (March 8, 1924– ) Sculptor he abstract sculptures for which Sir Anthony Alfred Caro is best known are creations of welded steel, composed of an interplay of beams, rods, and other shapes. As an assistant to the abstract sculptor HENRY MOORE, he was influenced early in his career by Moore’s style. Caro’s meeting with the American abstract and welded-steel sculptor David Smith in 1959 set him on the path to the mature abstract, constructivist forms of style. Caro was born in New Maiden, Surrey, England. From 1942 to 1944 he studied engineering at Christ’s College, Cambridge. During World War II he served in the Fleet Air Army of the Royal Navy, and in 1946 he began to study sculpture at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London. From 1947 to 1952 he studied at the Royal Academy Schools, and during that time he moved to Much Hadham and worked as Moore’s assistant. He married Sheila Girling in 1949. In 1953 he took a teaching position at the School of Art in London, where he remained until 1979.
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Moore was the biggest influence on Caro’s early sculpture, which consists mainly of figurative works in clay. His sculptures were first exhibited in 1955, and the following year he held his first one-man show at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan. His style changed radically, however, following a trip to the United States and his meeting with David Smith. Under Smith’s influence, Caro moved into pure abstraction and adopted steel as his primary material. Midday (1960), composed of painted yellow steel and one of his bestknown works, reflects the shift in his work. An expert welder, he began creating sculptures from beams, thin rods, and sheets of metal, with no bases. Sometimes he painted the metal in striking, solid colors, as in the purple-painted steel sculpture Shaftsbury (1965) and the bright green mix of cylindrical and rectangular shapes entitled Dumbfound (1976). In other works, he simply allowed the metal to rust. Other sculptures were interplays of thin, metal bars, such as Emma Dipper (1977) and Emma Dance (1977–1978).
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In 1974 Caro worked at the York Steel Company in Toronto, where he began a series of large steel sculptures that required the use of cranes. Caro created some paper sculptures in the early 1980s as well as stoneware and sculptures in wood and lead. In the 1990s he began to create “sculpitectures,” such as the twenty-two-foot-high Tower of Discovery (1991), which the observer can walk around. His later work includes “installation art,” which utilizes sculpture and other art forms to modify the manner in which people experience both public and private spaces. He was
made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1979 and knighted in 1987. The Tate Gallery honored him for his eightieth birthday with a retrospective exhibition of his work in 2005.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fenton, Terry, Anthony Caro, 1986; Moorhouse, Paul, ed., Anthony Caro, 2005; Rubin, William Stanley, Anthony Caro, 1975; Waldman, Diane, Anthony Caro, 1982; www.anthonycaro.org.
Carreras, Jose ´ (December 5, 1946– ) Singer ith a voice acclaimed for its lyrical qualities and tonal purity, Jose´ Carreras attained international fame as an operatic tenor in the 1970s, performing in the standard Italian operatic roles. With PLA´ CIDO DOMINGO and LUCIANO PAVAROTTI, he formed the Three Tenors, who gave a number of high-profile concerts around the world in the 1990s. Carreras was born Josep Maria CarrerasColl into a Catalan family in Barcelona. Although his parents were not musically inclined, they were supportive of the singing talent and ambition that emerged in their son at a young age. His father was a teacher by profession, and his mother was a hairdresser. For economic and political reasons (his father was a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and had fought against the Franco forces), the family moved briefly to Argentina before returning to Spain. At the age of six Carreras experienced his first inspiration to sing when he saw the film The Great Caruso (see ENRICO CARUSO), with Mario Lanza.
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From that point on Carreras began to sing around the house, dressing up as a character on occasion. At the age of eight he saw his first opera—a performance of Aı¨da with RENATA TEBALDI. Soon afterward he gave his first public performance, in a benefit for the National Radio. At the age of 11 he played a small role in a production at the Gran Teatro del Liceo. His family’s purchase of a record player augmented his ambition to sing. His interest in his schoolwork was marginal, and his other hobby in his youth was sports. When he was 17, Carreras began to take singing lessons from Jaime Francisco Puig, a local singer and teacher. He next studied under Juan Ruax, who remained a lifelong friend and whom Carreras warmly described as “the complete opposite of those unbending, overbearing singing teachers who from time immemorial have forced a certain method on their students.” Still unsure about pursuing opera as a career, Carreras entered the University of Barcelona, but by 1968 he had decided finally to become an opera singer.
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Carreras earned critical acclaim for his Flavio in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma in 1970. His performance in that show impressed the soprano MONTSERRAT CABALLE´ , who from then on remained his loyal friend and supporter. Carreras had his first leading role as Gennaro in Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia. Over the next several years Carreras debuted at the major opera cities around the world—New York, London, and finally in Milan at La Scala in 1975. The first of many collaborative efforts with conductor HERBERT VON KARAJAN came in Salzburg in 1976, when he sang in Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem. Over the years Carreras continued to appear in the standard Italian operas, and he is particularly known for the lyrical beauty of his Don Jose´ in Georges Bizet’s Carmen. In the mid-1980s he branched out into other forms of music, recording LEONARD BERNSTEIN’s West Side Story with soprano
KIRI TE KANAWA. Carreras made his first recordings in 1972 and since then has recorded dozens of operas, songs, and other material. Following his recovery from leukemia in the late 1980s, he participated with Pavarotti and Domingo in the highly successful Three Tenors concerts in 1990 and 1994, an effort that also produced several recordings. Among the numerous honors and awards to Carreras’s credit are several honorary doctorates, the Gold Medal of the Catalan Transplant Society, the Diamond Tulip Award of the Stichting Day by Day Foundation of the Netherlands, the St. Boniface General Hospital Research Foundation 1996 International Award, and the Golden Cross of the Social Solidarity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Carreras, Jose´, Singing From the Soul: An Autobiography, 1989; www.josepcarreras.com.
Carson, Johnny (October 23, 1925–January 23, 2005) Television Personality or nearly thirty years, Johnny Carson dominated the late-night American television airwaves with his off-brand sense of humor as the host of NBC’s The Tonight Show. Millions of Americans looked forward to sitting down with Carson, whose entrance in the later years of the show was characteristically announced by sidekick Ed McMahon’s, “Heeeere’s Johnny!” Carson was born John William Carson in Corning, Iowa, but grew up in Norfolk, Nebraska. His father managed a power company. Carson was an amateur showman by the age of fourteen, when he had managed to learn some magic tricks and delivered a performance as “The Great Carsoni.”
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After attending Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, Carson served in the Navy from 1943 to 1946. During his military service, he was known for entertaining his fellow troops. Upon his discharge from the Navy, he enrolled at the University of Nebraska, from which he graduated in 1949. While at the University of Nebraska, he worked at the local radio station KFAB and then at WOWT radio and television in Omaha. During this era, Carson wrote comedic pieces and served as an announcer for commercials. He also appeared with future news anchor and sportscaster Ken Case (1925–2007). He soon began to host his own morning show, The Squirrel’s Nest and in 1950 took a job at
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KNXT in Los Angeles, where he hosted the comedy show Carson’s Cellar from 1951 to 1953. In 1953, comic Red Skelton (1913–1997) invited Carson to write for his show. The following year, Carson found himself delivering an unplanned performance, filling in for Skelton one day when the latter knocked himself unconscious after running into a door just before air time. Carson went on to host and/or appear on a series of television shows, including the game show Earn Your Vacation (1954) and the variety show The Johnny Carson Show (1955–1956). He also filled in on occasion for Jack Paar (1918–2004) on CBS’s The Morning Show. Switching networks in 1957, Carson appeared on ABC’s daytime game show Who Do You Trust? (1957–1962). It was on that show that Carson first met and worked with Ed McMahon (1923– ), his longtime sidekick on The Tonight Show. The Tonight Show had its origins in NBC’s Tonight, which began airing in 1954 and was hosted by Steve Allen (1921–2000). Soon, Allen’s sidekick Ernie Kovacs (1919–1962) was alternately hosting the show, and in 1957 Paar began to host the renamed The Jack Paar Tonight Show. Paar led the show until Carson took over as host of the again-renamed The Tonight Show in 1962 (he had filled in for Paar as host as early as 1958), beginning a nearly thirty-year run of the show under his leadership. Groucho Marx of the MARX BROTHERS introduced him on the first episode, which aired on October 1, 1962. The show, which consisted of a combination of introductory monologues, comedic sketches, music, and interviews, remained a popular hit with millions of Americans who enjoyed Carson’s sharp wit. Carson presented several recurring characters and skits on the show. He appeared as Art Fern, “The Art Fern Tea Time Movie” announcer who sold questionable merchandise. The skit originally featured actress Carol Wayne (1942–1985) as the “Matinee Lady.” Floyd R. Turbo, an intellectually challenged
right-wing political extremist, was another repeat character, as was the gossipy old woman Aunt Blabby. Carson frequently played Carnac the Magnificent, who pretended to be a psychic who could read and answer questions without seeing them. “The Mighty Carson Art Players” presented parodies of commercials, news items, films, and television shows. “Stump the Band” was another favorite skit. Along with McMahon, bandleader Doc Severinsen (1927– ) was a longtime icon on the show. He started as Carson’s bandleader in 1967 and remained in the position until Carson’s retirement in 1992. The American songwriter Paul Anka (1941– ) wrote the show’s theme song, originally a hit for the American singer Buddy Holly (1936–1959) entitled “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” Frequent guests included Carson’s friend, the astronomer Carl Sagan (1934–1996); jazz bandleader and drummer Buddy Rich (1917–1987); author GORE VIDAL; actor and comedian Bob Newhart (1929– ); and Jerry Lewis (1926–). Actor Joey Bishop (1918– ) appeared on The Tonight Show more than any other guest at 177 times. The Tonight Show was originally produced, for the most part, in New York City but eventually moved to Burbank, California. During the 1970s, the show’s live feed was transmitted via satellite from Burbank to New York for editing before broadcast. Home satellite users began to pick up the uncensored version of the feed and were able to view unedited risque´ antics and language. NBC eventually moved to transmitting via landline until the editing was moved to Burbank altogether. In 1980, the show was cut from ninety to sixty minutes. The Tonight Show prospered with Carson as its host for nearly three decades before he retired in 1992. During his later years, the show featured a guest host on Monday nights. Joan Rivers (1933– ) was the usual guest host from 1983 to 1986 but was let go after she took a role on a competing show without asking Carson. The comedian Jay Leno (1950– ), who would take over The Tonight Show per-
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manently upon Carson’s retirement, became a frequent guest host. After leaving the show, Carson participated little in television or entertainment and rarely gave interviews. He did, however, appear on Late Night With David Letterman, which became The Tonight Show’s biggest competitor. With Carson as its host, The Tonight Show, inspired itself by The Ed Sullivan Show, left a legacy that lives on in many popular late-night entertainment shows, such as Late Night With David Letterman. Many comedians got their big breaks on Carson’s show. Carson’s life off screen was as tumultuous as his colorful character was on screen. He was married four times. In 1949 he married Joan (Jody) Wolcott, his college sweetheart. It was a turbulent marriage that ended in divorce in 1963. He married Joanne Copeland the same year, and the union again ended in divorce in 1972. The same year, Carson made a surprise announcement on The Tonight Show that he had married former model Joanna Holland. In a highly publicized divorce set-
tlement in 1983, Holland received twenty million dollars in money and property. Carson married his final wife, Alexis Maas, in 1987 for what proved to be his most happy union. Carson died in 2005 due to complications from emphysema. Among his numerous honors were the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ (ATAS) Governor’s Award in 1980, the George Foster Peabody Award in 1986, his induction into the ATAS Hall of Fame in 1987, six Emmy Awards, the Scopus Award from the American Friends of Hebrew University in 1989, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the American Comedy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, and the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lorence, Douglas, Johnny Carson: A Biography, 1975; Leamer, Laurence, King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson, 1989. www.johnnycarson.com.
Caruso, Enrico (February 27, 1873–August 21, 1921) Singer nrico Caruso charmed world audiences with his warm, lyrical voice in the first two decades of the twentieth century and was the world’s most renowned operatic tenor in his day. Caruso was also one of the first artists to offer his music to the public in the form of gramophone recordings. Caruso was born Errico Caruso into a large, impoverished family in Naples, Italy. A woman from the church nursed and tutored him, helping him endure the conditions of a home life with poor sanitation, frequent illness, and cramped quarters. Caruso sang regularly in his youth—first in the church choir
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and later at other engagements and with cafe´ troupes. A talent for drawing and sketching also emerged, and he earned extra money copying music. His finances prohibited him from taking the singing lessons he desired, but he finally got a break when a persistent friend persuaded Guglielmo Vergine, one of the city’s leading teachers, to take him on in exchange for 25 percent of his earnings for five years. (The contract eventually resulted in a legal battle.) When he was 18, Caruso served two months of a three-year term in the military before he was excused to return to his music
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lessons. Vergine was sometimes less than helpful to Caruso and regarded him as a minor talent. Caruso debuted on stage at age 21 in Mario Morelli’s L’Amico Francesco at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples. He began to build his reputation with a successful performance as Loris in the premiere of Umberto Giordano’s Fedora in Milan in 1898. Caruso’s tenor impressed the composer GIACOMO PUCCINI, and in 1900, thanks to Puccini, Caruso starred as Rodolfo in Puccini’s La Bohe`me. The performance, opposite Caruso’s longtime mistress, Ada Giachetti, playing the soprano, was a rousing success. Caruso debuted at La Scala, the Milan opera house built by the Austrian archduchess Maria Theresa, in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s La Bohe`me (1901), conducted by ARTURO TOSCANINI. Later that season he sang in the premiere of Pietro Mascagni’s Le Maschere (1901; The Masks) and appeared, to great popular acclaim, as Nemorino in L’Elisir d’Amore. He appeared in many subsequent productions at La Scala, including Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur and Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West). The success of Caruso’s performances in Italy led to engagements around the world, including St. Petersburg and Buenos Aires. In a popular production of Puccini’s La Bohe`me in Monte Carlo, Caruso first sang opposite the soprano Nellie Melba. He would sing opposite many other top sopranos of his day, including Emmy Destin, Luisa Tetrazzini, and Mary Garden. Caruso debuted in the United States at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1903 in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto. He enjoyed a long career singing at both the Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden in London. Among the many other operas in which he starred during his career are Mefistofele; Verdi’s Aı¨da, Il Trovatore, and Un Ballo (as King Gustavo); Leoncavallo’s I Paglicacci (as Canio); Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, La Tosca, and Madame Butterfly; and Jacques Hale´vy’s La Juive (his final role, as Ele´azar).
Enrico Caruso (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-01883)
In the years before World War I, Caruso’s life and career began to deteriorate. His relationship with Giachetti ended bitterly, eventually resulting in his successful slander suit against her. His voice began to darken, but on account of his popularity he was not denied engagements. His health also began to worsen. In 1917, he met and later married the American Dorothy Benjamin. Aside from his success as a live performer, Caruso earned royalties from some of the first gramophone recordings, which he began in 1902 under contract with Fred Gaisberg in London. In the United States, Calvin G. Child of the Victor Company (later purchased by the Radio Corporation of America and known as RCA-Victor) took an interest in recording Caruso’s work, and many of his songs were subsequently released on the company’s Red Seal series. Like his performances, Caruso’s recordings gained enormous popularity. Caruso developed a severe lung infection in 1921 and died later that year.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Greenfeld, Howard, Caruso, 1984; Greenfeld, Ho-
ward, Caruso: An Illustrated Life, 1991; Jackson, Stanley, Caruso, 1972; Scott, Michael, The Great Caruso, 1988.
Cary, Joyce (December 7, 1888–March 29, 1957) Novelist he moderate literary output of Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary, always called simply Joyce Cary, falls into three main categories: his fiction set in Africa, which probes the complex political and social situations created by European colonialism so successfully that some of it is still read because of the insight it gives into the inadequacy of all simple and idealistic solutions; his novels on childhood; and his trilogies, in which each volume is narrated by a different character in the story. Cary was born in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. His father came from a long line of Anglo-Irish landowners, and the family moved to London in his youth. At the age of 10, Cary suffered the first in a lifelong series of tragic losses when his mother died. From his childhood through his adulthood, he was never overly interested in school. Cary studied at the Hurstleigh School in Tunbridge Wells and then at Clifton College, beginning in 1903. In 1906 he went to Paris to study painting, and he returned the following year to study art at the Board of Manufacturers School of Art in Edinburgh. Cary finished his education between 1909 and 1912, studying law at Trinity College, Oxford. In 1912, Cary joined a Red Cross unit with the Montenegrin army in the Balkans. The following year, he began seven years of service in Africa that included fighting in the Southwest African Field Force in World War I and working in the Nigerian Civil Service. He returned to Oxford and joined his wife (Ger-
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trude Margaret Ogilvie, whom he had married in 1916) in 1920. The same year, a number of his short stories appeared in the United States in the Saturday Evening Post. His first novel, however, was not published until 1932. As with a number of its successors, Aissa Saved takes place in Africa and depicts the multifaceted conflicts in colonial African society. The main character, Aissa, is a Christian convert caught between the demands of her new religion and her old one. An American Visitor (1933) also unfolds in Africa and examines other conflicts created by the intrusion of colonialism in Nigeria. The American visitor is Marie Hasluck, who marries Brewsher. She and Brewsher believe in minimal intrusion into the Birri province, while another faction seeks to introduce tin mining. Both come into conflict with missionaries. Other novels set in Africa, The African Witch and Mister Johnson, followed in 1936 and 1939. Cary came to favor independence for African colonies and advocated it in a political work, The Case for African Freedom (1941). In the years surrounding World War II, Cary wrote two novels on the theme of childhood. The protagonist of Charley Is My Darling (1940) is a young, rebellious boy who goes to live in the country and leads other kids into trouble. A House of Children (1941) is semiautobiographical, with many incidents drawn from Cary’s own childhood, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
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The first of Cary’s two trilogies begins with Herself Surprised (1941). The protagonist is Sara Monday, a country girl who takes a job as a cook for the Monday family. Sara, an emotional woman who perceives the world through feeling rather than thought, marries Matthew Monday and becomes involved with two other men, Tom Wilcher and Gulley Jimson. Wilcher is a staunchly conservative lawyer, whereas Jimson is a volatile visionary artist. Wilcher narrates the second part of the trilogy, To Be a Pilgrim (1942), and Jimson narrates the third and most popular of the volumes, The Horse’s Mouth (1944), acclaimed for its masterfully intense combination of drama and comedy. Having been rejected for military service in World War II, Cary served in the Civil Defense. In 1942, the Ministry of Information asked him to write a motivational film script for Men of Two Worlds. After the war, Cary lost his wife to cancer in 1949 and his son to heart disease four years later. His second trilogy begins with A Prisoner of Grace (1952). Its protagonist, Nina Woodville, is a young orphan who finds herself pregnant by Jim Latter. She marries the politician Chester Nimmo, whom she does not love, and feels trapped in an unhappy mar-
riage for years. When she finally breaks free, she marries Jim, but Chester continues to place demands on her. Jim murders her. An aged Chester Nimmo narrates Except the Lord (1953), in which he tells the story of his younger years. Not Honour More (1955) is narrated by Jim Latter. Failing health prevented Cary from completing even the first volume of a third trilogy, The Captive and the Free (1959), a treatment of religious faith and practice. The novel was published posthumously in its unfinished form. He tried his hand at other forms of writing that met with less success. His Verses were published in 1909, and his short stories appeared in the posthumously published volume Spring Song (1960). His other works include the political pieces Power In Men (1939) and British West Africa (1946); the play The King is Dead, Long Live the King (1939); and a volume of lectures, Art and Reality (1958).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bishop, Alan, Gentleman Rider: A Life of Joyce Cary, 1988; Fisher, Barbara, Joyce Cary: The Writer and His Theme, 1980; Roby, Kinley E., Joyce Cary, 1984.
Casadesus, Robert (April 7, 1899–September 19, 1972) Pianist, Composer he pianist and composer Robert Marcel Casadesus, one of an extended family of distinguished composers, violinists, cellists, conductors, and actors, was known for his clarity of style and interpretations of the piano works of the French composers and of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Casadesus was also a respected teacher.
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Casadesus was born into a large family in Paris. His mother died at his birth, and his father was a traveling actor, so he was raised primarily by grandparents who lived near Paris. He took his first piano lessons from his aunt Rose Casadesus, a concert pianist. At age 11 he entered the Paris Conservatory, where he trained on the piano under Louis Die´mer (a former pupil of the composer
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Franz Liszt) and studied composition under Xavier Leroux. He won several awards for his piano playing there, including the Grand Prix Die´mer. In 1917 he made his debut as a professional pianist. In 1921 Casadesus married the concert pianist Gaby L’Hote, who was also a student of Die´mer. He began touring in 1922 and distinguished himself as a piano player around the world. He frequently performed the works of French composers such as Gabriel Faure´ RAVEL, CLAUDE (1845–1924), MAURICE DEBUSSY, and Albert Roussel (1869–1937). His American debut came in 1933, as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic Symphony—a performance that impressed the Italian conductor ARTURO TOSCANINI, who was in attendance. Casadesus made many recordings, including all of Ravel’s piano music and Eduoard Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole with vio-
linist Zino Francescatti, pianist Max Lanner, and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. He received the Commandeur de la Le´gion d’honneur and Belgium’s Commandeur de l’Ordre de Le´opold. In 1929–1930 Casadesus was professor of musical interpretation at the Conservatory of Genoa, and the following two years he taught at the Conservatory of Lausanne. From 1935 until the eruption of World War II, he taught at the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. Casadesus was also a composer and in 1917 finished his first work, Le Voyage Imaginaire. Among his other compositions are violin sonatas, piano concertos, and two symphonies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Casadesus, Gaby, Mes noces musicales, 1989.
Casals, Pablo (December 29, 1876–October 22, 1973) Cellist, Conductor est known for his interpretations of the cello music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), the Spanish-born Pablo Casals was one of the foremost cellists of the twentieth century. Exiled from his native country during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), he refused to return to Fascist Spain and spent his mature years advocating world peace through music. Casals was also known for his gifts as a teacher. Casals was of Catalan ancestry, born Pau Carlos Salvador Defillo de Casals in the Tarragonese town of El Vendrell, Spain. The eldest of his mother’s surviving children, he was her favorite and the undisputed center of her attention. His father was a piano and organ repairman, singer, organist, and choirmaster, and his interests also extended to science and
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politics. From him Casals inherited his ardent republicanism and received his first music instruction, starting with piano lessons at the age of 4. Casals attended a local school as a boy and in his spare time enjoyed learning to play obscure instruments. A major turning point in his life came in 1888, when he heard his first chamber trio perform. Overwhelmed by the music, and particularly the cello, he fell in love with the instrument that would bring him world fame. Over his father’s objections, his mother sent him to the Municipal School of Music in Barcelona, where he studied the cello for five years under Jose´ Garcı´a. Garcı´a was his most important instructor. Under him Casals felt free enough to develop his own style and dispense with conventional
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rules of playing. Rather than move the entire left hand, Casals preferred to extend the fingers when possible. He also disliked the generally required rigid pose, in which the cellist plays with stiff arms and elbows to the side of the body. Casals, too, rejected the requirement of using the full length of the bow.
Pablo Casals (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-23451)
During his time as a student, Casals took part-time jobs playing the cello at cafe´s, weddings, and other places to earn money. At the age of 14 he discovered Bach’s Six Suites for Unaccompanied Violincello, which was to become one of his signature pieces as a performer. He gave his first solo performances in 1889. Four years later, with the financial assistance of the music patron, Queen Regent Marı´a Cristina, Casals entered the Madrid Conservatory. Uncomfortable with the expectations of his royal patrons, who wanted him to compose rather than play the cello, Casals studied briefly in Brussels and finally chose freedom over financial assistance. He moved briefly to Paris and in 1896 moved again to Barcelona, becoming principal cellist of the Gran Teatro del Liceo. In Barcelona he also began his distinguished teaching career, taking over Garcı´a’s duties at the Municipal School of Music. By 1898 Casals had repaired his relationship with his royal patrons, and the Queen Regent purchased for him a fine cello. His major debut as a cello soloist came the same year at the Concerts Lamoureaux in Paris. Casals soon established himself as one of the finest cellists in Europe, playing for many royal audiences as well as the public. From 1898 to 1917 he toured extensively in Europe and the Americas. Although he often performed alone, he also appeared with others. His most famous collaboration, with French pianist Alfred Cortot and French violinist Jacques Thibaud, produced more than 150 international performances. As a performer he promoted the works of others he admired, such as the Hungarian composer Emanuel Moo´r. In 1919 Casals, with Thibaud and particularly Cortot, helped found the E´cole Normale de Musique in Paris. The following year he established the Orquestra Pau Casals in Barcelona, which he conducted regularly for sixteen years. Each fall and spring, the orchestra gave a series of ten concerts. Casals preferred the works of romantic and classical compos-
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ers to modern works, but he often included the latter in the repertoire and invited their composers to conduct performances. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Casals, an adamant opponent of Fascism, fled his native country and settled in Prades, France. During the civil war and World War II he was active in relief efforts to help Spanish refugees and other war victims. In 1946 he announced his retirement from performing in protest of the Franco government in Spain, but he returned in 1950. The same year he founded, at Prades, an annual Bach Commemorative Festival. Casals had recorded some performances prior to 1950 but did so much more actively after his return to public view. In 1956 he settled permanently in Puerto Rico, where he established the annual Casals Festival. He spent
his mature years crusading for world peace and calling for an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He performed several times for United Nations Day and widely conducted his own oratorio El Pessebre (composed 1944–1946; The Manger), a musical call for world peace. Casals continued to perform into his nineties; he died at the age of 96. In 1989 he was awarded, posthumously, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. His recollections, Joys and Sorrows, were published in 1970.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baldock, Robert, Pablo Casals, 1992; Kirk, H. L., Pablo Casals: A Biography, 1974.
Cash, Johnny (February 26, 1932–September 12, 2003) Singer, Songwriter, Actor major and highly influential figure in American country music, Johnny Cash spent his entire career shirking the trends of the mainstream country music industry, from his rebellious persona and deep voice to his characteristic all-black attire that earned him the nickname “The Man in Black.” Over the course of his career, Cash wrote more than a thousand songs, released dozens of albums, and exerted a profound influence not only on country music artists, but on musicians of other genres as well. Cash was the husband of country singer and songwriter June Carter Cash, with whom he recorded a significant amount of music. Cash was born J. R. Cash in Kingsland, in Cleveland County, Arkansas. Both of his parents, Ray Cash and Carrie Rivers Cash, were of Scottish ancestry. He grew up in Dyess, Ar-
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kansas, where the family had taken advantage of a New Deal program that provided them with a house and twenty acres of farming land in the Dyess Colony. Cash went to work in the fields with his family at a young age. They all sang as they worked, and the family always had a guitar and a piano. Music was an integral part in the Pentecostal Holiness Church they attended, and Cash was also exposed to the country and western music that played on the radio. In 1937, the colony’s farmland flooded, and with it the Cashes’ farm, an event that later inspired his song “Five Feet High and Rising.” The struggles of his family during the Great Depression colored his songwriting for the rest of his life. In 1944, Cash’s brother Jack died in a tragic sawing accident. After Cash graduated from Dyess High School, he briefly moved to De-
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troit to work in an auto body plant. He soon returned to Arkansas, however, and in 1950 enlisted in the Air Force. He was subsequently stationed in Landsberg, Germany, where he served as a Radio Intercept Operator and formed a small country-western band. Upon his discharge from the military, Cash married Vivien Liberto in 1954 and moved to Memphis in hopes of pursuing a career in music. He sold appliances and studied to become a radio announcer. At night, he played gospel songs with country music guitarist Luther Perkins (1928–1968) and bassist Marshall Grant (1928– ). Perkins and Grant became known as The Tennessee Two. Cash approached Sun Records in hopes of obtaining a recording contract in late 1954. Sun was the label that launched the careers of ELVIS PRESLEY, Roy Orbison (1936–1988), and Carl Perkins (1932–1998), as well as Cash. He auditioned for the label’s founder Sam Phillips (1923–2003), first with gospel songs. Unimpressed at first, Phillips wanted songs with a rougher feel. Early the next year, Cash returned to him with songs more to his liking and got his contract. Having called himself “John” for years, he began to use the stage name “Johnny” at Phillips’s request. Among his first recordings at Sun were “Hey Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry,” both released in 1955. They attained modest success in the country music arena. Cash and the Tennessee Two began to play local Memphis shows and appeared regularly on a fifteen-minute radio show on KWEM. His next record, “Folsom Prison Blues” (1955), rose to the country top five, and his famous song “I Walk the Line” (1955) topped the country charts and entered the top twenty on the pop charts. Not far into his recording career, Cash’s hits consistently appeared on both the country and western and pop charts. Among his most popular early songs are “There You Go,” “Next In Line,” “Home of the Blues,” “Ballad of a Teenage Queen,” and “Guess Things Happen That Way.” By this time, Cash had toured with both Perkins and the now-famous Presley. On De-
cember 4, 1956, Presley dropped in on recording sessions with Cash, Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis (1935– ) after a routine, friendly visit to Phillips, and the four recorded legendary impromptu songs while Phillips left the tapes running that were later released on the CD Million Dollar Quartet (1990). In 1958, Cash left Sun to sign with Columbia. Don Law, who signed him, was his producer for the next decade. The same year, he moved to Ventura, California. He released his first LP for Columbia, The Fabulous Johnny Cash (1958). His 1959 song for Columbia “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” would become one of his biggest hits, and the same year he recorded the LP Hymns by Johnny Cash. With the album, he realized his longtime desire to record gospel songs, which Phillips had discouraged during his Sun years. The years 1959 and 1960 saw a consistent string of hits for Cash, including “I Got Stripes,” “Seasons of My Heart,” and “The Little Drummer Boy.” Cash’s first child, Roseanne Cash, who is now a successful recording artist in her own right, was born in 1955. He and his wife had three more children, but with his marriage plagued with the demands of touring and his increasing addictions to alcohol, amphetamines, and barbiturates, they divorced in 1966. In spite of his drug use, he recorded at a frantic pace and scored such hits as “Ring of Fire” (1963), which not only topped the country charts but landed in the top twenty on the pop charts. June Carter (1929–2003) of the famed country music Carter Family and Merle Kilgore (1934–2005) wrote the song. Two years later, he and Carter married. Their long and happy union was to produce many recordings. The year 1960 saw the release of his first concept album, Ride This Train, which intertwined narrative with music. The following year, the Carter Family toured with Cash, and from 1962 onward they recorded a number of folk, gospel, and country and western hits together. By that time, Cash had moved to
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Greenwich Village in New York, inspiring his folk-influenced Blood, Sweat, & Tears (1963). The same year, his album Ring of Fire (The Best of Johnny Cash) was released. During the mid-1960s, Cash released several concept albums, such as Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian (1964), consisting of songs highlighting the plight of Native Americans written with Peter La Farge (1931–1965). The record included the hit “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.” The double album Ballads of the True West, which featured authentic frontier songs mixed with Cash’s narration, was released the following year. In 1967, he recorded Carryin’ On With Cash & Carter, and the following year, he released The Holy Land, an album of song and narrative of inspirational songs about Israel. While stationed in Germany, Cash had seen director Crane Wilbur’s (1886–1973) film Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951), which had inspired him to write his early hit “Folsom Prison Blues.” Moved with compassion toward the prisoners, he started performing at numerous prisons in the late 1950s. Among these was San Quentin, where future country music legend Merle Haggard (1937– ) was then serving time for robbery. Haggard saw Cash perform at the prison three times during his incarceration. Cash’s prison performances were the basis for two highly successful live albums, At Folsom Prison (1968) and At San Quentin (1969). The first featured a powerful new rendition of his classic “Folsom Prison Blues” and was the Country Music Association’s Album of the Year. The San Quentin album featured the comical, chart-topping hit “A Boy Named Sue,” written by Shel Silverstein (1930–1999), an American writer of many genres best known for his children’s stories. The song tells the story of a boy whose father named him Sue, scarring him for life and instilling in him a vow for revenge. From 1969 to 1971, Cash hosted his own television show, The Johnny Cash Show, on ABC. The Statler Brothers opened up every show for him. Famous musical artists ap-
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peared on the show, such as James Taylor (1948– ), NEIL YOUNG, JONI MITCHELL, and BOB DYLAN, who appeared on the debut episode. Cash also promoted country music star Kris Kristofferson (1936– ), whose career was greatly helped by his songwriting for The Johnny Cash Show. During a live performance of Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’,” Cash caused an uproar when he refused to change lyrics that referenced marijuana. Cash and Dylan became closer friends in the late 1960s when both were neighbors at Woodstock, New York. The two sang the duet “Girl From the North Country” on Dylan’s country-infused Nashville Skyline (1968), for which Cash wrote the Grammy Award-winning liner notes. Cash said of Dylan: “This man can rhyme the tick of time, The edge of pain, the what of sane And comprehend the good in men, the bad in men Can feel the hate of flight, the love of right . . .”
Hello, I’m Johnny Cash, an album titled after the line he usually used to introduce himself at the beginning of his shows, was released in 1970. Shortly thereafter, Cash experienced a spiritual transformation, ceased using drugs, and began attending the small, Nashville-area Evangel Temple. A Thing Called Love (1972) featured background vocals from the Evangel Temple choir. By the early 1970s, the public widely knew Cash as “The Man in Black,” as he often performed all dressed in black and donned a long, black coat. Cash never cared for the Nashville country mainstream, and his dress contrasted sharply with the typical flashy, rhinestone-bedecked outfits and cowboy boots that continue to shape the country music star stereotype to this day. He wrote a song about his choice of dress in 1971 entitled “Man In Black.” Cash’s popularity began to decline in the mid-1970s. He continued to release albums such as Look at Them Beans (1976), Strawberry Cake (1976), I Would Like to See You
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Again (1978), and Johnny Cash—Silver (1979). Although they were not chart-toppers, his albums from this period generally maintained a consistent presence on the country and western top fifty. In 1975, he published his autobiography Man in Black, which sold 1.3 million copies. He published a second autobiography, Cash: The Autobiography, in 1997. Cash befriended the evangelist Billy Graham (1918– ), which led to his production of a movie about Christ entitled Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus (1973). Cash cowrote the screenplay with Larry Murray and narrated the film, and his wife starred as Mary Magdalene. Cash also made many television appearances. Throughout the 1970s, he hosted an annual Christmas special on CBS, and he also appeared in episodes of the television series Columbo and Little House on the Prairie (with June Carter Cash). In 1981, he starred as the illiterate coal miner Jesse Hallam, who must learn to read as an adult, in The Pride of Jesse Hallam. In 1983, he appeared as a heroic sheriff in Murder In Coweta County, a film based on a real-life Georgia murder case that costarred Andy Griffith (1926– ) as his nemesis. He portrayed John Brown in the 1985 Civil War television miniseries North and South and appeared in four episodes of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman between 1993 and 1997. Cash was on friendly terms with every U.S. president beginning with Richard M. Nixon. He was invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972, and he played “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” “Man in Black,” and “What Is Truth?” In 1980, he released Rockabilly Blues, an album recorded in a more experimental vein than he was accustomed to with British musician Nick Lowe (1949– ), who married his stepdaughter Carlene Carter (1955– ). The album produced the single “Without Love.” Cash became the youngest member inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame at age forty-eight in 1980. During the 1980s, his records stayed off of the country charts, but he continued to tour successfully.
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recorded Johnny 99 a BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN-inspired album, in 1983, as well as records with country artists Waylon Jennings (1937–2002), Willie Nelson (1933– ), and Kristofferson as The Highwaymen. They produced two hit albums, Highwayman (1985) and Highwaymen: The Road Goes on Forever (1995). During the 1980s, Cash’s relationship with Columbia deteriorated, and he recorded the self-parody “Chicken in Black” about his brain being transplanted into a chicken. Although it was his greatest commercial success in a while, he parted ways with Columbia soon thereafter. In 1986, Cash returned to Sun to record the album Class of ’55 with Orbison, Perkins, and Lewis. The same year, Cash published his only novel, Man in White, about the New Testament Saul and his conversion to the apostle Paul. He also recorded a New King James Version of Johnny Cash Reads the Complete New Testament in 1990. From 1987 to 1991, Cash recorded with Mercury Records in what was a largely unsuccessful partnership. Johnny Cash Is Coming to Town (1987) was his first record with them, and Water From the Wells of Home (1988) and The Mystery of Life (1991) also belong to his Mercury period. He saw an unexpected return to fame in the 1990s. In 1992, Cash and Carter sang Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” at his Thirtieth Anniversary Concert Celebration at Madison Square Garden, and the song was released on a two-CD recording. He recorded the vocal for the Irish rock band U2’s “The Wanderer” from their album Zooropa (1993). Producer Rick Rubin (1963– ) asked Cash to record with his American Recordings label, producing American Recordings (1994) in his living room accompanied only by his guitar. The album won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. The songs were a mix of covers from contemporary artists—Lowe, Kristofferson, Tom Waits (1949– ) and others—as well as Cash originals. Cash’s songs evinced his deep religious conviction in songs
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such as “Oh, Bury Me Not” and “Redemption,” the latter of which is rife with biblical imagery. In 1996, he released Unchained, in which he was backed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The 1997 soundtrack for Dead Man Walking featured Cash’s song “In Your Mind.” In 1997, Cash’s health began to deteriorate, forcing him to cut back on his touring schedule. In 2000, Columbia/Legacy issued a boxed set of his music entitled Love, God and Murder with liner notes written by June Carter for “Love,” by Bono (1960– ) of U2 for “God,” and by film director Quentin Tarantino (1963– ) for “Murder,” with Cash’s commentary on each. Columbia/Legacy digitally remastered and rereleased many of his earlier recordings. The albums American III: Solitary Man (2000) and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) showcased notably somber songs. Cash’s haunting video for “Hurt,” recorded just a year before his death, showed a weakened and pallid man wondering what he had lived his life for: What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end. And you could have it all, my empire of dirt I will let you down, I will make you hurt.
The video featured a montage of bleak, interspersed images of a tortured then crucified Christ, Cash’s family, his past, a Johnny Cash museum that had closed to the public, and smashed awards for his music. It ends ominously with Cash closing the lid on his piano. When June Carter Cash died of complications following heart valve surgery in 2003, Cash seemed to lose his will to live and died less than four months after she did. One of
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Cash’s final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, entitled American V: A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on July 4, 2006, and the album debuted at number one on Billboard magazine’s top two hundred albums chart. In 1999, Cash received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number thirtyone on its list of the hundred greatest artists of all time. Cash’s other awards are innumerable—he received multiple Country Music Awards, Grammys, and other awards for singing, spoken performances, album and liner notes, and videos, as well as the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996. James Mangold (1963– ) directed Walk the Line, an Academy Award-winning biographical film about Cash’s lifetime starring Joaquin Phoenix (1974– ) as Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon (1976– ) as June Carter Cash (for which she won the 2005 Best Actress Oscar). It was released in the U.S. on November 18, 2005, to considerable commercial success and great critical acclaim. BIBLIOGRAPHY Cash, Johnny, Man in Black, 1975; Cash, Johnny, Cash: The Autobiography, 1997; Fine, Jason, ed., Cash, 2004; Miller, Stephen, Johnny Cash: The Life of an American Icon, 2003; Smith, John L., Another Song to Sing: The Recorded Repertoire of Johnny Cash, 1999; Smith, John L., The Johnny Cash Discography, 1994; Streissguth, Michael, Johnny Cash: The Biography, 2006; Streissguth, Michael, ed., Ring of Fire: The Johnny Cash Reader, 2002; www.johnnycash.com; www.johnnycashonline. com.
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Cavafy, Constantine (April 29, 1863–April 29, 1933) Poet, Essayist rigorous critic of himself and his work, Constantine Cavafy never published his poems commercially during his lifetime and printed only a select number of poems privately to circulate among friends. In spite of this fact, the posthumous publication of his small body of work established him as one the major Greek-language poets of the twentieth century. Cavafy was particularly noted for his intimate style and innovative use of both the ancient and modern Greek vernacular in poetic language. He also contributed essays to various periodicals. Cavafy was born Konstantı´nos Pe´trou Kava´fis into a large Greek family in Alexandria, Egypt, where he spent most of his life. The family business, Cavafy Brothers, took them to Alexandria, but the business eventually failed. His father died when he was 7, and in 1872 his mother moved the family to Liverpool, England. They remained in England until they returned to Egypt in 1879, and this period of time in Britain was significant in Cavafy’s development. Cavafy often spoke English out of preference, and sometimes wrote in English. In 1881, he entered a private school run by A. Papazis. When hostilities erupted in Egypt, the family spent 1882–1885 in Constantinople. Back in Alexandria after that time, Cavafy worked briefly for the Alexandria paper Telegraphos and later at the Egyptian Stock Exchange with one of his brothers. In 1892 he was appointed special clerk at the Irrigation Service (Third Circle) in the Ministry of Public Works, where he worked for three decades. Although his family’s fortunes had declined, he remained well connected through them. Cavafy admired French literature as well as English, and many of his early poems were influenced by the French Symbolists. He translated Charles Baudelaire’s (1821–1867) “Correspondances” and was particularly influ-
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enced by his work. Cavafy’s verse is written in a direct, intimate style and incorporates many colloquialisms. Cavafy wrote in both forms of modern Greek—the first, Katharevousa, still conforms to the usage of ancient Greek, as handed down by the Byzantines, whereas the Demotike is the modern vernacular of Greece. Cavafy’s poetry frequently incorporates Hellenistic and Byzantine imagery ; it reflects his personal despair, which sometimes plunged him into deep depression. His disillusionment with orthodox Christianity and traditional values as well as his frank exploration of his homosexuality, emerge in a number of his poems. Among his better-known poems are “Du¨nya Gu¨zeli” (1884), “The City” (1894), “Waiting for the Barbarians” (1898), and “Hidden Things” (written 1908; published 1963). Although never printed in commercial editions, a number of Cavafy’s poems were published in periodicals during his lifetime. Early poems appeared in Hesperos, a periodical published in Leipzig, Germany, in 1886. Four poems were published in the journal Grammate in 1917, and T. S. ELIOT published “Ithaka” in his Criterion in 1924. He was not well known to the public, but several prominent authors and critics took notice of his work. In 1901 he met the Greek critic Gregory Xenopoulous, who promoted his poetry. In 1915, Cavafy formed a friendship with the British writer E. M. FORSTER, who wrote an essay on him in Athenaeum, a periodical published in London. In his Alexandria Quartet, LAWRENCE DURRELL, who lived in Egypt and on the Greek islands, frequently alludes to Cavafy’s work. Cavafy printed “Walls,” originally written in Greek and translated into English by his brother, in 1897. In 1904 he printed his Booklet, which contained fourteen poems and was
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expanded as Booklet, Poems (1910). Cavafy’s verse first appeared in a commercial edition after his death, just before World War II, and the English translation The Poems of C. P. Cavafy only appeared in 1951. Among his other works are Ars Poetica (1903); the article “The Elgin Marbles” (1891), written in English; and “Genealogy” (1911). He edited the journal Alexandrian Art in 1926. Cavafy was awarded Greece’s Medal of the Phoenix in 1926 and
died seven years later of cancer of the larynx on his seventieth birthday.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Anton, John P., The Poetry and Poetics of Constantine P. Cavafy: Aesthetic Visions of Sensual Reality, 1995; Bien, Peter, Constantine Cavafy, 1964; Evans, Robert Charles, A Critical Introduction to C. P. Cavafy, 1988; Liddell, Robert, Cavafy: A Critical Biography, 1974.
Cela, Camilo Jose ´ (May 11, 1916–January 17, 2002) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Poet, Essayist amilo Jose´ Cela ranks among the prominent novelists of the post–Civil War generation in Spain. With novels such as The Family of Pascual Duarte, he uses a literary style known as tremendismo, whose violent, brutal imagery delivers a strong impact. Cela received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989 “for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man’s vulnerability.” Cela was born Camilo Jose´ Cela y Trulock in the Galician town of Iria Flavia, Spain. His mother was of English origin, and his father, a customs official, of Galician origin. The family moved around Spain frequently in Cela’s youth and eventually settled in Madrid. Cela was a poor student at the numerous Catholic schools he attended. After graduating from the last of them in Madrid, he enrolled at the University of Madrid, where he studied medicine and later law, neither of which appealed to him. Cela began his literary career as a poet; his book of poetry, Treading the Uncertain Light of Day, published in 1936, was significantly influenced by the Chilean poet PABLO NERUDA.
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Cela achieved the rank of corporal in the forces of the Fascist dictator Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, during which he was seriously wounded. He later rejected the Franco dictatorship, and several of Cela’s books were subjected to censorship under Franco’s rule. In 1941, suffering from a severe bout with tuberculosis, Cela recuperated in a sanitarium. During his illnesses he read extensively, particularly classic Spanish authors such as Miguel de Cervantes and Lope de Vega. His first novel, The Family of Pascual Duarte (1942), proved to be his most widely read work. He tells the story in the form of fictional memoirs of its protagonist, Pascual Duarte, and supplementary documents from others. Duarte is a violent criminal whose brutal and unpredictable actions torment his family. After he has murdered two victims, his mother and a pimp who has impregnated his wife, he kills a third and is sentenced to die. Pascual’s motive for killing his third victim, the wealthy Don Jesu´s Gonza´lez de la Riva, is left largely as a matter of speculation. The graphic depiction of Pascual’s crimes is characteristic of tremendismo, a style many crit-
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ics see as originating with Cela. Although the Spanish authorities confiscated copies of the novel after its second publication, it was translated into many languages and well received internationally. In 1943 Cela married Marı´a del Rosario Conde Picavea. The same year also saw the publication of his novel The Sanitarium (Rest Home), inspired by his experiences during his bouts with tuberculosis. Cela spent the next several years working tirelessly on The Hive, published in 1951. The novel is an experimental literary montage featuring 160 characters and unfolding in a broken sequence over three days in Madrid at the close of 1943. Cela’s next novel, Mrs. Caldwell Speaks to Her Son (1953), is also fragmentary in nature. He tells the story in the form of the mad ramblings of an overbearing English mother obsessed with her son, Eliacim, who lost his life in a war. During a visit to Venezuela in 1954, Cela was commissioned to write The Blonde (1955), a novel set in that country. His later novels include San Camilo, 1936 (1969), a work rendered in stream-of-consciousness form and set during the Spanish Civil War; the 1194 episodes that comprise
Requiem of Darkness (1973); Mazurka for Two Dead (1983), set in rural Spain; and Christ Versus Arizona (1988). Cela has also written a number of travel books recounting his journeys through Spain and Latin America. They include Journey to the Alcarria (1948), From the Min˜o to the Bidasoa (1952), Jews, Moors, and Christians (1956), and The Wheel of Idle Moments (1957), relating his journeys through South America. His collections of short stories include The Passing Clouds (1945), The Neat Crime of the Carabiniere and Other Tales (1947), and The Windmill and Other Short Fiction (1956). After moving to Mallorca in 1954, Cela founded the respected literary review Papeles de Son Armadans, published from 1956 to 1979. In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989 “for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man’s vulnerability,” he was admitted to the Royal Spanish Academy in 1957 and received honorary doctorates from several universities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY McPheeters, D. W., Camilo Jose´ Cela, 1969.
Celan, Paul (November 23, 1920–May 1, 1970) Poet, Translator nfluenced by the Surrealists and other French poets, Paul Celan contributed ten volumes of verse to post–World War II German poetry. His poetry is largely concerned with the horrors of the Holocaust and the historical plight of the Jewish people. He was one of the most important poets writing in German to give powerful expression to these themes.
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Celan was born Paul Antschel into a German-speaking Jewish family in Czernowitz, Romania, now Chernovtsy, Ukraine. Upon his graduation from school in 1938, he went to Tours, France, to study medicine. The following year he returned to Romania to study Romance languages and literature. The advent of World War II devastated Celan’s family. Romania allied itself with the Nazis, and Celan’s parents were sent to their deaths in a concen-
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tration camp. Celan was interned in a labor camp but escaped death. After the war ended Celan worked as a translator in Bucharest for several years. In 1948 he moved to Vienna and then to Paris. His first published poems appeared in the Romanian journal Agora in 1947. The following year, a major series of poems appeared in Otto Basil’s periodical Plan. The latter series formed the first cycle of verse in his debut volume of poetry, Der Sand aus den Urnen (1948; The Sand from the Urns). Celan’s early poetry is lyrical, tinged with romanticism, and among the most personal of his largely impersonal verse. The French poets had the strongest influence on his style, which was marked by rich imagery and precise language. Personal notes arise in poems such as “Na¨he der Gra¨ber” (“Nearness of Graves”), which evokes the memory of the mother he lost to the Nazis. Although Celan was not a religious poet, his Jewish heritage and the historical suffering of the Jewish people is the dominant theme in his work. Mohn und Geda¨chtnis (1952; Poppy and Memory) brought Celan fame in postwar West Germany; it consists of four parts entitled “Der Sand aus den Urnen,” “Todesfuge,” “Gegenlicht” (“Counterlight”), and “Halme der Nacht” (“Blades of Night”). “Todesfuge” (“Fugue of Death”), an impassioned evocation of a Nazi concentration camp narrated from the perspective of the victims, remains one of his most popular poems. In 1950 Celan married Gise`le Le-strange, a Frenchwoman to whom he dedicated his next collection of verse, Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (1952). With Von Schwelle zu Schwelle and its
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successor, Sprachgitter (1959), his poetic language grew more sparse and less lyrical. Perhaps more strongly than any of his collections, Die Niemandsrose (1963) expresses his concern with the plight of the Jewish people and his antipathy toward Christianity. He dedicated the volume to OSIP MANDELSTAM, the Russian-Jewish poet and martyr to the Soviet state. Atemwende (1967) backed away somewhat from Jewish themes, and its first cycle of poems appeared earlier as Atemkristall (1965). Celan’s later volumes of verse are Fadensonnen (1968), Todtnauberg (1968), Lichtzwang (1970; Lightforce), and the posthumous collection Schneepart (1971). Celan’s other area of interest was language. He was multilingual and taught languages at the E´cole Normale in Paris. During his lifetime he translated many works from French (including works by JEAN COCTEAU), English, Italian, and Russian. Celan took a keen interest in European literature of both the East and West and often read literary works in the original languages. Celan received the Georg Bu¨chner Prize in 1960 and co-edited the periodical L’Epheme`re beginning in 1968. He drowned in 1970 in what appears to have been a suicide. SpeechGrille and Selected Poems, an English translation of his poetry, appeared in 1971.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Colin, Amy D., Paul Celan: Holograms of Darkness, 1991; Glenn, Jerry, Paul Celan, 1973; Samuels, Clarise, Holocaust Visions: Surrealism and Existentialism in the Poetry of Paul Celan, 1993.
CHAGALL, MARC
Chagall, Marc (July 7, 1887–March 28, 1985) Painter, Graphic Artist, Costume Designer he Russian-born painter Marc Chagall infused the external world with an optimistic sense of the subconscious, and is best known for his use of fantastic elements to create a sense of the joy that lurks in the subconscious, at a time when artists have been more apt to dwell on the darkness. He used a unique style that blended elements of Realism, Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism. Chagall is known not only for his paintings but also for the murals and stainedglass windows he executed in his later life. Chagall was born into a devout Jewish family, in Vitebsk, in what is now Belarus. His father worked in a herring warehouse, while his mother ran a small grocery shop. As a child he attended a Jewish elementary school. Chagall’s upbringing and the Vitebsk environment served as material for his work throughout his career. After attending a public school, Chagall began to study painting with Jehuda Pen, a local portraitist who painted in an academic and traditional style he soon grew to dislike. In 1907 he moved to St. Petersburg and studied with the Russian painter and stage designer LE´ ON BAKST. Chagall’s early paintings often lack the exuberance of his later work. Dark, somber blacks, blues, muted reds, and grays dominate paintings such as Red Nude (1908), and My Fiance´e with Black Gloves (1910), and Bride With a Fan (1911). In 1910 Chagall moved to France and eventually settled in an artist’s colony known as the Beehive. There, surrounded by the widely varied influences of the Fauvists, Impressionists, Postimpressionists, and Cubists, he began to develop his mature painting style. While some of these influences are evident in his paintings, as for example Cubism in Cubist Landscape (1918), Chagall did not ally himself with any school. Instead he began to create his own distinctive style, employing bolder and brighter color
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Marc Chagall ( Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-116611)
schemes, upside-down figures, and floating objects. Typical of this period are the brilliantly colored I and the Village (1911), SelfPortrait with Seven Fingers (1912), and The Burning House (1913). After two joint exhibitions in Paris, Chagall held his first individual showing in Berlin in 1914. He returned to Vitebsk in 1914 and painted a series of local figures and scenes, including The Praying Jew (1914), Jew in Green (1914), and Jew in Red (1914). The following year he married Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of a prosperous merchant whom he had long loved before their marriage. Images of Bella appeared in many of his subsequent paintings, including Bella With a White Collar (1917), Bella in Green (1934) and The Three Candles (1938).
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As an artist, Chagall found the creative climate in Russia after the 1917 revolution increasingly intolerable. He became commissar of art for the Vitebsk area and, unhappy with the political demands that accompanied his position, moved to Moscow in 1919. Between 1919 and 1922 he dedicated much of his time to the stage. He served as art director of the Moscow Jewish State Theater from 1919 to 1922, designed sets and costumes, and painted a series of murals for the Kamereny Theater, including Love on the Stage and Dance. In 1922 Chagall moved to Berlin, where he developed an interest in printmaking, lithography, and wood engraving. In Berlin he completed a series of autobiographical engravings entitled Mein Leben (1922; My Life). The following year he moved his family to Paris and began to achieve his first measure of success. He continued to paint in essentially the same vein as he previously had, treating a variety of subjects in such paintings as The Praying Jew (1923), The Falling Angel (1923–1947), Lovers in the Lilacs (1930), The Circus (1931), Solitude (1933), and The Bride and the Groom of the Eiffel Tower (1938–1940). Chagall also traveled widely through Europe and Palestine. In addition to painting, he began the first of three projects for the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard, a series of 107 plates for an edition of the Russian author Nikolay Gogol’s Dead Souls. Chagall completed another series of prints for an edition of Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables and had begun work on a series of illustrations for the Bible when Vollard passed away. After World War II, another publisher took over the projects and eventually released completed editions of all three. The years of World War II were difficult ones for Chagall, and the sadness he felt comes through in many of his paintings of this period. Fleeing the Nazi occupation of France, he moved his family to the United States, where his wife died from an illness in 1944. In a series of paintings using the crucifixion motif, including White Crucifixion (1938), Martyr (1940), and Descent from the
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Cross (1941), Chagall modified the crucifixion scene to lament the sacrifice of Jewish lives under the Nazis. Bella is also a recurring image in his paintings of this period, including the gloomy, tragic Around Her (1945) and Wedding Candles, two halves of what began as a single painting, and the exuberant The Naked Cloud. By this time Chagall’s work was widely exhibited in the United States and Europe. Before he returned to France in 1948, his work appeared in two major exhibitions in New York and Chicago. After moving back to France, he married Valentina Brodsky. Many of his paintings in the mid-1950s feature scenes in Paris, including Bridges Over the Seine (1954). In 1958, commissioned by the architect Joseph Neufeld and the Women’s Zionist Organization, he began designing a number of stained glass windows that appeared in the Cathedral of Metz and later the synagogue of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center near Jerusalem. The synagogue windows, each of which is dominated by a particular color, depict the biblical blessings given to the twelve patriarchs of the tribes of Israel. Chagall’s hand was employed in decorating several public buildings, including a United Nations window in 1964, the ceiling for the Paris Opera (1964), and the walls for the New York Metropolitan Opera (1966), which featured the murals The Sources of Music and The Triumph of Music. The National Museum of the Marc Chagall Biblical Message, dedicated to the artist’s biblical works, opened in 1973. Andre´ Malraux, the writer and French minister of cultural affairs, commissioned three tapestries on the Creation, the Exodus, and the Entry into Jerusalem. Amidst his other activities Chagall designed scenery and costumes for a number of stage productions in the United States and Europe. These include a 1945 production of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird, a 1958 production of MAURICE RAVEL’S Daphnis et Chloe´ in Paris, and a 1967 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Magic Flute in New York.
CHAGALL, MARC
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Sidney, Marc Chagall: A Biography, 1978; Greenfeld, Howard, Marc Chagall, 1990.
Chaliapin, Feodor (February 13, 1873–April 12, 1938) Singer, Actor eodor Chaliapin rose from poverty to become the most renowned operatic bass of his day. Best known for his defining interpretation of the title part in Boris Godunov, Chaliapin appeared around the world as Ivan the Terrible, Don Quixote, and in many other dramatic singing roles. He also performed in baritone roles. Chaliapin was born Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin into an impoverished family near Kazan, Russia. His father was of peasant background and worked as a clerk in the district town council.
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Feodor Chaliapin (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-37847)
Before his brief schooling, Chaliapin was tutored privately at home. When he refused to attend school any further, his father unsuccessfully tried to place him in a number of trades. Showing no interest or skill in working with his hands, Chaliapin dreamed of singing and acting. As an adolescent he sang in a church choir. In Kazan in 1884, he obtained his first role, a minor part in L’Africaine. In search of better work, the family moved to Astrahkhan. His father vehemently objected to his aspirations, and the exasperated Chaliapin left his family at the age of 17. For the next several years he traveled and supported himself with odd jobs. A job singing in a chorus gave him a minor break, and by 1890 he had risen to the rank of soloist. However, Chaliapin continued to endure economic hardship so severe that it led him to the brink of suicide. His fortunes changed when he met Dimitri Usatov and went to study with him in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia). Usatov took in the emaciated figure, gave him the only formal musical training he ever had, and secured local singing engagements for him. Chaliapin would remain grateful to his teacher for the rest of his life, and he supported Usatov’s widow until she died. In 1895 Chaliapin sang Mephistopholes in Gounoud’s Faust, a role he later repeated many times around the world. He found his first success at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1896. The same year he joined the Mamontov Private Opera Company, where, in contrast to the Mariinsky, he was
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granted considerable freedom to experiment. There he also met his first wife, the Italian ballerina Iola Tornaghi. Once he found himself in comfortable circumstances, Chaliapin began to educate himself in earnest. He immersed himself in literature, drawing, clay modeling, and painting, executing a number of self-portraits. He soon found himself a famous figure, and he took on roles in many languages, including Russian, French, and Italian. His Salieri in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri (1898) was the first of his numerous performances of that role. In 1900 he first worked with the pianistcomposer SERGEI RACHMANINOFF, to whom he remained close for the rest of his life. Among Chaliapin’s notable successes were his performances as Ivan Susanin in Mikhail Glinka’s A Life for the Czar (1901), Philip II in Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos; Ivan the Terrible in Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s Maid of Pskov (1914), the title role in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, the title role in Don Quixote (1910, at the Bolshoi Theatre as well as in a film version in 1933), and the Viking Merchant in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko. He also appeared in Alexander Borodin’s Prince Igor and in Judith and excelled in comic roles, such as Don Basilio in Gioacchino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Leporello in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Chaliapin’s most famous interpretation, however, was the title role in Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, an opera about the life of the sixteenth-century tsar. He first performed the role in 1901, repeated it on numerous occasions over the next four decades, and left the stage with Boris Godunov as his final
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role. A 1921 production at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House proved particularly successful. On stage Chaliapin’s tall, broad-shouldered figure and booming voice made him a commanding figure. Known for his dramatic flair as well as his vocal tone, he was both talented and temperamental. His uncompromising demands for perfection made him difficult for others to work with. Immersing himself in his roles, he carefully thought out the facial expressions and psychological states of his characters. Those who saw Chaliapin perform marveled at the complete transformations his face underwent, helped by his skillfully applied makeup, so that he seemed to fit his part perfectly whether he played a peasant or a prince. Chaliapin performed abroad as early as 1901 (Milan) and appeared in New York in 1907 and in London, at the invitation of SIR THOMAS BEECHAM, in 1913. He left the newly formed Soviet state in 1921 and lived the remainder of his life in Europe. Chaliapin frequently appeared with the Metropolitan Opera Company, the Chicago Civic Opera Company, and his own company. He made hundreds of recordings beginning in 1898 and wrote two autobiographical works, Pages from My Life (1926) and Man and Mask: Forty Years in the Life of a Singer (1932). In 1984 Chaliapin’s remains were moved from Batignolles Cemetery in Paris to the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Borovsky, Victor, Chaliapin: A Critical Biography, 1988.
CHAPLIN, SIR CHARLES SPENCER
Chaplin, Sir Charles Spencer (April 16, 1889–December 25, 1977) Actor, Comedian, Mime he English-born comedic film actor Charlie Chaplin moved to the United States as a young man, when, in Hollywood, he established himself as a master of slapstick comedy that poignantly blended humor, sentimentality, and pathos. Perhaps most famous of all was his invention of his famous character of the Tramp, a uniquely costumed beggar-sophisticate who appeared in many of his more than eighty films. Chaplin was born in Walworth, London. As his parents were both in the entertainment business, he was exposed to singing and acting at a young age. They separated before he turned three, and he and his brother went to live with his mother, actress Lily Harley. She suffered from a throat condition that ended her singing career, and she took odd jobs to support Chaplin and his brother Sydney. After his mother was institutionalized for mental illness more than once and his father
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Charlie Chaplin (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-21143)
died of complications related to alcoholism, Chaplin wound up in an orphanage at the age of seven. He was treated cruelly there but also received a basic education. He would later interject the dismal circumstances of his upbringing into the atmosphere of his acting and filmmaking. Chaplin made his professional debut as a member of a group of youths, “The Eight Lancashire Lads.” When he was fourteen, he appeared in his first major stage role as Billy in a production of Sherlock Holmes. Both Chaplin and his brother began creating slapstick skits for Fred Karno’s Fun Factory. Assisted by Karno (1866–1941), a British impresario and pioneer in slapstick comedy, the brothers began appearing around Europe in music halls. Chaplin was nineteen when he was made principal clown, and he toured the United States from 1910 to 1912. Arthur Stanley Jefferson (1890–1965), later known as Stan Laurel of the famed British comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, was his understudy. Chaplin’s American debut came at the Colonial Theatre in New York City. Chaplin returned briefly to England in 1912 but found himself back in the United States in the following year. Mack Sennett (1880–1960), an innovator in slapstick comedy film nicknamed the “King of Comedy,” had seen Chaplin perform with Karno’s troupe and hired him to perform for his Keystone Film Company. By 1914, Chaplin had delivered his first film performance as a swindler who tries to steal a newspaper reporter’s breaking-news photograph in the slapstick comedy Making a Living. Again working with Sennett, he appeared as Charlie the City Slicker in Tillie’s Punctured Romance the same year. It was at Keystone that Chaplin fashioned his famous character the Tramp, carrying a cane and donning a tight jacket, baggy pants, a derby, oversized shoes, and a short mous-
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tache. The Tramp resembled a cross between a man-about-town sophisticate and a hobo. Public audiences first saw Chaplin as the Tramp in the short comedy Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914). The Tramp again starred in Mabel’s Strange Predicament (1914), and Chaplin made more than two dozen short comedies for Sennett and Keystone starring in various roles that year. In 1915, Chaplin joined Essanay Studios, where he had the opportunity to further hone the studio production skills he had begun to learn at Keystone. The Tramp character also appeared in a company production of the film bearing that title, for which Chaplin himself wrote the screenplay, in 1915.Chaplin starred in and directed more than a dozen short comedies for Essanay. During his time there, he also met the actress Edna Purviance (1895–1958), with whom he became romantically involved. Even after the end of their romance, Purviance starred as the leading lady in many of his films, and they remained on friendly terms. In 1916, Chaplin left Essanay for Lone Star Mutual. His highly successful and influential films from the Lone Star Mutual period are among the most remembered and critically acclaimed comedy films from the early twentieth century. They include The Pawnshop (1916), The Rink (1916), The Immigrant (1917), and The Adventurer (1917). In 1917, Chaplin signed with First National, where he made approximately a dozen films. On the wings of success, Chaplin used his increasing creative freedom to broaden his horizons into longer films such as Shoulder Arms (1918), in which he starred as a boot camp private; the feature-length classic The Kid (1921), in which he again appeared as the Tramp; and The Pilgrim (1923). With Canadian actress Mary Pickford (1892–1979), actor Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1939), and director D. W. Griffith (1875–1948), Chaplin founded the United Artists film distribution company in 1919. His involvement with the company—he served on its board of directors until the 1950s—en-
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sured his independence and control over his creative work, and United Artists distributed his next seven films. A Woman of Paris (1923) kicked off Chaplin’s string of feature-length films for United Artists. The highly successful The Gold Rush (1925) and The Circus (1928), for which he sang the title music, followed. Although he didn’t win a competitive Academy Award for the film, the Academy bestowed upon him an honorary award, noting, “The Academy Board of Judges on merit awards for individual achievements in motion picture arts during the year ending August 1, 1928, unanimously decided that your name should be removed from the competitive classes, and that a special first award be conferred upon you for writing, acting, directing and producing The Circus. The collective accomplishments thus displayed place you in a class by yourself.” Chaplin, accustomed to silent films, eventually joined the sound film era after the silentsound hybrids City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936), a satire of the mechanization and dehumanization of modern society. Although the films showcased no human dialog, Chaplin enhanced them with sound effects and music. With The Great Dictator (1940), Chaplin finally moved into the sound-dialog era. In the film, Chaplin delivered unflattering portrayals of the Fascist dictators Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) in the characters of Adenoid Hynkel and Benzini Napaloni, as well as drew attention to the Nazi persecution of Jews through his portrayal of a Jewish barber who falls victim to Nazi persecution. He costarred in the film with actress Paulette Goddard (1910–1990), who depicted a woman in the Jewish ghetto. Its release predated the United States’ entry into the war and stirred controversy among isolationists who wished to remain out of the brewing conflict. Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a postwar anticapitalist black comedy that spoofed bourgeois society, sparked protest in many U.S. cities. Limelight (1952), which he choreo-
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graphed, was semiautobiographical and his last American-made film. Costarring with the British actress Claire Bloom (1931– ), Chaplin portrayed a declining comedian who helps a depressed ballerina. The film also features his well-known stage appearance with fellow comic Buster Keaton (1895–1966). That same year, Chaplin went to England for what he intended as a visit. However, when he discovered that efforts were underway to prevent his re-entry into the United States, and that upon his return he would face hostility from the political hysteria surrounding the anticommunist investigations of the era, he settled instead in Vevey, Switzerland. Chaplin directed two final films abroad. With A King in New York (1957), a Europeanmade film, he starred in, wrote, directed, and produced a film that satirized political persecution in the U.S. A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), a commercial failure, was his final film and starred the Italian actress Sophia Loren (1934– ) and MARLON BRANDO. Chaplin also composed and sang a number of successful songs to accompany his films. His score from Limelight was nominated for an Academy Award in 1972, two decades after the film’s release. Chaplin’s off-screen life was often tumultuous due to both his leftist political opinions and his penchant for younger women that led to more than one messy divorce. His tempestuous relationship with Polish actress Pola Negri (1897–1987) in 1922 and 1923 turned into a highly publicized personal nightmare for Chaplin. His marriage to actress Lita Grey (1908–1995) ended in a bitter and financially draining divorce. Perhaps most nerve-wracking of all, however, was his brief relationship in 1942 with actress Joan Berry, who began harassing him and brought a successful paternity suit against him (even though inadmissible blood tests proved he was not the father of her child). The courts not only forced him to pay for the child’s support but unsuccess-
fully attempted to prosecute him under the Mann Act of 1910. In 1943, he married Oona O’Neill, who was thirty-six years his junior and was the daughter of playwright EUGENE O’NEILL. The elder O’Neill thoroughly disapproved of the marriage, but it proved to be Chaplin’s longest and happiest. The couple had eight children and remained married until his death. My Autobiography, Chaplain’s memoirs, was published in 1964. In 1972, Chaplin returned to the United States to accept an Honorary Academy Award “for the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.” The same year, he won an Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score for Limelight (1952). Queen Elizabeth II knighted Chaplin when he was eighty-five. Chaplin suffered a serious decline in health in the 1970s, in spite of which he managed to write original music compositions and scores for his early silent pictures and re-release them. He died in his sleep on Christmas Day in 1977 and was buried in Switzerland.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Asplund, Uno, Chaplin’s Films: A Filmography, 1973; Bessy, Maurice, Charlie Chaplin, 1985; British Film Institute, Chaplin: The Dictator and the Tramp, 2004; Chaplin, Charlie, My Autobiography, 1964; Gehring, Wes D., Charlie Chaplin’s World of Comedy, 1988; Gifford, Denis, Chaplin, 1974; Kamin, Dan, Charlie Chaplin’s One-Man Show, 1984; Kimber, John, The Art of Charlie Chaplin, 2000; Lynn, Kenneth Schuyler, Charlie Chaplin and His Times, 1997; Manvell, Roger, Chaplin, 1974; McCabe, John, Charlie Chaplin, 1978; Robinson, David, Chaplin: His Life and Art, 1985; Robinson, David, Charlie Chaplin: Comic Genius, 1996; Smith, Julian, Chaplin, 1984; Vance, Jeffrey, Charlie Chaplin: A Genius of the Cinema, 2003; www.charliechaplin.com.
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Chesterton, G. K. (May 29, 1874–June 14, 1936) Novelist, Poet, Critic, Essayist, Editor ilbert Keith Chesterton, known for his jovial temperament, conservative outlook, and clever writing, wrote more than a hundred books in his lifetime. He is perhaps best known for his novels The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) and The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) as well as his series of detective stories featuring Father Brown. His other work includes poetry, biographies, short stories, essays, and theological works. Chesterton was born at Campden Hill, London, attended St. Paul’s School from 1887 to 1892, and later studied art at the Slade School in London. He studied English literature at University College in London. His literary career began there when he met Ernest Hodder Williams, the future governing director of the publishing house Hodder and Stoughton. He began to write reviews for its monthly periodical Bookman. In 1901 he married Frances Blogg. Although he began as a political and
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philosophical liberal, his ideology soon grew more conservative. With HILAIRE BELLOC he edited a conservative weekly journal, and he contributed voluminous essays to his own magazine, G.K.’s Weekly, and The Illustrated London News. The essays covered a wide range of subject matter, including religion, politics, literary criticism, society, and philosophy. Chesterton opposed both the large concentrations of power and wealth of corporate capitalism and the forced communalization of socialism. Instead, he believed land, society, and enterprise were best divided into small, privately owned segments, a philosophy dubbed “distributivism.” In 1922 he converted to Catholicism, and he remained a devout Roman Catholic for the rest of his life. Both his political and religious beliefs influenced his fiction. The novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) looks forward to the end of the twentieth century, when the nations of the world have amalgamated into a few large and peaceful empires. When the new king, Auberon Quin, is appointed, he orders the restoration of medieval customs around London as a joke. The matter is no joke to Adam Wayne, who eventually starts a successful civil war and inspires a rebirth of localized patriotism. The story ends on an optimistic note as society begins to redivide itself into smaller segments. The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) was an allegorical response to the pessimistic generation prior to World War I. Syme, a poet and secret police agent, infiltrates a circle of anarchists. As it turns out, all six of the others on its inner council are police agents. Each of them is named for a day of the week (Syme is Thursday). Their leader is the powerful Sunday, who is only revealed to be a fellow agent after the others unite in pursuit of him. The story reflects Chesterton’s belief that things
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are not as bad as they seem and ultimately work toward a good purpose. In Manalive (1912), Chesterton emphasizes the extraordinary nature of life, even in its ordinary things. The main character, Innocent Smith, proves to himself and others the worth of life, his house, and his wife. When he offers to end the lives of some of his negatively disposed friends, he shoots a hole through their hats instead, which he finds quickly restores their appreciation for their own lives. Chesterton’s other fiction includes The Club of Queer Trades (1905), a collection of short stories, How I Found Superman (1909), and above all the Father Brown stories. The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) was the first volume in a series of popular detective stories about a priest-sleuth. Chesterton’s poetry, including The Ballad of the White Horse, reflects the same philosophical themes that appear in his novels and essays. Although his
views often spurred controversy, the clever, witty style of delivery that pervades all of his literary output rendered his work more palatable to critics than that of Belloc. Chesterton wrote works of literary criticism on Robert Browning (1903), Charles Dickens (1906), his friend and contemporary GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1909), William Blake (1910), and Robert Louis Stevenson (1927). His religious works include Orthodoxy (1909), St. Francis of Assisi (1923), The Everlasting Man (1925), The Catholic Church and Conversion (1926), and St. Thomas Aquinas (1933).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Chesterton, G. K., The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton, 1936; Evans, Maurice, G. K. Chesterton, 1938; Pearce, Joseph Chilton, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton, 1996.
Chevalier, Maurice (September 12, 1888–January 1, 1972) Actor, Singer aurice Chevalier charmed millions of moviegoers and theatergoers around the world with his French accent, popular songs, tilted hat, polish in light comedy, and his ability to convey zest for life, even in old age. Chevalier’s dozens of films made in France, England, and Hollywood made him an international sensation, and he continued to draw crowds performing on stage throughout his life. Chevalier was born in a Paris slum. His father, an alcoholic house painter, erupted in violent tirades when he drank and eventually left the family. Chevalier saw him only once afterward. The elder Chevalier’s departure left his mother nearly destitute with three sons. Chevalier attended a charity school un-
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til he was 10, when he obtained the first in a series of odd jobs to help support his mother. At the age of 12, he started to sing in Paris cafe´s. Chevalier’s career rose steadily over the next several years. By the age of 16, he had achieved a measure of popularity singing in the music hall scene. Chevalier continued to sing in music halls and operettas in Paris and London over the next several years. Having postponed his mandatory military service, he enlisted in 1913 and eventually fought in World War I. While recovering from wounds he began to learn English, which served him well in his Hollywood career. In the meantime, Chevalier had begun making silent films. Trop Cre´dule, his first, ap-
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Maurice Chevalier (쑖 Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
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peared in 1908. Before 1924, he appeared in a dozen silent films, with the later ones all directed by Henri Diamant-Berger. Chevalier first sang “Valentine” (written by Albert Willmetz and Henri Christine´), one of his many popular songs, at the Casino de Paris in 1925. Three years later, he starred in his first sound film, Bonjour New York! Chevalier’s successful Hollywood career began with the comedy The Innocents of Paris (1929), in which he stars as the junk dealer Maurice Marney, who abandons his stage career for a woman. In The Love Parade (1930), Chevalier starred as Count Alfred opposite Jeanette MacDonald’s Queen Louise. The count marries the queen, resents her ill treatment of him, and succeeds in curing her of her callousness. Both of these films grew into international hits. The first phase of Chevalier’s Hollywood career continued until his return to Europe in 1935. Among the films in which he starred during that phase are Playboy of Paris (1930), based on a Tristan Bernard comedy; The Smiling Lieutenant (1931); One Hour With You (1932); Love Me Tonight (1932); Bedtime Story (1933), in which he acted the part of the romantic Vicomte de St. Denis, who finds an infant in his car; and The Merry Widow (1934). The Beloved Vagabond (1936), based on a novel by W. J. Locke, was produced in England. RENE´ CLAIR directed Break the News (1938), in which Chevalier starred as Franc¸ois Verrier, one of two men in show business who orchestrate a publicity stunt. Verrier’s colleague, Teddy (Jack Buchanan), is allegedly murdered. Political events in the country where he is hiding prevent him from returning
before Verrier is convicted of his murder. Clair also directed Le silence est d’or (1945; Silence is Golden), in which Chevalier plays a film director who is attracted to the same young girl as his actor-prote´ge´. During World War II, Chevalier’s appeal declined. The Germans occupied France, and Chevalier was accused of collaborating with them, charges of which he was later cleared. Following the war, he toured North America with the popular one-man shows he continued performing around the world for two decades. Chevalier returned to Hollywood in 1957, singing the title song in The Happy Road (1957). In Love in the Afternoon (1957), he played the father of Ariane Chavasse (Audrey Hepburn). In this and other later films, he played father figures and other roles of older men. These include Gigi (1958); Can-Can (1960), with FRANK SINATRA; Fanny (1961); Jessica (1962); and Monkeys, Go Home (1967), as Father Sylvain in a story about an American who inherits an olive farm in France. Chevalier sang the title song for The Aristocats (1970). In 1958, Chevalier received an Academy Award for his contributions to the field of entertainment. He published several autobiographical volumes: Man in the Straw Hat (1946), With Love (1960), I Remember it Well (1970), and My Paris (1972).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Behr, Edward, Thank Heaven for Little Girls: The True Story of Maurice Chevalier’s Life and Times, 1993; Harding, James, Maurice Chevalier: His Life 1888–1972, 1982.
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Chillida, Eduardo (January 10, 1924–August 19, 2002) Sculptor, Graphic Artist, Illustrator nown for their massive, abstract forms in granite, iron, steel, and concrete, the sculptures of the Spanishborn Eduardo Chillida Juantegui explore relationships between interior and exterior space. His works stand in public places and buildings around the world. Chillida is also an accomplished graphic artist. Chillida is of Basque ancestry, born in San Sebastia´n, Spain. His mother was a soprano. In 1930 he entered a secondary school that emphasized classical studies in the curriculum, and in his youth he was a goalkeeper at the San Sebastia´n football club. From 1943 to 1946 he studied architecture at the University of Madrid, and the following year he studied drawing at a private school in Madrid. Chillida experimented with clay and plaster in his earliest sculptures, such as the plaster Forma (1949), a headless female figure. In 1950 he married Pili de Belzunce, and the following year he created his first major iron sculpture, Ilarik, an abstract work with intersecting geometric forms. About this time he began to work primarily with iron. Chillida’s first one-man show came in 1954 at the Clan Gallery in Madrid. The same year he created the first in a long series of sculptures entitled Yunque de suen˜os (1954–1966; Anvil of Dreams), many of which consisted of wood bases and iron anvils, and won an award for his work at the Triennale in Milan. The year 1954 also brought an important commission for four iron doors for the Basilica of Aranzazu, and the following year the city of San Sebastian commissioned a stone sculpture of Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin. The iron Elogio del aire (In Praise of Air, 1956) is one of several small works composed of thin, pointed forms. An exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1958 secured Chillida’s international reputation as a sculptor. The series of large sculp-
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tures entitled Abesti Gogora, begun in 1959, marked the beginning of his serious use of wood as a medium. In Rumor de lı´mites IV (1959; Rumor of Limits), part of a series of seven sculptures rendered in iron and steel, Chillida first began to use steel. Elogio de la luz (1965; In Praise of Light) is another significant early work. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Chillida finished several major steel sculptures, including Comb of the Wind IV (1969) and Alrededor del Vacı´o (1970; Around the Void), the latter of which was placed at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. In 1973 he began to use terra cotta, and he also executed massive abstract sculptures in concrete such as Lugar de Encuentros III. The House of Johann Sebastian Bach (1981), The House of Hokusai (1981), and The House of Goethe (1981) are among his imaginative re-creations of artists’ homes. Chillida has often used granite in his later sculptures. Aside from his work in sculpture, Chillida has also illustrated numerous books. His woodcuts for JORGE GUILLE´ N’s Ma´s Alla´ won the Diano Marina Prize in Milan 1974. He illustrated Max Hoelzer’s book Meditation in Kastilien (1968) and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s Die Kunst und der Raum (1969; Art and Space). Chillida won an award for his etchings Euzkadi IV at the Tenth Biennale of Graphic Arts in Tokyo in 1976. His other works include his large memorial Homage to Jorge Guille´n (1982); Elogio de agua (1987; In Praise of Water), for the Parque de la Creueta del Coll in Barcelona; Lo profundio es el aire (1988); Gravitations (1988); the massive steel sculpture De Musica (1989); and Elogio del horizonte (1990).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Carandente, Giovanni, Eduardo Chillida, 1999; Carandente, Giovanni, Eduardo Chillida,
Open-Air Sculptures, 2002, Chillida, Eduardo, Chillida, 1990; Selz, Peter Howard, Chillida, 1986.
Chirico, Giorgio de (July 10, 1888–November 19, 1978) Painter, Sculptor ith GIORGIO MORANDI and the Italian Futurist Carlo Carra`, Giorgio de Chirico established the pittura metafisica style of painting in Italy. Characterized by their dark, brooding atmospheres, bizarre juxtapositions of places and objects, and faceless human forms, his paintings significantly influenced the development of Surrealism in France. In the 1930s Chirico renounced his earlier work and turned to a more academic style of painting. Chirico was born into an Italian family living in Vo´los, Greece, where his father worked as a railroad engineer. At a young age he began to take drawing lessons, and when his family moved to Athens in 1899 he studied drawing at the Polytechnic and painting with a portraitist. After his father died, the family returned to Italy in 1905. Chirico began painting five years later, producing a series of landscapes, such as his Enigma series, that evoke the fantastic, allegorical work of the Swiss painter Arnold Bo¨cklin (1827–1901). In 1911 Chirico settled in Paris, where he formed friendships with PABLO PICASSO, the French Symbolist poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), and other figures of the Paris avant-garde. A Self Portrait (1912–1913) from this period shows a left profile of the artist’s somber, serious face against a bright green background. In paintings such as The Soothsayer’s Recompense (1913), The Uncertainty of the Poet (1913), The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914), and Metaphysical Composition (1914), Chirico created bleak ci-
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Giorgio de Chirico (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42530)
tyscapes and placed unusual combinations of objects against backgrounds of darkness and mystery. In his compelling Metaphysical Composition, for example, an egg casts a shadow over a long, gray surface, on which sit human feet and other objects. Two red smokestack-like figures rise in the background. After being conscripted into the army, Chirico found himself in Ferrara in 1915. With
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Carra` he founded the magazine Pittura Metafisica in 1920. The dreamlike paintings of his output from 1915 to the end of the 1920s include The Seer (1915), Grand Metaphysical Interior (1917), The Lovers (1925), and The Poet and His Muse (1925). The latter depicts two faceless figures, the gloomy poet dressed in white, slouched in a chair, and receiving consolation from the muse. Chirico broke with the Surrealists in 1926 but continued to associate with the Paris avant-garde. In 1928 JEAN COCTEAU examined his work in Le Myste`re Laic, and the following year he contributed scenery and costume designs to a production by SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes. His paintings from the late 1920s include Furniture in a Valley (1927), which places a roofless interior in an outdoor setting. In 1930 he met his second wife, Isabella Pakszwer, with whom he returned to Italy. In the 1930s Chirico turned to more classical sources for his inspiration and began to paint in an academic style, becoming an avowed antimodernist. Horses of the Hellespont (1936), a fiery picture of two horses un-
der a brilliantly lit sky, conveys an almost apocalyptic tone. Chirico also created a series of nude male warriors, a Mysterious Baths series, portraits, and covers and illustrations for Vogue. He spent much of 1936–1937 in New York and often used the city as a backdrop for his paintings, for example, The Mystery of Manhattan (1973) and Metaphysical Vision of New York (1975). In the 1940s and 1950s, numerous arguments and scandals arose over forgeries of Chirico’s work. In his work from the 1960s and 1970s, he sometimes returned to the metaphysical subjects of his early paintings. His other works include the autobiographical Hebdomeros (1929), a series of lithographs for an edition of Apollinaire’s Calligrammes (1930), bronze sculptures, and scenery design.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Braun, Emily, ed., Giorgio de Chirico and America, 1996; Soby, James Thrall, The Early De Chirico, 1969; Glenbow Museum, Four Modern Masters: De Chirico, Ernst, Magritte, and Miro´, 1981.
Christie, Agatha (September 15, 1890–January 12, 1976) Novelist, Playwright, Short-Story Writer he investigative sleuth Hercule Poirot, one of the most famous detectives in modern fiction, was the creation of the British mystery writer Agatha Christie. Christie’s bestselling mysteries made her one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century. Christie also wrote popular plays such as The Mousetrap and romance novels. Christie was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller into a well-to-do family in Torquay, De-
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von, England. She grew up in a house her mother purchased in Ashfield, and her childhood and family life was generally happy. As a young girl she never attended a formal school, but was tutored by her mother, to whom she grew particularly close. She wrote her first stories on her mother’s suggestion. Agatha was shy, private, and reserved, traits that characterized her for the rest of her life. Early in her life she considered becoming a professional singer and took music lessons in
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Paris. In 1914 she married Colonel Archibald Christie, and she served as a nurse in Torquay during World War I while her husband fought. Christie’s wartime medical experience provided her with a thorough knowledge of poisons, often used as the murder weapon in her mysteries. Acting in part on a challenge from her older sister, in 1916 Christie began the first in a long series of engaging mystery novels rife with plot twists and surprises. That first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), concerns the murder of a wealthy woman. The eccentric Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, who appeared in so many of her subsequent stories, made his first appearance in this book. Christie introduced the second of her two most popular detectives, Miss Jane Marple, in Murder at the Vicarage (1930). The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) was the first of her mysteries to become famous. The same year she generated a real-life mystery of her own. When her husband asked her
Agatha Christie (쑖 John Hedgecoe / Topham / The Image Works)
for a divorce, she disappeared for ten days, the circumstances of which remain a mystery. They officially divorced in 1928, and her second marriage to Sir Max Mallowan two years later proved to be a much happier one. Christie and Mallowan, an archaeologist, traveled to the Middle East on archaeological expeditions. Their excursions to Syria and Iraq provided the material for some of her mysteries, such as Murder in Mesopotamia (1930) and Appointment with Death (1938). Among her numerous other mysteries are The Seven Dials Mystery (1929); A Murder is Announced (1950); and At Bertram’s Motel (1965). Poirot dies in Curtain (1975). Christie also wrote a number of plays. They include her enormously popular The Mousetrap (1952), one of the longest running plays in history; Witness for the Prosecution (1953), made into a film in 1958; Murder on the Orient Express (1934), a film version of which was released in 1978; Death on the Nile (1937), produced as a film in 1978; Ten Little Indians (1939); and And Then There Were None (1940). Among Christie’s other works are six romance novels using the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, including Absent in the Spring (1944), Unfinished Portrait (1934), and The Burden (1956); the short stories collected in The Thirteen Problems (1932), The Hound of Death and Other Stories (1933), The Listerdale Mystery and Other Stories (1934), and Poirot and the Regatta Mystery (1943); and finally the posthumously published Autobiography (1977). She was created Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1971.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Christie, Agatha, An Autobiography, 1977; Gill, Gillian, Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries, 1990; Morgan, Janet P., Agatha Christie: A Biography, 1985; Osborne, Charles, The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, 1982; Robyns, Gwen, The Mystery of Agatha Christie, 1978; Sanders, Dennis, The Agatha Christie
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Companion: The Complete Guide to Agatha Christie’s Life and Work
Clair, Rene ´ (November 11, 1898–March 15, 1981) Director, Novelist ene´ Clair established his directing career among the Parisian avant-garde during the 1920s. After initially opposing the introduction of sound into the cinema, he experimented with the interaction of imagery and sound in several films during the 1930s. Clair spent the World War II years working in Hollywood but was less successful after his return to France. Clair was born Rene´ Chomette in Paris and grew up in the city’s market quarter. He served with the French ambulance corps in 1917–1918 and later worked as a journalist for
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L’intransige´ant. Clair first entered the cinema as an actor in 1920, appearing in Le lys de la vie. Over the next several years he wrote film criticism for The´aˆtre et Comoedia Illustre´s, continued to act in films, and began to work as an assistant director in Carillon de minuit and other films. Clair first adopted his pseudonym for the screen in 1921. In 1924 Clair directed his first film, Paris qui dort (1923; The Crazy Ray; literally, Paris Who Sleeps). Set in Paris, the story concerns a night watchman who finds Paris frozen in its tracks. He meets a group of still animate visitors and with them discovers the cause of the sudden paralysis—a scientist with a motionstopping ray. With the help of his niece, they convince the scientist to undo the paralysis. Clair’s second film, Entr’acte (1924), was made to accompany a ballet by ERIK SATIE. Satie and several Dadaist painters appeared in the film. At this time Clair’s film technique belonged to the avant-garde and was influenced by the Surrealists and Dadaists. Entr’acte is a surrealistic film laced with montage sequences. Le fantoˆme du Moulin Rouge (The Phantom of the Red Mill) appeared in 1924, followed the next year by Le voyage imaginaire (The Imaginary Voyage). Protagonist Jean is a weak and timid figure in love with Lucie, who works in his office. Le voyage imaginaire is one of Clair’s most surrealistic films and contains an intricate dream sequence that reveals Jean’s inner world. La proie du vent (1926; The Prey of the Wind) marked the first of several films for which Lazare Meerson served as art director.
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La tour (1928), a brief film about the Eiffel Tower, was followed by Les deux timides (1928; The Two Timid Souls), the most visually innovative of his silent films. Clair employed flashbacks; jump cuts, split screen, and many other techniques to relate the story of a man in trouble with the law for beating his wife. Un chapeau de paille d’Italie (1927; The Italian Straw Hat), based on a farce by Euge`ne Labiche, satirizes middle-class hypocrisies; in it, Clair began to move toward a more conventional approach to filmmaking. Clair at first disliked the introduction of sound into film, believing sound detracted from “the world of dreams over which the silent cinema reigned.” Sous les toits de Paris (1930; Under Paris Rooftops), his first sound film, concerns a song-seller named Albert who falls in love with Pola. With this film and ` nous la liberte´! with Le million (1931) and A (1931; For Us, Liberty), he began experimenting with the place of sound in his work. After the release of Quatorze juillet (1933; July Fourteenth), Clair traveled to England to film his international success The Ghost Goes West (1935). Break the News, starring M AURICE CHEVALIER, followed in 1937. Clair was working on Air pur when Germany invaded France and never finished the project. He fled France with his family, eventually settling in the United States. During the war he worked in Hollywood. After the unsuccessful film The Flame of New Orleans (1940), Clair finished his most popular Hollywood film, I Married a Witch (1942). The story begins during the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century, with a curse pronounced by a witch burned at the stake. The witch, Jennifer, curses the descendants of her leading accuser, Wooley. And indeed, poor relationships plague Wooley’s descendants. In 1940, a lightning strike releases Jennifer’s spirit, after which she seduces Wallace Wooley. After a series of twists and turns, they are happily married. It Happened Tomorrow (1944) and And Then There Were
None (1945), adapted from an AGATHA CHRISTIE story, finished his Hollywood films. Clair returned to Paris in 1946 and completed Le silence est d’or (1947; Man About Town; literally, Silence is Golden), again starring Chevalier. Chevalier plays a film director who takes in a friend’s daughter. Both the director and his prote´ge´, Jacques, fall in love with her, but she returns affection only to Jacques. The story ends with the director accepting their love. Among Clair’s later films are La beaute´ du diable (1949; Beauty and the Devil), adapted from the Faust story; Les belles-de-nuit (1952); Les Grandes Manoeuvres (1955), his first color film; Porte de Lilas (1957; Gates of Paris); Tout l’or du monde (1961); Les feˆtes galantes (1965; Courtly Affairs). He also wrote several novels: Adams (1926; Star Turn), De fil en aiguille (1941), and La princesse de Chine (1951). Clair’s other efforts include the radio production Une larme du diable (1951; literally, “a tear of the devil”), the stage production On ne badine pas avec l’amour (1959; literally, “one does not jest with the devil”), and in 1972 Glu¨ck’s opera Orpheus for the Paris Opera. Clair received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University (1956) and was elected to the French Academy in 1960. His Reflections on the Cinema was published in 1953. His films often unfold in Paris and are characterized by his unique blend of humor and fantasy, explorations of the dynamics of relationships, and his own scenarios. Although some critics fault his style for superficiality, he infused his films with a distinctive charm that rendered him one of the leading filmmakers of his time. Although he was considered a leader in the avant-garde in the silent film era, Clair’s reputation as a filmmaker declined after World War II.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dale, R. C., The Films of Rene´ Clair, 1986; McGerr, Celia, Rene´ Clair, 1980.
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Clark, John Pepper (April 6, 1935– ) Poet, Playwright, Critic, Translator, Teacher, Editor he Nigerian poet and playwright John Pepper Clark is best known for his lyrical verse and poetic dramas rooted in Nigerian culture and tradition. Clark was one of the first West African poets to be published in English and helped make the traditional Niger Delta Ozidi Saga known to the Englishspeaking world. He has also used the name J. P. Clark-Bekederemo. Clark was born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria. As a boy he attended several schools and was fond of reading. Upon his completion of secondary school, Clark enrolled at the University of Ibadan, where he edited the journal Beacon and helped found the poetry periodical The Horn. Many of his earliest poems appeared in these publications. He graduated with an English degree in 1960 and subsequently went to work for the newly formed independent Nigerian government. He wrote editorials and features for the Daily Express in Lagos, where he worked from 1961 to 1962. His first book of poetry, Poems, appeared in 1961, as did the play Song of a Goat, a oneact verse tragedy about a wealthy man, Zifa, who is sexually impotent and has defied the gods. Zifa’s wife’s affair with his brother leads to her pregnancy, and an angry Zifa hastily and improperly prepares a ritual goat sacrifice. The incident leads to the suicides of both men. Like most of Clark’s work, the play incorporates many Nigerian, and specifically Ijo, customs, beliefs, and traditions. In 1962 and 1963 Clark went to Princeton University as a Parvin Fellow. His year overseas inspired America, Their America (1964), a biting narrative indictment of the United States, its people and culture, and Princeton University. Clark also wrote two plays while he was in the United States. The first, The Masquerade (1964), can be seen as a sequel to Song of a Goat. In The Masquerade, Clark implies that Tufa is the illegitimate son of Zifa’s
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wife. Titi is the daughter of the main character, Diribi, and is engaged to Tufa. When questions about Tufa’s background arise, Diribi opposes the marriage, murders his daughter, and later kills Tufa. The Raft (1964) is often considered Clark’s best play. The simple story is a metaphor for Clark’s bleak perception of the human condition: four men drift on a raft on the Niger River, and all eventually meet death in one way or another. Clark returned to Nigeria in 1963, when he embarked on research into Ijo history and tradition at the Institute of African Studies. The subject of his inquiries was the story of Ozidi (or Azudu), a traditional Niger Delta epic about a heroic son schooled by his grandmother, who has supernatural powers, to avenge his father’s murder. Clark collected several versions of the Ozidi Saga, translated one of them into English, and used the epic as the basis for subsequent works. Among them are his play The Ozidi (1966) and his film Tides of the Delta (with Francis Speed), which depicts a performance of the saga. Clark has published several other collections of poetry. A Reed in the Tide (1965) consists of verse published previously as well as new poetry. Many of its poems are shaped by the crises leading up to the civil war in Nigeria in 1966. The verse in Casualties: Poems 1966–1968 (1970) is largely inspired by the Nigerian civil war. Aside from Nigeria’s political scene and native culture, Clark addresses erotic themes in his poetry and laments the adverse effects of European colonialism in poems such as “Ivbie: A Song of Wrong.” His other volumes of verse include A Decade of Tongues (1981) and State of the Union (1981). Beginning in 1964, Clark taught English at the University of Lagos. He married Ebun Odutola the same year, and with her he founded the PEC Repertory Theater in Lagos in 1982. Clark also served as coeditor of the
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literary periodical Black Orpheus. His other works include the essay collection The Example of Shakespeare (1970) and the prose play The Boat (1981). Although Clark has officially retired, he continues to maintain an active presence in the literary world. In 1991 he received the Nigerian National Merit Award for literary excellence. Howard University published both
The Ozidi Saga and Collected Plays and Poems 1958-1988 the same year.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Alston, J. Baxter, The Plays of J.P. Clark, 1974; Banham, Martin, John Pepper Clark, Three Plays: A Critical View, 1985; Egudu, Romanus N., Four Modern West African Poets, 1977; Wren, Robert M., J. P. Clark, 1984.
Cocteau, Jean (July 5, 1889–October 11, 1963) Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Director, Painter
From l. to r. Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Olga Picasso (쑖 Lebrecht/The Image Works)
he versatile French avant-garde artist Jean Cocteau began his career as a poet in his teens and became a prolific creator in a wide variety of art forms, including novels, poetry, plays, surrealistic films, and paintings, and in all of these areas
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he was a major figure in the French avantgarde. Cocteau always insisted that poetry formed the basis for all of his art. Cocteau was born into a wealthy family of lawyers in Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, the city in which he spent the majority of his life. His father, a broker and amateur painter,
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committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. His mother, Euge´nie Lecomte, came from a wealthy background, and both parents took an interest in the arts. At the Petit Condorcet and later the Lyce´e Condorcet, Cocteau was a poor student and often played the role of class clown. His formal schooling ended when he dropped out at age 16. In 1908, the actor E´douard de Max sponsored a reading of Cocteau’s poetry, thus launching his career in the arts. His first collection of poetry, La lampe d’Aladin (Aladdin’s Lamp), was published when he was 19, and established his reputation as a writer. The following year he met the impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV, then in Paris with his Ballets Russes. Diaghilev’s famous challenge to Cocteau, “Astonish me,” resulted in the ballet The Blue God, which premiered in 1912 but proved a commercial failure. VASLAV NIJINSKY danced the lead role in a London production the following year. Cocteau supplied the scenario for Diaghilev’s ballet Parade (1917), accompanied with music by ERIK SATIE and a set designed by Cocteau’s friend PABLO PICASSO; it was more successful. In 1920 he created the scenario for Diaghilev’s Le boueuf sur le toit (1920; The Nothing-Doing Bar), while DARIUS MILHAUD supplied the musical score. His first book, Le Potomak (1912), is a prose fantasy and began as a tale Cocteau invented to entertain a child. Among Cocteau’s novels is Thomas the Imposter (1923), which reflects his experiences as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross during World War I. The hastily written Les enfants terribles (1929; Children of the Game) is Cocteau’s most widely read novel. The story centers on the brother and sister Paul and Elizabeth, whose father has deserted the family. Cocteau’s war experience also contributed to The Cape of Good Hope (1919), a collection of poetry inspired by his first experiences flying in airplanes. Plain-Chant, a book of lyrical poetry addressed to an angel, appeared in 1923. In general, Cocteau’s work reflects influences of the Symbolists and Surrealists of his era. His acquaintances included the Symbolist
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writer Guillaume Apollinaire, Picasso, and the writer and painter Max Jacob. Cocteau’s intimate relationship with Raymond Radiguet (1903–1923) was also one of the primary influences on his career. Radiguet, introduced to Cocteau by Jacob, was a young poet and novelist who embraced qualities of classicism and simplicity in his writing. Radiguet’s death from typhoid in 1923 plunged Cocteau into a state of despair. He developed an addiction to opium and wrote several works around the time of his recovery. Among them is the lengthy L’ange Heurtebise, a tormented poem inspired by his belief that he was in the presence of an angel named Heurtebise. Opium: journal d’un de´sintoxication (1932; Opium: The Diary of an Addict) addresses Cocteau’s struggle with his addiction. During this period Cocteau also wrote poems in a variety of styles, many of which appear in Ope´ra (1927). Two of Cocteau’s most popular plays derive from Greek myths. Orphe´e (1925; Orpheus) is a character study of a poet based on a modernized version of the myth of Orpheus, the son of Apollo, renowned as the first and greatest musician and poet,who rescued his deceased wife (Eurydice) from Hades by the power of his song, then lost her again. The angel Heurtebise again appears in the play, and it premiered at the The´aˆtre Des Artes in Paris in 1926. Le machine infernale (1936; The Infernal Machine) is an adaptation of the Oedipus myth, a theme that had also appeared earlier in his collaboration with the Russian composer IGOR STRAVINSKY, Oedipus Rex. Cocteau sought to create a “poetry of the theatre,” integrating all elements of a production to produce a unified experience. Cocteau narrated his first film, the autobiographical Le Sang d’un po`ete (1930; Blood of a Poet). He did not make another film until the 1940s. Le belle et la beˆte (1945; Beauty and the Beast) is a surrealistic rendering of the children’s fairy tale, and he based the film Orpheus (1950) on his play of the same title. The actor Jean Marais, to whom Cocteau grew close in the 1930s, starred in many of Coc-
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teau’s films and theater productions; his roles include the beast in Beauty and the Beast and Galahad in the play The Knights of the Round Table (1937). In the last years of his life and career Cocteau occupied himself with visual arts, an area in which he was significantly influenced by Picasso. In 1950 he decorated the Villa Santo Sospir in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, and he subsequently painted frescoes for a number of churches. His later volumes of poetry include Le Chiffre Sept, Clair-Obscur, and the collec-
tion of prose poems Appogiatures. Cocteau’s other works include the novella The White Book; the novel The Big Split (1923); and the ballet The Ox on the Roof (1920), with music by Darius Milhaud.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, Frederick, An Impersonation of Angels: A Biography of Jean Cocteau, 1969; Crosland, Margaret, Jean Cocteau, 1955; Steegmuller, Francis, Cocteau: A Biography, 1970.
Colette (January 28, 1873–August 3, 1954) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Critic, Playwright, Librettist ever having had the idea of becoming a writer, Sidonie-Gabrielle Claudine Colette found her first literary character, Claudine, something of a fictional cult figure in the France of 1900. Although her first husband took the credit for the stories of Claudine, which were published under his name, Colette soon established herself as a leading French writer in her own right. Her dramatic and probing stories explore the difficulties of romantic and sexual relationships, primarily through the eyes of female protagonists; the stories gain depth by being closely intertwined with the cycles of nature. Colette was born in the Burgund-ian village of Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, France. Her mother was the dominant influence in her life, instilling in her a love of animals and nature that later emerged as a prominent force in her fiction. Colette’s father was a former military man who had lost a leg in battle and become a tax collector. Although she loved to read from her childhood, Colette nursed no ambition to become a writer. In 1890 debt forced the family to move to the neighboring village of
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Chaˆtillon-Coligny, where her brother worked as a doctor. Her marriage to Henri Gauthier-Villars (Willy) in 1893 dramatically changed her life. Willy took her from her idyllic country life to the social circles of Paris. Under his influence she began to write while recovering from an illness. The resulting series of novels, known as the “Claudine” books, which bore Willy’s name on them, became immediate bestsellers. The heroine of the semiautobiographical series, Claudine, is a rebellious, and independent character. Claudine a` l’e´cole (1900) begins as a journal written by the fifteen-yearold Claudine during her final year at school. Claudine a` Paris (1901) finds her two years older and living in Paris, but as yet unmarried. In Claudine en me´nage (1902; Claudine Married) the heroine has married and, as Colette was when she wrote the novel, is struggling with an unhappy union and confused sexuality. Claudine s’en va (1903; translated as Claudine and Annie; literally, “Claudine leaves”) and La retraite sentimentale (1907; The Sentimental Retreat) completed the series.
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Colette (쑖 Pierre Jahan/Roger-Voillet/The Image Works)
In 1904 Colette published her first novel under her own name, Dialogues de beˆtes. Unhappy with Willy and unable to endure his infidelities, she separated from him in 1906 and
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spent the next several years as a music hall performer. Her next major work, L’inge´nue libertine (1909; The Gentle Libertine), con-
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sists of two novels about a heroine in a failed search for ideal love. La vagabonde (1910; The Vagabond) marked a major new direction in Colette’s writing and is usually considered the first of her mature novels. Written largely backstage during her music hall performances, the story derives from Colette’s experiences of these years. The protagonist is the recently divorced music hall performer Rene´e Ne´re´, who is involved in a new relationship with Maxime. Colette continued the story in the sequel L’entrave (1913; The Shackle). L’envers du music-hall (1913) is a collection of sketches that recalls her music- hall days. With her 1912 marriage to Henry de Jouvenel Colette left the music hall circuit and began to write for his paper, Le Matin. In 1916 she published La Paix chez les beˆtes (1916; Peace Among Animals), followed by Mitsou in 1919. Her marriage to Jouvenel, too, proved unhappy and disastrous. They separated in 1923 and divorced in 1925. Che´ri (1920) and La Fin de Che´ri (1926) became two of Colette’s biggest successes. The protagonist of the title is a young man who has a romantic relationship with Le´a de Lonval, an older woman. Their story ends unhappily, with his inability to cope with his life and eventual suicide. Many of her other novels treat what she viewed as a fundamental incompatibility between men and women. Le ble´ en herbe (1923; Ripening Seed) explores a romantic relationship between two young protagonists emerging from the innocence of youth. Duo (1934) concerns the deterioration of a relationship between Michel and his wife after she has a brief affair. Colette continued the story in the short sequel Le Toutounier (1939). In other novels such as La maison de Claudine (1922; My Mother’s House) and Sido
(1930) Colette explored themes of childhood innocence and nature. La chatte (1933) evinces the deep regard Colette held for animals. In the story, a cat attains such stature in his master’s eyes that it breaks up his marriage to a jealous wife who tries to kill it. In 1935 Colette married Maurice Goudeket, the only one of her marriages that proved to be emotionally fulfilling. There were trials to endure, however: the Gestapo arrested Goudeket in 1942, and after the war Colette suffered from painful and crippling arthritis. Among her later works are Julie de Carneilhan (1941) and the short-story collection Gigi (1944). The title story of the latter became the basis for a popular musical. Colette’s other works include La Naissance du jour (1928; Break of Day); La Seconde (1929; The Other One); Ces plaisirs (1932; later titled Le Pur et l’impur—The Pure and the Impure); Mes Apprentissages (1936; My Apprenticeship), a negative account of her first marriage; Jounral a` rebours (1941; Looking Backwards); De ma Feneˆtre (1942; From My Window); and the journals ´ toile Vesper (1946; The Evening Star) and L’E Le Fanal bleu (1949; The Blue Lantern). Aside from her fiction, journals, and criticism, Colette also wrote plays, ballet scenarios, and libretto. She was elected to the Belgian Royal Academy in 1935 and the French Acade´mie Goncourt in 1945, and in 1953 she was elected a grand officer of the Le´gion d’Honneur. Her Oeuvres comple`tes (“complete works”) were published in 1949–1950.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cottrell, Robert D., Colette, 1974; Crosland, Margaret, Colette—The Difficulty of Loving: A Biography, 1973; Lottman, Herbert R., Colette: A Life, 1991; Mitchell, Yvone, Colette: A Taste for Life, 1975; Richardson, Joanna, Colette, 1983.
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Compton-Burnett, Ivy (June 5, 1884–August 27, 1969) Novelist n her twenty novels, the British author Ivy Compton-Burnett is chiefly noted for her ability to dissect family relations in upper-middle-class English families. Her typical family portraits are dominated by one or more controlling individuals who adversely affect the rest of the family. Compton-Burnett was one of twelve children born into a large upper-middle-class family in London. Her difficult family relations provided material for much of her fiction. Her father was a homeopathic doctor, and her mother was perpetually ill-tempered. None of the children ever had any offspring of their own, and three of them committed suicide. Neither Ivy nor any of her sisters ever married; Ivy lived most of her life in London with her friend, Margaret Jourdain. Her brothers tutored her at home before she went to the Royal Holloway College at the University of London, where she studied classics, graduating in 1906. Dolores (1911), Compton-Burnett’s first novel, was regarded neither by the author nor her critics as a solid work. Fourteen years elapsed before the publication of her next book, Pastors and Masters (1925), which showcases the ironic understatement characteristic of her style, set at a boys’ school. Manipulation and power struggles—prime elements in all of Compton-Burnett’s novels— drive the motley cast of characters. Nicholas Herrick, who with his sister Emily owns the school, steals a manuscript written by Bumpus and claims it as his own writing. Bumpus, who would like to bring out the truth, cannot because his own secrets are too incriminating. The atmosphere Compton-Burnett creates among the characters is one of dishonesty and people feeding off each others’ failures. Brothers and Sisters (1929), Men and Wives (1931), and More Women than Men (1933) followed.
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Almost without exception, human relationships are the fundamental concern in Compton-Burnett’s novels. In particular, she dissects relationships in large families ruined by tyrannical figures, such as a manipulative woman, an authoritarian man, or a lustful man. Her view of these associations is overwhelmingly pessimistic, and children often provide the only sense of freshness or innocence in her claustrophobic family dens. Curt, clipped speech dominates dialogue between characters, emphasizing the ineffective communication that troubles them. In Daughters and Sons (1937), two women, the elderly Sabine Ponsonby and her daughter Hetta, dominate the family. Hetta, whose domain is the day-to-day running of the household, fakes suicide in an attempt to prove that the others need her. Sabine, meanwhile, is concerned with manipulating the relationships in her household. When her granddaughter Frances writes a prize-winning novel using her governess’s name as a pseudonym, Sabine wants to marry her son, the novelist John, to the governess. The novel ends in the death of both women. Manservant and Maidservant (1947) was published as Bullivant and the Lambs in the United States and was Compton-Burnett’s most successful work in America. The villain of this story, Horace Lamb, differs from other Compton-Burnett autocrats in that he recognizes his own shortcomings when he discovers his wife’s intention to leave him. Nevertheless, Horace fails to do anything about them. Intertwined with the family intrigues is a world of manipulation among the servants, chief of whom is the butler, Bullivant. The shortcoming of Cassius Clare, protagonist of The Present and the Past (1953), is his insensitivity. He allows his ex-wife, Catherine, to return to see their children. The visit at first distresses Flavia, his current wife, and
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the children, who have adapted to their new family situation. Circumstances turn against Cassius when Catherine and Flavia become friends and ignore him, so he fakes a suicide attempt to get attention. The patriarch Hereward Egerton, married to Ada Merton, manipulates his family through his sexual conquests in A God and His Gifts (1963). Hereward’s affair with Ada’s sister produced the first of his secret illegitimate children, Viola. His legitimate son Merton is engaged to Hetty, Hereward’s next conquest. Their union produces a second illegitimate child, Henry. When Hereward’s illegitimate and legitimate children grow up, he is forced to reveal his paternity when they become attracted to each other. Compton-Burnett’s other novels include A House and Its Head (1935), Parents and Chil-
dren (1941), Elders and Betters (1944), Two Worlds and Their Ways (1949), Darkness and Day (1951), Mother and Son (1955), A Father and His Fate (1957), A Heritage and Its History (1959), The Mighty and Their Fall (1961), and The Last and the First (1971). She received an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Leeds in 1960 and was made Dame of the British Empire in 1967.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baldanza, Frank, Ivy Compton-Burnett, 1964; Nevius, Blake, Ivy Compton-Burnett, 1970; Sprigge, Elizabeth, The Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett, 1973; Spurling, Hilary, Ivy: The Life of I. Compton-Burnett, 1984; Spurling, Hilary, Secrets of a Woman’s Heart: The Later Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett, 1920–1969, 1984.
Conrad, Joseph (December 3, 1857–August 3, 1924) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Essayist he Polish-born author Joseph Conrad spent his young adult life at sea and wrote novels that incorporate his varied experiences and explore the deficiencies in human nature. He is widely admired for his masterful use of the English language, which he did not learn until his early twenties. Conrad was born Jo´zef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Berdychev, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His father, a poet, translator, and Polish patriot, was arrested by the Russian authorities and took his family with him into exile in northern Russia in 1861. His mother died from tuberculosis in 1865. After his father’s death from the same ailment four years later, Conrad went to live with an uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, who was a constant source of support until his death. Conrad read
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voraciously as a child, particularly translations of English writers, and studied in both Cracow and Switzerland. With assistance from his uncle in 1874, he went to Marseilles, where he began a twenty-year career at sea with the French merchant service. Conrad’s years at sea provided the material for much of his work. The first ship on which he sailed, the Mont-Blanc, took him to Martinique. There is speculation about his activities as a steward on the Saint-Antoine, which sailed to the West Indies, Colombia, and Venezuela. On this voyage Conrad was purportedly involved in illegal activity, either smuggling or gunrunning for Spanish rebels. Upon his return to France, Conrad shot himself in the chest in a failed suicide attempt. After his recovery in 1878 he joined the crew of a British steamer, the Mavis, and
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from that point on he lived in England. Two years later he became a second mate. The next voyage that provided significant material for his later work came in 1881 as second mate aboard the Palestine, which sailed to the Far East. It was a troubled voyage that ended in the ship’s destruction by a devastating fire. Conrad’s experiences on this journey appear in his short story “Youth” (1898). His next important voyage, as second mate aboard the iron ship Narcissus (from Bombay) in 1883, contributed to his novel The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897). In 1886 he earned his master mariner’s certificate, and the same year he became a British subject. The following year he was first mate of the Highland Forest on a voyage to Java. Its captain, John MacWhirr, became the unremarkable captain MacWhirr in Typhoon (1903). Conrad then joined the Vidar, which traded in Southeast Asia. Conrad began to write in 1889 in London. After returning to England from the Belgian Congo in 1891, he sailed as first mate on sev-
Joseph Conrad (쑖 Topham/The Image Works)
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eral ships, retiring from sea life in 1894. The following year he married Jessie George; they had two sons, Borys and John. Conrad’s early writings received critical acclaim but were unsuccessful commercially. During his writing career he became a friend of Edward Garnett, who took an early interest in his work as well as gaining the friendship of Stephen Crane, Henry James, H. G. WELLS, and FORD MADOX FORD. Because of the difficulty the English found in pronouncing “Korzeniowski,” he used the name Joseph Conrad. Conrad’s works are noteworthy for their skillful use of the English language (his third language, after Polish and French), pessimistic outlook, and investigation of human morality and psychology. The characters in his novels are largely unheroic; at their worst they divorce themselves from reality, and often their own flaws and imperfections inhibit noble ideals they possess. Critics labeled him a writer of sea stories, a reputation he sought to shed throughout his career. Power and greed motivate the protagonists of Conrad’s first novels, Almayer’s Folly (1895) and An Outcast of the Islands (1896), both set in Borneo. The title character of Lord Jim (1900) tries to compensate for an unheroic act and redeem himself. Nostromo (1904) examines greed in a fictional South American country whose major source of wealth is a silver mine. Dominic Cervoni, first mate of the Saint-Antoine, aboard which Conrad sailed as a steward in the 1870s, served as the model for one of Nostromo’s characters. Heart of Darkness (1902), published two years before Nostromo, is perhaps Conrad’s most famous work. Like its narrator, Marlow (who appears in several of Conrad’s works), Conrad traveled into the Congo aboard a river steamboat. He began his difficult voyage in 1890 for the Belgian Company for Commerce, and his journey aboard the Roi de Belges closely paralleled the events of Heart of Darkness. Marlow sails through the heart of the Congo on the river steamer, anticipating his meeting with the hypnotic Kurtz. Kurtz, whom Conrad based on the trading compa-
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ny’s agent at Stanley Falls, Georges Antoine Klein, operates with brutal power in a secluded place where his evil nature is allowed to reign unchecked. At the time of Marlow’s arrival, Kurtz suffers from the illness that will later claim his life. Part of Marlow is horrified by what he sees, but he nevertheless finds he is strangely fascinated with the man who seems a pure embodiment of evil. As Kurtz lies dying on Marlow’s ship, he utters his famous words, “The horror! The horror!” Conrad’s experience in the Congo was traumatic psychologically, spiritually, and physically. He suffered from dysentery and fever and never fully regained his health. The horrific effects of Belgian exploitation in the area deeply disturbed him, and he was known to say, “Before the Congo I was a mere animal.” The Congo journey also served as the basis for his story “The Outpost of Progress.” With The Secret Agent (1907), Conrad turned to European politics. Set in London and steeped in political intrigue, the novel paints a dark picture of radical politics. Under Western Eyes (1911), set in tsarist Russia, takes place in the stormy pre-Soviet political climate. Razumov, a philosophy student in St.
Petersburg, finds himself in a revolutionary plot against his will. With the serialization of his novel Chance in the New York Herald in 1912, Conrad began to enjoy a measure of commercial success. Victory (1915) became popular in both the United States and Great Britain. His later works include The Shadow-Line (1917), The Arrow of Gold (1919), The Rescue (1920), and The Rover (1923). Among his other writings are The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903), both written with Ford; the autobiographical A Personal Record (1912); The Congo Diary (1925); and Last Essays (1926). Conrad refused an offer of knighthood in 1924 and died of a heart attack the same year. Conrad’s novels, particularly Heart of Darkness and Nostromo, are still widely read and admired for their mastery of English and probing depictions of corruption and the dark side of human nature against exotic backgrounds.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Elbridge L., Conrad: The Man, 1976; Bennett, Carl D., Joseph Conrad, 1991; Sherry, Norman, Conrad, 1988; Tennant, Roger, Joseph Conrad, 1981.
Copland, Aaron (November 14, 1900–December 2, 1990) Composer, Conductor, Pianist nown as the “dean of American composers,” Aaron Copland fused modern music and American folk styles to establish a distinctly American composing technique that broke with European tradition and created a unique blend of popular, classical, and folk tradition that inspired many composers who followed him. Copland, a conductor himself, was instrumental not only in writing works in his new idiom but in
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actively promoting the new style both of his own works and of others he admired and inspired. Aside from composing and conducting, he lectured widely, wrote, and taught. The fifth child of Lithuanian Jewish parents, Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father changed the family name of “Kaplan” to “Copland” before settling in the United States. Copland learned to play the pi-
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ano from his older sister and developed a serious interest in music in his teens; by the age of fifteen he wanted to make a career out of composing. At the age of sixteen, he went to Manhattan to study with Rubin Goldmark (1872–1936). During this time, he also absorbed as much classical music of the day as he could by attending performances and concerts. In 1924, he traveled to France to attend the Summer School of Music for American Students at Fontainebleau, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) from 1921 to 1924. Boulanger, a composer and an organist, was noted for teaching American students at Fontainebleau. Among them were GEORGE GERSHWIN, LEONARD BERNSTEIN, and PHILIP GLASS. A progressive-minded teacher, Boulanger encouraged Copland to experiment with new rhythms, harmonies, and structure. In Paris, Copland not only found rich musical instruction under her, but he studied in the city and climate where major avant-garde composers of the day—IGOR STRAVINSKY, FRANCIS POULENC, DARIUS MILHAUD, and others—had taken up residence. He also met the famed conductor SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY. Following his studies with Boulanger, Copland returned to the United States, where he wrote his American jazz-inspired Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1925). The New York Symphony, conducted by Walter Damrosch (1862–1950), premiered the work. Music for Theatre (1925) and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1927), performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Koussevitzky, followed. The year 1930 began what some call Copland’s “austere” period, in which he abandoned the dissonant harmonies and stylized rhythms of his earliest work. His jazz-inspired austerity was evident in Piano Variations (1930) and the Short Symphony (1931). El Salo´n Me´xico (1935), rooted in Mexican folk music, inaugurated a new period in Copland’s work in which he drew from folk traditions. He turned next to more simplified American folk-inspired works, which would
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last through the Great Depression and into the 1940s. He completed a number of ballet scores in this vein, including Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944). Rodeo featured “Hoe-Down,” which remains one of the most popular American compositions and is widely used in film and television productions. Choreographer MARTHA GRAHAM commissioned Appalachian Spring, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Music. During World War II, Copland wrote patriotic works such as Lincoln Portrait (1942) for voice and orchestra and Letter from Home (1944), as well as film scores. Among the latter were scores for screen works adapted from the writings of American authors and playwrights such as Of Mice and Men (1939), based on the JOHN STEINBECK story; Our Town (1940), based on THORNTON WILDER’S play; The Red Pony (1949), based on a short story by Steinbeck, and The Heiress (1949), directed by William Wyler (1902–1981) and based on Henry James’s (1843–1916) novel Washington Square. The last of these won an Academy Award for Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. Fanfare for the Common Man (1942) was scored for percussion and written for Euge`ne Goossens (1893–1962), who was then conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. One of his most popular works, it has lent music to themes for the Olympics and many other popular and commercial uses. In the 1950s and 1960s, Copland composed less and concentrated more on conducting. Pieces from this period include experimentations with twelve-tone techniques pioneered by ARNOLD SCHOENBERG in compositions such as Connotations (1962) and Inscape (1967). Public audiences found these works less appealing than his earlier compositions, and he is best remembered for his Americana-inspired music. Copland conducted his final work in 1983. Aside from composing, Copland was involved in many other activities. He was an accomplished conductor, often but not always of his own works. He and the American com-
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poser Roger Sessions (1896–1985) founded the Copland-Sessions Concerts, which lasted from 1928 until 1931 in New York and focused on promoting new works from young composers. In 1932, Copland helped stage the Yaddo Festival of American Music. Copland served as president of the American Composers’ Alliance (1937–1945), taught at Harvard in 1935 and 1944, taught at the Berkshire Music Center from 1940 to 1965, lectured widely, and wrote books, essays, and articles. Among the many other awards Copland earned were the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award, the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Yale University’s Howland Prize, and numerous honorary doctorates. He
was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007. Copland died of Alzheimer’s disease and respiratory failure in North Tarrytown, New York in 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Berger, Arthur, Aaron Copland, 1971; Copland, Aaron, and Perlis, Vivian, Copland, 1984; Crist, Elizabeth Bergman, Music for the Common Man: Aaron Copland During the Depression and War, 2005; Pollack, Howard, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man, 1999; www.aaroncopland.com. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ copland_a.html.
Coppola, Francis Ford (April 7, 1939– ) Director, Producer, Screenwriter he five-time Academy Award-winning American director, producer, and screenplay writer Francis Ford Coppola first gained widespread fame for his classic film The Godfather in 1972. He is best known for directing that film and its two sequels, as well as The Conversation (1974), and Apocalypse Now (1979). To date, Coppola also has nearly seventy television and film credits as producer or executive producer to his name. The second of three children, Coppola was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a talented flautist who at the time of Coppola’s birth played with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. His mother was a former actress, and artistic talent was encouraged in the household. When he was two, the family moved to Queens, New York, where he grew up. Coppola studied theater at Hofstra University, from which he graduated in 1959 with a
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drama degree and numerous drama-related awards. While he was there, he consolidated a musical comedy club and a drama club into The Spectrum Players, a group that staged weekly shows. He later earned an M.F.A. in directing from the University of California at Los Angeles film school. While at UCLA, he started his career writing screenplays and helping out with production, dialog, sound, and other elements of low-budget films with Roger Corman (1926– ). The first feature film he directed was Dementia 13 (1963), for which he also wrote the screenplay. He met his future wife, Eleanor Neil, on the set. Meanwhile, Coppola was also busy working on screenplays for such films as Sydney Pollack’s (1934– ) This Property Is Condemned (1966), adapted from the TENNESSEE WILLIAMS play; and French director Rene´ Cle´ment’s (1913–1996) Paris bruˆle-t-il? (1966;
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Is Paris Burning?), which he cowrote with GORE VIDAL. You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), the second feature film he directed, marked his entrance into mainstream films. Two years later, he directed the film version of the Broadway musical Finian’s Rainbow, starring British actress Petula Clark (1932– ) and FRED ASTAIRE. In 1969, he wrote the screenplay for and directed The Rain People, which won the Golden Seashell Award at the San Sebastia´n International Film Festival in 1970. With director GEORGE LUCAS, he founded the independent production company Zoetrope Studios (named in honor of a gift he received of zoetropes, devices that give the illusion of motion) in 1969. Their first film was THX 1138 (1971), which Coppola produced and Lucas directed. Coppola also produced Lucas’s highly successful film American Graffiti in 1973. The company, based in San Francisco, California, still exists today and has helped launch the careers of countless Hollywood stars. In 1971, Coppola shared an Academy Award with Edmund H. North (1911–1990) for Best Screenplay (based on material from another medium) for Patton (1970), starring George C. Scott (1927–1999) as the controversial World War II American general. However, it was his work as the cowriter (with Mario Puzo, 1920–1999) and director of The Godfather (1972) that made his name famous. An enormous box-office and critical hit, it was followed by The Godfather Part II in 1974. Both films won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, and the latter of the two was the first sequel to be so honored. In 1974, Coppola directed The Conversation, a story of a paranoid wiretapping and surveillance expert played by Gene Hackman (1930– ) who finds himself caught up in a possible murder plot. It, too, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture but lost out to his own Godfather II. The Conversation won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974. Coppola’s screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974), based on the American
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novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (1896–1940) book, however, did not enjoy success either at the box office or with critics. Apocalypse Now (1979), based on JOSEPH CONRAD’S novel Heart of Darkness, proved to be both Coppola’s most difficult film to make and one of his most highly acclaimed productions. Conrad’s novel was set in nineteenthcentury colonial Africa, but Coppola modernized the setting to 1960s war-torn Vietnam. The filming was beset with difficulties—actors and crew members falling ill, inclement weather, and MARLON BRANDO’S unexpected obesity that prompted Coppola to shoot him in shadowy scenes. Although the film almost bankrupted Zoetrope Studios, some consider it Coppola’s finest work. The 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, codirected by his wife Eleanor Coppola, chronicles the difficulties encountered while filming Apocalypse Now. In 1982, Coppola directed the musical One from the Heart (1982). In spite of its innovative use of video-editing techniques, it was a commercial failure. Coppola has, in his later directing career, focused mainly on less ambitious films. Among them are Rumble Fish (1983), The Cotton Club (1984), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Gardens of Stone (1987), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and Jack (1996). In 1986, with Lucas, he directed pop star Michael Jackson’s (1958– ) film for Disney theme parks Captain Eo. A notable exception is the final film in the Godfather trilogy, The Godfather III, which was released in 1990. His latest films as both director and screenplay writer include The Rainmaker (1997), based on the novel by John Grisham (1955– ); Youth Without Youth (2007); and Tetro, scheduled for release in 2009. Over the years, Coppola has used many of his family members in his films in one capacity or another. His father wrote much of the music for The Godfather, The Godfather II, and Apocalypse Now. His sister Talia Shire (1946– ) played Connie Corleone in all three
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Godfather films. Sofia Coppola, his daughter, appeared in first and third Godfather films and is an accomplished director, actress, screenplay writer, and producer. The popular actor Nicholas Cage (1964– ) is Coppola’s nephew, and he appeared Rumble Fish and starred in Peggy Sue Got Married. Outside of filmmaking, Coppola and his family own wineries, restaurants, resorts in Guatemala and Belize, and a line of specialty pastas and sauces. In 1997, Coppola founded Zoetrope All-Story, a successful literary magazine that publishes short stories and essays.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bergan, Ronald, Francis Coppola, 1998; Clarke, James, Coppola, 2003; Cowie, Peter, Coppola: A Biography, 1994; Goodwin, Michael, On the Edge: The Life and Times of Francis Coppola, 1989; Phillips, Gene D., Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola, 2004; Schumacher, Michael, Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker’s Life, 1999; www.all-story.com. www.zoetrope.com.
Corta ´ zar, Julio (August 26, 1914–February 12, 1984) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Poet, Translator he Argentinian fiction writer Julio Florencio Corta´zar is best known for his experimental novel Hopscotch and his many fantastic, surrealistic short stories. He ranks among the most influential Latin American writers of the twentieth century. Corta´zar was born to Argentine parents in Brussels, Belgium, and grew up in Banfield, Argentina. At the age of 12 he enrolled in the Escuela Normal Mariano Acosta and took a degree as a teacher in 1932. In 1935 he began studying at the University of Buenos Aires and later taught high school near the city. His first book, Presencia, a collection of sonnets, appeared in 1938 under the pseudonym Julio Denis. In 1944 he began teaching literature at the University of Cuyo, a position he lost two years later because of his active resistance to Juan Pero´n, who became Argentina’s leader in 1946. JORGE LUIS BORGES published the first of Corta´zar’s short stories to see print, “House Taken Over,” in 1946. The fantastic nature of the story is typical of Corta´zar’s early writings as well as much of his later fiction. The story
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centers around a brother and sister living in financial ease in a house they have inherited. When the mysterious “they” invade part of the house, the apathetic siblings find themselves confined to one portion of the home. The unidentified invading force eventually drives them from the house altogether, and the siblings leave, expressing little shock or reaction. In 1949 Corta´zar published The Monarchs, a prose poem based on the myth of the Minotaur. Bestiary, his first short-story collection, appeared in 1951. Fleeing the Pero´n regime, Corta´zar moved to Paris permanently the same year. In 1953 he married his first wife, Marries Aurora Berna´ndez. Other short-story collections followed in the 1950s, including End of the Game (1956) and Secret Weapons (1958). The latter contains “The Devil’s Drivel,” adapted for MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI’s film Blow-up (1966). As he grew older Corta´zar became increasingly involved in Latin American politics. During the early 1960s he actively supported the Cuban revolution and traveled frequently to
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Cuba. He would later support Marxist movements in other Latin American countries, most notably the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Short stories such as “Meeting” (1964) and “Apocalypse at Solentiname” (1979) were politically oriented, as was his 1973 novel, A Manual for Manuel. Nevertheless, he maintained a measure of intellectual distance from pure political revolutionaries, who he felt held too little respect for artists and intellectuals. In Corta´zar’s first published novel, The Winners (1960), a motley group of contest winners embarks on a river cruise aboard the Malcolm only to find themselves trapped in a nightmarish web of intrigue, disease, and tangled relationships. His next novel, Hopscotch (1963), is his most internationally famous work on account of its experimental structure. Corta´zar suggested an alternative order for reading the novel’s chapters but also allowed the reader to finish them in their traditional order. The somewhat disjointed story of 62: A Model Kit (1968) unfolds as a series of reflections through the eyes of numerous
characters and takes its title from chapter 62 of Hopscotch. For much of his adult life Corta´zar worked as a professional translator. In 1947 he finished his translating degree, and beginning in 1952 he translated for UNESCO. Among the works of fiction he translated into Spanish are Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Edgar Allan Poe’s prose. Corta´zar’s later shortstory collections include All Fires the Fire (1966), the humorous Cronopios and Famas (1969), Octahedron (1974), Someone Walking Around (1977), We Love Glenda So Much (1980), and Bad Timing (1982). Among his other works are the collection of poetry Peoms and Meops (1971); his commentary on art, Territories (1978); Rimbaud (1941); the novel The Exam, published posthumously; Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (1967); and A Certain Lucas (1979). Corta´zar died of leukemia in 1984.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Peavler, Terry J., Julio Corta´zar, 1990.
Coward, Noe ¨l (December 16, 1899–March 26, 1973) Playwright, Composer, Actor, Poet, Short-Story Writer, Novelist oe¨l Pierce Coward won widespread fame in the English-speaking world with his lightly satiric comedies of the British upper classes in the post–World War I generation. Coward also acted in the theater and in film, wrote musicals, composed music, and wrote short stories and novels. A number of his plays remain part of the standard repertory, and his brand of pointed satire has contributed to the enduring popularity of his plays. Coward was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England, near London. Having a mother,
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a navy captain’s daughter, who pushed him toward the performing arts, Coward began his career as a professional at an early age. His mother enrolled him in dance classes and his father, a piano tuner, exposed him to music. Coward debuted on stage at the age of 11, when he received a part in a production of the fairy play The Goldfish. By 1917 he was playing lead roles, his first in The Saving Grace. After several months, marked by ill health and difficulty, serving in the British Army in 1918, Coward obtained a medical discharge and returned to the theater. He enjoyed some
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early successes as a playwright with the comedies I’ll Leave It to You (1920) and The Young Idea (1922). But his first major triumph came with the drama The Vortex (1923), in which he starred as the drug-addicted Nicky Lancaster. Nicky’s mother, Florence, has a habit of chasing younger men. Her latest fling, Tom Veryan, turns out to be the former lover of Nicky’s fiancee, Bunty Mainwaring. When Florence and Nicky find Bunty with Tom, both relationships fall apart. Nicky, heartbroken and addicted to drugs, demands that his mother start acting like one. The three-act Hay Fever (1925) was Coward’s first success in the style for which he is most famous—the comedy of manners. The action takes place at a weekend party in a British country home, owned by the Bliss family, around a series of romantic mismatches and games. Other Coward plays from this period include Fallen Angels (1925), Easy Virtue (1925), The Queen Was in the Parlour (1926), This Was a Man (1926), The Marquise (1927), and Home Chat (1927).
Noe ¨ l Coward (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-38534)
The comedy Private Lives (1930), written primarily for Gertrude Lawrence, is still widely performed. When the former husband and wife Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne find themselves in neighboring suites, each on a honeymoon with a new spouse, chaos erupts. Elyot and Amanda each demand to leave the hotel, but neither of their spouses will agree. The resulting arguments end with Elyot and Amanda running off with each other and eventually arguing violently. Victor and Sibyl, their new spouses, find them together and break their relationships. Elyot and Amanda have by now forgiven each other and take off together. Coward’s plays were carefully structured, employed his characteristic clipped speech in the dialogue, and were entertaining and dramatic. He involved himself in all aspects of his projects, often writing, directing, singing, dancing, and acting in a production. Although he is most famous for his comedies, his active association with the impresario C. B. Cochran led to a number of popular reviews for which he composed lyrics, music, and books. In 1925 Cochran commissioned him to write the book and lyrics for On with the Dance (1925), and Coward wrote This Year of Grace! in 1927. The operetta Bitter Sweet (1929) was one of the most popular products of the Coward-Cochran collaboration. With Cavalcade (1931), a play that chronicles the ups and downs of a working-class family and a wealthier one during the Victorian era, production assumed gigantic proportions, requiring an elaborate set, a multitude of characters, and thousands of costumes. Words and Music (1932), also proved successful. Coward composed the music for London Calling! (1939), which included his popular parody of the Sitwells, “The Swiss Family Whittlebot.” Coward’s other popular songs include “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “Some Day I’ll Find You,” “Poor Little Rich Girl,” “A Room With a View,” “Mad About the Boy,” and “Marvellous Party.” In 1959 he composed the score for the ballet London Morning (1959).
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Coward enjoyed a long career in film as well as the theater, and many of his plays were adapted into films. In 1935 he appeared in the film The Scoundrel. His play Blithe Spirit (1941) became the basis for a film. In the story, Ruth Condomime and her husband, Charles, a novelist, throw a dinner party. Among the guests is the medium Madame Arcati, who deeply disturbs Charles by materializing his deceased former wife, Elvira. Elvira wreaks havoc on the household and eventually kills Ruth through a car accident. Calamity ensues when both women materialize in the house. In Which We Serve (1942), a war propaganda film, was one of Coward’s contributions to Britain’s war effort after having been rejected for military service. Coward adapted his play Still Life as the film Brief Encounter (1946). Coward continued to write plays in the midst of his other activities. Relative Values (1952) unfolds in a house in East Kent around the engagement of Nigel, Earl of Marshwood, to the American film star Miranda Frayle. In Nude with Violin (1956), a satire on modern art and its critics, a deceased modernist painter, Paul Sorodin, leaves a letter confessing that he did not paint his widely acclaimed masterpieces. One by one, the valet Sebastien gets rid of the series of ghost painters from various “periods” in Sorodin’s career who
emerge. Meanwhile, Sorodin’s “mourners” plot how to keep the fraud secret and sell his final painting, Nude with Violin, from the “Neo-Infantilist” period. Coward made his last West End stage appearance in his Suite in Three Keys (1966). Among Coward’s literary endeavors are Collected Short Stories (1962); the short stories in Pretty Polly Barlow (1964) and Bon Voyage (1967); the novel Pomp and Circumstance (1960); and the poetry collection Not Yet the Dodo (1967). Two volumes of his autobiography appeared during his lifetime and a third was unfinished when he died. His other plays, musicals, and reviews include A Withered Nosegay (1922), Sirocco (1927), Design for Living (1933), Conversation Piece (1934), Tonight at Eight-Thirty (1936), Operette (1938), Present Laughter (1939), This Happy Breed (1942), Sigh No More (1945), Pacific 1860 (1946), Peace in Our Time (1947), Home Colonial (1949), Quadrille (1952), After the Ball (1954), Waiting in the Wings (1960), and Sail Away (1961). Coward was knighted in 1970.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fisher, Clive, Noel Coward, 1992; Hoare, Philip, Noe¨l Coward: A Biography, 1995; Kiernan, Robert F., Noel Coward, 1986.
Craig, Gordon (January 16, 1872–July 29, 1966) Actor, Director, Producer, Essayist, Theorist, Graphic Artist lthough he attained only modest success and recognition during his lifetime, Edward Gordon Craig was an influential force in the development of dramatic presentation in the early twentieth century. Rejecting the realistic tendencies of his age, he took a symbolic and integrated ap-
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proach to the design of a play’s elements. Craig promoted his ideas with his long-running review The Mask and in theoretical works on the theater. Craig was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England. He was the son of the famed actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928) and the architect Ed-
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Edward Gordon Craig (쑖 Private Collection/Lebrecht/The Image Works)
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ward William Godwin. When his parents separated in 1875 he moved to London with his mother. There he began his theatrical career, studying and acting in Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theatre. As early as age 6 he appeared as a super in Olivia. From Irving’s company Craig received a broad education in the theater, as he appeared in plays ranging from Shakespeare and the classics to modern stage works. Craig continued touring with acting companies until 1898, when he gave up his stage career. From then on he devoted himself mainly to the development of his ideas on the theater. He founded the periodical The Page, to which he contributed expressionistic woodcuts and other items. Hoping to put some of his developing theories into practice, he established the Purcell Operatic Society when he was 28. His first major production was Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1900), which impressed WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS enough to earn him a commission for designs for the Abbey Theatre. Craig also staged Purcell’s The Masque of Love (1900) and George Frederick Handel’s Acis and Galatea (1902). Into these productions he introduced a number of innovative scenic and design elements, among which were the earliest examples of colored overhead lighting. In 1903 he produced Henrik Ibsen’s The Vikings (1903) for Terry’s company at the Imperial Theatre in London. In 1903 he went to Italy, where he founded the School for the Art of the Theatre at the Arena Goldoni in Florence. In 1904, the same year he began his stormy affair with the American dancer Isadora Duncan, Craig went to Germany at the invitation of Count Harry Kessler. There he wrote The Art of the Theatre (1905; later published as On the Art of the Theatre in 1911), in which he called for the creation of an expressive, symbolic theater. Craig attempted to integrate all elements of a theatrical production—costumes, acting, lighting, and set design—into an artistic whole. He sought a symbolic mode of expression to replace the representational and real-
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istic productions that dominated the era. Objecting to traditional footlighting, he designed a system of suspended overhead lights that enabled directors to control shadow and mood in their productions. Craig also created a mobile stage consisting of movable blocks, allowing the creation of spatial variations. In an article entitled “The Actor and the U¨bermarionette” he compared actors to marionettes in a director’s hand. Craig wrote of the actor as an element of the production and not as a unique, individual force. These ideas and many others he energetically promoted in his periodical The Mask, which he founded in Florence in 1908 and ran until 1929. A skilled graphic artist, Craig presented his scenic designs in A Portfolio of Etchings (1908) and other volumes. In 1907 he began to develop folding screens, which he employed in a production of Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre (1912). The famed Russian director KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY, whose realistic vision of the theater stood diametrically opposed to Craig’s symbolic view, was nevertheless intrigued by his theories and invited him to Moscow. Among Craig’s other productions were designs for Eleonora Duse’s production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm (1906); The Pretenders in Copenhagen (1926) for Johann Poulsen; and Macbeth in New York (1928). Despite the vigor with which he promoted his ideas, he never became successful enough to operate his own theater company. Nevertheless, his innovative theories of the stage and set designs had a significant impact on the development of dramatic production in the later part of the twentieth century. Craig wrote numerous theoretical and historical works on the theater, including Towards a New Theatre (1913), Henry Irving (1930), and Ellen Terry and Her Secret Self (1931). He also illustrated editions of Hamlet (1929; translated by GERHART HAUPTMANN) for Cranach Press and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Scene, a collection of articles and essays accompanied by a series of “Frozen Motion Studies,” appeared in 1923. He exhibited
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his drawings and etchings on numerous occasions. Craig published his memoirs, Index to the Story of My Days, in 1957.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Innes, C. D., Edward Gordon Craig, 1983; Innes, C. D., Edward Gordon Craig: A Vision of the Theatre, 1998; Price, Thomas, Edward Gordon Craig and the Theatre of the Imagination, 1986.
Cranko, John (August 15, 1927–June 26, 1973) Dancer, Choreographer he South-African born choreographer John Cranko raised the Stuttgart Ballet from its status as a small German dance company to international prominence in the 1960s. In his work with the company and with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in England, Cranko contributed highly visual, dramatic choreography to both his original ballets and new versions of the classic ballets. Cranko was born in Rustenburg, South Africa, and moved with his family to Johannesburg when he was eight. As a child he watched his sister’s ballet classes in Cape Town, and his parents, both ballet enthusiasts, encouraged him to think about dance. When they separated, Cranko first lived with his mother and later with his father. At the age of 9, he enrolled in St. John’s College but disliked the school so much that he ran away. He subsequently attended Highlands North, a government school. Cranko pursued several artistic interests as an adolescent, including music and elaborate orchestrations of puppet shows. In 1944, Cranko began his career in dance, studying at the University of Cape Town Ballet. Cranko was soon dancing in productions of the Cape Town Ballet Club and the University of Cape Town Ballet. With the former, he performed in and directed his first major production, The Soldier’s Tale (1944), to music by IGOR STRAVINSKY. The story takes place
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around a group of soldiers who come to a village and fall victim to the wiles of a conniving devil. Cranko performed the part of the devil and later danced many other roles, but his talent and interest lay more in choreography. In 1946, he joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, which later became the Royal Ballet, in England. Among his most famous productions with the Sadler’s Wells were Pineapple Poll (1951) and Harlequin in April (1951). The story of The Prince of the Pagodas (1957), an original Cranko ballet, concerns an emperor and his two daughters, who have opposite personalities. The commanding Belle Epine is set to inherit her father’s kingdom and succeeds in taking it from him before his death. Her gentler sister, Belle Rose, journeys to the land of the pagodas, and their prince, in the form of a salamander, proves to be her salvation and Belle Epine’s undoing. The Prince of the Pagodas featured a score by BENJAMIN BRITTEN. In 1961, Cranko took the position of director of the Stuttgart Ballet and subsequently transformed it from a small German company into a major international dance company. Among the works he choreographed for the Stuttgart are Romeo and Juliet (1962); Jeu de Cartes (1966); the three-act Onegin (1965), taken from Alexander Pushkin’s poem; The Taming of the Shrew (1969); and Traces (1973). In 1963, Cranko created the ballet
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Song of My People for the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel. Cranko suffered a heart attack and died in 1973. Marcia Hayde´e, who danced many lead roles in his productions, became director of the Stuttgart Ballet in 1976.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Percival, John, Theatre in My Blood, 1983.
Crosby, Bing (May 3, 1903–October 14, 1977) Actor, Singer, Songwriter merican singer/songwriter and actor Bing Crosby is widely regarded as one of the great entertainers of the twentieth century. During a remarkable career spanning over fifty years, Bing Crosby was a top draw in record sales, radio play, and film grosses. His stage presence and singing style entertained generations of fans and influenced many performers that followed. Born Harry Lillis Crosby, the fourth of seven children, in Tacoma, Washington, he moved at an early age to Spokane, Washington. Crosby’s father, Harry Lowe Crosby, was an English American bookkeeper. His mother, Catherine Harrigan (known as Kate) was an Irish American homemaker. The Crosbys were a musical family. Harry owned a piano and was one of the first in his community to purchase an Edison phonograph, a precursor to the later-day record player. Although middle class, Crosby’s mother spent a great deal of time and money on music lessons for her children. As a six-year-old, Crosby discovered in his local paper a full page humorous supplement called “The Bingville Bugle.” The “Bugle” was a parody of a hillbilly newsletter, complete with fake headlines, local gossip, spelling mistakes, and mock advertisements. Young Crosby found a fellow fan of the “Bugle” in fifteenyear-old Valentine Hobart, who called the boy “Bingo from Bingville.” The “o” was dropped,
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and the nickname stuck. Eventually only his mother called the boy by his given name. At fourteen years old, Crosby took a summer job as a prop boy at the Spokane Auditorium. There he became enthralled by the performance of Al Jolson, regarded at the time to be one of the country’s top entertainers. It was at this time that Crosby first imagined himself in show business. Crosby received a Jesuit education at Gonzaga High School where he excelled in Latin, history, English, and Christian studies. He was an above-average student, although many of his teachers believed him to be an underachiever with tremendous potential. He was a popular student and an excellent athlete. He went on to Gonzaga University with the intention of practicing law. While at Gonzaga University, Crosby was active in the theater, landing leading roles and rave reviews from student and local newspapers. He was also a member of the varsity baseball team. He enrolled in a six-year program to receive both bachelor’s and law degrees, yet by the beginning of his fourth year, decided that his future was brightest with the theater. Crosby had purchased a set of mailorder drums and auditioned with a local high school band, “The Musicalanders.” The popular band was successful enough for Bing to drop out of Gonzaga.
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The Musicalanders lasted roughly five years before members gradually moved on to other endeavors. Crosby landed a role at a local theater singing between motion pictures, but that ended quickly. He then, in 1925, moved to Los Angeles with the band’s piano player, Al Rinker, to pursue a career in show business. Together, they performed as “Two Boys and a Piano” up and down the West Coast. In 1927, they were hired as a singing act for Paul Whiteman’s band. This led to Crosby’s first movie role, playing music in Whiteman’s The King of Jazz. After being dismissed from Whiteman’s band for not being serious enough, Crosby got his big break in 1931 when his brother Everett sent a record of Crosby singing “I Surrender, Dear” to William Paley, then president of CBS. Paley put Crosby on the air, and Crosby became an instant sensation. Crosby soon set a record for CBS, appearing for twenty straight weeks at the Paramount Theater in 1932. This success led to his being a valued commodity for films, appearing in revues of popular radio acts. Much of this can be accredited to his “no worries” attitude, which held great appeal during the strain and turmoil of the Great Depression. As the thirties progressed, his act became more and more popular, and it was said that there was not a time of day that his voice could not be heard on the radio across the nation. Crosby met his first wife Wilma Winifred Wyatt, known as Dixie Lee, while working the Montmartre in Los Angeles. They married in September 1930 and had four sons, Gary,
Lindsay, and twins Phillip and Dennis. Crosby was criticized for his corporal form of discipline of the boys. Years later, he apologized, stating that if he could do it differently, he would. Dixie died in 1952 and, in 1957, Crosby married actress Kathryn Grant, thirty years his junior. Together they had three children, Harry Lillis III, Nathaniel Patrick and Mary Frances. Crosby stayed in the public eye until his death. He and his second family were featured in Minute Maid orange juice commercials, of which he was a one-time investor. His other investments included racehorses, cattle ranches, real estate, and Pittsburgh Pirates and Detroit Tigers baseball teams. His love of golf resulted in the Bing Crosby Pro-Amateur Golf Tournament, now known as the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. In 1950 he was awarded the William D. Richardson Memorial Trophy in recognition of his contributions to the game. In fact, the golf course is where Crosby died on October 14, 1977, at the age of seventy-three, after winning a champion round by one stroke, he suffered a heart attack on a course near Madrid, Spain.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Giddens, Gary, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams–The Early Years, 1903-1940, 2002; The New York Times obituary, October 15, 1977; Gehring, Wes, “On The ‘Road’ with Hope & Crosby,” USA Today, November 11, 2000; Benson, Heidi, “The Definitive Crosby Biography,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 21, 2001.
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Cugat, Xavier (January 1, 1900–October 27, 1990) Bandleader, Violinist orn in Spain and raised in Cuba, Xavier Cugat later moved to the United States, where he was an influential force in the introduction of Latin American band music into American popular culture through live band performances, recordings, radio and television appearances, and film. Cugat’s showy personality extended to both the stage and his private life. Cugat was born Francisco De Asis Javier Cugat Mingall De Brue y Deulofeo in Barcelona, Spain. When he was 5 his family emigrated to Cuba, and Cugat spent the formative years of his life in Havana. Cugat’s skill with the violin emerged when he was young, and after training as a classical violinist he performed with the Orchestra of the Teatro Nacional in Havana. Having earned enough money to emigrate, he eventually settled in Brooklyn. A violin performance at a Barcelona cafe´ impressed the Spanish tenor ENRICO CARUSO, who asked the then 15-year-old Cugat to accompany him on a tour. Following the tour Cugat gave a series of unsuccessful solo concerts on the violin. Unable to make a living, he took a job as a cartoonist and caricaturist with the Los Angeles Times (1927). The following year Cugat formed a dance band, The Gigolos, which created an instant sensation. The Gigolos soon became the resident band at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. For the next several decades Cugat continued to perform with dance bands in glitzy shows that featured brightly dressed dancers
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and attractive women. Maracas, bongo drums, and other Latin American instruments always featured prominently in his performances. Cugat’s music spanned the gamut of Latin American rhythm and dance—the cha-cha, the tango (which originated in Argentina), the conga, the Cuban-influenced rumba and mambo, and others—and coincided with the particular trends of the time. His many recordings for Mercury, RCA, Decca, Columbia, and Philips—such as Cugat’s Favorite Rhumbas, Tango With Cugat, Conga with Cugat, Mambo at the Waldorf, Mambo, Cha-Cha-Cha, and Bread, Love, and Cha-Cha-Cha—also reflect the spectrum of his music. As notorious for his love life as for his music, Cugat had a succession of five wives. His fourth wife, Abbe Lane, frequently performed with him in the 1950s, while his fifth wife, Charo, appeared with him regularly in the 1960s. Cugat and his band appeared in many films as well, including You Were Never Lovelier (1942; with Rita Hayworth), Bathing Beauty (1944), Weekend at the Waldorf (1945), Holiday in Mexico (1946), On An Island With You (1948), A Date With Judy (1948), Chicago Syndicate (1955), and Desire Diabolique (1959). Cugat had several radio hits, among which was “Perfidia” (1940), with Miguelito Valdes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Garrod, Charles, Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra, 1995.
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Cusack, Cyril (November 26, 1910–October 7, 1993) Actor, Director nown for his brooding air, quirky manner, and instinctive subtlety, the Irish actor Cyril James Cusack was particularly suited to introspective and stern roles. After acting for more than a decade at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, he became a successful stage actor and director in Ireland, Britain, and the United States. Cusack also appeared in dozens of films. Cusack was born in Durban, South Africa, and moved with his mother to Ireland in 1916. His mother founded a touring acting company with Brefni O’Rourke, and Cusack was performing on stage by the time he was seven. The company’s touring schedule took him to many schools to study in his youth. After obtaining a law degree at University College in Dublin, he decided to pursue acting instead of law. From 1932 to 1945 he was associated primarily with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. The original force behind the Abbey was the Irish poet WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, who cofounded its predecessor group in 1899. Although the Abbey was at first founded to promote the works of Irish Renaissance playwrights such as SEAN O’CASEY and J. M. SYNGE, the Abbey repertoire of Cusack’s day also included nonIrish plays. During this time he also performed from time to time in Britain. Cusack remained associated with the stage for the rest of his life. After managing the Gaiety Theater in Dublin in the early 1940s he founded Cyril Cusack Productions in 1944, and he directed and acted in many produc-
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tions for his company. In 1957 he starred opposite Wendy Hiller in a Broadway production of EUGENE O’NEILL’s A Moon for the Misbegotten. In 1963 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the following year he joined the National Theatre. Three years before his death, he appeared in a Gate Theater production of Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters with three of his four daughters who had become actresses, Sine´ad, Niamh, and Sorcha Cusack. Although Cusack appeared in films as early as 1917 (Knocknagow), his first real screen success came with his 1947 supporting role in CAROL REED’s thriller about the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Odd Man Out. His other films include Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), FRANC¸ OIS TRUFFAUT’s Fahrenheit 451 (1967), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), King Lear (1971), Les Mise´rables (1978), Tristan and Isolde (1979), The Kingfisher (1982), The Day of the Jackal (1973), Danny, The Champion of the World (1989), and My Left Foot (1989). Cusack received many honorary doctorates. His Timepieces was published in 1970, and his Between the Acts and Other Poems appeared in 1990. BIBLIOGRAPHY Cusack, Cyril, Timepieces, 1970; Ryan, Kathleen Jo, and Share, Bernard, eds., Irish Traditions, 1990.
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Dahl, Roald (September 13, 1916–November 23, 1990) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Writer of Children’s Books, Screenwriter, Poet uring World War II, Roald Dahl began his career as a writer of war-inspired tales and macabre short stories. He is better known, however, for his popular children’s works, and stories such as The Gremlins, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory attained classic status in modern children’s literature. Dahl was of Norwegian ancestry, born in Llandaff, Wales. His father, the successful part-owner of a ship-brokering firm, died when he was 4. Dahl entered Llandaff Cathedral School in 1923 and St. Peter’s School in Weston-Super-Mare two years later. The harsh disciplinary atmospheres of both
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Roald Dahl (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-116610)
schools alienated Dahl from formal education and took an emotional toll on him. He continued his studies at the elite Repton Public School in Derby until 1934 but chose to end his education there. At Repton, he acquired his agnosticism as well as a love for photography. Upon his graduation, he took a job with the Shell Oil Company, working first in London and then in East Africa. With the outbreak of World War II, Dahl enlisted in the Royal Air Force and served as a fighter pilot. Tragedy indirectly led to his decision to become a writer. When the plane he was flying ran out of fuel, Dahl was forced to crash land in the Libyan desert and was seriously wounded. Upon his recovery, he returned briefly to active service but was eventually posted at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. In the United States, he met the author C. S. Forester, who encouraged him to write about his war experiences. Dahl began with “A Piece of Cake,” retitled as “Shot Down Over Libya” and published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1942. Soon his stories appeared in other major American periodicals such as Harper’s and the New Yorker. The volume Over to You (1945) collected some of these stories, which range in style from realistic to fantastic and are largely drawn from his war experiences. In 1953, Dahl married the actress Patricia Neal. Alfred Knopf published a second and very successful short-story collection, Someone Like You, the same year. In this and a subsequent volume, Kiss, Kiss (1960), Dahl’s stories began to take on darker elements. Extraordinary circumstances often force his characters to reveal sinister aspects they succeed in hiding under normal conditions. They sometimes fall tragically, victims of their own vices and weaknesses. Troubled relationships between men and women are another prominent theme in the stories.
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Dahl published his first full-length book, a children’s story entitled The Gremlins, in 1943. Originally written for Walt Disney, it later formed the basis of a popular film. Gremlins appear in the book as tiny creatures with horns sabotaging RAF planes during World War II. The pilot Gus devises a scheme to tame the mischievous creatures, who then help him return to flying after an accident. The gremlins are more obnoxious in their second incarnation in Some Time Never: A Fable for Supermen (1948). Their leader ends their campaign to rid the earth of humans, correctly observing that humans are predisposed to kill themselves off. Having become the father of several children, nearly losing a son, and losing his daughter to encephalitis, Dahl devoted much of his time to children’s stories in his later life. James and the Giant Peach (1961) originated as a story he told his own children and repeats a theme that recurs in his children’s stories—an innocent child victimized by callous adults. The orphaned James is sent to live with his cruel aunts. When he spills the contents of a bag given to him by a mysterious old man, a nearby peach tree grows a giant peach. James’s aunts seek to profit from the curiosity, but the peach is for the young boy a place of refuge. Inside, he befriends a group of insects. The peach becomes a vehicle, running over the nasty aunts, traveling, and eventually settling in New York, where James lives happily ever after. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), like James and the Giant Peach, was a huge success. Dahl, who himself loved chocolate and taste-tested chocolates for Cadbury with his schoolmates at Repton, imagined a mysterious chocolate factory operated by the eccentric and energetic Willy Wonka. Charlie is one of five children to win a tour of the factory, along with the blabbermouth Violet Beauregarde, the obese glutton Augustus Gloop, the brat Veruca Salt, and the television-watching Mike Teavee. The other children’s vices
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lead them into trouble inside the factory, where they encounter dwarfish workers called Oompa Loompas. Charlie is the only one to finish the tour, and he inherits the factory from Wonka. Dahl adapted the story into a screenplay for the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). At the insistence of his publisher, he completed a sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972), which earned much less critical and popular acclaim than did the original work. Dahl did not abandon adult writing entirely in his later life. During the 1970s he wrote a number of sexually oriented stories for Playboy, some of which appeared in the collection Switch Bitch (1974). The main character of two of them, “The Visitor” and “Bitch,” is the womanizing playboy Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, protagonist of Dahl’s later novel My Uncle Oswald (1979). For young children, Dahl wrote The Magic Finger (1966), Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970), and The Enormous Crocodile (1977), the first of several books on which he collaborated with illustrator Quentin Blake. His other children’s works include Danny, the Champion of the World (1975), George’s Marvelous Medicine (1981), The BFG (1982), The Witches (1983), winner of the Whitbread Award, and Matilda (1988). Among Dahl’s other works are the autobiographical works Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) and Going Solo (1986); screenplays for the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice (1967) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968); the verse collections Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes (1982), Dirty Beasts (1983), and Rhyme Stew (1989); and the play The Honeys, produced in New York in 1955.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Treglown, Jeremy, Roald Dahl: A Biography, 1994; Warren, Alan, Roald Dahl, 1988; West, Mark I., Roald Dahl, 1992.
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Dalı´, Salvador (May 11, 1904–January 23, 1989) Painter, Illustrator, Costume Designer, Novelist he Spanish artist Salvador Dalı´ led the Paris Surrealists in the 1930s until his expulsion from the movement in 1934. Although he is best known for Surrealist paintings, such as The Persistence of Memory, that juxtapose and distort everyday objects in bizarre combinations, Dalı´ worked with a wide variety of styles, themes, and art forms over his long career. Dalı´ was born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalı´ y Domenech in Figueras, Catalonia, Spain. From the beginning of his life to the end, he was used to being the center of attention. Dalı´ was born nine months after the death of his elder brother, also named Salvador, and both parents doted on him. (His father was a prosperous notary.) Dalı´ attended a number of schools as a boy but never excelled academically. He began painting around the age of 10, and his father nurtured his interest in every way he could. Dalı´ also frequented the home of the artistically inclined Pichot family. His early impressionistic paintings reflect the Spanish landscape in which he spent his time, including the fishing village of Cadaques, where his family kept a summer home. Typical of this period is the impressionistic oil painting View of Cadaques with Shadow of Mount Pani (1917).
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Salvador Dali (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-114985)
In the early 1920s Dalı´ began studying draftsmanship at the Municipal Drawing School, and in 1922 he enrolled in the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. He never graduated from the latter on account of his refusal to take his final exam, but he continued to paint and met other Spanish artists such as the film maker LUIS BUN˜ UEL and the poet and playwright FEDERICO GARCı´A LORCA. He began experimenting with the Cubist style, evident in such works as Femme Couche´e (1926) and the ink drawing Cubist Study of Figures on a Beach (1923–1925). Assisted by his father, Dalı´ held his first show in 1925 in Barcelona. He collaborated with Bun˜uel in the films An Andalusian Dog (1928) and The Golden Age (1930) and designed the set for Garcı´a Lorca’s play Mariano Pineda (1927). In 1928, his photorealistic oil painting The Basket of Bread first brought him international attention when it was displayed in the United States. The following year he met Gala E´luard, then married to the French Surrealist poet P AUL E´LUARD. Her marriage to Dalı´ in 1934 lasted until Gala’s death in 1982, and she was intimately involved with Dalı´’s work throughout his life. Although he was exposed to a wide variety of artistic influences, a primary influence on his career was his interest in the theories of Sigmund Freud (whom he met in London in 1938). After moving to Paris at the age of 25, Dalı´ also became involved with the French Surrealist group and continued his friendship with PABLO PICASSO. Dalı´ and the other Surrealists consciously sought to employ subconscious elements in their paintings, often in the form of bizarre, distorted images rendered in bright color and realistic detail. To tap into his subconscious Dalı´ used a process he called the paranoid critical method, which involved creating hallucinations without using drugs.
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Dalı´’s most famous paintings come from the 1930s, known as his Surrealist period. Typical of the paintings of this decade are contorted objects, such as the limp, drooping watches in one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory (1931). The Weaning of Furniture, Nutrition (1934), set in a Catalonian fishing village, features his childhood nurse with a rectangular hole cut in her back. A mock trial among the Surrealists ended in Dalı´’s ejection from the movement in 1934, but he continued to paint in a Surrealist style for several years afterward. Around 1940 Dalı´ began to paint in a more traditional style, and this later period in his work is often called his “classic” period. His later paintings also reflect his growing interest in science, the molecular world, religion, and history. In the same year he and his wife fled the impending German invasion of France and, with the help of money from Picasso, moved to the United States. The Metropolitan Museum of Art held a major exhibition of his work in New York in 1941. Dalı´’s works on religious themes include the watercolor The Madonna of the Birds (1943), Ma-
donna of Port Lligat (1949), Crucifixion (1954), and The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955). Historical themes characterize works such as The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1959). In addition to painting, Dalı´ experimented with other art forms. He illustrated a number of books, including editions of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the Bible, and Dante’s Divine Comedy. Among his writings are the autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dalı´ (1944), Diary of a Genius (1965), and the novel Hidden Faces (1944). His other works include costume and set designs, ballet scenarios, and jewelry. Dalı´ died of heart failure in 1989. The Salvador Dalı´ museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, houses many of his paintings.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ades, Dawn, Dalı´ and Surrealism, 1982; Lear, Amanda, Persistence of Memory: A Personal Biography of Salvador Dalı´, 1987; Maddox, Conroy, Salvador Dalı´: Eccentric and Genius, 1990.
D’Annunzio, Gabriele (March 12, 1863–March 1, 1938) Poet, Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Journalist controversial, often egocentric figure who was never a stranger to scandal, Gabriele D’Annunzio was Italy’s most notorious writer of the pre–World War I era. A sensual, passionate, and lyrical writing style pervades his poetry and fiction. D’Annunzio knew no inhibitions in his critical and sometimes cruel portrayals of others. He created several successful plays for the actress Eleonora Duse, the most famous of his many wellknown mistresses.
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D’Annunzio was born in Pescara, Italy, where his father, a wealthy landowner, and very influential in the area, was once elected mayor. From a young age he showed a rebelliousness and independent spirit given to trouble-making. Both D’Annunzio and his father believed he was destined for greatness. Raised in a household full of superstitious aunts, nurses, and sisters, D’Annunzio began to write at a young age, sparing no criticism of his nurses or anyone else he felt like criticizing. During his childhood he also devel-
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oped the great love of nature and the outdoors that emerges in his poetry. His family sent him to the College of Prato, a Catholic school, where he studied Latin with great success but was not the least bit respectful of religion. Bound for the University of Rome and soon to become a journalist for the paper Tribuna, D’Annunzio moved to Italy’s capital in 1881. Around this time his first volumes of poetry appeared—Primo vere (1879; In Early Spring) and Canto novo (1882; New Song). Both collections of lyrical verse reflect an ecstatic, youthful spirit and sold well upon their publication. New Song sold 10,000 copies in three years time. The decadent and sacrilegious poems of Intermezzo di rime (1883), originally printed on pink paper, provoked a scandal when they appeared. In these D’Annunzio celebrated vice and sexual plea-
Gabriele D’Annunzio (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain06617)
sure, devoting a number of the poems to famous adulterers. D’Annunzio’s scandalous love affairs and tireless pursuit of women found their way into his fiction. Among his early novels are L’innocente (1892; The Intruder), his bestknown novel Il trionfo della morte (1894; The Triumph of Death), and Le vergini delle rocce (1896; The Maidens of the Rocks). The Triumph of Death is a macabre story depicting the affair and ultimate death of the lovers Giorgio and Ippolita. D’Annunzio also wrote short stories that appeared in collections such as Il Libro delle Vergini (1884; The Book of Virgins). D’Annunzio used flowery, passionate, and sensuous language. Il piacere (1898; The Child of Pleasure) follows the adventures of the autobiographical Nietzschean seducer Andrea Sperelli. Sperelli meets Elena Muti, Duchess of Scerni, at a dinner and falls wildly in love with her. Elena leaves him, and his successive seductions of other women lead him into a series of troubles, among which is a duel with his mistress’s lover. The three-volume work Laudi del cielo del mare della terra e degli eroi (1899; In Praise of Sky, Sea, Earth, and Heroes) is his bestknown poetic effort. His love of the outdoors manifested itself particularly in the third volume, Alcyone (1904), a celebration of the Tuscan landscape. In 1894 D’Annunzio began the most infamous of his love affairs—with the actress Eleonora Duse. For her he began to write plays, among which was La gioconda (1899), an enormous success when it was staged in Palermo. The tragic story concerns a sculptor who finds himself torn between his wife, Silvia, and his model, Gioconda. His Francesca da Rimini (1901), first staged in Rome, is based on the life of a thirteenth-century noblewoman murdered by her husband for having an affair with his brother. La figlia di Iorio (performed 1904; The Daughter of Jorio), taken from Abruzzi peasant life, was written after his breakup with Duse and is often considered his best theatrical work.
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D’Annunzio’s often cruel nature was at its worst in Il fuoco (1900; The Flame of Life), a pointed fictional account of his relationship with Duse. In a vengeful manner he revealed Duse’s secrets and private details of her life. His increasingly nationalistic outlook manifests itself in the play La Nave (1908; The Ship), a historical drama. Given to extravagant living and spending more than the considerable sum he earned, D’Annunzio fled his creditors and moved to France in 1912. There he gained the friendship of ANATOLE FRANCE and continued to write stories and plays, among which was the verse drama Le martyre de Saint Se´bastien (1911; The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian). D’Annunzio also collaborated with the ballet impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV, composer CLAUDE DEBUSSY, and artist LE´ ON BAKST in a production for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The outbreak of World War I was to lead to D’Annunzio’s status as national hero. After working briefly as a propagandist for the French government, he actively sought action and adventure, urging Italy to enter the war and eventually obtaining a commission as a lieutenant. Serving in the navy, infantry, and air force, d’Annunzio managed to involve himself in the most dangerous missions he could. In 1919 D’Annunzio, with 300 followers, occupied the Dalmatian Adriatic seaport of Fi-
ume (now Rijeka, in Croatia) in a direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty gave the port to the new Yugoslav state, but D’Annunzio believed it was Italy’s, occupied it, and ruled it until his expulsion in 1920. Italy eventually was able to keep possession of the port. After the war D’Annunzio established himself as an enthusiastic supporter of Fascism and a personal friend of dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini promoted his works, having them printed in a national collection. The youthful bravado and sensuality of his earlier works gave way to loneliness, despair, and a preoccupation with death in his later writings, among which is the La Contemplazione della morte (1912; The Contemplation of Death), and the memoir Libro segreto. Other works include the poetry collection L’Isoteo—La Chimera (1890); the plays Piu` che l’amore (More than Love) and Le Che`vrefeuille (1913; The Honeysuckle); and the novel Forse che sı` forse che no (1910; Perhaps So, Perhaps Not).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jullian, Philippe, D’Annunzio, 1972; Woodhouse, John Robert, Gabriele D’Annunzio: Defiant Archangel, 1998.
Day-Lewis, C. (April 27, 1904–May 22, 1972) Poet, Novelist, Playwright, Teacher ecil Day-Lewis began publishing poetry a few years before the contemporaries with whom he is usually associated—STEPHEN SPENDER, LOUIS MACNEICE, and W. H. AUDEN. Like these three, Day-Lewis rose to prominence in the 1930s with politically charged poetry, responding to the De-
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pression and the rise of Fascism, and like them he showed a brief interest in Marxism. His mature poetry reflects a more personal outlook and lyrical style. Day-Lewis was born in Ballintupper, Ireland. His father was a clergyman in the Church of Ireland. Two years after the family
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moved to London (1906), Day-Lewis’s mother died. He studied at the Sherbourne School before entering the University of Oxford to study the Greek and Roman classics, from which he would draw much of the symbolism in his later poetry. While at Oxford, Day-Lewis met Auden, Spender, and MacNeice. In 1927 he co-edited Oxford Poetry with Auden. Upon the completion of his studies the same year, Day-Lewis took a job teaching at the Summer Fields preparatory school in Oxford. Meanwhile, he had financed the publication of his first volume of poetry, Beechen Vigil (1925), which contains twenty-four poems generally regarded by critics as immature and slight. A second volume along the same lines, Country Comets, followed in 1928. Day-Lewis married Constance Mary King the same year and took a job teaching at the Larchfield School in Scotland, after which he taught at the Cheltenham Public School (1930–1935). His Transitional Poem (1929) marked the beginning of a more mature phase in his poetry and was followed by From Feathers to Iron (1931). The critical volume A Hope for Poetry (1934) was one of the main texts outlining the aims of the thirties poets. In it Day-Lewis argued for a socially committed poetry and rejected the notion of “pure poetry.” His own leftist political outlook took full shape in the long poem The Magnetic Mountain (1933), one of his primary works of the period, and he joined the Communist Party. Several subsequent volumes maintained the political orientation, including A Time to Dance (1934) and Overture to Death (1938). The latter contains Day-Lewis’s popular poems “Newsreel” and “Bombers” and was dedicated to the novelist E. M. F ORSTER. The advent of World War II (during which he served in the Ministry of Information) signaled another change in Day-Lewis’s poetry,
which became less political. Poems in Wartime (1940) was published during this period, and its poems reappeared in the subsequent volume Word Over All (1943). This period is also marked by the breakdown of his marriage, which resulted in his divorce in 1951 and his marriage to Jill Balcon the same year. In Day-Lewis’s later poetry, including Pegasus and Other Poems (1957), The Gate and Other Poems (1962), The Room and Other Poems (1965), and The Whispering Roots (1970), he developed a highly personal style. Day-Lewis maintained an intermittent academic career in the 1940s and 1950s as the Clark lecturer at the University of Cambridge (1946–1947) and as Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1951–1956). He translated the classics, notably Virgil’s Georgics (1941), Aeneid (1952), and Eclogues (1963). His other works of criticism include a series of lectures published as The Poetic Image (1947) and The Lyric Impulse (1965). Although most famous for his poetry, DayLewis wrote in other genres. His novels include The Friendly Tree (1936), Starting Point (1937), Child of Misfortune (1939), The Morning After Death (1966), and The Private Wound (1968). Under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake, Day-Lewis wrote the detective novels A Question of Proof (1934), Minute for Murder (1948), and Whisper in the Gloom (1954). Among his other works are his autobiography, The Buried Day (1960), the verse play Noah and the Waters (1936), and the poetry volumes Italian Visit (1953) and Collected Poems (1954). Queen Elizabeth II appointed him poet laureate in 1968. The Academyaward winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis is the son of Day-Lewis and Jill Balcon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gelpi, Albert, Living In Time: The Poetry of C. Day-Lewis, 1998; Riddel, J. N., C. Day-Lewis, 1971.
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De la Mare, Walter (April 25, 1873–June 22, 1956) Poet, Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Writer of Children’s Books B. PRIESTLEY said of Walter de la Mare’s work, “We can always recognize his hand, the work is all of a piece, but no one who has once known it can fail to appreciate that curious perfume and that most melodius twang.” Known for his rhythmic, precise, and imaginative works, Walter John de la Mare wrote poetry, novels, short stories, and numerous works for children. His writing was propelled by an ever present sense of wonder, admiration of nature, an interest in spiritual matters and the imagination, and a love for children. De la Mare was born in Charlton, Kent, England. His father was a church warden of Huguenot ancestry. De la Mare’s mother’s main influence was her habit of reading the Bible to him, and though he rejected organized religion he maintained a lifelong love of the Bible stories and imagery that inspired his imagination. He studied at St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir School in London, where he founded the school magazine, The Chorister’s Journal, but did not have enough money to go on to university. From 1890 to 1908 he worked as a bookkeeper in the London office of the Standard Oil Company. De la Mare began writing while he worked for the oil company and in 1902 published Songs of Childhood under the pseudonym Walter Ramal. Henry Brocken, the first of his five novels, in which the protagonist travels through old literary scenes on his mare, was published two years later, followed by Poems (1906), which contained many sonnets. Having received a royal grant in 1908 he quit his job at the oil company and devoted himself to writing. De la Mare quickly demonstrated his ability to evoke ethereal beauty in simplicity and the cycles of nature as well as to explore the realm of the imagination. The title piece from The Listeners and Other Poems (1912) may serve as an example of de la Mare’s ability to
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create a powerful sense of mystery. An unidentified man comes back to an empty house to fulfil an unexplained promise. He speaks to no one—“‘Tell them I called, and no one answered, / That I kept my word,’ he said”—and a “host of phantom listeners” stand in the moonlight and listen to a “voice from the world of men.” Many of de la Mare’s works are fantastic in nature, such as his acclaimed novel Memoirs of a Midget (1921), which treats the life of a female midget until she reaches 21, and his children’s fairy play Crossings (1921). A man with deep interest in and admiration for children, he published many works for young readers. Among these are Come Hither (1923), an anthology of English poetry for children; the highly successful Peacock Pie (1924); Collected Rhymes and Verses (1944); and Collected Stories for Children (1947). His children’s tale “The Turnip,” adapted from a Brothers Grimm tale, is a moral fable about two brothers. The elder is a wealthy merchant motivated by avarice, while his farmer-brother has little money and a lot of happiness. One day the younger brother finds a giant turnip in his fields, a gift that he presents to the king. The grateful king rewards him with a fortune, after which his elder brother determines to pursue his own reward. He sells all he owns to buy a ruby for the king, but the king understands his motivations and rewards him with only a slice of his brother’s turnip. A children’s fairy story, and the title story of a collection of tales, “The Lord Fish,” recounts the adventures of young John Cobbler, who is out to release a fish girl from a curse. De la Mare impressed many young poets with his kindness and willingness to help them, and many spoke highly of him. T. S. ELIOT summed up de la Mare’s excellence in perhaps the most striking of those tributes,
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“To Walter de la Mare,” which ends with a reference to “the delicate invisible web you wove—/ The inexplicable mystery of sound.” De la Mare also received numerous awards for his work, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Carnegie Medal (1947). He was made Companion of Honour in 1948 and received the Order of Merit in 1953. His other books of verse include The Burning Glass (1945), the long poem The Traveller (1946), Inward Companion (1950), O Lovely England (1953), and numerous vol-
umes of Collected Poems. Among his other works are the novels The Return (1910), about a man who undergoes a radical change in personality through possession by the spirit of a French Huguenot; and the anthology Desert Islands (1930).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hopkins, Kenneth, Walter de la Mare, 1957; Whistler, Theresa, Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter de la Mare, 1993.
de Mille, Agnes (September 18, 1905–October 7, 1993) Dancer, Choreographer, Author choreographer, dancer, and author, Agnes de Mille defined American dance and musical comedy during the 1940s. With a focus on an idealized Wild West, she combined the technique of traditional ballet, the freedom of modern dance, and the familiarity of folk dances to create definitive American productions such as the ballet Rodeo in 1942, and the classic musical Oklahoma! in 1943. Born to a theatrical family from New York City on September 18, 1905 (the director CECIL B. DEMILLE was her uncle), de Mille decided to become a dancer at a very young age, contrary to the wishes of her father. After the family moved to Hollywood in 1914, her father convinced her to, for the time, give up her pursuit of a career in dance and attend college. She agreed, and graduated cum laude from the University of California–Los Angeles with a degree in English. Upon graduation, however, she took back up her dream and moved to New York City, where she began auditioning for roles. She composed the choreography for her debut performance, Stage Fright, in 1927.
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Well-received, it was followed by a series of appearances in minor stock companies and variety shows. In 1932, she left New York for Europe. Trained in ballet, her time in New York and Europe exposed her to modern dance which, with its dramatic physical action, became increasingly evident in her choreography as the years progressed. Her first substantial success came in 1942 with her ballet Rodeo. Accompanied by an original score from AARON COPLAND, and performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo company, Rodeo was the company’s attempt to establish itself in America, after having fled Europe at the start of World War II. De Mille provided them with a romanticized vision of the pioneering West, and in the process won herself international acclaim. She followed that success with an even greater one: her revolutionary choreography for the musical Oklahoma!. In this Rogers and Hammerstein production, the dances in an American musical were, for the first time, a part of the story, and not just a diversion from it. Oklahoma! was the first musical to unify dancing, story, and music into one cohesive
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unit. Oklahoma! established de Mille as a force on Broadway, and established her choreographic style as the predominant form in musicals for decades to come. After Oklahoma!, de Mille choreographed a number of ballets and musicals, collaborating again with Rogers and Hammerstein on Carousel in 1945 and on Allegro in 1947. The latter marked a milestone for de Mille: she became the first woman to both direct and choreograph a large-scale Broadway musical. Many of her ballets, notably The Fall River
Agnes de Mille (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, Lot 12735-295, XIV T 19)
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Legend, based on the life and trial of Lizzie Borden, are still regularly performed by the American Ballet Theater, for whom she created many works. Off the stage, de Mille gave frequent lectures and became a well-known and respected author. In 1952, de Mille published the first of several autobiographies, Dance to the Piper, which was followed by The Promenade Home (1958), Speak to Me, Dance with Me (1973), Where the Wings Grow (1978), and Reprieve (1981), the last written about her recovery from a cerebral hemorrhage she suffered in 1975. She also used her time away from the stage to herald the arts and call for greater federal funding. In 1965, she became the first president of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. In the process, she became the first woman to lead a national labor union. She founded the Heritage Dance Theater in 1973, a touring company that performed traditional folk dances. She also received over fifteen honorary degrees from various institutions of higher learning and was elected to the Theater Hall of Fame in 1973. On October 7, 1993, Agnes de Mille died in her Greenwich Village apartment from a stroke.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Easton, Carol, No Intermissions: The Life of Agnes de Mille, 1996; Anderson, Jack, “Agnes de Mille, 88, Dance Visionary, is Dead,” The New York Times, October 8, 1993; Odom, Selma Landen, World Book, 2000.
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De Sica, Vittorio (July 7, 1901–November 13, 1974) Director, Actor ittorio De Sica’s best-known films belong to the post–World War II era in Italian cinema dominated by Neorealist directors such as ROBERTO ROSSELLINI and LUCHINO VISCONTI. During that time De Sica made a succession of Neorealist films, including Shoeshine, The Bicycle Thief, and Umberto D. De Sica’s films achieved more success abroad than in his native Italy and won numerous international awards. De Sica was born into a Neopolitan family in Sora, Italy. His family was relatively poor but not destitute. His father, a bank clerk and former journalist, admired the arts and encouraged his eldest son to participate in the theater. Reluctant at first, De Sica studied for a business career, graduating from the University School of Political and Commercial Science. At the age of 21 he did his military service. Following his release De Sica still had a more practical career in his mind when he began to act. In 1923 he joined an acting company that performed for wounded soldiers, and he quickly gained a following for his matinee performances and singing appearances. Over the next decade De Sica appeared in many plays ranging from serious pieces to musical comedies. De Sica’s father had pushed him into a film appearance as early as 1918, but it was not until the 1930s that his screen career began to take off. His role in Mario Camerini’s Gli uomini, che mascalzoni! (1932; The Men, What Rascals!), a film about an affair between a chauffeur and the daughter of a cab driver, made him a minor film star. La compagnia dei matti gave De Sica his first leading role in a film. By this time De Sica had also begun to direct films, and he achieved his first directorial success with Due dozzine di rose scarlatte (1940; Twenty-Four Red Roses). During
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World War II he began to work with his longtime screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, completing The Children Are Watching Us in 1942. Filming was difficult during the war, especially during the Nazi occupation. In 1944 De Sica filmed The Gate of Heaven (1944), a religious work for the Catholic Film Center in Rome that depicts a pilgrimage to the Santa Casa shrine at Loreto. Sciuscia` (1946; Shoeshine) was the first of the Neorealist films for which De Sica is best known. A film about poverty-stricken children who shine the shoes of American soldiers in postwar Rome, the work has the key characteristics of the Neorealist style—the use of amateur actors, realistic depictions of ordinary people, scenes shot in the streets instead of the studio, and a documentary-like atmosphere. Ladri di biciclette (1948; The Bicycle Thief), Miracolo a Milano (1951; Miracle in Milan), and Umberto D. (1952) are also in the Neorealist vein. In these films De Sica evoked the atmosphere of postwar Italy and treated the effects of social difficulties on individual people. The central figure in Umberto D. is a pensioner, lonely, old, and poor, who has only the company of his dog to comfort him. The dog, too, passes away. After a succession of Neorealist films De Sica traveled to the United States and planned to work with a number of Hollywood directors. However, his traditional mode of working did not fit in with the polished studio productions and professional actors that Hollywood preferred. Many planned projects never materialized, and those that did—such as Indiscretion of an American Wife (1954)— proved to be commercial failures. De Sica returned to Italy and made two more major Neorealist films: L’Oro di Napoli (1954; The Gold of Naples), based on short stories by Giuseppe Marotta, and The Roof
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(1956). After the latter he continued to act and began a series of what many critics regard as unsuccessful experiments with other film styles. Nevertheless, it was for his later films that he earned numerous awards. La ciocara (1961; Two Women), based on ALBERTO MORAVIA’S book, starred Sophia Loren in an Oscar-winning performance. De Sica first used color in The Last Judgment (1961). Other later films include Ieri, oggi, domani (1963; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow); Matrimonio all’italiana (1964; Marriage Italian
Style); Woman Times Seven (1967), starring Shirley MacLaine; Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (1970; The Garden of the Finzi-Continis), which won an Academy Award for best foreign film; and Una breve vacanza (1974; A Brief Vacation). His final film Il viaggio (1974; The Voyage) starred Loren and RICHARD BURTON.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Daretta, John, Vittorio de Sica: A Guide to References and Resources, 1983.
Debussy, Claude (August 22, 1862–March 25, 1918) Composer, Critic, Pianist he twentieth-century composer Achille-Claude Debussy, as he was christened, developed original sounds and musical structures from the diverse artistic and cultural elements that dominated Paris during his lifetime. His work owes much of its influence to the French Symbolists and Impressionists and is often classified as “musical Impressionism.” Debussy was born into an impoverished family in Saint-Germaine-en-Laye, France, and became interested in the piano as a young boy. At age 9 he took his first piano lesson, and at age 11 he began studying composition (under Ernest Guiraud) and piano in the Romantic style (under Antoine Francois Marmontel) at the Paris Conservatory. He later met the wealthy Russian Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck, who hired him to play for her family. In this position Debussy was able to travel around Europe, where he gained exposure to the work of composers such as Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Aleksandr Borodin (1833–1887), and Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). In 1884 he won the Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata The Prodigal Child.
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Debussy seldom performed his music for the public and preferred instead to compose. Soon after his studies at the Paris Conservatory, he began to reject the traditional Romantic techniques in which he was trained and experiment with new compositional styles. The primary influences on his work were poetry and painting, particularly the work of the Impressionists and Symbolists. Pre´lude a` l’apre`s-midi d’un faune (1894; Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), his first orchestral composition, is based on a poem by the French Symbolist Ste´phane Mallarme´ (1842–1898) and was later used in a widely performed ballet. Among his other early works are La demoiselle e´lue (1888; The Blessed Damozel), Cinq poe`mes de Baudelaire (1889; Five Poems of Baudelaire), and the popular orchestral suites Nocturnes (1893–1899). Pelle´as et Me´lisande (Pelle´as and Me´lisande), Debussy’s first and only opera, was based on a play by MAURICE MAETERLINCK and written with his cooperation. Maeterlinck claimed to have no ability to critique music,
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but he was impressed, as were many others, with the smooth, lyrical quality of Debussy’s finished composition. However, a quarrel erupted between them when Maeterlinck’s mistress was removed from the leading role. The opera, first performed in 1902, presented a dark, dreamy score tightly integrated with Maeterlinck’s libretto and proved to be both controversial and popular. Debussy’s compositions from the early twentieth century also include a number of pi-
Claude Debussy (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-97414)
ano works. Among them are Engravings (1903), Images (1905 and 1907), two collections of Preludes in 1910 and 1913, and Douze ´ tudes (1915; Twelve E´tudes). His most faE mous piano composition is Clair de lune (Moonlight) from the Suite Bergamasque, completed in 1905. The piano suite Children’s Corner (1908) was written for his daughter, Claude-Emma. The three-part La Mer (1905; The Sea) stretched string color to new boundaries and is Debussy’s most famous orchestral work. His other compositions include the ballet score Games (1912), a violin sonata, a cello sonata, and a sonata for flute, viola, and harp. His death from cancer prevented him from pursuing his longtime desire to write a piece based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Among Debussy’s musical innovations are his use of the whole-tone scale and his experimentation with tonality and harmonic structure. Debussy’s abandonment of fixed tonality, in which the music centers around multiple tones instead of a single tone, significantly influenced later twentieth-century composers and lends an ethereal quality to his music. Along with other musical impressionists, such as MAURICE RAVEL, Debussy aimed at creating mood and tonal color rather than melody.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dumesnil, Maurice, Claude Debussy: Master of Dreams, 1940; Lockspeiser, Edward, Debussy: His Life and Mind, 1962; Nichols, Roger, Debussy Remembered, 1992; Wenk, Arthur; Claude Debussy and Twentieth Century Music, 1983.
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Deighton, Len (February 18, 1929– ) Novelist, Journalist, Producer, Short-Story Writer, Illustrator ith JOHN LE CARRE´ and James Bond creator IAN FLEMING, Len Deighton is part of a generation of British Cold-War spy-thriller novelists. He is best known for his long series starring the British secret agent Bernard Samson, but he has also written histories of World War II, cookbooks, and other fiction. Deighton was born in Marylebone, London. After doing his national service as a photographer for the Special Investigation Branch, he entered St. Martin’s School of Art in London. Deighton studied further at the Royal College of Art. During his years of study he worked as a waiter, inaugurating his lifelong interest in cooking. Following his graduation, Deighton worked alternately as a pastry cook, writer, illustrator, and art director. Dissatisfied with his career, or the lack of one, Deighton moved to the Dordogne and began to write. His first novel, The Ipcress File, appeared in 1962 and concerns the disappearance of leading biochemists in England. Having gained popular success with The Ipcress File, Deighton followed with several other spy novels: Funeral in Berlin (1964), The Billion Dollar Brain (1966), Only When I Larf (1968), and Bomber (1970). Close-Up (1972), not a spy novel, explores the intrigue of the Hollywood film industry through the film star Marshall Stone. Since the 1980s Deighton has released several series featuring the British intelligence officer Bernard Samson. Berlin Game (1983), Mexico Set (1984), and London Match (1985) pit Samson against Soviet KGB agents. These three novels were later collected as Game, Set, Match and serialized on PBS. Deighton orchestrates in his work fast-paced narratives and webs of intrigue—defection, treason, and suspicion. A second series, consisting of Spy Hook (1988), Spy Line (1989), and Spy Sinker (1990), finds Samson immersed in the intrigue
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of his own agency as he uncovers scams and finds himself under suspicion for treason. Between the Spy trilogy and his next, Deighton published Mamista (1991), a complex story set in a South American jungle. The Cold War enemies are pulling strings behind the scenes as Marxist revolutionaries try to wrest control of the government while the White House intends to prop up the current right-wing regime to enable the United States to exploit oil fields. Faith (1994) began another Bernard Samson trilogy. Set in 1987, in the years before the Berlin Wall fell, the story concerns Samson’s efforts to return an agent named Verdi from the East and Samson’s tenuous relationship with his wife, Fiona. Fiona’s return from the East is accompanied by the death of her sister, Tessa Kosinski. Hope (1996) finds Samson investigating the disappearance of Tessa’s husband in Poland. In Charity (1996) Samson is still obsessed with Tessa’s death; he ultimately discovers that the British Secret Service ordered the execution. Aside from Cold War spy thrillers, Deighton has written numerous fiction and nonfiction works concerning the World War II era. Declarations of War (1971) consists of short stories about the experiences of soldiers and the horrors of death they face on the battlefield. His novel Winter (1987) concerns the brothers Peter and Pauli Winter, sons of a German banker and American mother. The Winter brothers are not at all alike but find their fates intertwined as war ravages their native land. Blitzkreig (1979), a nonfiction work, examines the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany and German military strategy in World War II. In Blood, Tears, and Folly (1993), a history of World War II, Deighton probes the early years of the war leading up to the entry of the United States.
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Deighton’s fast-paced and dramatic spy thrillers have enjoyed immense commercial and critical success in the United States and England. Many of his works have been adapted for film and television. Deighton’s historical works have earned critical acclaim for their clarity in style, depth of research and detail, and objective approach. Among his other writings are the novels Yesterday’s Spy
(1975), XPD (1981), and Goodbye, Mickey Mouse (1982), and several cookbooks.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Milward-Oliver, Edward, The Len Deighton Companion, 1987; Sauerberg, Lars Ole, Secret Agents in Fiction: Ian Fleming, John le Carre´, Len Deighton, 1984.
Delaunay, Robert (April 12, 1885–October 25, 1941) Painter, Designer, Costume Designer obert Delaunay, husband of the painter and decorator SONIA DELAUNAY, developed as a painter by studying the dominant Paris styles of his day—Fauvism, Cubism, the Nabis, and other movements. His mature paintings combine purely abstract, circular forms with vibrant color, a style the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) called Orphism. Delaunay was born into a middle-class family in Paris. His father left the family when he was four, and he was raised by his mother and an uncle. School never excited Delaunay. He began drawing when he was young and in 1902 was apprenticed to a theater designer— essentially his only training as an artist. Two years later he exhibited his first paintings at the Salon des Inde´pendants in Paris, and he was soon showing his work in other Paris Salons. In the early 1900s he experimented with a number of the painting styles that emerged in Paris. Some paintings show the influence of the Nabis (see MAURICE DENIS and PIERRE BONNARD), whereas he rendered works such as Landscape with Disk (1905) and the Portrait of Wilhelm Uhde (1907) in a Neo-Impressionist style. The influence of the Fauves is apparent in the brightly colored Saint-
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Se´verin (1909) series, a succession of interiors in blues, yellows, and other colors. By 1910 Delaunay was painting in a Cubist style, generally with a brighter palette than Cubist originators PABLO PICASSO and GEORGES BRAQUE used. A Cities series begun around the same time combines Cubism with Pointillism, as in Window on the City (1910–1911). The Eiffel Tower, the central symbol in his popular Tour Eiffel series in 1910–1911, became a recurring symbol in his paintings and drawings throughout his life. The City of Paris (1910–1912), a colorful rendition of the Eiffel Tower, the river, and a Three Graces motif, was exhibited at the Salon des Inde´pendants and attracted a lot of attention to Delaunay’s work. A 1926 painting depicts the tower in bright red, reaching into a blue sky and viewed from the bottom up. In 1910 Delaunay married Sonia Terk (formerly married to the Wilhelm Uhde of his portrait), who was to become his intimate companion and collaborator. The following year saw the birth of their son Charles, who later became a jazz historian. Other paintings from this period include The Cardiff Team (1912–1913), Disk (1912), and Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon (1912–1913). The latter, with its abstract, and wavy forms in
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bright colors, characterizes the Orphist style Delaunay finally adopted, although he did not completely abandon representation until the early 1930s. Delaunay’s work gained recognition more quickly than did his wife’s. By World War I he was exhibiting regularly in France and, through the influence of WASSILY KANDINSKY, in Germany. The Delaunays spent the war in Spain and Portugal, which provided the subject matter for the series Portuguese Markets and Still Lifes. While there, both of the Delaunays contributed scenery and costume designs to a 1918 Ballets Russes production of Cleopaˆtre. After the war ended, the Delaunays returned to France and began to associate with the Paris literary avant-garde, most closely with Dadaist founder Tristan Tzara. Delaunay painted many portraits of his friends and acquaintances, including the Portrait of Henri Rousseau (1914), a charcoal portrait of Surrealist ANDRE´ BRETON (1922), Portrait of Tristan Tzara (1923), and the unfinished Portrait of Jean Cocteau (1924). He preferred to work with series, creating a group of paintings on the same theme. Among
these are the Windows, the Circular Forms, a series of Color Disks, a Windows series, Sprinters (1924–1926), and Rhythms (1938). In the 1920s Delaunay and his wife designed a number of sets for film. In the next decade he devoted himself to pure abstraction. In his work he also experimented with a variety of materials, including sprayed sand, casein, lacquered stone, and wax. Among his best-known later works are the large panel The Woman and the Tower (1935) and his murals for the Paris Exposition in 1937, in the Railroad Pavilion and the Pavilion of the Air. The following year, the Delaunays, with other artists, decorated the interior of the sculpture hall of the Tuileries Salon. With the unique brand of abstraction he formulated early in the development of nonobjective art, Delaunay was a pioneer in the broad movement toward abstract painting that dominated twentieth-century canvases.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hoog, Michel, R. Delaunay, 1976; Vriesen, Gustav, Robert Delaunay: Light and Color, 1967.
Delaunay, Sonia (November 14, 1885–December 5, 1979) Painter, Designer, Costume Designer nfluenced by the developments in French art at the turn of the century, Sonia Terk Delaunay and her husband, ROBERT DELAUNAY, developed very similar painting styles after their marriage in 1910. Early in her career as a painter, she settled on a purely abstract style characterized by broad, flat, areas of pure color dominated by but not limited to circular forms. Delaunay was born Sonia Stern in Gradizhsk, Ukraine. Her father worked in a nail factory, and she did not get along well with
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her mother. As a young child she left both of them to live with a wealthy uncle, an attorney in St. Petersburg. In her new family Delaunay learned several languages and was taught by governesses at home until, at the age of 16, she was sent to a prestigious secondary school in St. Petersburg. More importantly, she gained exposure to Europe’s art museums through her adoptive family’s extensive European travels. Delaunay received her first paints from MAX LIEBERMANN, who was an acquaintance of
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her uncle. At age 18 she entered the academy of fine arts in Karlsruhe and also studied in a painter’s studio. Surviving works from her early years include a number of realistic charcoal portraits—of her aunt, peasants, and others. In 1905 she settled permanently in Paris, where she studied briefly at the Acade´mie de la Palette in Montparnasse. In Paris she frequented art exhibits, quickly adopting the bright colors and expressive lines of the Fauves and Postimpressionists, and she was particularly influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin (1842–1903). Young Finnish Girl (1906) depicts a vivid, multicolored head of a girl against a bright yellow background. Radiant reds dominate paintings such as Philome`ne (1907). After a brief marriage to and amicable divorce from the Paris art dealer Wilhelm Uhde, she married Robert Delaunay in 1910. By that time her paintings had become almost entirely abstract, consisting of interplay of areas of bright color—for example, the large oil Bal Bullier (1913). Unlike her husband, however, she would have to wait many years for her paintings to gain international recognition. Financial circumstances spurred her to devote her energies to the applied arts—pottery, rugs, carpets, handbags, dishes, furniture, tapestries, and other items. Her designs, particularly in fabrics, met with considerable success. Delaunay founded her own company to produce fabric designs in the 1920s, and the Amsterdam department store Metz & Co. was a principal purchaser of them for many years. She did not, however, give up painting entirely. The Delaunays spent World War I in Spain and Portugal, where she painted The Market at Minho (1916), self-portraits, dancers, flamenco singers, and a series of Disks. In 1917 she created designs for a production
of the opera Aı¨da in Madrid, and the following year both Delaunays contributed designs to a Ballets Russes production of Cle´opaˆtre. After the war they returned to France and began to associate with many prominent Paris writers, including their particular friend Tristan Tzara. With him she collaborated on “poem dresses,” and she contributed costume designs to his Le coeur gaz (1923). In the 1920s the Delaunays designed a number of costumes and sets for film. Delaunay also painted advertisements and book designs, among which are endpapers for Blaise Cendrars’s Paˆques a` New York (1912; Easter in New York). The following year she illustrated the poet’s La Prose du Transsibe´rien et de la Petite Jeanne de France (1913; The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France), a “simultaneous book,” or a foldout poem with decorated pages. Delaunay returned to painting in the 1930s, producing for the 1937 Paris Exposition a mural featuring a large airplane propellor for the Palais de l’Air. After her husband’s death in 1941, her work began to gain international recognition, particularly in the 1950s. In 1964 she became the first living female artist to have an exhibition at the Louvre. Her late paintings, which include Rhythme couleur (1939) and many gouache-on-paper paintings entitled Rhythme colore´, follow the abstract, colorful style of her work from 1910 onward. Among her more unusual works is a painted automobile, which was exhibited in the Muse´e Nationale d’Art Moderne in 1967.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baron, Stanley, Sonia Delaunay: The Life of An Artist, 1995; Cohen, Arthur Allen, Sonia Delaunay, 1975.
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Delius, Frederick (January 29, 1862–June 10, 1934) Composer, Pianist, Violinist n spite of his general disdain for England, Frederick Theodore Albert Delius (to give him his full name) contributed to a revival of English music at the end of the nineteenth century. Influenced by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843–1907), Delius’s style has a romantic, lyrical quality that derives from unique harmonies achieved by unusual juxtapositions of chords. Delius was the fourth of fourteen children and was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. Both of his parents immigrated to England from Germany. Although his father loved music, he wanted Delius to pursue a more practical career in his wool business. Nevertheless, Delius learned to play the violin and the piano in his youth. He studied at the Bradford Grammar School and later at the International College in London. After working briefly for his father, he decided to move to Florida and grow oranges. Delius settled at Solano Grove, near Jacksonville, in 1884. Although his orange-growing enterprise was unsuccessful, he took with him from his time in Florida two influences significant to the development of his music. The first was the teaching of the organist Thomas F. Ward, whom Delius would later acknowledge as his most valuable instructor. He also absorbed the local African-American folk music, the influence of which is evident in early compositions such as his Florida Suite (1888). After the failure of his orange-growing venture, Delius moved up the East Coast, supporting himself by singing and teaching in Danville, Virginia, and in New York. In 1886 he moved to Germany to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, where he took violin lessons and began to devote himself to composing. There he met Grieg, who had gained world fame with his incidental music for Henrik Ib-
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sen’s Peer Gynt (1867). Grieg’s harmonic constructions and Romantic style were to greatly influence Delius’s mature work. From Grieg, Delius also acquired a love of Scandinavian culture, and he made numerous excursions to Norway throughout his life. Delius’s body of work includes many Danish and Norwegian songs. Many other influences on Delius were literary—the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the author Jens Peter Jacobsen, and the poet Walt Whitman (whose texts he used in Sea Drift, 1904). Delius’s great love of nature inspired many of his works, such as The Song of the High Hills (1912). His work first attracted attention in Germany, where in 1897 Hans Hym conducted a performance of his tone poem Over the Hills and Far Away. Hym enthusiastically promoted Delius’s work in Germany and the same year gave an entire concert of his music. Also in 1897, Delius settled permanently near Paris, where he lived much of the rest of his life. There he married the painter Jelka Rosen. Hym again conducted at the premiere of Appalachia (1907; composed 1902), a set of variations on an African-American spiritual. Owing to the efforts of the English conductor Sir THOMAS BEECHAM, Delius’s music began to gain a following in England. Of Delius’s six operas, A Village Romeo and Juliet (1900–1901) is his most famous. It recounts a tragic tale of two lovers from feuding Swiss families and features the popular orchestral interlude, “The Walk to the Paradise Garden.” Others include Irmelin (1890–1892); The Magic Fountain (1894–1895); Koanga (1895–1897), which incorporates African-American folk music; Margot la Rouge, a one-act opera with piano arrangement by MAURICE RAVEL; and Fennimore and Gerda (1908–1910), based on Niels Lyhne, an important novel by the Danish poet
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and novelist, Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847–1885). In the mid-1920s Delius suffered blindness and paralysis. He continued to compose with the assistance of Eric Fenby, who moved into his home and transcribed at his dictation. Also among his works are symphonies, including the London Symphony, the Paris Symphony, and the Pastoral Symphony. His orchestral works include Brigg Fair (1907), Caprice and Elegy for cello and small orchestra, two Dance Rhapsodies (1908 and 1916), On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912), North Country Sketches (1913–1914), A Song Before Sunrise (1918), and Poem of Life and Love (1918). Delius also composed A
Mass of Life (1904–1905) and Requiem (1914–1916) on texts by Nietzsche, string quartets, piano concerti, sonatas for violin and piano, and incidental music for Hassan, a drama by James Elroy Flecker. He was admitted to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1929.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Beecham, Sir Thomas, Frederick Delius, 1959; Fenby, Eric, Delius As I Knew Him, 1981; Jefferson, Alan, Delius, 1972; Palmer, Christopher, Delius: Portrait of a Cosmopolitan, 1976; Redwood, Christopher, ed., A Delius Companion, 1980.
Delvaux, Paul (September 23, 1897–July 20, 1994) Painter, Designer, Costume Designer aul Delvaux’s mature painting style combines unusual juxtapositions of imagery, brooding atmosphere, and recurring images that include trains, classical architecture, female nudes, and skeletons. His work formed a major contribution to the Surrealist movements of 1930s Paris. He also taught painting and designed sets and costumes for the stage. Delvaux was the son of a barrister, born in Antheit, Lie`ge, Belgium. In 1904 he entered the E´cole Primaire de Saint-Gilles in Brussels, where he studied music and acquired a fascination with skeletons that eventually manifested itself in his paintings. He also enjoyed Jules Verne’s Voyage to the Centre of the Earth, from which he later drew his depictions of the character Professor Otto Lindenbrock. From 1910 to 1916 he studied at the Athe´ne´e de Saint-Gilles in Brussels, concentrating on Greek and Latin.
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Delvaux’s family discouraged his ambition to paint. He studied architecture under Joseph Van Neck and painting at the Acade´mie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. His earliest paintings are forest landscapes in the realist manner. Railway scenes, found in many paintings over the course of his career, also began to appear in the works of the early 1920s. Then in the year 1926 he met the Surrealist painter GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, a turning point in his career. Influenced by de Chirico, RENE´ MAGRITTE, SALVADOR DALı´, and other Surrealists, Delvaux left his early realism behind, and began to exhibit with them during the 1930s. Paintings such as Young Woman Dreaming (1930) and Women and Stones (1934) date from this period. In accordance with the Surrealist emphasis on the unconscious and strange juxtapositions of imagery, The Break of Day (1937) depicts a group of creatures who are half female nude, half tree.
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Delvaux’s figures are realistic and academic in appearance, but imbued with an eerie quality through lighting effects and bizarre combinations of imagery. Female nudes are often found walking amidst elements of classical architecture, as in Entry into the City (1940). In the most famous of his Sleeping Venus paintings (1944), a female nude reclines on a sofa in the midst of classically styled architecture under a threatening night sky. At her head a standing nude reaches toward the dark sky, while at her feet a woman appears to be conversing with a skeleton. Other noteworthy paintings from the 1940s and 1950s include The Sleeping City (1938); his Phases of the Moon series; The Anxious City (1941), painted after the German invasion of Belgium during World War II; The Public Voice (1948); and The Iron Age (1951) a blue-tinged painting with a female nude in the foreground and a threatening train emerging from the background. Train scenes recur in many of his 1950s paintings, such as Evening Trains (1957). In 1952 Delvaux married his longtime love Anne-Marie De Maertelaere. In the next decade he produced the erotic and controversial paintings The Visit (1962) and The Sabbath (1962), the latter of which is a dimly lit portrayal of a gathering of female nudes. To the left, a man wearing a suit stares into a fulllength mirror.
Delvaux continued to paint until his eyesight failed in the 1980s. From 1950 to 1962 he also taught painting at the E´cole Nationale Supe´rieure d’Art et d’Architecture in Brussels. Later paintings include Abandon (1964), The Blue Sofa (1967), Homage to Jules Verne (1971), and The Choir (1983). Aside from painting, Delvaux designed sets for the ballet, film, and the theater. Among these is JEAN GENET’s ballet Adame miroir (1947). He also designed sets for two plays by Claude Spaak at the Vieux Colombier The´aˆtre in Paris in 1950 and created costumes for ROLAND PETIT’s ballet La nuit transfigure´e (1976). Delvaux completed several public commissions, such as the murals for the Palais des Congre`s in Brussels (1960) and for the Lie`ge in Belgium (1960) and the diptych The Legendary Voyage I (1974) for the casino at Chaudfontaine. The Paul Delvaux Museum opened in 1982 at Sint-Idesbald on the North Sea coast. Delvaux is most remembered for his ability to express on canvas the fears that filled the conscious and unconscious mind of humanity at mid-century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Scott, David, Paul Delvaux: Surrealizing the Nude, 1992.
DeMille, Cecil B. (August 12, 1881–January 21, 1959) Producer, Director, Actor ecil B. DeMille was an American movie producer and director. He was responsible for seventy films, among them some of the most successful and widely seen films of all time.
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He was born Cecil Blount de Mille in Ashfield, Massachusetts, on August 12, 1881. Throughout his life, Cecil used the family spelling ‘de Mille‘ in his personal life and used the variation ‘DeMille‘ as his professional name. The son of the playwright Henry Chur-
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chill de Mille, Cecil DeMille studied at the Pennsylvania Military College and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1900, he began his career in the theater as an actor and was soon collaborating with his brother, the playwright William Churchill DeMille. Along with Jesse Lasky, SAMUEL GOLDWYN, and Arthur Freed, DeMille formed the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company in 1913, which later became Paramount Pictures. His first film was a Western, The Squaw Man (1914), and one of the first full-length feature films made in Hollywood. Between 1919 and 1923, he made comedies that reflected the freedom from moral confines that typified the postwar period. The popularity of his films made him an important player in the days when directors were mostly unknown. He then began to produce films with biblical themes and spectacular sets and crowd scenes, like The Ten Commandments (1923) and The King of Kings (1927), which is estimated to have been seen by 800 million people. Other important films included The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Union Pacific (1939). DeMille appeared on radio in a popular weekly series of adaptations of recent motion pictures from 1936 to 1945. He focused on large productions in later decades, particularly Samson and Delilah (1949), The Greatest Show on Earth (which
won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1952), and a second version of The Ten Commandments (1956), his last film. DeMille was the first director to use a megaphone on the set and to install a loudspeaker system for issuing orders. He was known for his intense, forceful personality as well as his right-wing political views and his energetic opposition to labor unions. Although many critics dismissed DeMille’s films as lacking in artistic value, his many honors include a special Academy Award for “brilliant showmanship” in 1949 and the Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1952.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Birchard, Robert S., Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, 2004; DeMille, Cecil B., Autobiography, 1959; Edwards, Anne, The DeMilles, an American Family, 1988; Higham, Charles, Cecil B. DeMille, 1973; Koury, Phil A., Yes, Mr. DeMille, 1959; Ringgold, Gene, The Films of Cecil B. DeMille, 1969. http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9029890. www.imdb.com/name/nm0001124/. www.cecilbdemille.com/bio.html. www.reelclassics.com/Directors/deMille/demille. htm. http://wc04.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2: 87147∼T1.
Denis, Maurice (November 25, 1870–November 13, 1943) Painter, Illustrator aurice Denis was a prolific painter of murals and smaller works, but he gained more recognition during his lifetime for his writings about painting and the theories they expressed. Motivated by his staunchly Catholic outlook, he studied the history of religious art and sought to revive it
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in France. His murals decorate several cathedrals in France and Switzerland. Denis also accepted secular commissions and painted on nonreligious themes. He worked in other media as well, producing stained glass windows, tapestries, mosaics, and ceramics.
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Denis was born into a Catholic family in Granville, France, and was to remain a devout Catholic his whole life. His mother was a milliner, and his father was a railway official. For a time Denis considered becoming a monk. By the time he was a teenager, Denis knew he wanted to devote his life to art. He took drawing lessons and excelled in his studies at the Lyce´e Condorcet, where he studied the Greek and Latin classics from 1882 to 1887. During this time he met E´DOUARD VUILLARD and began his lifelong habit of writing in a diary. In 1888 he entered the Acade´mie Julien (1888), where he met PIERRE BONNARD and studied under Jules Lefebvre. Denis subsequently studied at the E´cole des Beaux-Arts. It was also during this time that he frequented the Louvre and began to develop his love of Italian art. With Vuillard, Bonnard, and others, Denis formed a group of painters, the Nabis, in 1888. The Nabis, influenced by Paul Gauguin, the German Expressionists, and the Art Nouveau movements, rejected the work of the Impressionists. In their paintings the Nabis used broad, flat areas of bold color. Denis’s religious bent influenced him to treat many biblical subjects, as in Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1893), but he also worked with many secular subjects. The Nabis also contributed to a revival in the decorative arts, and Denis designed screens, lampshades, ceramics, and other items. For the Baron Denys Cochin, a Catholic statesman, Denis in 1897 created La legende de Saint Hubert (1897) in seven panels. His paintings were first exhibited two years later in Paris, and in 1891 he exhibited at the Salon des Inde´pendants. At this time his subjects included still lifes, such as Dish of Plums (1889), portraits, and almost mystical landscapes. In Forest with Anemones (1889), ghostlike trees rise from the green forest floor into a blue sky. In his Green Christ (1890) and Orange Christ (1890), both of which depict the crucifixion scene, the figures in the crowd and Christ on the cross appear as silhouettes among flat areas of color. Several paintings demonstrate an
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acknowledged debt to Paul Ce´zanne (1839–1906), whom he visited, including Homage a` Ce´zanne (1901) and Monsieur Ce´zanne au motif (1906). Working with Lugne-Poe’s Symbolist The´aˆtre de l’Oeuvre, Denis contributed scenery design to the theater. In 1892 he met ANDRE´ GIDE, and he illustrated Gide’s Le Voyage d’Urien the next year. The year 1893 also saw his marriage to his first wife, Marthe Meunier, who appears in Portrait of the Artist and His Wife at Dusk (1897) and other paintings. Denis first visited Italy in 1895. Broadening the scope of his love for Italian art, he absorbed the works of the fresco painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Toward the end of the decade he embraced a neoclassical style. He subsequently decorated many churches, receiving in 1899 his first commission, La glorification de la croix for the chapel of the College SainteCroix at Vesinet. The mural Pentecost (1934) decorates the apses of Saint-Esprit church in Paris. In 1919 Denis, with Georges Devallie`res, founded the Studios of Sacred Art. His wife died the same year, and in 1922 he married Elizabeth Graterolle. He executed many stained glass windows, including The Life of Joan of Arc (1916) for the home of Gabriel Thomas in Meudon. Denis illustrated St. Francis of Assisi’s Fioretti (1913); Eloa, a poem by the nineteenth-century French Romantic, Alfred de Vigny; and a number of books published by Ambroise Vollard. His theoretical writings on art include Theories (2 vol., 1920, 1922) and History of Religious Art (1939). Among Denis’s other works are Life of Saint Paul (1916) for St. Paul’s in Geneva; Justice and Peace (1928) for the staircase ceiling of the Senate in Paris; the paintings Eurydice (1906), The Golden Age: The Spring (1911), and The Raising of Lazarus (1933); the four-panel Screen with Doves (1896); mosaics; and tapestries. Outside of France, Denis’s work gained little recognition during his lifetime, and his work has not often been ex-
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hibited since his death. He was elected to the Acade´mie des Beaux-Arts de l’Institut de France in 1932. Denis died at 73 when a tram ran over him on the Boulevard St. Michel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cogeval, Guy, et al., Maurice Denis, 1870–1943.
Dennis, Nigel (January 16, 1912–July 19, 1989) Novelist, Playwright, Journalist, Editor igel Forbes Dennis made his living for many years as a book reviewer for major publications in the United States and England. In the realm of fiction and drama, he was best known for his novel Cards of Identity (1955), which, like his plays, is sharply satirical and explores aspects of psychology. Dennis was born in Bletchingley, Surrey, England. During his childhood he lived in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later studied at the Odenwald School in Germany and finally settled in England. In 1930 he finished his first novel, Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (published 1949), a fictional investigation of the Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler’s theories on the development of personalities, in the characters of the liberal journalist Max Divver and the wealthy Jimmy Morgan, who owns the periodical where Divver works. Beginning in 1934 he spent a lot of time in the United States, where he worked for the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures in New York City in 1935–1936. Dennis subsequently reviewed books for The New Republic and Time, and he served as associate editor
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at the former. He returned to London in 1949 and worked as a book reviewer (1960–1963) and co-editor (1967–1970) for Encounter. He continued to write book reviews for the Sunday Telegraph into the 1980s. Dennis finished his best-known novel, Cards of Identity, in 1955, and it was later adapted as a play. As the title suggests, the novel is about the search for identity. In a sharply satiric manner, Dennis depicts a group of psychologists (members of the Identity Club), who gather at an English country house to hear papers on problems of identity. A House in Order (1966) also concerns the question of identity. The protagonist is a prisoner and a pawn in a rivalry between military factions, and he is able to successfully preserve his identity during his confinement. Dennis’s other works include August for the People (1961), an indictment of the media; the play The Making of Moo (first performed in 1957), a satire on religious zeal; A House in Order (1966); and Exotics: Poems of the Mediterranean and Middle East (1970). Among his nonfiction works is Jonathan Swift: A Short Character (1964).
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Derain, Andre ´ (June 10, 1880–September 8, 1954) Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist, Illustrator, Designer ndre´ Derain’s paintings were part of the famous Fauve exhibition at the Paris Salon d’Automne in 1905. Before his break with the movement around 1908, he was a chief proponent of its brilliant color, broken brush strokes, and free forms. After 1908 Derain experimented with Cubism and other styles before evolving the Neoclassical forms of his late work. Derain also illustrated books, designed sets for the ballet and for theater, and sculpted. Derain was born in Chatou, France. His father was a pastry chef, and both parents encouraged his early love of painting. At the age of 15, he went to study with a local landscape painter. When it came to finding a career, however, his parents had more practical ideas. Derain studied at the Lyce´e Chaptal and under his parents’ influence intended to go into engineering. Bored with his studies, he spent much of his time painting and frequenting Paris museums. He later studied painting at the Acade´mie Carrie`re and at the Acade´mie Julien. At the Louvre he met Georges Florentin Linaret, who introduced him to HENRI MATISSE and other painters of the Paris avant-garde. Derain also gained the close friendship of MAURICE DE VLAMINCK. In the early years of his career, Derain painted numerous landscapes, such as The Road to Carrie`res (1899), and city scenes. After completing his military service (1901–1904), Derain returned to Paris and met the Symbolist poet Guillaume Apollinaire. In 1905 the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard (who handled the work of other artists, notably GEORGES ROUAULT) purchased almost all of his work. Derain exhibited paintings with the Fauves at the 1905 exhibition at the Salon d’Automne. At this time, like the other Fauves, he used pure pigment and brilliant color—notably rich blues and greens—in his paintings. In 1906 he
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went to London, where he painted a series of London scenes, among which is Hyde Park. The following year, PABLO PICASSO introduced him to his future wife, Alice Princet. Derain soon moved away from the Fauvist style, however, and began to develop his own. A tragic studio fire in 1908 destroyed many of his paintings up to that time. In 1909 art dealer Daniel Henry Kahnweiler began to buy his work. Although Derain maintained his friendships with other painters, he also came to be friends with literary figures such as the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and also acquired an interest in mysticism. The painter Paul Ce´zanne (1839–1906) influenced the next phase of development in his art. Derain used milder color in many of his paintings, although works such as Trees on the Banks of the Seine (1912) retain the intense color of his Fauvist paintings. Other works from this period include Bathers (1908), The Old Bridge at Cagnes (1910), and Last Supper (1911). Paintings such as La Samedi (1913) and Chevalier X (1912–1914) are dominated by long, thin figures and muted earth tones. In his later years, Derain painted in a neoclassical style, and his subjects included nudes (Nu au chat, 1923; Nu a` la cruche, 1921–1923), harlequins (Arlequin et Pierrot, 1924), ballet dancers, portraits, and still lifes (Still Life with Dead Game, 1928). A number of his paintings prior to World War II were destroyed when German soldiers occupied his home in 1940. In addition to painting, Derain contributed illustrations to editions of books by Max Jacob, ANDRE´ BRETON, Oscar Wilde, and George Gabory as well as to editions of many classical texts. In 1919 he designed sets for SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s production of La boutique fantasque. He contributed designs to a number of other ballets, including Le diable l’emporte
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(1948), for ROLAND PETIT. In 1933 he designed the ballets Les fastes and Les songes. His work for theater includes designs for a production of Paul Claudel’s L’annonce faite a` Marie (1918). In 1927 he completed a series of lithographs entitled Metamorphoses, and he also executed sculptures.
He won the Carnegie Prize in 1928.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lee, Jane, Derain, 1990.
Diaghilev, Sergei (March 31, 1872–August 19, 1929) Impresario, Editor he legendary Russian-born ballet impresario Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev was perhaps the most influential figure in modern dance. Between 1909 and 1929 he ran the Ballets Russes, an international dance company that launched the careers of many of the twentieth century’s best-known dancers and choreographers. Diaghilev’s efforts to integrate the talents of the leading musicians and painters of his day into ballet productions that had roots in the Russian classical tradition with which he was familiar—largely through the choreographer MICHEL FOKINE—revolutionized the conception of ballet in his day. Diaghilev was born in Perm, Russia, and raised by his father, a military man, and his stepmother. As a youth he studied music and attended the Perm Gymnasia, and in 1890 he entered the University of St. Petersburg to study law. After he graduated he intended to pursue a career writing music, but the Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), whom he met in St. Petersburg, convinced him that his true talents did not lie in music. Next Diaghilev began to associate with prominent painters, writers, and musicians, including LE´ ON BAKST. From 1899 to 1904, he edited the influential art review Mir Iskusstva (The World of Art). His entrance into the
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world of theater came in 1899, when the director of the Imperial Theatres gave him a post and appointed him editor of the Annual of the Imperial Theatres. As Diaghilev’s responsibilties grew, he began to oversee productions of operas and ballets. Diaghilev spent most of the years between 1904 and 1908 organizing art exhibitions, and in 1906 he settled in Paris, where he was based for the rest of his life. His debut as an independent theatrical impresario came in 1908, when he secured FEODOR CHALIAPIN to sing his famous title role in Modest Mussorgsky’s (1839–1881) Boris Godunov at the Paris Opera. The following year he founded Les Ballets Russes de Diaghilev. Drawing from a pool of talents he had known in Russia, he secured such noted dancers as TAMARA KARSAVINA, ANNA PAVLOVA, and VASLAV NIJINSKY to perform in a series of ballets (including Les Sylphides) largely choreographed by Michel Fokine. The season in Paris met with resounding success, and for the next two decades the Ballet Russes was the dominant force in dance on international stages. In 1910, the company performed the first of three operas by IGOR STRAVINSKY, The Firebird, which showcased the talents of Karsavina and the dancer Adolph Bolm. The following year the Ballet Russes expanded its pro-
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Sergei Diaghilev (쑖 Roger-Voillet/The Image Works)
ductions to international stages, performing in Rome, London, and Monte Carlo as well as in Paris. For the next two years Karsavina and Nijinsky dominated lead roles in productions such as Petrouchka and Le Spectre de la Rose,
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while Fokine continued to provide the bulk of the choreography. Following Fokine’s temporary departure from the Ballet Russes in 1913, Nijinsky, who had done some choreography for the compa-
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ny before, began to choreograph more, notably for Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). Soon afterward, however, Nijinsky, with whom Diaghilev had maintained a long and close homosexual relationship, married a female dancer, and an enraged Diaghilev dismissed him from the company. Fokine returned to choreograph several ballets in 1914, and the same year LE´ ONIDE MASSINE made his dancing debut with the Ballet Russes in La Le´gende de Joseph (The Legend of Joseph). The company made its American debut in 1915, and Nijinsky returned to dance with the Ballet Russes during the 1916 season. Massine’s choreographic debut for the company came the same year with Le Soleil de nuit (The Midnight Sun), and until the mid-1920s he was a major contributor, with Bronislava Nijinska, to the company’s choreography with such works as La Boutique Fantasque, The Three-Cornered Hat, and Mercure. In the company’s final years, GEORGE BALANCHINE became Diaghilev’s prin-
cipal choreographer, creating such works as La Chatte and Les Dieux Mendiants. The Ballet Russes gave its final production with a trio of ballets at Covent Garden on July 26, 1929, and Diaghilev’s death less than a month later ended the existence of the company as it was. Season after season until then, his productions became huge international successes. CLAUDE DEBUSSY, PABLO PICASSO, JEAN COCTEAU, MAURICE RAVEL, HENRI MATISSE, MANUEL DE FALLA, GEORGES BRAQUE, and RICHARD STRAUSS were among many avant-garde musicians and painters who contributed costumes, set designs, and music scores to Ballet Russes productions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Buckle, Richard, Diaghilev, 1977; Drummond, John, Speaking of Diaghilev, 1997; Garafola, Lynn, Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, 1998; Garafola, Lynn, and Nancy Van Norman Baer, eds., The Ballet Russes and Its World, 1999; Spencer, Charles, The World of Serge Diaghilev, 1974.
Diddley, Bo (December 30, 1928– ) Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist lthough he never attained the commercial popularity of many other artists of the two musical genres he bridged together—blues and rock and roll— the American musician Bo Diddley was an important innovator in styles that formed the foundation of much of the rock and roll music that rose to prominence in the 1960s. Nicknamed “The Originator,” Diddley developed a syncopated, rumba-like hambone beat that goes bomp-bomp-bomp bomp-bomp and has served as the basis of many a rock and roll song. He is also known for guitar innovations in the use of tremolo, string scratching, dis-
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tortion, reverb, and other special effects. Diddley is well respected among fellow musicians, was a particularly strong influence on British rock and roll bands, and has been widely covered by his peers. Diddley was born Ellas Bates in McComb, Mississippi. He was the only child of Ethel Wilson and Eugene Bates but had half siblings. His mother sent him to live with her cousin, Gussie McDaniel, in 1934, and he changed his name to Ellas McDaniel. The adopted child of sharecroppers, he eventually moved with the family to the South Side of Chicago. He soon began taking violin lessons
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from O. W. Frederick at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and played in the church orchestra, and he would study the violin for about a dozen years. His sister gave him an acoustic guitar for Christmas in 1940, and he taught himself to play, experimenting with different effects as he learned. By the time Diddley entered Foster Vocational High School, he had dropped the violin in favor of the guitar and was playing on Chicago’s Maxwell Street. His classmates nicknamed him “Bo Diddley” after a one-stringed African instrument known as the Diddley bow. He picked up the craft of making violins and guitars, and he constructed his first rectangular guitar (which would become his stage trademark) at the age of fifteen. Just before he graduated, he formed his first band, a trio first called The Hipsters and later The Langley Avenue Jive Cats. As a young man, Diddley worked odd jobs, became a semi-pro boxer, and played music on the streets for spare change. He married his first wife, Ethel “Tootsie” Smith, around this time, but the union lasted only a short time. In 1946, he married his second wife, Ethel Mae Smith. By 1951, he was playing in Chicago clubs, and by 1954, Diddley had purchased an electric guitar and formed a band of his own consisting of maracas player Jerome Green and harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold (1935– ). In 1955, Leonard Chess (1917–1969) signed Diddley to his Checker label, a subsidiary of Chess Records, and he recorded with them until 1974. He recorded his first hit, the tremolo guitar-laden “Bo Diddley.” which was based on the popular lullaby “Hush Little Baby.” Its B-side, a harmonica-driven blues-rock song “I’m a Man,” also fared well on the charts. By the end of the 1950s, he had recorded three albums, Bo Diddley (1957), Go Bo Diddley (1957), and Have Guitar, Will Travel (1959). The majority of Diddley’s songs, however, were not so much chart material as innovative and influential creations that influenced the music of many 1960s-era (and beyond) rock and roll groups from the U.K. and the
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United States. The Irish rock band U2’s “Desire” is often cited as a prime example of the use of the Diddley beat. His experiments with tremolo significantly influenced The Doors, and his forays into the use of distortion paved the way for further exploration of feedback and distortion in the guitar work of JIMI HENDRIX. THE ROLLING STONES covered his “Mona” and “I’m Alright,” and he particularly influenced their early music. Diddley had only had a few hits during the 1950s and early 1960s, and among them were “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover,” “Diddley Daddy,” “Roadrunner,” “Mona,” “You Don’t Love Me,” and “Who Do You Love?” the last of which would become a standard in The Doors’ live performances. During this period, only “Say Man,” crossed over into the pop charts. Diddley toured steadily throughout the 1950s and early 1960s with the drummers Clifton James and Frank Kirkland, pianist Otis Spamm, guitarist and vocalist “The Duchess” (who was also his half-sister), and his righthand man and longtime playing partner Green on bass and maracas. He shone as a live performer on stage, sporting his trademark rectangular guitars, and was also one of the first performers to use women in his band. For much of his career, Diddley was more popular in the U.K. than he was in his native U.S. Ironically, the British Invasion that owed much to his influence overshadowed his presence in America during the 1960s, and he spent much of his touring time during the 1970s in Europe. British punk bands like The Clash even embraced his music, and he later opened a series of concerts for them in the U.S. in 1979. In 1972, he played with the GRATEFUL DEAD at the Academy of Music in New York City. He toured with Rolling Stones bassist Ron Wood (1947– ) in the late 1980s, and in 1991, he played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Diddley toured California with Jerry Lee Lewis (1935– ) in 1994. Although his tours have proved more successful than his studio albums, he has record-
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ed sporadically since the 1960s in a wide variety of styles, including the surfing album Surfin’ With Bo Diddley (1963); the traditional blues album Super Blues (1968), with blues harmonica virtuoso Little Walter (1930–1968) and MUDDY WATERS; the 1992 electric-funk album This Should Not Be; and A Man Amongst Men (1996), which featured members of THE ROLLING STONES as well as the Shirelles. In 1976, RCA released 20th Anniversary of Rock ’n ’ Roll, featuring more than twenty artists who paid tribute to Diddley. Aside from his stage performances and studio recordings, Diddley has appeared on television shows and in films. In 1955, he was the first African-American to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (see ED SULLIVAN) but infuriated Sullivan. He was asked to sing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s (1919–1991) “Sixteen Tons” and instead played his number one R&B hit “Bo Diddley.” Sullivan banned him from future performances on the show. His other television and film appearances include a spot on the 2003 episode of the sitcom According to Jim and a small role as a pawnbroker in director John Landis’s (1953– ) Trading Places (1983), starring Eddie Murphy
(1961– ) and Dan Aykroyd (1952– ). He also played a Louisiana Gator Boys guitarist in Landis’s Blues Brothers 2000 (1998). Diddley appeared in noted documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker’s (1925– ) Keep On Rockin’ (1969) and was part of another documentary entitled Let the Good Times Roll (1973), originally released in Finland. Throughout his career, Diddley has won numerous awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. In the months of 2007, Diddley has suffered a series of life-threatening medical problems. In May 2007, he suffered a stroke during a concert in Iowa that affected his speech and communication to the point that he will not likely be able to perform again. While undergoing a routine medical checkup in late August, Diddley suffered a nonfatal heart attack. He currently lives in Archer, Florida.
BIBLIOGRAPHY White, George, Bo Diddley: Living Legend, 1998. www.bo-diddley.com.
Dietrich, Marlene (December 27, 1901–May 6, 1992) Actress, Singer ropelled from the German stage to international stardom almost overnight by film director JOSEF VON STERNBERG, Marlene Dietrich commanded admiring audiences for more than fifty years as a film actress and nightclub singer. Using shadow, contrast, and innovative camera work, Sternberg created the haunting mystique associated with her in their first film, The Blue Angel, in which she starred as the sensuous singer Lola-Lola.
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Dietrich was born Marie Magdalene Dietrich von Losch in Berlin; many details of her childhood remain unknown. Her father was an officer in the Royal Prussian Police, and in her first years her family had ample financial means. After the death of her father, and subsequently her stepfather, her family’s fortunes declined markedly. She attended the Augusta Victoria School for Girls and later enrolled at the Berlin Hochschule fu¨r Musik, where she studied the violin. However, she gave up her
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ambition to play professionally after injuring her arm with overpractice. Dietrich next studied acting under the director Max Reinhardt. In 1921 she made her stage debut in the chorus line of a touring review, and a short time later she returned to Reinhardt to act in his theater company. Reinhardt aimed to steer theater away from strict literary interpretations, emphasizing decor, costumes, and choreography. While acting in his company, Dietrich also appeared as an extra in films for the Universum Film AG. In 1924 she married the director Rudolf Sieber. Two years later she accepted a part in British director ALEXANDER KORDA’s Eine Du Barry von Heute (A Modern Du Barry). It was Sternberg, however, who was responsible for making Dietrich an international star and sex symbol. After seeing her in the play Two Bow Ties, he insisted on casting the then unknown
Marlene Dietrich (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-77224)
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actress as the cabaret singer Lola-Lola in his Der blaue Engel (1930; The Blue Angel), an adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s novel and the first sound film made in Germany. Sternberg’s shadow and light contrasts and Dietrich’s sensuous singing contributed to overnight fame, particularly in the United States. From 1930 to 1935 Dietrich worked with von Sternberg and Paramount Pictures in Hollywood, appearing again as a cabaret singer in Morocco (1930), as a secret agent in Dishonored (1931), and as a wife who leaves her husband in Blonde Venus (1932). In the action-packed Shanghai Express (1932), she played Shanghai Lily, one of several characters aboard a Shanghai-bound train that has been taken by revolutionaries. Dietrich appeared as Catherine the Great in The Scarlet Empress (1934), and the following year she finished her final film with Sternberg, The Devil Is a Woman (1935). Desire (1936) and Destry Rides Again (1939) are among Dietrich’s other notable movies prior to World War II. An ardent opponent of Nazism, she renounced her German citizenship and devoted the years between 1943 and 1946 to entertaining Allied troops. After the war Dietrich continued to appear in films, including A Foreign Affair (1948), The Monte Carlo Story (1956), and Witness for the Prosecution (1957; adapted by Billy Wilder from AGATHA CHRISTIE’s play). In Orson Welles’s visually appealing Touch of Evil (1958), she played a madam and fortuneteller opposite Welles’s alcoholic sheriff in a Mexican-American border town. In 1961 she appeared in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), a film about the Nazi war trials. In the later years of her life Dietrich became a popular nightclub and concert hall singer, appearing in her characteristic top hat and tails. She toured the United States giving concerts in 1973. Just a Gigolo was one of the few films in which she appeared. Her autobiography, Ich bin, Gott sei Dank, Berlinerin (I Am, Thank God, a Berliner; English translation, Marlene), appeared in 1987.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bach, Steven, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend, 1992; Dickens, Homer, The Complete Films of Marlene Dietrich, 1992; Dietrich, Marlene, Mar-
lene, 1989; Morley, Sheridan, Marlene Dietrich, 1976; O’Connor, Patrick, Dietrich: Style and Substance, 1991; Spoto, Donald, Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich, 1992; Walker, Alexander, Dietrich, 1984.
Dinesen, Isak (April 17, 1885–September 7, 1962) Novelist, Short-Story Writer sak Dinesen was the pseudonym of Karen Christence Dinesen, Baroness Blixen-Finecke. Best known for her memoirs Out of Africa, Dinesen published several collections of romantic tales beginning in the 1930s. Her work first attained popularity in the United States and inspired a number of films, including Babette’s Feast. Dinesen was born in Rungsted, Denmark. Her father, a military officer, acquired the family’s property in Rungsted, where Dinesen spent the majority of her life. His hanging suicide during her childhood left an emotional scar on Dinesen, made more serious by the local scandal that followed. Nevertheless, her childhood had many happy moments. For example, as a child, she enjoyed dressing up and putting on pantomime shows with her siblings. She was educated privately, studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen, and traveled widely in Europe, visiting Paris in 1910. Four years later, she married a cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, and settled with him in Africa. The Blixens ran a coffee plantation in Kenya, where she developed a deep love for the landscape, natives, and traditions of Africa. By 1921 their marriage had dissolved, in part due to his frequent absence and extramarital affairs. Dinesen stayed to run the plantation until 1931, when financial and other difficulties forced her to leave. During that time she fell in love with the English hunter Denys
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Finch Hatton, whose death in a plane crash devastated her. She recorded her experiences of these years in her memoirs Out of Africa (1937) (the basis for an Oscar-winning film directed by Sydney Pollack). A sequel, Shadows on the Grass, appeared in 1960. Dinesen began to write seriously upon her return to Denmark. She wrote in English and translated her works into Danish. The short stories collected in Seven Gothic Tales (1934) marked her first success. Winter’s Tales followed the same year. A successful American lecture tour in 1959 followed her early popularity in the United States. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Dinesen embarked on her only novel, The Angelic Avengers (1944), published under the pseudonym Pierre Andre´zel. She contradicted those who saw the story, which concerns a group who liberate themselves from an evil captor, as a wartime allegory. Dinesen’s short stories fall in the Romantic tradition. She often combined multiple narrations in her stories, which were also influenced in style by her longtime love of the theater. Dinesen was particularly fascinated with the commedia dell’arte and was often known to dress as the commedia dell’arte persona Pierrot, the clown. Themes of self-searching, the past, the meaning of art, and the mythological and supernatural characterize her work. A 1987 film based on “Babette’s Feast,” directed by Gabriel Axel, popularized the story
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of a servant who spends all her money to prepare an elaborate feast for a group of rigid and skeptical diners. “The King’s Letter” is
Isak Dinesen (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42505)
based on the true story of a letter Dinesen brought from the King of Denmark to Africa. Orson Welles produced a film based on “The Immortal Story” in 1968. In “Deluge at Norderney,” the young Calypso, living with her uncle, is the victim of his obsession with dressing her up as a boy. Illness hampered Dinesen’s writing efforts from the 1950s onward. Her Last Tales were published in 1957, followed by the posthumous volume Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (1977). Her other works include Daguerreotypes, and Other Essays (1979) and Letters from Africa, 1914–31 (1981). Her stories, and particularly Out of Africa, were highly regarded for their mystical atmospheres, drama, and sensitivity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hannah, Donald, ‘Isak Dinesen’ and Karen Blixen: The Mask and the Reality, 1971; Juhl, Marianne, Diana’s Revenge: Two Lines in Isak Dinesen’s Authorship, 1985; Lasson, Frans, The Life and Destiny of Isak Dinesen, 1970; Migel, Parmenia, Titania: The Biography of Isak Dinesen, 1967; Pelensky, Olga Anastasia, Isak Dinesen: The Life and Imagination of a Seducer, 1991; Thurman, Judith, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, 1982.
Dolmetsch, Arnold (February 24, 1858–February 28, 1940) Musician, Violinist, Pianist he musical career of French-born Euge`ne Arnold Dolmetsch revolved around three focal points—restoration and construction of old instruments, research into early English music, and performing of old English music on authentic instruments— all of which sparked renewed interest in longforgotten music. Dolmetsch’s ideas, unique
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approach to music, uncompromising enthusiasm for his work, and often unforgiving outlook rendered him a controversial figure in an era that championed musical experimentation. Dolmetsch was of German and French ancestry and was born in Le Mans, France. Several of his immediate ancestors had musical
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interests. His father, an organ and piano builder who worked for his father-in-law, was a stern and disciplined man. The skill of both men contributed to a successful business. Dolmetsch remained close to his grandfather and often accompanied him on organ–repairing journeys. His mother, too, had musical talent—she played the cello. At the age of 4, Dolmetsch began taking piano lessons. The cruelty of his teacher, however, caused disillusionment with the piano, and many years passed before he seriously played keyboard instruments again. Dolmetsch next studied the violin, and at the age of 6 he entered the Lyce´e du Mans. There, as in all of his studies, he received the highest marks. At the age of 14 he quit school to help out in his father’s business. Within two years, both his beloved grandfather and his father died. Dolmetsch was left, as a teenager, to run the family business, impeded by interfering relatives. He joined the local orchestra as a violinist. Before long had eloped with the young widow Marie Morel. They had a daughter, He´le`ne, who would later become a talented musician, and after her birth they married in England. After a brief stay in the United States, the Dolmetsches returned to France. There he continued the family business, successfully, with his mother’s new husband Alphonse Gouge. Dolmetsch next studied at the Brussels Conservatory, at first playing the viola. Under the influence of Ferdinand Kufferath he overcame his aversion to the keyboard and took up the study of the pianoforte. He acquired an old piano and, unable to find someone to restore it for him, did the work himself. This early acquisition was one of many old instruments he purchased and restored over the years. Lutes, violas, and many other instruments he restored were prominent features of his concerts. After leaving the Conservatory, Dolmetsch moved to England and attended the Royal College of Music, where he studied the violin under Henry Holmes and performed regularly
in the school’s concerts. Upon the completion of his studies, E. D. Rendell hired him as a part-time violin teacher at Dulwich College. Dolmetsch took on private students as well, and he developed a teaching style that focused on developing feeling for the music before the introduction of formal technique. Both in the libraries at the Royal College and in the British Museum, Dolmetsch grew increasingly fascinated with early British music, particularly viol music. Around the same time he acquired a viola d’amore, an unfretted instrument with vibrating sympathetic strings underlying bowed melody strings. He poured himself into research, finding new music to perform and studying how to play it authentically. He gave his first viol concert in 1890, gave many concerts and lectures over the course of his life, and frequently appeared with the Elizabethan Stage Society. Dolmetsch often appeared with a trio consisting of himself, Kathleen Salmon, and his wife. He found an enthusiastic supporter in the playwright GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, who attended many of his performances and promoted his work. In 1902 he embarked on a tour of the United States. From 1905 to 1909 he immersed himself in the building and restoration of lutes, harpsichords, and other instruments. From 1911 to 1914 he worked at the Gaveau factory in Paris, and following World War I he began constructing some of the first modern recorders. In addition to performing and building instruments, Dolmetsch published many editions of old music and a book, The Interpretation of Music of the XVII and XVIII Centuries (1915 and 1944). The Dolmetsch Foundation, founded in 1928 to advance his ideas on music, published the magazine The Consort. He received an honorary doctorate in music from Durham University.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Campbell, Margaret, Dolmetsch: The Man and His Work, 1975.
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Domingo, Pla ´ cido (January 21, 1941– ) Singer, Actor, Conductor n operatic tenor renowned for his warm voice and versatility, Pla´cido Domingo is a household name around the world. The thousands of productions in which he has appeared include standard opera roles, concerts of popular music and Spanish songs, films, traditional Spanish light operas, and modern operas. Domingo was born into a Catholic family in Madrid. From his earliest childhood, he spent much of his time around music and the theater. His mother, a popular singer, was of Basque ancestry. Domingo’s father, a talented singer and violin player, was of Catalan and Aragonese background. Both parents earned their living performing in zarzuelas, a form of Spanish light opera that dates to the seventeenth century and involves singing, dancing, and acting. Domingo appeared from time to
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Placido Domingo (쑖 Clive Barda / ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
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time in these productions as a boy, for example, in Manuel Penella Moreno’s The Wildcat (El gato monte´s). In 1946 Domingo’s parents decided to move to Mexico and form their own zarzuela troupe. Domingo and his sister joined them there three years later. In Mexico he began to study the piano, first under Manuel Barajas and then at the National Conservatory of Music. At the latter Domingo studied under Cerlo Morelli, the brother of Chilean tenor Renato Zanelli. He also observed classes by the National Opera, giving him his first real introduction to modern opera. A marriage, child, and subsequent divorce cut short Domingo’s formal music training. He took to performing in his parents’ zarzuelas, singing in nightclubs, playing the piano, and appearing in musicals, often singing baritone roles. In 1959 he joined the National Opera, where he started out singing supporting roles such as Borsa in Giuseppe Verdi’s (1813–1901) Rigoletto and Gaston in Verdi’s La traviata. During this time he continued to perform outside of the opera and began to appear in music shows on television. Domingo also dabbled in acting, preparing for his roles using the Stanislavsky method (see KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY). In 1961 he made his debut in a lead operatic tenor role as Alfredo in La traviata. The following year he married his second wife, Marta Ornelas, with whom he later formed a chamber opera group. After his debut in Mexico, Domingo joined an opera company in Dallas. Among his most successful roles there was his performance in Lucia di Lammernour with JOAN SUTHERLAND. From 1962 to 1965 Domingo sang with the Hebrew National Opera in Tel Aviv. In Philadelphia in 1965 Domingo sang his first performance as the German poet E. T. A. Hoffmann in Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes
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d’Hoffmann. It became one of his best-known roles, the other outstanding one being his Chevalier des Greiux in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. He took a contract with the New York City Opera in 1965, debuted at the Hamburg Opera in 1967, made his first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1968, and debuted at Milan’s La Scala in 1969. Domingo had by this time become an international star and sang regularly at the major opera houses of the world, as he still does, performing all of the standard repertoire and also appearing in modern operas such as Don Rodrigo. Although his range is not as broad as that of his contemporary LUCIANO PAVAROTTI, he is renowned for the warmth, color, and timbre of his voice. In 1984 he was instrumental in founding the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, and the following year he sang in the world premiere of ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’s Requiem. He accepted the post of artistic director of the Washington Opera in 1996. Domingo has made many recordings of opera, Spanish songs, and other music. With Pa-
varotti and JOSE´ CARRERAS, he has performed as The Three Tenors. The event, originally conceived to benefit the Jose´ Carreras Leukemia Foundation, has repeated numerous times since its inception at the opening of the 1990 World Cup in Rome. Domingo performed a solo at the 2006 World Cup in Berlin. He has also appeared in film versions of numerous operas and conducted. His video The Songs of Mexico features performances of popular Mexican music. My First Forty Years, an autobiography, was published in 1983.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Domingo, Pla´cido, My First Forty Years, 1983; Domingo, Pla´cido, My Operatic Roles, 2000; Schnauber, Cornelius, Pla´cido Domingo, 1997; Snowman, Daniel, Pla´cido Domingo’s Tales From the Opera, 1995. www.placidodomingo.com.
Douglas, Keith (January 20, 1920–June 9, 1944) Poet ike the World War I poet WILFRED OWEN and other poets of that generation, Keith Castellain Douglas lost his life fighting for England at a young age. Mortally wounded in World War II at the age of 24, Douglas had already begun to publish verse that expresses the turmoil and misery of his wartime experience. His reputation as a poet was established with several posthumous collections of his verse. Douglas was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. His mother worked as an artist’s secretary, and his father faced perpetual financial difficulties. A wilful, deter-
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mined personality emerged early in the young Douglas. In 1926 he entered the Edgeborough School, where he was given to rebellious behavior but still earned good grades. From 1931 to 1938 Douglas studied at Christ’s Hospital, a boarding school. His first published poems, “Pan” and “Ave Atque Vale,” appeared in the school’s literary periodical The Outlook in 1934. Douglas’s poetry soon began to appear regularly in The Outlook; it expressed a youthful optimism as yet untainted by the disappointment of relationships and the misery of war. As the years wore on, Douglas’s indepen-
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dence and determination brought him into conflict with the Christ’s Hospital authorities. His military activity began in 1935 and continued for the rest of his brief life. Upon the completion of his studies (mainly in history) at Christ’s Hospital, Douglas won a scholarship to study at Merton, Oxford. The years at Merton marked the beginning of numerous stormy love affairs, the difficulties of which found their way into his poetry. Douglas served as editor of the school’s The Cherwell and regularly contributed verse to its pages. With the outbreak of World War II Douglas enlisted in the military. From 1941 to 1944 he served in the Middle East, where he wrote much of the poetry for which he became famous. Douglas framed images of soldiers, battlefield miseries, and death in the Middle Eastern setting where he served, and in several poems he seems to predict his own death. Although principally concerned with his wartime experiences, Douglas’s verse lacks the strong antiwar sentiment found in the World
War I poetry of Owen and SIEGFRIED SASSOON, and instead carries the subtle tone and attitude of a detached observer. Single poems such as “Dead Men,” published in Citadel in 1943, found their way into print in various periodicals. Much of his verse was collected, with sketches, in Alamein to Zem-Zem (1946). After serving in the Middle East Douglas was sent back to England. He was mortally wounded during the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Following his death several editions of his poetry appeared, including Collected Poems (1951) and Selected Poems (1951). TED HUGHES compiled an edition of his poetry entitled Selected Poems (1964) that contributed significantly to the posthumous recognition of his work for its eloquent and ironic treatment of war themes in verse.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fraser, G. S., Keith Douglas: A Poet of the Second World War, 1957; Graham, Desmond, Keith Douglas, 1920–1944: A Biography, 1974; Scammell, William, Keith Douglas: A Study, 1988.
Douglas, Norman (December 8, 1868–February 9, 1952) Novelist, Essayist hough of Scottish and German ancestry, Norman Douglas lived much of his life in the warm Mediterranean climate of southern Italy, the setting of his most famous novel, South Wind. Douglas wrote only two other novels, devoting most of his time as a writer to his travel books, acclaimed for their rich and colorful detail; and opinionated essays, all of which reveal his pointed sense of humor and his mastery of conversational style. Douglas’s father was Scottish, his mother Scottish-German, both of aristocratic families;
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Douglas was born in Thu¨ringen, Austria. His father, an enthusiastic outdoorsman whom he deeply admired, died in a hunting accident in 1874. Four years later, Douglas’s family sent him to study at Yarlet Hall, Staffordshire, England. Douglas disliked the rigid atmosphere of this and the other English schools he attended, and in 1883 he went to study at the gymnasium in Karlsruhe, Germany. During his time there, he wrote for The Zoologists and learned a handful of languages, including German, French, and Russian. The looser discipline better suited his outlook and tempera-
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ment, and he remained at the gymnasium until 1888. By this time, Douglas had already developed his lifelong interest in the natural sciences. His first published work was an article entitled “Variation of Plumage in the Corvidae” for the journal Zoologist. In 1893, without having attended a university, Douglas entered the British Foreign Office. His diplomatic work took him to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he served until 1896; he then left the service for reasons that remain unclear. Douglas married a cousin, Elsa Fitzgibbon, in 1898. They collaborated on Unprofessional Tales (1901), a book of short stories, mostly conceived by his wife, published under the pseudonym “Normyx.” Their marriage ended bitterly in 1903. Unprofessional Tales was Douglas’s only major work of fiction until the publication of South Wind in 1917. In the meantime, he occupied himself with traveling and writing travel books.
Norman Douglas (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, Lot 12735330, XI I)
Douglas particularly liked the Mediterranean area and lived much of his life in southern Italy, the subject of many of his travel books, which combine his impressions with philosophy and local history. Among them are Siren Land (1911), Fountains in the Sand (1912), Old Calabria (1928), Alone (1921), Together (1923), One Day (1929), Summer Islands (1931), and A Footnote on Capri (1952). In all his works, Douglas was an outspoken and opinionated writer. He cultivated a reputation for hedonistic, bohemian living. Principal targets of his pen were Christianity in particular and organized religion in general. His lifelong atheism and antireligious sentiment is evident in Goodbye to Western Culture (1929; published in Europe as How About Europe) and other essay collections. An interest in the culture of ancient Greece and a fundamentally scientific approach to nature also influenced his writing. From 1912 to 1916 Douglas worked as assistant editor of FORD MADOX FORD’s English Review. The first and best-known of his three novels, South Wind, is a philosophical and conversational work set on the fictional island of Nepenthe, modeled on Capri, his home of many years. The rather proper and orthodox English Bishop Mr. Heard comes to Nepenthe to fetch his cousin and take her back to England. The hedonistic atmosphere of the island, where each of Douglas’s assortment of characters seems to embody some form of rebellion against conventional morality, slowly transforms the bishop. By the end of the novel, he is defending his cousin’s murder of her no-good ex-husband. The setting of Douglas’s second novel, They Went (1920), moves to an island that resembles England; it was inspired by an old Breton legend. A princess renowned for her beauty, her cruelty, and her love of architecture falls in love with the unattractive Theophilus, also a lover of architecture. Together they transform the city into a model of beauty and craftsmanship, and Theophilus softens the formerly harsh princess. In the weak and elderly King, a convert to Christianity who is
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not the princess’s real father, Theophilus identifies an enemy. He urges the princess to dispose of the Christian missionary Kenwyn, which she does with initial but not lasting regret. Nevertheless, the couple fails to save the city from disaster in the end and flees elsewhere to start anew. Although the novel received some critical acclaim, it was less successful commercially than South Wind. Douglas derived his final novel, In the Beginning (1927), from the legend of Ninus and Semiramis, founders of the Assyrian Empire. Among his other works are Goodbye Western
Culture (1930), the autobiographical Looking Back (1933), and the essay collections London Street Games (1916), Experiments (1925), Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology (1927), An Almanac (1941), Late Harvest (1946), Three of Them (1930), and Venus in the Kitchen (1952).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dawkins, R. M., Norman Douglas, 1954; Greenless, Ian, Norman Douglas, 1957; Leary, Lewis Gaston, Norman Douglas, 1968; Lindeman, Ralph D., Norman Douglas, 1965.
Doyle, Arthur Conan (May 22, 1859–July 7, 1930) Novelist, Short-Story Writer ir Arthur Conan Doyle created the most popular sleuth in detective fiction, Sherlock Holmes, whose name has become synonymous with good detective work. Doyle also wrote novels in other genres, practiced medicine, lectured, and became an ardent advocate of spiritualism in his later life. Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, a civil servant of Norman ancestry, suffered from both mental and physical ailments, and he was primarily raised by his mother. The family was Catholic, and Doyle first attended the Jesuit schools Hodder House and Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, where he studied classics and mathematics. After an additional year at Feldkirsch School in Austria, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he also began to write stories. After obtaining his degree in 1881, Doyle set up a practice in Southsea, England. The most important legacy from his time at Edinburgh was his meeting the surgeon Joseph Bell, who inspired the character
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of Sherlock Holmes. Four years later he married Louise Hopkins; after her death from tuberculosis in 1906 he married his mistress of many years, Jean Leckie. Magazines began to publish Doyle’s short stories in the 1880s. The character of Sherlock Holmes, a brilliant sleuth who applies rational deduction to solve cases, first appeared in A Study in Scarlet (1887), published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Over the next few years, Holmes, accompanied by his sidekick, the less brilliant but reliable and lovable Dr. Watson, solved mysteries in the pages of Strand and other magazines. The stories gained enormous popularity with British and American audiences, and fans besieged Doyle with letters (often addressed to Sherlock Holmes). Typical of the Holmes stories is The Sign of Four (1890), in which the detective is drawn into a mystery surrounding the murder of Bartholomew Sholto, brother of Thaddeus Sholto. The latter Sholto is wrongly accused of murdering his brother, and Holmes unearths
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the true culprits. A collection of the stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, was published in 1892, and the next year Doyle decided to end the detective’s life in The Final Problem. The resulting protest included thousands of angry letters to Doyle and the magazine, and he eventually complied with public demand and resurrected the detective. With The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901), set before Holmes’s death, Doyle reintroduced the detective. The popular story focuses on his investigation of a mysterious, apparently supernatural hound implicated in the deaths of Sir Charles Baskerville and his family. Not until the series of thirteen stories in The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) did Doyle resurrect Holmes from the dead. Stories about Holmes, which appeared in collections such as His Last Bow (1917), continued to appear until 1927. In the meantime, Doyle’s other fiction also began to draw a large audience. Micah Clarke
Arthur Conan Doyle (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-34026)
(1888) is set in seventeenth-century Scotland during the time of the Monmouth Rebellion and is one of his many historical novels. The story’s hero, Micah Clarke, embodies Doyle’s ideal of a good individual. Clarke shuns dogmatic church doctrines—as Doyle had by this time—and is moral, courageous, and intelligent. The hero of The White Company (1890), Alleyne Edricson, is a similar character; he has been raised in a monastery and is at first reluctant to leave its shelter, but his father’s will forces him to spend a year in the world. He opens himself up to broader experiences in a series of adventures, eventually coming to see ordinary human life as more worthwhile than “holy” seclusion. All Doyle’s historical novels, which also include The Refugees (1891), Rodney Stone (1896), and Sir Nigel (1906), are filled with adventure and also carry strong moral messages. He experimented with a variety of other genres, such as the scientific romance The Lost World (1912), the play A Story of Waterloo (1894), and the verses collected in The Tragedy of the Korosko (1897). Doyle’s dislike of the clergy and organized religion, particularly the Catholic Church, is evident in works such as Micah Clarke and The White Company, in which the clergy are often portrayed as self-serving hypocrites. A fictional series of letters to a Catholic friend, the character of J. Stark Munro in The Stark Munro Letters (1894), expresses Doyle’s own reasons for rejecting the Catholicism of his upbringing. After the death of his son in World War I, Doyle became increasingly and publicly devoted to spiritualism. Among his writings on this subject is his two-volume History of Spiritualism (1926). Around the turn of the century, Doyle was heavily involved in the Boer War in South Africa, serving as a physician at Bloemfontein Field Hospital. His The Great Boer War (1900) and The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Its Conduct (1902) address issues associated with the war. Doyle was knighted for his service in 1902.
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Among Doyle’s other works are his six-volume History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders (1916–1920), the autobiography Memories and Adventures (1924), and the novels A Duet: With Occasional Chorus (1898) and The Firm of Girdlestone (1890). He also lectured widely and did a bit of detective work himself, collecting evidence
and launching publicity campaigns that eventually freed two men wrongly convicted of crimes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cox, Don Richard, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1985; Jaffe, Jacqueline A., Arthur Conan Doyle, 1987; Pearson, Hesketh, Conan Doyle, 1974.
Du Maurier, Daphne (May 13, 1907–April 19, 1989) Novelist, Playwright, Short-Story Writer ost famous for her novel Rebecca (1938), Daphne du Maurier reintroduced the genre of the gothic romance to English literature in the World War II era. ALFRED HITCHCOCK directed several successful screen adaptations of her mysteryshrouded stories. Du Maurier’s interest in British history also inspired a number of historical novels. Du Maurier was the daughter of the actor and manager Sir Gerald du Maurier, born in London. She deeply admired her father, the primary influence in her younger life. Her grandfather, George du Maurier, was also a novelist. In 1916, she entered a day school in Oak Hill Park, and the following year she began her studies with a tutor at home. She attended finishing school at Camposena outside of Paris for six months beginning in 1923. Du Maurier read a lot of French and English literature and cited Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) and KATHERINE MANSFIELD as authors she admired. She began writing short stories in the 1920s but grew disappointed with her early efforts. When she finished school, du Maurier lived a somewhat adventuresome life filled with traveling and boating. In 1932 she married Leiutenant Colonel Frederick Arthur Montague
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Browning, whose military career forced them to move often, much to her dismay. Du Maurier’s real love was the Cornwall coast, the setting of many of her novels. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, followed by I’ll Never Be Young Again (1932) and The Progress of Julius (1933). Jamaica Inn (1936), the film version of which Hitchcock directed in 1939, is a gothic romance inspired by her visit to a hostelry of the same name. From the outset, du Maurier creates a mysterious, brooding atmosphere. The main character, the 23-year-old Mary Yellan, is one of the numerous strong female figures that inhabit the pages of du Maurier’s fiction. Following the death of her mother, Mary goes to stay with her aunt Patience and her uncle Joss, who run the Jamaica Inn. She finds Patience weary and broken, while the larger-than-life Joss seems to be evil incarnate. It soon emerges that Joss is a “wrecker” who puts false lights on the coastline to cause shipwrecks, and then loots the wrecks. Behind this scheme is Frances Davey, a mysterious and malevolent vicar, who orders the murders of Patience and Joss. Mary emerges from the adventure that follows a much stronger woman than when she came to the inn,
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and she is now ready to marry Jem, her uncle’s brother. The film version of Rebecca (1938), which Hitchcock transformed for the screen in 1940, starred LAURENCE OLIVIER and Joan Fontaine and earned an Academy Award for Best Picture. Stage versions were also produced in London and New York. As in Jamaica Inn, the opening pages of Rebecca immediately reveal a dark and mysterious atmosphere. The action of the story takes place on the estate Manderley, where the Rebecca of the title was the first wife of the mysterious Maxim DeWinter. Rebecca’s memory haunts the house, now inhabited by DeWinter, his innocent and timid second wife (who narrates the story), and the wicked housekeeper Mrs. Danvers. Like Mary Yellan, the second Mrs. DeWinter comes through the strife and emerges victorious as a stronger woman. Du Maurier published a sequel to Rebecca, Mrs. DeWinter, in 1971. Du Maurier’s works often explore individual psychological obsessions within a mysterious setting. Her belief in living for the present and her rejection of religious sentiment also inform her stories. Her love of history, particularly that of the British Isles, frames the narratives of several novels such as Hungry Hill (1943; filmed in 1947), The King’s General (1946), and Mary Anne (1954), set during the madness of George III. The King’s General tells the story of the romance between Sir Richard Grenville, a naval hero of the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and the beautiful Honor Harris. The du Maurier family history, which she researched extensively, inspired her novel The Glass Blowers (1963). Rule Brittania (1972), set in a fictional near future when Britain has withdrawn from the Common Market and decided to form a union with the United States, reflects du Maurier’s fundamental dislike of American culture. My Cousin Rachel (1951), another of du Maurier’s successful novels, was filmed in 1952, with RICHARD BURTON and Olivia de Havilland playing the leads. A tone of mystery
again dominates the story, set in Cornwall and narrated by Philip Ashley. Ashley, who has grown up distrustful of women thanks to his cousin and guardian Ambrose, receives a desperate letter from him. Ambrose begs him to come before his mysterious and domineering wife, Rachel, does him in. Ashley arrives to find Ambrose dead and is given unsatisfactory explanations of his death. He seeks out Rebecca, who eventually comes to his home and seduces him. Throughout the narrative, du Maurier teases the reader with hints of Rebecca’s involvement in Ambrose’s murder, but Rebecca dies in an accident and leaves the mystery unsolved. Du Maurier also wrote plays, short stories, the travel books Vanishing Cornwall (1967) and Enchanted Cornwall (1989), and the autobiography Growing Pains (1977). The drama The Years Between was staged in Manchester in 1944 and in London the following year. Her short-story collections include The Apple Tree (1952; published in the United States as Kiss Me Again, Stranger), The Breaking Point (1959), Not After Midnight (1971; American title Don’t Look Now), and The Rendezvous and Other Stories (1981). Gerald: A Portrait (1934) and The du Mauriers (1937) are among the works she wrote on her family. Du Maurier’s other novels include Frenchman’s Creek (1941), The Parasites (1949), The Scapegoat (1957), The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte (1960), The House on the Strand (1969), Golden Lads (1975), and The Winding Stair (1976). She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1952 and was made Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire in 1969.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cook, Judith, Daphne: A Portrait of Daphne Du Maurier, 1992; Forster, Margaret, Daphne du Maurier, 1993; Kelly, Richard, Daphne du Maurier, 1987; Shallcross, Martin, The Private World of Daphne du Maurier, 1991.
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Dubuffet, Jean (July 31, 1901–May 12, 1985) Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist, Illustrator ean-Philippe-Arthur Dubuffet (as he was christened) is primarily remembered for his development of art brut, or “raw art,” a violent, brutal style into which he assimilated the art of the mentally ill, primitive cultures, and children. In the 1960s Dubuffet began creating a series of puzzle-like pictures constructed of interlocking areas. Dubuffet was among the few French artists to impact modern art after the World War II era. Dubuffet was born in Le Havre, France. His father was a wine merchant. He studied art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre beginning in 1916, and two years later went to the Acade´mie Julien in Paris. For a short period of time, Dubuffet involved himself with the latest developments in the Paris art world, befriending such figures as RAOUL DUFY. From 1920 to 1924 he immersed himself in philosophy, literature, painting, and music, and he was also interested in the work of the Dadaists. In 1923 Dubuffet acquired a copy of a book by Dr. Hans Prinzhorn, in which the author asserted that the art of the mentally ill deserved attention as serious art. Dubuffet became fascinated with the art of the mentally ill as well as art produced by children and primitive cultures. These three influences were to shape his body of work, but not for another two decades. The following year Dubuffet abandoned painting altogether and took over his father’s wine business. Six years later he founded his own wine business and continued in that trade until 1934. He then turned to painting again for three years, but only decided to devote himself permanently to art in 1942. Dubuffet held his first one-man show at the Galerie Rene´ Drouin in 1944. Three years later he held a one-man show in New York, and the same year he began holding the first art brut exhibitions, the first of which took place at
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the Galerie Rene´ Drouin. The following year he founded La Compagnie de l’Art Brut, and in 1949 he wrote L’Art Brut pre´fe´re´ aux arts culturels. Dubuffet’s art brut assimilated the influences of the art of the insane and children’s art. Primitive human figures populate his paintings, lithographs, and drawings. These include male and female nudes (such as the Large Charcoal Nude of 1944) as well as people in everyday situations, as in the 1943 series of gouaches entitled Me´tro (Subway). In his paintings, Dubuffet created thick, rough surface textures formed by mixing a variety of materials, including ashes, sand, and tar. In the 1960s he turned to creating puzzlelike compositions with interlocking striped or colored areas. Among these are La gigue irlandaise (1961; Irish Jig) and Nunc Stans (1965) as well as the Hourloupe series begun in 1962. In some of the works, the interlocking pieces cover the whole canvas, sometimes obscuring faces hidden among them. In others, barely recognizable figures themselves are formed of interlocking areas, as in the large work Coucou Bazar (Le Bal de l’Hourloupe) [1972–1973; Coucou Bazaar (The Hourloupe Ball)]. Dubuffet also applied these concepts to three–dimensional sculptures formed of epoxy and styrofoam. Among Dubuffet’s other works are a series of praticables for theater and a series of costumes de the´aˆtre (both 1971); the Group of Four Trees at Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York (1972); and illustrations for books. In his later career, Dubuffet designed a series of large sculptures of black-and-white-painted fiberglass. BIBLIOGRAPHY David and Aldfred Smart Gallery, Jean Dubuffet: Forty Years of His Art, 1984; Messer, Thomas M., et al., Jean Dubuffet: A Retrospective, 1973.
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Duchamp, Marcel (July 28, 1887–October 2, 1968) Painter, Sculptor, Actor, Director
Marcel Duchamp (center). (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-63273)
major force in nonobjective art in the twentieth century, the French-born painter and sculptor Henri-RobertMarcel Duchamp created “readymades,” or everyday objects exhibited as sculpture, a series of motorized works in glass, and his major sculpture, The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors. His work strongly influenced the development of conceptual art and pop art in the United States, and he is credited with introducing Dadaism and Surrealism to American audiences. Duchamp also painted, although he did little in that medium after 1913, and worked in film. Duchamp was born in Blainville, France. His father was a notary, and his grandfather was an engraver. The youngest of three broth-
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ers (see JACQUES VILLON and RAYMOND DUCHAMP-VILLON) and a sister who all became artists, Duchamp attended the E´cole Bossuet in Rouen and graduated in 1904. From a young age he demonstrated an ability to draw, and at 15 he painted his first known work, Landscape at Blainville (1902), in an impressionistic style. In 1904 he moved to Paris and entered the Acade´mie Julien, where his two brothers also studied. The following year he began contributing comic cartoons to the magazines Courrier Franc¸ais and Le Rire. The next several years were ones of experimentation for Duchamp. The influences of Impressionism, Postimpressionism, Paul Ce´zanne (1839–1906), Fauvism (see HENRI MATISSE), Cubism (see PABLO PICASSO and
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GEORGES BRAQUE), and Italian Futurism (see F. T. MARINETTI and UMBERTO BOCCIONI) all successively appeared in his painting. His first exhibition at the Salon des Inde´pendants came in 1909. Two years later he painted, in a manner that combines Cubism and Futurism, the first version of his Nude Descending a Staircase, based on a text by the Symbolist poet Jules Laforgue. The subsequent version of the painting, which depicts a nude female figure in successive phases of motion, earned universal disdain when it was exhibited at the Salon des Inde´pendants in Paris in 1912 and attracted a great deal of attention at the Armory Show in New York in 1913, the first major exhibition of modern art in the United States. Around 1912 Duchamp, under the influence of friends who included the Symbolist poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) and the French avant-garde artist Francis Picabia (1879–1953), abandoned representational art altogether. He ceased painting in 1913 and took a job as a library clerk at the Bibliothe`que Sainte-Genevie`ve. He began to construct sculptures of everyday objects. Bicycle Wheel (1913) was the first of these sculptures, which he called “readymades”; it consisted of a bicycle wheel mounted upside down on a wine rack. Others include In Advance of the Broken Arm (1917), a snow shovel; and a urinal exhibited as Fountain (1917). Having moved to New York in 1915, Duchamp began work on his The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (1915–1923; also known as The Large Glass), widely considered his masterpiece. The work consists of a large object made of various materials—lead, paint, and metal—as well as a collection of notations. The latter were published in 1934 as Boite Verte (Green Box). Tu M’, Duchamp’s final painting, was exhibited in 1918 and combined painting with everyday objects. He returned to Paris in 1919 and the following year exhibited L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), a repro-
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duction of the Mona Lisa on which he drew a moustache and a goatee. Over the next two decades Duchamp loosely associated himself with the Dadaists and the Surrealists. In 1920 he began, with Rotary Glass Plate (Precision Optics), a series of mobile glass constructions entitled Precision Optics. The same year he adopted the pseudonym Rrose Se´lavy. Duchamp worked in film as well. He appeared in RENE´ CLAIR’s film Entr’acte in 1924 and made, with Man Ray, the short film Anemic Cinema two years later. While working in art and film Duchamp devoted much of his time to playing chess and was one time chess champion of Haute-Normandie. Duchamp returned to New York in 1942 and became a U.S. citizen in 1955. During the last years of his life he worked on a massive ´ tant donne´s: 1. la chute d’eau. piece entitled E 2. le gaz d’e´clairage (Given: 1. the waterfall. 2. the illuminating gas, 1946–1966), now held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, consisting of a leather female figure lying on a bed of leaves near a waterfall. Walter Arensberg, a friend of Duchamp since 1915, donated a large collection of the artist’s work to the Philadelphia Museum of Art when the artist died in 1954. Duchamp’s use of everyday objects in his artwork influenced the Pop art movement in the 1950s and 1960s, which borrowed imagery from pop culture. Duchamp’s work also significantly influenced the conceptual art movement of the 1960s, in which the concept of an artwork is more important than the actual work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hopkins, David, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst: The Bride Shared, 1998; Hulton, Pontus, ed., Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life, 1993; Masheck, Joseph, Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, 1974; Schwarz, Arturo, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, 1969; Tomkins, Calvin, Duchamp: A Biography, 1996.
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Duchamp-Villon, Raymond (November 5, 1876–October 7, 1918) Sculptor efore his premature death, Raymond Duchamp-Villon was among the earliest sculptors to work in the Cubist style. Although he had only a few years to develop his style, he influenced a succeeding generation of abstract sculptors. Duchamp-Villon was born Raymond Duchamp in Damville, near Evreux, France. His father was a notary, and he was the halfbrother of the painter JACQUES VILLON and the brother of the sculptor MARCEL DUCHAMP. After studying medicine, he decided to pursue sculpture as a career around the turn of the century. His early works were influenced by the naturalistic style of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), who sought to portray the inner state of his subjects. Works such as the terra cotta Le torse de jeune homme (Torso of a Young Man, 1910; also titled The Athlete), which depicts the athletic torso of a male figure, show Rodin’s influence in their representational portrayals of the subject. Duchamp-Villon executed por-
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trait sculptures in this manner as well, such as his head of the Symbolist poet Baudelaire (1911). Like his brothers, Duchamp-Villon fell under the influence of Cubism as it developed under PABLO PICASSO and GEORGES BRAQUE. Pursuing a more abstract and simplified style than in his earlier work, he executed such sculptures as Maggy (1911) and The Seated Woman (1914). Le cheval majeur (Large Horse, 1914), an abstract, half-animal, halfmachine creation based on geometric shapes, is widely considered his masterpiece. Duchamp-Villon’s career was cut short by his death from exposure to poison gas in World War I.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cabanne, Pierre, The Brothers Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, 1976.
Dufy, Raoul (June 3, 1877–March 23, 1953) Painter, Ceramicist, Graphic Artist, Designer he Impressionists and Postimpressionists were the first influences on the French painter Raoul Dufy. Dufy was then influenced by the Fauves and the Cubists before he evolved his personal style, in which his typical outdoor scenes convey motion, activity, and light through simple, sensuous forms and bright color. Dufy was born into a poor family in Le Havre, France. Like his fellow Fauve MAURICE
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DE VLAMINCK, he came from a family of musicians. His brother, Jean Dufy, was also a painter. With eight siblings and parents with little money, Dufy had to work at the expense of some of his schooling. He did, however, study art at the E´cole Municipale des BeauxArts du Havre, where he met the future Cubist GEORGES BRAQUE and cubist painter E´mileOthon Friesz. In 1900 he went to the E´cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
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Raoul Dufy (쑖 Laure Albin-Guillot / Roger-Voillet / The Image Works)
Dufy was not terribly attracted to the formal study of art. He developed an interest in the Impressionists and Postimpressionists, both of which influenced early works such as
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his Self Portrait (1898). The treatment of line in Japanese prints also shaped his work. Dufy began to exhibit his work in Paris, first at the
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Salon des Artistes Franc¸ais in 1901 and then at the avant-garde Salon des Inde´pendants. By 1904, Dufy was painting with the Fauves, whose bold compositions employed vibrant colors designed to make a strong visual impact. His work appeared in the famous 1905 exhibition at the Salon d’Automne with paintings by HENRI MATISSE, ANDRE´ DERAIN, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Braque. Like the rest of the Fauves, Dufy soon abandoned the style and developed his own. He spent the year 1906 in Normandy with the painter Albert Marquet, another Fauve, producing such works as Old Houses at Hornfleur (1906) that reveal the subject matter he was to treat for the rest of his life—scenes that reveal the dynamic movement associated with human activity. His colors, always vibrant, were nonetheless more subdued than those in the works from his Fauvist period. In 1907, Dufy worked with Braque in Provence. Braque’s evolution toward Cubism briefly affected Dufy’s style, evident in the angular forms of such works as Homage to Mozart (1915). Dufy’s forms grew increasingly simple and flowing, as his paintings placed more emphasis on the vibrant motion, color, and light of his subject matter.
Popular subjects in his work were regattas (Henley Regatta, 1934, and Deauville Regatta, 1936), circuses, city scenes from London and Paris, farming scenes (The Threshing Machine, 1946), and major events (The Coronation of King George VI, 1937). Particularly in his later years, Dufy often painted musical instruments, operas, and orchestras, for example, Orchestra (1942), The Double-Bass Players (1946), The Pink Violin (1948), and Homage to Bach (1952). His nudes include many standing nudes and reclining nudes. Dufy did not confine himself exclusively to painting canvases. He worked on a series of murals for the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. His fabrics, used by the fashion designer Paul Poirot, were worn in fashionable Parisian society. Dufy also executed woodcuts and ceramics. An edition of Guillame Apollinaire’s Le bestiaire with his illustrations appeared in 1911.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brion, Marcel, Raoul Dufy: Paintings and Watercolours, 1958; Lancaster, Jan, Raoul Dufy, 1983; Perez-Tibi, Dora, Dufy, 1989.
Durrell, Lawrence (February 27, 1912–November 7, 1990) Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Short-Story Writer awrence George Durrell is best known for his fictional tetralogy set in Alexandria, Egypt, The Alexandria Quartet, published between 1957 and 1960. His literary output, which also includes poetry, short stories, plays, and travel books, was shaped by the many places in which he lived and, more basically, by his interest in a deeper reality, the Heraldic Reality, as he called it.
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Durrell was of Irish and English ancestry, born in Jullundur, India, where he lived until he was 11. The Indian background of his early childhood played a significant role in his development, and in his adulthood he retained an interest in Eastern thought and liked to think he had a Tibetan mentality. At the age of 11, Durrell’s parents sent him to school in England. After attending a series of preparatory
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schools, he repeatedly failed his entrance examinations for the university and never went on with formal study. England made a negative impression on Durrell, and he was to live there only briefly during his life. In 1936 he moved with his family and his first wife, Nancy Myers, to the Greek island of Corfu. During the time he lived there he became a friend of the NobelPrize-winning author GEORGE SEFERIS and taught at the British Institute in Athens. His first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers, was published in 1935. The same year, he read the American writer HENRY MILLER’s Tropic of Cancer and wrote a letter to the author, inaugurating a forty-five-year friendship and correspondence between the two men. With the intention of marketing the book to the public, Durrell published Panic Spring in 1937 under the pseudonym Charles Norden. His more serious work The Black Book was published in Paris the following year. With the approach of the German army, Durrell fled Greece with his wife and daughter in 1941 and settled in Cairo. The couple separated the following year, and Durrell moved to Alexandria, where he worked as a press attache´ in the British Information Office. Alexandria provided the setting for his popular tetralogy of novels, The Alexandria Quartet, and his second wife, Eve Cohen, whom he met in Egypt, served as the model for Justine in the first volume. Durrell returned to Greece, settling on the island of Rhodes, in 1945 and worked as a public relations director. In 1947 and 1948, he served as director of the British Council Institute during an unpleasant stay in Cordoba, Argentina. During that year he wrote A Key to Modern British Poetry (1948), and his novel White Eagles Over Serbia appeared in 1949. From that year until 1952, he lived in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and again worked as a press attache´. In 1952, Durrell moved to Cyprus, taught English literature, and worked as a public relations officer. The political situation there grew unstable as tensions mounted among
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the British and Cypriot Greeks and Turks. The turmoil placed Durrell in danger, and in 1956 he moved to Dorset, England. His experiences in Cyprus form the substance of his travel book Bitter Lemons (1957). He married Claude-Marie Vincendon in 1961. Justine, the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet, was published in 1957, the year Durrell settled in the south of France. There he continued work on the subsequent volumes, Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960). The best-selling tetralogy earned praise from critics and the public. The series is narrated from multiple perspectives, with the most significant voice being that of the middle-aged, Anglo-Irish schoolteacher L. G. Darley. Darley is recovering from an affair with Justine Hosnani, and he is assisted in understanding the things that have befallen him by the doctor-mystic Balthazar. Mountolive deviates from Darley’s story and uses third person narration, but Darley returns to the narrator’s spot in Clea and tells of his love for the painter Clea Montis. In his fiction, Durrell presents subjective pictures of people and events, entering into the souls of his characters as they search for deeper meaning in their lives. Durrell himself saw deeper meaning as to be found in a fusion of Western physics (particularly the theories of Albert Einstein) with Eastern metaphysics. He believed in the existence of a realm of higher consciousness toward which one should strive, which he called the Heraldic Reality. Durrell investigated various mystic traditions that seemed to offer paths to that reality, including the Cabbala (the tradition of Jewish mysticism), Eastern mysticism, and the tarot. His novels are subjective both in substance and in structure; subjectivity of structure is particularly evident in The Avignon Quintet, in which he purposely confuses the division between fiction and reality. The series consists of Monsieur; or, The Prince of Darkness (1974), Livia; or, Buried Alive (1978), Constance; or, Solitary Practices (1982), Sebastian; or, Ruling Passions (1983), and Quinx;
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or, The Ripper’s Tale (1985). Critics were less enthusiastic about The Avignon Quintet than The Alexandria Quartet. Durrell published a third multivolume novel, The Revolt of Aphrodite, consisting of Tunc (1968) and Nunquam (1970). Durrell’s varied living situations provided the material for a number of critically acclaimed travel books, often considered equal to his fiction. In addition to Cyprus in Bitter Lemons, Durrell treated two other Greek islands in Prospero’s Cell (1945) and Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953). His final book, Caesar’s Vast Ghost: Aspects of Provence (1990), describes the landscape and culture of Provence in the south of France. Among Durrell’s other works are the volumes of poetry A Private Country (1943),
Cities, Plains and People (1946), The Tree of Idleness (1953), The Ikons (1966), and Collected Poems 1931–74 (1980); the plays Sappho (1961), Acte (1961), and An Irish Faustus (1964); Antrobus Complete (1985), a series of humorous sketches inspired by his work in the Civil Service; and paintings under the pseudonym Oscar Epfs.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bowker, Gordon, Through the Dark Labyrinth: A Biography of Lawrence Durrell, 1997; Kaczvisnky, Donald P., Lawrence Durrell’s Major Novels, or, The Kingdom of the Imagination, 1997; Pine, Richard, Lawrence Durrell: The Mindscape, 1994; Weigel, John A., Lawrence Durrell, rev. ed., 1989.
Du ¨ rrenmatt, Friedrich (January 5, 1921–December 14, 1990) Playwright, Short-Story Writer, Essayist nfluenced by experimental stylists such as BERTOLT BRECHT, the German-language playwright Friedrich Du¨rrenmatt emerged as one of the most prominent figures in post–World War II German theater. His plays, which include The Visit and The Physicist, convey a sense of the absurdity and futility of ordinary human endeavor, yet the possibility of achieving authenticity, even in defeat. Du¨rrenmatt’s work has been widely translated and is frequently performed around the world. Du¨rrenmatt was the son of a Protestant minister, born in Konolfingen, near Bern, Switzerland. He attended a local school before his family moved to Bern, where he studied at the gymnasium. At the universities of Zurich and Bern, Du¨rrenmatt studied philosophy and literature, also developing an interest in painting. He married Lotti Geissler in 1947.
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Du¨rrenmatt began his career as a writer with the publication of his first short story, “The Old Man,” in Bern in 1947. Over the next several years, his stories continued to appear in Swiss and German periodicals. Among them were several detective stories, including “The Judge and His Executioner” and “The Suspicion,” both published serially in the early 1950s. He contributed theater criticism to Die Weltwoche in Zurich in 1951–1952. A number of his stories were collected and published as The City (1952). Es steht geschrieben (It Is Written), Du¨rrenmatt’s first play, premiered in Zurich in 1947 and was published the same year in an edition he illustrated. The story, set during the siege of Mu¨nster in 1534–1536, a conflict that ended in the suppression of the radical Protestants by the Roman Catholic authorities, reflects Du¨rrenmatt’s cynical attitude
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toward religion. The story incorporates several parodies of historical participants and in part concerns a power struggle between the literalist-religionist Knipperdollinck and the sensualist Bockelson. Der Blinde (The Blind Man) followed in 1948. Romulus der Grosse (1949; Romulus the Great) proved to be Du¨rrenmatt’s first success in the theater and typifies the tragicomic style of his mature works. The hero is Romulus, the last emperor of the crumbling Roman Empire, usually called Romulus Augustulus, or Romulus the little Augustus, so ineffectual was he believed to be. In the playwright’s portrayal, Romulus has genius, although it does not emerge until well into the drama. His greatness lies in his recognition of the emptiness of the empire, the end of which he makes every effort to hasten. In his early plays, Du¨rrenmatt borrowed stylistic elements from Brecht, who employed various devices to break the usual connection between the actors and the audience. Broken chronology, interruptions, chaotic atmosphere, and actors who step out of their roles to speak to the audience recur frequently in Du¨rrenmatt’s work, making the audience remember that what they are seeing is not real, and think about its message. Human attempts to control fate or establish ideal societies, whether religious or political, are portrayed as futile. Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi (1952; The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi, produced in New York as Fools Are Passing Through in 1958) brought Du¨rrenmatt his first real success abroad. The play opens with the final scene in chronological time, three men shooting another. In the action that follows, the three men each represent an idealist of a different philosophical leaning. The devious Anastasia leads all to their downfalls. An Angel Comes to Babylon was produced in Munich in 1953. In Der Besuch der alten Dame (1956; The Visit), Du¨rrenmatt painted a grim picture of greed, mob mentality, and the destruction of a community. The impoverished prostitute-
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turned-multimillionaire Claire Zachanassian returns to Gu¨llen, a now economically depressed city from which she was driven years before. The town’s citizens hope to secure a sizable donation from her with the assistance of her former lover, Alfred Ill, whose corruption had led to her earlier disgrace. Instead, Claire agrees to give a billion dollars, but only if the townspeople will kill Ill. Outraged at first, they slowly warm to the idea as the economic situation worsens, rationalizing their crime as punishment for the no-good Ill. The city’s moral demise is complete when the townspeople carry out the act, but Ill himself achieves a certain redemption by the way he accepts his doom. Along with The Visit, many critics consider Die Physiker (1962; The Physicist) Du¨rrenmatt’s best play. Framed in a more conventional structure than most of his plays, it relates his skepticism over the role of rapidly advancing science and shows an individual powerless to stop impending disaster. The central character, Mo¨bius, is faking madness to prevent the spread of a potentially destructive discovery he has made. Two other insane scientists are spies for rival powers of the East and West, who want access to Mo¨bius’s discovery. In the end, it is their unscrupulous psychiatrist who obtains the damaging secrets, leaving them confined to the sanatorium and the world destined for disaster. Der Meteor (1966; The Meteor), a two-act play, caused an uproar at its Zurich premiere. The protagonist is a nihilistic Nobel Prize winner who actively seeks death and in the process ruins everyone in his path. At the end of the play, he has not been able to die. Du¨rrenmatt’s other plays include Frank V (1959); Hercules and the Augean Stables (1962), originally written as a radio play in 1954; and Portra¨t eines Planeten (1970; Portrait of a Planet). Among his other works are Theaterprobleme (1955; Problems of the Theatre) and a number of radio plays—The Double (1946); The Case of the Donkey’s Shadow (1951); Stranitzky and the National Hero (1952);
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Nocturnal Conversation With a Despised Person (1952); Operation Vega (1954); and Traps (1956).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Chick, Edson M., Dances of Death: Wedekind, Brecht, Du¨rrenmatt, and the Satiric Tradition,
1984; Peppard, Murray B., Friedrich Du¨rrenmatt, 1969; Tiusanen, Timo, Du¨rrenmatt: A Study in Plays, Prose, Theory, 1977; Urs, Jenny, Du¨rrenmatt: A Study of His Plays, 1981; Whitton, Kenneth S., Du¨rrenmatt: Reinterpretation in Retrospect, 1990.
Dylan, Bob (May 24, 1941– ) Singer, Songwriter, Musician erhaps the most talented and revered lyricist in American rock and roll history, Bob Dylan derived his musical roots from American folk and blues songs of the early twentieth century. In the early 1960s, barely into his twenties, he became a cultural icon after penning such folk-inspired songs as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” In the mid-1960s, he put his lyrics and his warm, edgy, and gravelly voice to electric music, creating a new strain of rock and roll that augmented the role of the songwriter in “singer-songwriter” without diminishing the importance of the music. Dylan’s influence on the development of rock and roll is incalculable, and his poetic lyrics remain a standard against which critics judge songwriting (“Dylanesque” is a popular word in music reviewers’ vocabulary). A deeply introspective and sensitive person, Dylan has maintained a constant stage presence for years while taking great strides to maintain a semblance of privacy in his personal life. He has concentrated publicly only on his work, intentionally distancing himself from the press and rarely granting interviews. His heartfelt and philosophical lyrics have invited much speculation and argument about his beliefs among both fans and detractors, as well as labels ranging from born-again Christian to
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social activist-spokesman to Zionist, none of which he comments on. Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman to parents of Jewish ancestry in Duluth, Minnesota, where the family lived until he was seven. Following his father’s bout with polio, the family moved to the nearby ironmining town of Hibbing, and Dylan spent the remainder of his childhood there. He developed an interest in music at a young age and frequently listened to blues, country, and rock and roll music on the radio. By the age of ten, he had learned the harmonica and the piano, and he taught himself to play the guitar. While in high school, he formed a number of bands, including The Shadow Blasters and The Golden Chords. In 1959, he entered the University of Minnesota, and he soon developed a strong interest in American folk music. Around Minneapolis, he met other folk musicians and began performing at coffeehouses. Sometime during this period, he unofficially changed his name to Bob Dylan (he would later legalize the new name). Unimpressed with the stuffiness of formal academia and more interested in pursuing his musical ambitions, he dropped out of college after a year. After spending a few months on the Minneapolis folk circuit, he moved to New York City in late 1960. At the time, New
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York’s folk scene was bustling. He began to play at clubs around Greenwich Village, making his debut at Gerde’s Folk City in April 1961. The legendary folk singer WOODY GUTHRIE, suffering from Huntington’s disease, had by that time grown sick enough to require hospitalization, and Dylan visited him in the hospital. Guthrie was one of the strongest early influences on his music, and he paid tribute to him in “Song to Woody” and “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.” Dylan’s work around the city caught reviewers’ attention and eventually the ears of Columbia producer John Hammond (1910–1987), who signed Dylan to Columbia records in 1961. His first album, the self-titled Bob Dylan (1962), consisted of blues, folk, and gospel songs along with homage “Song to Woody.” Beginning with his next album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), Dylan gained increasing attention and began to introduce songs that remain classics today—“Blowin’ In the Wind,” “Masters of War,” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” among them. Other artists began to cover his songs, as they would do prolifically throughout the 1960s and beyond. Critics began to label Dylan as a protest singer—one of many labels slapped on him over the years that he disliked. While still musically rooted in the folk and blues traditions, Dylan’s music introduced a new, deeper dimension to lyricism than anything that had appeared before it. Complex yet unpretentious, it mixed careful and intentional introspection with a blend of pointed humor, criticism, search for redemption, satire, and profound sadness. Dylan began to inspire a new wave in folk music headquartered in Greenwich Village. He performed with folk singer Joan Baez (1941– ), whose shows helped launch his career as a more widely known performer. His next album, The Times They Are aChangin’, was still heavily rooted in the folk tradition and introduced such songs as “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” about a hotel maid murdered by a young socialite;
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“Boots of Spanish Leather;” and “One Too Many Mornings.” While Dylan addressed social issues in the songs, they shied away from making overt political statements. Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964) saw Dylan beginning to distance himself from the folk movement and contained his famous songs “I Shall Be Free #10,” “My Back Pages,” and “It Ain’t Me Babe.” With “It Ain’t Me Babe,” Dylan seemed to be telling over-adoring fans that they would never find anything emotionally or spiritually satisfying if they were looking to him for answers. Bringing It All Back Home (1965) was a further move toward rock and roll, and it was the first album on which Dylan first employed electric instruments. The popular songs “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Maggie’s Farm,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” (popularized by the Byrds’ recording of the song the same year) all belong to Bringing It All Back Home. D. A. Pennebaker (1925– ) included a video of Dylan holding up individual words to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” as they are sung in his documentary of the singer’s 1965 British tour in Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back (1967). It was in the summer of 1965 that Dylan both horrified and enchanted segments of his traditionally folk audiences by plugging in an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival. Amidst the crowd’s mixed reaction, Dylan left the stage after performing three songs but returned to perform acoustic versions of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Folk enthusiasts, however, had not forgotten the electric songs, which alienated many of them. In 1965, Dylan released Highway 61 Revisited featuring the enormously successful “Like a Rolling Stone,” a song that has become one of the most widely covered songs in rock and roll history. “Tombstone Blues,” “Queen Jane Approximately,” and “Desolation Row” all belong to the album as well. Dylan embarked on a tour backed by The Hawks, a band with guitarist-singer Robbie
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Robertson (1943– ) and drummer Levon Helm, both of whom would later form part of the group simply named “The Band.” In 1966, he recorded Blonde on Blonde in the country music powerhouse of Nashville, Tennessee. His classics “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” “Just Like a Woman,” “I Want You,” “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” and “Absolutely Sweet Marie” all formed part of the album. After returning to the United States from a European tour in 1966, Dylan suffered serious injuries from a motorcycle accident near his home in Woodstock, New York (the site of the famed music festival). After recuperating, he began recording with The Hawks both at his own home and in the Hawks’ basement at “Big Pink,” a house they shared in Saugerties, New York. Columbia released some of the recordings, which featured both old and new songs, as The Basement Tapes belatedly in 1975. In the meantime, other artists covered and scored hits with some of the resulting music (including The Byrds’ version of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”). The Hawks renamed themselves The Band and recorded songs Dylan either wrote or cowrote on their debut album Music From Big Pink in 1968 (“Tears of Rage,” “This Wheel’s On Fire,” and “I Shall Be Released.”) The first volume of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits appeared in 1967. Later that year, he released John Wesley Harding, a musically sparse album notable for the famous song “All Along the Watchtower.” Inspired by biblical passages from the Book of Isaiah (21:5–9), it prompted JIMI HENDRIX to record a rollicking rendition of the song in 1968, and Dylan himself preferred Hendrix’s version to his own. The country-infused Nashville Skyline (1969) opened with a duet with JOHNNY CASH on an earlier Dylan song entitled “Girl From the North Country,” and Cash won a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for writing the record’s liner notes. His well-known song “Lay Lady Lay” is also from the album. Dylan
was notably absent from the Woodstock Festival, where many of the day’s famous rock and roll musicians played in 1969. Two new albums, Self Portrait and New Morning, followed in 1970, and a second volume of greatest hits appeared in 1972. The next year, Dylan played the character of Alias in director Sam Peckinpah’s (1925–1984) western film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. An accompanying soundtrack, written by Dylan, was released the same year and introduced the classic and extensively covered “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” The album Dylan was also released in 1973. His next album, Planet Waves (1974) featured two versions of what was to become another Dylan classic, “Forever Young,” and was recorded with The Band. Dylan and The Band next embarked on a lengthy North American tour that produced the double live album Before the Flood (1974). Blood on the Tracks (1974), recorded as his 1965 marriage to Sara Lownds was breaking up, opened with the well-known “Tangled Up In Blue.” On Desire (1976), Dylan collaborated with the theater director and psychologist Jacques Levy (1935–2004). Songs from the album include “Hurricane,” a defense of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (1937– ), who he believed had been unjustly imprisoned for a triple homicide; “Isis”; and “Sara,” a song expressing his inner torment over his failed relationship with his wife. Hard Rain (1976) collected past songs and was accompanied by a television special of the same name. In the famed 1975–1976 Rolling Thunder Revue tour, Dylan took a large cast of musicians on the road with him. Among them were songwriter T-Bone Burnett (1948– ), ALLEN GINSBERG, folk singer Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (1931– ), former Byrds singer and guitarist Roger McGuinn (1942– ), Baez, and JONI MITCHELL. Dylan appeared in two notable films in the late 1970s. Renaldo and Clara (1978) was a four-hour film featuring himself as Renaldo with his wife as Clara and largely filmed dur-
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ing the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. He was one of many musicians, including NEIL YOUNG, Mitchell, and MUDDY WATERS, who participated in The Band’s 1976 The Last Waltz concert, filmed by MARTIN SCORSESE and released in 1978. Street Legal (1978) was the last album preceding Dylan’s highly publicized conversion to Christianity. In 1979, he attended Bible study classes at the Vineyard School of Discipleship in Reseda, California. Slow Train Coming (1979) and Saved (1980) were Dylan’s most overt expressions of his newfound faith, the former highlighted by the title song and “Gotta Serve Somebody” and the latter featuring a powerful biblical account of the chief priests coming with the betrayer Judas and a multitude to the Garden of Gethsemane to retrieve the soon-to-be crucified Christ entitled “In the Garden.” In subsequent albums, such as Shot of Love (1981) and Infidels (1983), Dylan continued to express Christian themes in less “preachy” language. Shot of Love’s “Every Grain of Sand” describes beauty he found in the master’s handiwork, in the midst of human despair: In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand. “Man of Peace” from Infidels warns of the devil’s deceptive outwardly appeal: Look out your window, baby, there’s a scene you’d like to catch, The band is playing “Dixie,” a man got his hand outstretched. Could be the Fuhrer, could be the local priest. You know sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Although Dylan has since shunned affiliations with particular religious sects and denominations, his later songs and albums generally paint a portrait of a spiritually corrupted world in one form or another. In “Blind Willie McTell,” an outtake from Infidels that would not be released commercially until
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1991’s The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991, he lamented: Well, God is in heaven, and we all want what’s His But power and greed and corruptible seed seem to be all that there is I’m gazing out the window of the St. James Hotel And I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell
In “Foot of Pride,” also released as part of the first edition of The Bootleg Series, he made clear his beliefs that religious establishments can be as corrupt as the rest of the world. In 1985, his retrospective box set Biograph was released, as was Empire Burlesque (1985). The latter featured the apocalyptic “When the Night Comes Falling From the Sky,” and it was followed by Knocked Out Loaded (1986) and Down in the Groove (1988). In 1988, he recorded the lighthearted Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 with Roy Orbison (1936–1988), Jeff Lynne (1947– ), Tom Petty (1950– ), and George Harrison (1943–2001). Orbison died after the first Traveling Wilburys record, but the remaining members of the group released Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 in 1990 (no Volume 2 was ever released). Dylan and the Dead (1989) featured Dylan singing his own classics backed by the GRATEFUL DEAD. He toured with both the Dead and with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in the late 1980s. Oh Mercy (1989) was produced by the Canadian musician and producer Daniel Lanois (1951– ), who is noted for infusing his work with melancholy, brooding, and ethereal undertones. “Ring Them Bells” and “Political World” belong to that album. With such songs as “Cat’s in the Well,” based on the biblical prophecies concerning the tribes of Israel in Genesis 49; “Wiggle Wiggle,” in which Dylan taunts the devil; and “God Knows,” Dylan continued to explore Christian themes in simplified language in Under the Red Sky (1990). Good as I Been to You (1992) and World Gone Wrong (1993), the
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latter accompanied with his extensive liner notes explaining the modern significance of the songs, saw Dylan returning to early blues and folk songs. Numerous artists paid tribute to him in a concert released as The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1993), and Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Volume 3 was released in 1994. Time Out of Mind (1997), produced by Lanois, painted a portrait of a difficult spiritual struggle and was Dylan’s most bleak album in years. The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall Concert” was released in 1998. Although he released a few singles over the next few years, including “Things Have Changed” for the Wonder Boys soundtrack in 2000 and a cover of singer Dean Martin’s (1917–1995) 1958 hit “Return to Me” for the HBO hit series The Sopranos, he did not record a full-length album after Time Out of Mind until his passionate effort Love and Theft (2001). Modern Times (2006), his most recent album, exudes a newfound warmth. World Gone Wrong, Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, and Modern Times all won Grammy Awards. Dylan played faded musician Jack Fate in the 2003 film Masked & Anonymous, which he cowrote with television producer Larry Charles (1956– ). Martin Scorsese’s awardwinning film biography No Direction Home (2005) focuses on the early years of Dylan’s career. In 2006, Dylan began to host a weekly, hour-long radio show on XM radio entitled “Theme Time Radio Hour.” He recently wrote a new original song, “Huck’s Tune,” for the soundtrack to director Curtis Hanson’s (1945– ) film Lucky You (2007), and the boxed set retrospective Dylan is scheduled for release in October 2007. Dylan had three sons and a daughter by Lownds. Jesse Dylan has directed music videos as well as numerous films, including American Wedding (2003), Inside the Light (2005), and Kicking and Screaming (2005).
Jakob Dylan has become famous in his own right as the lead singer and songwriter for the popular rock group The Wallflowers. Dylan’s adoptive daughter, Maria, is married to the singer-songwriter Peter Himmelman. When asked who he listened to in a 1995 interview with John Dolen, published in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Dylan replied, “Ever heard of John Trudell? He talks his songs instead of singing them and has a real good band. There’s a lot of tradition to what he is doing. I also like Kevin Lynch. And Steve Forbert.” Dylan published the first volume of his autobiography, Chronicles, in 2004. The same year, he gave his first television interview in nineteen years to the late Ed Bradley (1941–2006) on CBS’s 60 Minutes. When asked why he was “still out there,” he replied, “It goes back to that destiny thing. I mean, I made a bargain with it, you know, long time ago. And I’m holding up my end . . . to get where I am now.” Bradley asked with whom he made the bargain, to which Dylan replied, “With the chief commander, in this earth and in the world we can’t see.” BIBLIOGRAPHY Bradley, Ed, “Dylan Looks Back,” 60 Minutes, 2004; Dolen, John, “A Midnight Chat With Bob Dylan,” Sun-Sentinal, September 29, 1995; Dylan, Bob, Chronicles, 2004; Hedin, Benjamin, ed., Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader, 2004; Heylin, Clinton, Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades, a Biography, 1991; Sounes, Howard, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, 2001; Humphries, Patrick, Absolutely Dylan, 1991; Sloman, Larry, On the Road With Bob Dylan, 2002; Spitz, Bob, Dylan: A Biography, 1989; Thomson, Elizabeth and Gutman, David, eds., The Dylan Companion, 2001; Trager, Oliver, Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, 2004; www.bobdylan.com.
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Eames, Charles (June 17, 1907–August 21, 1978)
Eames, Ray (December 15, 1912-August 21, 1988) Designers, Writers, Filmmakers harles and Ray Eames were American designers best known for the beauty and comfort of their mass-producible furniture. They also made films, wrote books, and designed fabrics, exhibitions, and consumer and industrial products. Charles Eames was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 17, 1907. He grew up in America’s industrial heartland and worked for engineers and manufacturers as a young man. He attended Washington University on scholarship for two years but was thrown out for his advocacy of FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT. He then began working in an architectural office and started his own in 1930. He extended his design ideas beyond architecture and received a fellowship to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where he headed the design department from 1939 to 1941. During that time he collaborated with architect-designer Eero Saarinen on several projects, including a prize-winning form-fitting shell chair. Ray Kaiser was born Bernice Alexandria Kaiser in Sacramento, California, on December 15, 1912. She studied painting in New York with HANS HOFMANN and then went to Cranbrook Academy. There, she met and assisted Charles and Eero Saarinen in preparing designs for the Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Furniture Competition of 1940-1941. Charles and Eero’s designs, created by molding plywood into complex curves, won two first prizes. Ray and Charles married in 1941 and moved to Los Angeles, where they continued to design furniture design using molded plywood. Their firm, The Office of Charles and Ray Eames, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy to produce molded plywood splints,
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stretchers, and experimental glider shells. Evans Products began producing the Eameses’ molded plywood furniture in 1946. The Eameses became involved in architectural projects, product design, film production, and exhibits. The Eames chair, constructed of two pieces of molded plywood joined by stainless steel tubing, is probably their best known work. Charles Eames was the first designer to have a “one-man” exhibition of his furniture designs at the Museum of Modern Art in 1946. He was often attributed sole credit for their collaborations. Their house, built in 1949 in Pacific Palisades, California, incorporated factory-produced elements to create a graceful whole. Starting in 1955, they became increasingly interested in filmmaking, principally of an educational nature. The classic, Powers of Ten (1968), illustrates the concept of orders of magnitude by contrasting views from Earth’s surface to the universe’s edge and back to an atom. Working as design consultants for International Business Machines, the Eameses helped create IBM’s exhibit at the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair. Also working with IBM, they designed a large American Bicentennial exhibition called “Franklin and Jefferson,” which traveled nationally and in Europe.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Albrecht, Donald, The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention, 2005; Kirkham, Pat, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century, 1998; Neuhart, John, Eames Design: the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, 1941-1978, 1989; Stungo, Naomi, Charles & Ray Eames, 2000.
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http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9031709. www.eamesoffice.com/index2.php?mod=intro. www.loc.gov/exhibits/eames/bio.html.
www.designmuseum.org/design/ charles-ray-eames.
Eastwood, Clinton (May 31, 1930– ) Actor, Director, Producer he American actor Clint Eastwood is most famous for his portrayals of gruff, rough-hewn characters on the Hollywood screen, from cowboys in the Wild West to the memorable cop Dirty Harry. In his later years, Eastwood has involved himself in a string of highly acclaimed directing efforts. Eastwood was born Clinton Eastwood into a blue-collar Protestant family in San Francisco, California. His mother was a factory worker. The family moved often, and his father was a steelworker and a migratory worker. When he was a teenager, Eastwood’s family settled in Piedmont, California. He attended Oakland Technical High School and graduated in 1949, upon which he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Following his discharge from the army, Eastwood decided to pursue an acting career. His first roles were short appearances such as a lab technician in Revenge of the Creature (1955), Jonesey in Francis in the Navy (1955), First Saxon in Lady Godiva and Coventry (1955), a jet squadron leader in Tarantula (1955), and a Marine medic in Away All Boats (1956). Eastwood obtained his first starring role in a feature film as cowboy Keith Williams in Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958). The following year, he took the role of Rowdy Yates in the television series Rawhide, in which he appeared in 217 episodes between 1959 and 1965. During the 1960s, Eastwood played lead roles as the wandering gunslinger Joe in Ital-
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ian director Sergio Leone’s (1929–1989) Per un pugno di dollari (1964; A Fistful of Dollars); as the bounty hunter Marco in Per qualche dollaro in piu` (1965; For a Few Dollars More ); and as the gunslinger Blondie, who becomes involved in a tangled plot to find a hidden fortune, in Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). The success of all three films catapulted Eastwood into international stardom. In 1968, Eastwood starred with RICHARD BURTON in the World War II story Where Eagles Dare. The same year, he appeared in director Don Siegel’s (1912–1991) Coogan’s Bluff, in which he played Deputy Sheriff Walt Coogan, an Arizona cop who travels to New York to retrieve a prisoner. The film was the first in a series of collaborations with Siegel. Eastwood also appeared in Joshua Logan’s (1908–1988) western musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). Eastwood’s successful roles continued in the 1970s. He costarred with Shirley MacLaine (1934– ) in Siegel’s Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and played Private Kelly in the World War II action comedy Kelly’s Heroes (1970). In Siegel’s American Civil War film The Beguiled (1971), Eastwood portrayed the devious Yankee soldier John McBurney. In 1971, Eastwood formed his own production company, Malpaso, which lent him the creative freedom he wanted as an actor and a director. He directed and starred as Dave in Play Misty for Me (1971), about a disc jockey who falls victim to an obsessed fan who stalks him.
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The same year, Eastwood appeared in what is perhaps his most famous role as the police inspector Harry Callahan in Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971). Eastwood’s Callahan, a tough, no-nonsense, rule-breaking cop, is on the hunt for a serial sniper in San Francisco. With the popular character, Eastwood established a stereotype that is still widely imitated today. Dirty Harry spawned four sequels—Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988). Eastwood’s directing efforts in the 1970s included High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), in which he played a Civil War era hero seeking revenge for the murder of his family at the hands of Union soldiers. He and Jeff Bridges (1949– ) starred in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), a story written and directed by Michael Cimino (1939– ), about a gang of bank robbers who reunite to stage another heist. The following year, he directed and starred in The Eiger Sanction, in which his character infiltrates a rock-climbing group in search of a Russian assassin. In 1978, Eastwood starred as the trucker and brawler Philo Beddoe, who travels around the San Fernando Valley with his friend Orville and an orangutan, in the comedy Every Which Way But Loose. The film was a success at the box office and was followed by its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980). In Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Eastwood portrayed the real-life career criminal Frank Morris (1926–1962), who was determined to have a superior IQ than those of his fellow inmates, was known for his clever escapes from other penitentiaries, and masterminded the only successful escape from the now-defunct San Francisco island prison of Alcatraz. Although Morris and his cohorts escaped, they were never found and were presumed dead. Eastwood directed and starred as a mysterious preacher out to save a group of smalltime California miners from losing their land to an ambitious mining company in Pale Rider (1985). Other notable films from this period in his career include Heartbreak Ridge
(1986); Pink Cadillac (1989); White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), a fictional biography of the American director John Huston (1906–1987); and The Rookie (1990). In 1988, he directed Bird, about the American jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker (1920–1955). Eastwood directed and was part of an allstar cast in the Western film Unforgiven (1992), in which he played an aging ex-gunfighter who emerges from retirement to take on a last mission. His costars included Gene Hackman (1930– ), Morgan Freeman (1937– ), and Richard Harris (1930–2002). The film won critical accolades, was a huge moneymaker at the box office, and won four Academy Awards—two of which went to Eastwood for Best Director and Best Picture. In 1993, Eastwood starred as a secret service agent in German director Wolfgang Petersen’s (1941) box-office hit Line of Fire (1993). The same year, he directed and costarred with Kevin Costner (1959– ) in A Perfect World, and in 1995 he starred opposite MERYL STREEP in The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Eastwood’s latest films as an actor include Absolute Power (1997), True Crime (1999), Space Cowboys (2000), and Blood Work (2002). In recent years, Eastwood has concentrated more on directing than acting. His directorial efforts include Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), Mystic River (2003), and Million Dollar Baby (2004), which won four Academy Awards with two of them again going to Eastwood for Best Picture and Best Director. In 2006, he directed Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, both set among the events surrounding the World War II battle of Iwo Jima. Eastwood’s newest films, The Changeling (as director), a mystery thriller written by J. Michael Straczynski (1954– ), and Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends (as producer) are slated for release in 2008. Aside from his work in film, Eastwood is noted for both his love of jazz music and his foray into politics. His record imprint Malpa-
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so Records is distributed by Warner Bros. and has released the scores from many of his later films. In 1996, he hosted the jazz concert Eastwood After Hours—Live at Carnegie Hall, which was recorded and distributed by Malpaso Records. Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel-bythe-Sea, California, in 1986 and remained in office for a single term. A longtime registered Republican, he nevertheless distances himself from party-line politics. Among the many other awards Eastwood has won during his career are honorary degrees, the 1994 honorary Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in acting, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000, and the French Le´gion d’honneur and the
Jack Valenti Humanitarian Award (both in 2007). He was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cole, Gerald, Clint Eastwood, 1983; Frayling, Christopher, Clint Eastwood, 1992; Gallafent, Edward, Clint Eastwood: Filmmaker and Star, 1994; Gue´rif, Franc¸ois, Clint Eastwood, 1986; O’Brien, Daniel, Clint Eastwood: Film-Maker, 1996; Schickel, Richard, Clint Eastwood: A Biography, 1996; Tanitch, Robert, Clint Eastwood, 1995; Thompson, Douglas, Clint Eastwood: Riding High, 1992; Zmijewsky, Boris, The Films of Clint Eastwood, 1993; www.clinteastwood.net.
Eco, Umberto (January 5, 1932– ) Novelist, Essayist, Critic, Scholar, Teacher, Writer of Children’s Books professor of the obscure discipline of semiotics (the study of signs and symbols), Umberto Eco was little known outside of Italy until the 1980 publication of his blockbuster novel The Name of the Rose. Although sometimes criticized for their obscure language and overly complex plots, his three novels to date have sold millions of copies world wide. Eco was born in Alessandria, Italy. As a youth he was precocious; he enjoyed drawing cartoons and making parodies and games. He studied at the Liceo Plana and later at the University of Turin, where he received his Ph.D. in 1954. At Turin he studied under the aesthetics theorist Luigi Pareyson, and Eco devoted his earliest intellectual endeavors to aesthetics. Early in his career Eco saw himself as a Catholic intellectual and wrote regularly for the publication of the Gioventu` Italiana di Azione, a Catholic youth organization.
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Eco and his colleagues sought to move away from the conservative policies of Pope Pius XII and to counteract his influence on the Church. He also worked for Italian RadioTelevision. Having written his thesis on the aesthetics of St. Thomas Aquinas, he continued to explore the subject of aesthetics in Opera aperta (1962; The Open Work). Eco examined modern music, poetry, and literature, arguing that the works leave themselves open to multiple interpretations. He later imposed boundaries on this idea in The Limits of Interpretation (1990), in which he decries the explosion of nonsensical interpretations. Eco made his mark as a semiotician, or student of signs and symbols, with A Theory of Semiotics (1976) and Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984), both originally written in English. His real fame, however, came with the publication of his first novel Il
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Umberto Eco (쑖 Rossano B. Maniscalchi/Alinari / The Image Works)
nome della rosa (1980; The Name of the Rose). Ostensibly a murder mystery set in a medieval Italian monastery, the novel probes commonly accepted notions of truth. The story centers on the middle-aged English monk William of Baskerville, who arrives at the monastery in 1327. Seven murders occur in seven days, leaving Baskerville to pore through manuscripts, signs, and symbols to solve the mystery. Eco’s Baskerville is a modern monk who believes in the power of reason, leading him into conflict with the rest of the establishment. In spite of its difficulty and complexity, The Name of the Rose proved an international hit and was the basis of a successful film. Eco took the title of his next novel, Foucault’s Pendulum (1988), from inventor of the pendulum Leon Foucault (1819–1868). Many have pointed out possible links to the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984), although Eco has denied the connection. The bulk of the story concerns three editors in a Milan publishing house who, with their boss’s approval, decide to publish the works of pre-
viously rejected authors who have ideas on the mysteries of the universe. Overwhelmed with strange theories, they begin to compile the ideas into a master plan that will explain life’s mysteries conclusively. With the work Eco wove together hundreds of conspiracy theories and occult beliefs that he had researched in more than 1,000 volumes. L’isola del giorno prima (1995; The Island of the Day Before) features the adventurerprotagonist Roberto de la Griva in a complex narrative that weaves back and forth in time. Griva has embarked on a search for the Island of Solomon, believed to be on the hundred and eightieth meridian. He is shipwrecked on the Daphne and never reaches the island, but he begins to write his own narrative of his past. Eco’s most recent novels are Baudolino (2000) and La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana (2004; The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana). In the former, the protagonist named for the title recounts the adventures of his life against the backdrop of the Fourth Crusade. Yambo, the protagonist of the latter,
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cannot remember his past and sets about on a quest to regain lost memories. Eco’s essays have appeared in numerous volumes. Apocalypse Postponed (1968) is a collection of writings on mass media and culture. Misreadings consists of fifteen critical and satirical essays that explore imagined scenarios, such as Dan Rather and other modern media figures covering Columbus’s arrival in America and modern publishing companies refusing to publish great works such as the Bible. The five essays in Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (1988) concern the use and power of language. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, an analysis of the creation of fiction, was published in 1994. Eco has also written children’s books, among which are The Bomb and the General,
a story about a general who constructs an atomic bomb, only to find that his atoms prefer to live peaceably; and The Three Astronauts, which relates the story of three astronauts from different countries who land on Mars. Aside from his writing career, Eco has lectured and taught at numerous universities in Italy. Among Eco’s many awards are more than thirty honorary doctorates, the latest of them being from Jerusalem and Siena (both in 2002).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bondanella, Peter, Umberto Eco and the Open Text, 1997; Radford, Gary, On Eco, 2001.
Eisenstein, Sergei (January 23, 1898–February 11, 1948) Director, Theorist, Essayist erhaps the most influential figure in twentieth-century cinema, the Soviet film director Sergei Mikhaylovich Eisenstein was the most important early technical innovator in film, particularly in his pioneering experiments with visual sequences he termed “the montage of film attractions.” A prolific theorist as well, he established the centrality of the director to the production, a tenet that lay at the heart of later movements in film, such as Neorealism and the French New Wave. His best-known films include The Battleship Potemkin, Alexander Nevsky and the two-part Ivan the Terrible. Eisenstein was born in Riga, Latvia, into a middle class family. His father was of German Jewish ancestry and a stern figure; his mother came from a middle-class Russian family. Eisenstein was a well-behaved and well-educated child—fluent in four languages at the age
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of 10 and an avid reader. He was exposed to film at a young age. During a trip to Paris with his family in 1907 he saw his first film, Georges Me´le`is’s Les 400 farces du diable (400 Jokes of the Devil). The potent visual impact of the film left an imprint on the young child’s mind—particularly a scene depicting the skeleton of a horse pulling a carriage. Eisenstein’s home life was unpleasant on account of the frequent violent arguments between his parents. His family moved to St. Petersburg in 1910, and soon afterward his mother abandoned the family. After following in his father’s footsteps by studying at the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Eisenstein studied at the School of Fine Arts. Eisenstein supported the Bolsheviks in the 1917 revolution and joined the Red Army. In addition to his military duties, he organized a theatrical group to entertain soldiers. In 1920
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he became a designer at the Proletkult Theater in Moscow. After having studied at the State School for Stage Direction, Eisenstein eventually became the theater’s co-director and began to direct many of its plays. Among his influences was Japanese Kabuki theater, which places more emphasis on costuming, music, scenery, dance, and other special effects than on drama and plot. Eisenstein’s film career was confined to the years of the Stalin regime. His first major film, The Strike (1924), applied his early ideas on montage, in which unrelated images that deliver a strong, often shocking, visual impact are inserted into the drama. A film, he argued, “cannot be a simple presentation or demonstration of events; rather it must be a tendentious selection of, and comparison between, events, free from narrowly plot-related plans and moulding the audience in accordance with its purpose.” Eisenstein also used “typage,” selecting actors based on their physical appearances rather than their training or acting ability.
Sergei Eisenstein (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
Caricatures and grotesque depictions of wealthy capitalists contribute to The Strike’s brutal portrait of the tsarist government, and a montage sequence that intersperses images of cattle being slaughtered with shots of government soldiers massacring striking workers foreshadowed Eisenstein’s famous “Odessa Steps” sequence in the silent film The Battleship Potemkin (1925). Created to celebrate the Revolution of 1905, The Battleship Potemkin was largely filmed on a ship used for mine storage in Odessa and depicts a mutiny aboard a ship following the crew’s refusal to eat spoiled food and the subsequent confrontation with tsarist troops. The “Odessa Steps” sequence, which became a model for montage for many directors who followed Eisenstein, graphically portrays the massacre of citizens fleeing down a long flight of steps. Notable, too, in the otherwise black-and-white work, are the frames bearing the Potemkin’s red flag, which Eisenstein painted onto the film. A number of other films followed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. October (1928), later renamed Ten Days that Shook the World, depicted the Bolshevik Revolution and Lenin’s rise to power. The General Line (1929) renamed Old and New, was a propagandistic film supporting the extensive Stalinist collectivization projects imposed on the Russian countryside. In 1929 Eisenstein traveled to Paris, where he filmed Sentimental Melody. The following year he went to the United States to work on films based on the novels of Theodore Dreiser and Blaise Cendrars. However, Eisenstein grew dissatisfied with the projects and left to film Que Viva Mexico! in Mexico in 1932. He originally conceived the film as a comprehensive cinematic treatment of the varied aspects of Mexican culture, but he quarreled with the film’s financial backer, the novelist Upton Sinclair, and never finished the project. With the advent of sound in film, Eisenstein sought to apply the visual juxtapositions of images to audio. He returned to Russia in 1933 and was well into the production of Be-
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zhin Meadow, which would have been his first sound film, when government criticism forced him to abandon it. Eisenstein completed his next and most popular film, Alexander Nevsky, in a matter of months in 1938. The Battle on the Ice scene, which depicts German soldiers chaotically plunging into the water and drowning as the ice underneath them cracks, showcased his “orchestral counterpoint” technique and recounts the story of the thirteenth-century Novgorod prince who drove the Teutonic Knights from Russia. A score written by the Russian composer SERGEI PROKOFIEV accompanied Eisenstein’s epic tale. In 1943 Eisenstein began work on the first part of Ivan IV, a heroic portrayal of the Russian tsar known as Ivan the Terrible. The cinematic portrayal of the sixteenth-century tsar (played by Nikolai Cherkasov) who centralized power in Russia pleased Soviet authorities who wished to inspire patriotism
during World War II. By the beginning of 1946, Eisenstein had all but finished part two of Ivan IV when he suffered a serious heart attack. Stalin disliked the film, objecting that it evoked sympathy for the noblemen, or boyars, and it was officially banned until 1958. Eisenstein had also begun work on a third part, but the work was destroyed during the critical furor over the second. Another heart attack took his life in 1948. Eisenstein also wrote extensive theoretical notes and essays on film, published in English as The Film Sense (1942), Film Form (1949), Notes of a Film Director (1959), and Film Essays with a Lecture (1968). He received the Order of Lenin in 1939 and the Stalin Prize (for Ivan the Terrible) in 1946.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barna, Yon, Eisenstein, 1966; Bergan, Ronald, Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict, 1997.
Elgar, Edward (June 2, 1857–February 23, 1934) Composer, Teacher he composer Sir Edward William Elgar revitalized British choral music and orchestration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Elgar composed in the late Romantic style, but he is considered the first of Britain’s major modern composers. Elgar was born into a musical family in Broadheath, Worcestershire, England. His father was an organist and violinist with his own music business. The young Elgar delighted in listening to his mother, who had wide literary tastes, read poetry to him. Although he was an intelligent and sensitive child, his family’s financial situation kept him from formal study after he was 15. He took his first pi-
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ano lessons at school at the age of seven. Elgar had little further musical training. He taught himself to play several instruments and studied theory from his father’s books. Although he wanted to pursue a career in music, Elgar went to work in a law office as a solicitor’s clerk in 1872. His legal career was brief, and he soon quit to devote his time to music. In 1873 he joined the Worcester Glee Club, for which he played, conducted, and composed. During the next few years, Elgar played with several local orchestras and listened extensively to area church music. By 1877 he was able to afford a few violin lessons from Adolphe Pollitzer in London. In 1885 he replaced his father on the organ at St.
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Edward Elgar (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-36551)
George’s Roman Catholic Church, a position the elder Elgar had held for thirty-seven years. Elgar married Caroline Alice Roberts in 1889 and moved to London the same year. His failed attempts to launch a career in London prompted him to move to Malvern in 1891. By this time, he had given up his previous determination to become a professional violinist and was actively composing. With the cantatas The Black Knight (1893) and The Banner of St. George (1896) as well as the oratorio The Light of Life (1896) and Variations on an Original Theme (also known as the Enigma Variations) for orchestra (1898), Elgar began to gain a reputation in England as a composer. The Enigma Variations proved to be one of Elgar’s most popular and enduring compositions. Hans Richter conducted a performance of the work in London in 1899; it consists of a number of musical portraits of El-
gar, his wife, his friends, and his dog. The title continues to generate controversy, as Elgar allegedly wrote the theme as counterpoint to a popular melody, but refused to identify the song and left the matter open for speculation. With the Enigma Variations, Elgar finally secured an international reputation. The intriguing work consists of fourteen variations on a theme. Each variation reflects Elgar’s perception of how one of his acquaintances or relatives might approach the theme. The “enigma” referred to in the title is the tune. Elgar based the composition on a tune he never revealed. Elgar’s most important compositions are his vocal and choral works. At the time he wrote, choral composition in England was at a low, and his work helped revitalize the medium. Although he developed a unique style, his work belongs to the tradition of the late Romantics. Elgar was the first major composer to come from Britain in two centuries, and his work sparked a musical revival that led to the development of British national music (see VAUGHAN WILLIAMS). The Dream of Gerontius (1900), for mezzosoprano, tenor, bass, full choir, and orchestra, is considered by many to be Elgar’s masterpiece, a witty, lyrical, and dramatic oratorio. He based the composition on a poem by Cardinal John Newman, eleven years after he received the poem as a wedding present, and the work gained popularity in Germany before it did in Britain. During a 1902 visit to Du¨sseldorf, where Gerontius was enthusiastically received, Elgar met the composer RICHARD STRAUSS. Elgar produced many other vocal works in the early 1900s. He selected the biblical texts for The Apostles (1903), an oratorio in two parts based on the actions of the apostles prior to the resurrection. The Kingdom (1906), also a two-part oratorio, picks up after the resurrection. He intended to write a third religious oratorio, but his plan never materialized. His other early vocal works include the choral cantata Caractacus (1898), the song cycle Sea Pictures (1900), and the concert overture Cockaigne (1901).
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From 1905 to 1908 Elgar taught music at the University of Birmingham. He completed his two symphonies before the outbreak of World War I. Symphony No. 1 in A-Flat Major (1908) consists of four movements and uses a recurring theme. The music in Symphony No. 2 in E-Flat Major (1911) is a more musically complex interweaving of themes, suffused with tragedy, conflict, and nostalgia. With the outbreak of World War I, Elgar began writing a number of patriotic works. These include Carillon (1914) based on a poem by Emile Cammaerts, and the choral work The Spirit of England (1916), incorporating verse by the war poet Lawrence Binyon. Elgar joined the Hampstead Volunteer Reserve and donated the proceeds from some of his works to war charities. The bloodshed and suffering associated with the war, combined with the devastating emotional effect his wife’s death in 1920 had on him, affected his creativity during the last years of his life.
Elgar’s other works include church music, the overture Froissart (1890), Coronation Ode (1902), the symphonic study for orchestra Falstaff (1913), the marches Pomp and Circumstance (1901–1930), Introduction and Allegro for Strings (1905), Violin Concerto (1910), Cello Concerto (1919), and Nursery Suite (1931). Elgar was working on his third symphony when he died in 1934. He received numerous honorary degrees in music and was knighted in 1904. Elgar’s mastery of orchestral and choral music and his sensitivity to drama, color, and lyricism sparked a revitalization in English music and paved the way for later composers such as BENJAMIN BRITTEN and WILLIAM WALTON.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Robert, Elgar, 1993; Moore, Jerrold Northrop, Edward Elgar: A Creative Life, 1984; Reed, W. H., Elgar, 1949.
Eliot, T. S. (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) Poet, Playwright, Critic, Editor, Scholar homas Stearns Eliot, always referred to as T. S. Eliot, profoundly influenced twentieth-century verse not only by his example as a poet, but also through his many essays on literature and in his roles as an editor and patron. His poetry combines modern imagery with innovations in style and versification to convey powerfully his sense of dismay with contemporary culture and his hope for spiritual renewal, an outlook heightened by his conversion to Christianity in 1927. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948 “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.” Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His family came from a long line of distinguished
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New England writers and teachers, and among his ancestors was Andrew Eliot, the first member of the family to settle in America and a juror in the Salem Witch Trials. The Eliots, like many other liberal New England families, converted to Unitarianism in the nineteenth century. Eliot’s father, an amateur painter and businessman, was president of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Louis. From the beginning of his education— first at Miss Lockwood’s primary school and then at Smith Academy (founded, along with Washington University, by his grandfather)— Eliot proved himself an outstanding student and was routinely at the top of his class. After studying at Milton, a well-known college-pre-
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paratory school in Massachusetts, where many of his relatives still lived, Eliot entered Harvard University. At Harvard he edited the literary Harvard Advocate and fell under the influence of critic Irving Babbitt’s “new humanism,” which rejected the scientific and deterministic underpinnings of Naturalism and Realism and championed a restoration of individuality and moral foundation, and antiromantic outlook. Numerous other influences shaped Eliot’s perspective at this early stage in his life—the philosophers T. E. Hulme (1883–1917), a founding figure in the Imagist movement, and F. H. Bradley (1846–1924), who saw reality as a product of the mind, as well as Henri Bergson, whose lectures he attended at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1911. In Paris he also met the poet ALAIN-FOURNIER. Having earned his M.A. in philosophy at Harvard in 1910–1911, he returned to the university from 1911 to 1914 for his doctoral degree. His real interest, however, had shifted to poetry, and when he settled in London in 1915, he continued to study poetry, particularly that of the French Symbolist Jules Laforgue (1860–1887), the seventeenth-century lyric poet John Donne (1592–1631), and the great medieval epic poet Dante (1265–1321), author of the Divine Comedy. The same year he married Vivien Haigh-Wood, whose later decline into mental illness caused great personal despair to Eliot. In 1916 he wrote a dissertation entitled “Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H Bradley,” but the outbreak of war prevented him from taking his oral examinations at Harvard, and he never completed his doctorate. Eliot attended the University of Oxford and in 1914 gained the friendship of his fellow American expatriate, the poet EZRA POUND, who was instrumental in arranging for the publication of Eliot’s first volume of poetry, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). The volume’s title poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” was his first major poetic work, largely unrhymed and lacking traditional form. In fact, it was so daringly unconven-
tional that Eliot had not been able to get it published in the United States. The often quoted opening lines of the poem illustrate Eliot’s wry and ironic tone as well as his use of “unpoetic” (as poetic was then defined) imagery, antiromantic imagery that reflected the realities of the modern world: Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table . . .
These lines from the ending are perhaps even more memorable as a description of modern alienation: “I have heard the mermaids calling, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me.” In both “Prufrock” and “Gerontion,” an interior monologue in the traditonal form of blank verse, Eliot’s modern imagery again conveys powerfully a sense of the despair and alienation of contemporary urban life, a sense of the near impossibility of living an authentic life. Eliot’s indisputably modern poetic style might be a rejection of the Romanticism that had dominated poetry throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but it was not a rejection of tradition. In his famous essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” which appeared in his first volume of criticism, The Sacred Wood (1920), he argued that a poet should develop a comprehensive familiarity with the whole of European literature: “ . . .[T]he poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and . . . should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career,” he wrote. And in fact he filled his poems with allusions to other works, particularly in “The Waste Land” (see below), which contains so many allusions to literary works and religious traditions that he published notes for the poem. As examples of what effective poetry should be, where thought and feeling are one, where wit and passion work together, Eliot championed early seventeenth-century English poets like Donne; he believed that the later English poets had contributed to what
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he called the “dissociation of sensibility,” a divorce of thought and feeling in poetry. These ideas are reflected in the famous essays “The Metaphysical Poet” and “Andrew Marvell,” both of which appeared in Selected Essays 1917–32 (1932). Other early volumes of criticism include For Lancelot Andrewes (1928) and The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism (1933). “The Waste Land,” published in 1922, established Eliot’s reputation as a poet outside of Britain; although the poem’s modernism infuriated the more conservative, the vision of Western civilization after World War I as a wasteland resonated with many readers. Written in the midst of a personal mental crisis as well as the crisis of a post–World War I civilization, the five-part work reflects the poet’s alienation from the greed, vice, and other human ills of his surroundings. Broken meter underscores a sense of fragmentation and dismay. Again the opening lines have become part of our culture, and they convey Eliot’s despair: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
Nevertheless, a sense of the possibility of personal redemption and renewal of meaning admist the cultural debris was never absent from Eliot’s work, and it can be found even in “The Waste Land.” In the 1920s Eliot’s spiritual quest, particularly reflected in “The Hollow Men” (1925), culminated in his 1927 confirmation in the Church of England. (In the same year he became a naturalized citizen of Great Britain.) From that point onward, his poetry became more reflective. “Ash Wednesday,” his first major poem after his conversion, is a meditative poem that opens in despair, with lines such as, “Because I cannot drink / There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again,” but moves on to the possibility of redemption, invoking the one who “made strong the fountains and made
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fresh the springs / Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand. . . . In other poems, such as “Choruses from ‘The Rock”’ (1934), Eliot’s disillusionment with modern culture is expressed within the context of his faith. Eliot wrote many essays on a variety of subjects in the 1930s and 1940s, which were collected in volumes such as Thoughts After Lambeth (1931), The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948). He also turned increasingly to writing plays, the first of which was Sweeney Agonistes (1926). First performed in 1934, it was followed by his most successful play, Murder in the Cathedral (1935), a tragedy about the martyrdom of the twelfth-century archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a` Becket, who refused to subordinate the church to the state. Other plays include The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), and The Elder Statesman (1959). Through his poetic drama, Eliot was able to reach a much wider audience with his vision of the possibility of spiritual renewal. Aside from the considerable influence he exercised on modern poetry through actual contributions to poetry and literary criticism, Eliot was personally responsible for launching the careers of other poets. As editor of the quarterly review, The Criterion (1922–39) and an editor at the publishing house Faber & Faber Ltd., he published and supported young poets he admired. The widely celebrated Four Quartets were published in 1943 and consisted of four separate but related poems, “Burnt Norton,” (1936), “East Coker” (1940), “The Dry Salvages” (1941), and “Little Gidding” (1942). In these poems, he contemplates his own life in terms of a cohesive understanding of its fragments, its momentary glimpses of eternity, of “the still point of the turning world,” given full meaning by the magnificent vision of unity regained at the end of “Little Gidding,” a vision that begins with the often quoted lines, We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring
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Will be to arrive where we started And to know the place for the first time.
The Quartets were among Eliot’s favorites of his own work and led to a Nobel Prize in 1948. Eliot married Valerie Fletcher in 1947 and found in that second marriage the emotional fulfillment so absent in his first. A late poem, one of his rare completely personal poems, is “A Dedication to my Wife,” “To whom I owe the leaping delight/ That quickens my senses in our wakingtime/ And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime.” He lived with her happily until his death. In 1948 he received the Order of Merit. Among his other works is the volume of chil-
dren’s verse Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939), made newly popular in the 1980s as the basis of Cats (1981), a musical by ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackroyd, Peter, T. S. Eliot, 1993; Bergonzi, Bernard, T. S. Eliot, 1978; Bush, Ronald, T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style, 1984; Dale, Alzina Stone, T. S. Eliot: The Philosopher-Poet, 1988; Gordon, Lyndall, T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life, 1998; Hughes, Ted, T. S. Eliot: A Tribute, 1987; Pinion, F. B., A T. S. Eliot Companion: Life and Works, 1986; Sharpe, Tony, T. S. Eliot: A Literary Life, 1991.
Ellington, Duke (April 29, 1899–May 24, 1974) Composer, Musician merican musician Duke Ellington is considered one of the most important jazz musicians of all time. Ellington thought of himself first and foremost as a composer and arranger, though he is also remembered for his piano playing skills. He created music for the entire orchestra, often contrasting different sounds, pitches and rhythms and giving each musician in the orchestra his own voice, rather than unifying all the sounds into one. Though he made many recordings, most of Ellington’s fifty-year career was devoted to tours and performances. His biggest hits include “Mood Indigo,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing!” “In a Sentimental Mood,” and “Take the ‘A’ Train.” Ellington’s recordings remain among the most popular of the big band era. Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, D.C., on April 29, 1899, to Daisy Kennedy Ellington and James Edward Elling-
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ton. A childhood friend nicknamed him “Duke” based on Ellington’s elegant manner. Ellington began playing the piano at his mother’s urging at age seven, though the young Duke was originally far more interested in baseball than music—his first job was selling peanuts at the Washington Senators’ baseball games. Ellington was educated as a commercial artist at Armstrong Manual Training School. During his high school years at Armstrong, Ellington first heard ragtime pianists like Harvey Brooks, who inspired him to take up the piano again. Under the tutelage of musicians Oliver “Doc” Perry and Louis Brown, Ellington learned to read music and improved his playing skills, and began playing at clubs and cafe´s in the Washington area. Ellington was offered a scholarship to The Pratt Institute of Fine Art, but turned it down and dropped out of high school three months early to pursue a career as a professional musician.
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In late 1917, still living in Washington, Ellington formed his first group, The Duke’s Serenaders. The next year he married Edna Thompson. The couple had a son, Mercer Kennedy Ellington, in 1919. In 1923 Ellington and his group moved to New York City, where he was well received by a crowd already familiar with his music. The Duke’s Serenaders changed their name to The Washingtonians and quickly gained notoriety with performances at prominent Manhattan clubs like the Exclusive Club, Connie’s Inn, the Hollywood Club (later called the Club Kentucky), Ciro’s, the Plantation Club, and the Cotton Club. Duke’s rise to fame corresponded with the rise of the radio industry, and live broadcasts of From the Cotton Club spread the band’s music across the nation. Ellington’s early years in New York also saw him develop a new style called “Jungle Music.” In his brief years with the band, trumpet player Bubber Miley inspired Ellington to create a style of music called “Jungle Music,” which contrasted different pitches and keys to create a new and exotic sound. Jungle Music is exemplified by the Washingtonians’ song “East St. Louis Toddle-Oo.” A milestone in Ellington’s career came in 1926, when he signed with producer and publisher Irving Mills. In 1931 Ellington went on tour. He would continue touring for most of the rest of his life. Over his fifty-year career
Duke Ellington (center) (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USW3-023924-C)
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Ellington gave over twenty thousand performances in such far-reaching locales as New Delhi, Cairo and London. Ellington wrote music with an emphasis on the soloists in his group, letting their musical voices and talents play off against each other. Because of this attention Ellington won the loyalty of his soloists, who stayed with his band for a long time. Ellington’s group launched the solo careers of many important musicians, including saxophonists Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, and Ben Webster; clarinetists Barney Bigard and Jimmy Hamilton; trumpeters Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams, Rex Stewart, and Ray Nance; trombonists Joe ‘Tricky Sam‘ Nanton and Lawrence Brown; bassist Jimmy Blanton; and drummer Sam Woodyard. Ellington won thirteen Grammy Awards starting in 1959, when he won three Grammys for the music for the motion picture Anatomy of a Murder, to two posthumous recognitions in 2000 going to Best Historical Album, for The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition—The Complete RCA Victor Recordings, and Tony Bennett’s Bennett Sings Ellington—Hot and Cool. Additionally, Ellington was given the keys to the city of Los Angeles in 1936. He was given the President’s Gold Medal on behalf of Lyndon Johnson in 1966, and Richard Nixon presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969. France gave him the Legion of Honor and Yale University gave him an honorary doctor of music degree. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and was the first jazz musician to be elected as a member of the Royal Music Academy of Stockholm. Ellington died on May 24, 1974, of lung cancer, and was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in New York. His music became a standard for the big band movement, and provided a foundation for contemporary music.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ellington, Mercer with Dance, Stanley, Duke Ellington In Person, 1988; Tucker, Mark, Elling-
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ton: The Early Years, 1995; Hasse, John Edward, Marsalis, Wynton, Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, 1995; Dance, Stanley, The World of Duke Ellington, 1981; Tucker, Mark, The Duke Ellington Reader, 1995.
www.dukeellington.com http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist.aspx?aid= 2670(by Andrew Holmzy, excerpted from Duke Ellington’s Finest Hour) http://www.redhotjazz.com/duke.html http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ database/ellington_d.html
E´luard, Paul (December 14, 1895–November 18, 1952) Poet he French poet Paul E´luard helped found the Surrealist movement that developed out of Dadaism in France after World War I. Having written more than seventy volumes of verse, he ranks as one of the major lyric poets of the twentieth century. E´luard was born Euge`ne Grindel in SaintDenis, an industrial suburb of Paris. His mother was a seamstress, and his father was an accountant. He attended the Ecole Communale
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Paul Eluard (쑖 Henri Martinie / Roger-Voillet / The Image Works)
and the Ecole Primaire Supe´rieure Colbert in Paris. As a teenager, he suffered from tuberculosis and went to a sanatorium in Switzerland to recover. During his two years abroad, he read poetry and began to write his own. It was there that he met his first wife, Gala, who left him in 1930 for the Surrealist painter SALVADOR DALı´. They had one daughter, Ce´cile. E´luard served in the French Army during World War I, and was gassed. E´luard’s early volumes of poetry include Le Devoir (1916; The Duty) and Poe`mes pour la Paix (1918; Poems for Peace). In 1919, he began his association with a number of writers who later formed the vanguard of the Surrealist movement, including ANDRE´ BRETON, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon. All of these writers, including E´luard, first associated themselves with the anarchic Dadaist movement that started in Switzerland in 1917. The Dadaists were a nihilistic group who disliked Western culture and rejected traditional art forms. By 1923, E´luard and the others had rejected Dadaism, and Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, which E´luard signed, in 1924 inaugurated the Surrealist movement. Later that year, spurred by the end of his marriage, he took off on a voyage around the world. The Surrealists emphasized the importance of the subconscious in creative activity and often blurred the distinction between dream
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and reality in their work. Automatic writing, in which one spontaneously writes whatever comes into the mind, was an integral part of E´luard’s poetry and other Surrealist literature. Some believed supernatural forces were behind automatic writing, and others saw the subconscious as the source of their words. E´luard maintained his association with the Surrealists until 1938. The major volumes of E´luard’s Surrealist poetry include Capitale de la doleur (1926; Capital of Grief), L’amour, la poe´sie (1932; Love Poetry), La rose publique (1934; The Public Rose), and Les yeux fertiles (1936; The Fertile Eyes). Also among his Surrealist writings is the prose work The Reversals of Life, or the Human Pyramid (1926). During his Surrealist period, he collaborated with painters such as MAX ERNST and PABLO PICASSO in efforts to combine painting with poetry. His early poetry was largely personal, tinged with a sense of loneliness and isolation. E´luard and Breton also explored mental disorders in their joint poem L’immacule´e conception (1930; The Immaculate Conception).
E´luard broke with Surrealism in 1938. He had joined the Communist Party in 1926 and rejoined it in 1942. His later poetry is more politically and socially oriented, expressing his ideal of a universal brotherhood and his identification with the underclasses. Three of his volumes of poetry, Poe´sie et verite´ (1942; Poetry and Truth), Au rendez-vous allemand (1944; To the German Rendezvous), and Dignes de vivre (1944; Worthy of Living), circulated among the fighters in the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied France. The poem “Liberty” from Poetry and Truth became especially popular in the Resistance underground. E´luard married twice after his separation from Gala: Maria Benz (Nusch), in 1934, and Dominique Lemor in 1951, five years after Nusch’s death. His later volumes of poetry include Political Poems (1948), Tout dire (1951; Say Everything), and Le phe´nix (1951; The Phoenix). He died of a stroke in 1952.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Nugent, Robert, Paul E´luard, 1974.
Ernst, Max (April 2, 1891–April 1, 1976) Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist ax Ernst was at the center of the avant-garde painters in Europe in the early twentieth century, participating in both the Dadaist and Surrealist movements after World War I. Beginning with his Surrealist works, Ernst’s paintings are often vivid depictions of apocalyptic gloom. He is also noted for his experiments with painting and drawing techniques. Ernst was born into a Catholic family in Bru¨hl, Germany. His father was a teacher and administrator at a school for the deaf. From
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him, Ernst gained his first exposure to painting. The elder Ernst was an amateur painter thoroughly devoted to the realistic style his son later rejected. Ernst began drawing as a child and underwent several traumatic experiences that shaped his outlook, among which was the death of his sister in 1897. Ernst attended a gymnasium and in 1909 enrolled in the University of Bonn, where he studied psychiatry and philosophy. His interests around this time encompassed the occult (with which he had his first contact in 1906),
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the human psyche, philosophy, and painting. Although he had little formal art training, he increasingly devoted his time to painting at the expense of his studies. In 1910 he met the poet Auguste Macke, who was connected to the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Ernst’s paintings were first exhibited in 1912, and he began to associate with many leading avant-garde painters of Germany and France. Ernst served in the German army during World War I, and the horrifying experiences he endured manifested themselves in postwar creations such as his Collage of 1920. In the work, he altered photoengravings and shaped a human figure as an airplane. Following the war, Ernst joined the Dadaists and formed a Dadaist group in Cologne. Dadaism grew out of the disillusionment with Western civilization caused by World War I, and its adherents rejected all past conventions associated with art. Their nihilistic, chaotic approach to creation produced distorted figures and unconventional associations. Ernst and other Dadaists refused to restrict themselves to traditional materials and began to experiment with others, such as bits of magazines and photoengravings. The periodical Der Sturm, to which Ernst contributed, promoted his work in the postwar period. With JEAN ARP, he organized a controversial exhibit in a public restroom. In 1919 he met PAUL KLEE, who with GIORGIO DE CHIRICO was one of the major influences on his subsequent work. The same year he completed a series of eight lithographs entitled Fiat Modes Pereat Ars and began to publish Der Ventilator, quickly banned by the authorities. Elephant of Celebes (1921), one of his best-known Dadaist paintings, depicts a mechanical, elephant-like figure staring at a headless nude. His work from this period is marked by his use of photoengravings, photomontage, and collage, as in The Swan is Very Peaceful (1920) and Here Everything Is Still Floating (1920). In 1922 he settled in Paris, where in 1924 he helped found Surrealism and became
an early advocate of automatism. The Surrealists emphasized the role of the unconscious in artistic creation, giving rise to bizarre, distorted images and associations. Forests full of menacing trees, monstrous figures, birds, and nudes began to dominate ominous paintings like Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924). In 1925 Ernst began to incorporate his frottage, or pencil rubbing, techniques into his work, as he made rubbings of leaves, wood grains, and other surfaces. His Earthquake (1925) forms part of a major series of frottage drawings entitled Histoire naturelle (1926), and he also used frottage in his paintings. Always one to experiment with new techniques, Ernst next turned, in paintings such as Two Sisters (1926), to grattage, an adaptation of frottage for paint, in which paint is scraped from the canvas after the artist applies it. In the late 1920s he wrote the first of his autobiographical fragments, many of which later appeared in Beyond Painting (1948). Although his association with the Surrealists lasted until 1938, Ernst found himself at odds with them as early as 1926. The Surrealists looked unfavorably upon his 1926 contributions, with J OAN MIRO´ , to the design for a Ballets Russes production of Romeo and Juliet. In 1929, he finished the first of his collagenovels, La Femme 100 teˆtes (The Hundred Headless Women), which still followed the surrealist vein, and began to sculpt. He also appeared in LUIS BUN˜ UEL’S film L’age d’or. In the early 1930s, Ernst began to experiment with decalcomania, which involves rubbing two surfaces together to transfer paint from one to the other. His sculptures, among which are Oedipus II (1934) and Gypsy Dream Rose (1959), evince the same experimental directions he followed in his paintings. As a German alien, Ernst fell under the suspicion of the French government as World War II approached and was interned twice. He fled to the United States with his third wife, the collector and heiress Peggy Guggenheim, and settled in New York. Ernst’s work had already been exhibited in America in
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1931, and he had a son, Jimmy, also a painter, in the United States already. Paintings from this period include the oil paintings Europe after the Rain (1940–1942), Napoleon in the Wilderness (1941), and The Eye of Silence (1943–1944). In the early 1940s, Ernst experimented with another technique, oscillation, in paintings such as Vox Angelica (1943). His method involved swinging paint from a container over a canvas. After living in Sedona, Arizona, with his fourth wife Dorothea Tanning, Ernst returned to France in 1949. His later works, less experimental than his early endeavors, in-
clude the 1956 collage series Dada Forest, Dada Sun. Ernst’s other works include The Couple (1923), Woman, Old Man and Flower (1923), Vision Provoked by a String Found On My Table (1927), and The Great Forest (1927). The Museum of Modern Art in New York held a major exhibition of his work in 1958.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lieberman, William S., ed., Max Ernst, 1961; Russell, John, Max Ernst: Life and Work, 1967; Schneede, Uwe M., Max Ernst, 1972.
Evans, Edith (February 8, 1888–October 14, 1976) Actress t the time of her death at the age of eighty-eight, Dame Edith Mary Evans was a seasoned veteran of the British stage and a world-renowned screen actress. Though known for her ability to portray varied and complex characters, especially in the plays of William Shakespeare, GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, and Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), she was particularly adept at comic roles. From the 1940s onward, Evans starred in a succession of films, often in strong supporting roles. Evans was born in London. While working as a milliner’s apprentice, she began to study acting at night. Her stage debut came in 1912, when she acted the part of Cressida in William Poel’s production of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Evans was soon appearing on London stages in other Shakespearean roles as well as in the works of Shaw, Anton Chekhov, Wilde, NOE¨ L COWARD, and others. She joined London’s Old Vic’ company in 1925, and she later attained considerable success on Broadway.
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Among the major productions in which she appeared are stage versions of Fyodor Dostoeyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866) and HUGH WALPOLE’s The Old Ladies. CHRISTOPHER FRY created the part of the Countess in The Dark Is Light Enough (1954) specifically for her. Evans also starred as Judith Bliss in Coward’s Hay Fever, the Ghost of Christmas past in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Mrs. Millamant in William Congreve’s Way of the World, and Gertrude in Hamlet. Her most famous role, however, was that of Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Although she appeared in the silent films A Welsh Singer and East Is East in 1915 and 1916, she stayed away from the cinema after that until 1949. Then, hampered by fading memory in her later years, she turned increasingly to film as she aged. In 1949 she starred in the film version of Alexander Pushkin’s short story “The Queen of Spades.” Evans’s performance in that work established her as an international film star, and she subsequent-
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ly appeared with RICHARD BURTON in The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949) and as Lady Bracknell in Anthony Asquith’s film version of The Importance of Being Earnest (1952). Evans’s other film credits include roles in Look Back in Anger (1959), The Nun’s Story (1959), Tom Jones (1963), The Chalk Garden (1964), Young Cassidy (1965), Prudence and the Pill (1968), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), Crooks and Coronets (1969), and A Doll’s House (1973). Her 1967 performance as
Mrs. Ross in Bryan Forbes’s The Whisperers won her a number of awards, including Best Actress from the New York Film Critics and the British Film Academy and a Golden Globe Award. Evans was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1946.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Batters, Jean, Edith Evans: A Personal Memoir, 1977; Forbes, Bryan, Ned’s Girl: The Authorised Biography of Dame Edith Evans, 1977.
Evans, Geraint (February 16, 1922–September 19, 1992) Singer eraint Evans sang operatic baritone at London’s Covent Garden for more than thirty years. Best known for his roles in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Verdi’s Falstaff, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nu¨rnberg, Evans also appeared in the major opera houses of the world, sang in television productions, and recorded many of his roles. Evans was born in Cilfynydd, Glamorganshire, Wales. His father was a coal miner as well as, like so many of the Welsh, a music lover. His mother, too, was musically inclined, but she died in childbirth before his second birthday. After her death, Evans went to live with his maternal grandparents, where he remained until he was 10. His family spoke Welsh, and he learned the Welsh language before learning English. Evans’s music career started early. At the age of four, he won a gold medal in a singing competition, and two years later he won a prize for best singer-actor in the Children’s Action Song Competition. Evans attended local schools until he was 14, at which time he left to work for a window dresser. In his spare time he immersed himself in music and theater, playing the violin in
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the YMCA orchestra, joining a local dramatic society, and obtaining a role on the Welsh Rarebit radio program. Evans enthusiastically volunteered for the Royal Air Force in World War II, during which time he spent most of his time working and performing for the British Forces Radio Network. While in this job he eventually lived in Hamburg, where he was able to absorb the city’s musical life and take singing lessons from Theo Hermann—his first real musical training. Following his release from military obligations, Evans returned to England and entered the Guildhall School of Music. In 1948 he joined the opera company at London’s Covent Garden, where he debuted as the Nightwatchman in Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nu¨rnberg; The same year he sang Schaunard in PUCCINI’s La Bohe`me, and the next season saw his debut in one of his most popular roles—the title role in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. (He repeated his Figaro for his debut at Milan’s La Scala in 1960.) In 1952 Evans sang his first Leporello in Don Giovanni at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. In 1957 he peformed his first Falstaff, another of his popular roles, at the Glyndeb-
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ourne Festival, at which he would appear on many occasions. Evans’s American debut came in 1960, when he sang the title role of Paolo in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra in San Francisco. Two years later he sang Lemuel in The Harvest at the Chicago Lyric Opera. In 1965 sang the title role in Don Pascuale in Argentina. Aside from his performances in the standard repertoire, Evans appeared in roles in modern works—as Herald in RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS’s The Pilgrim’s Progress in its 1951 premiere at Covent Garden, and as Balstrode in BENJAMIN BRITTEN’s Peter Grimes. Evans performed around the world but centered his activity in London until he retired. For his final performance at Covent Garden, he sang the role of Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. In the 1970s Evans appeared in a number of television performances for Harlech Televi-
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sion and the BBC Television—as Sesto in Murder, the Magician (1976), as Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1978), and as Jack Vandeleur in The Rajah’s Diamond (1979). Among his numerous recorded roles are Figaro, under Otto Klemperer conducting the New Philharmonia (1971); Ned Keene in Peter Grimes (1959); the title role in Falstaff, conducted by Sir GEORG SOLTI (1964); and Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger with HERBERT VON KARAJAN conducting in Dresden (1971). He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1959 and knighted a decade later. His autobiography, A Knight at the Opera, was published in 1984. BIBLIOGRAPHY Evans, Sir Geraint, A Knight at the Opera, 1984.
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Falla, Manuel de (November 23, 1876–November 14, 1946) Composer anuel de Falla’s work drew from elements of traditional Andalusian dance and song as well as the impressionistic influence of French composers such as Claude Debussy, and was associated with a revival of nationalistic music in Spain in the early twentieth century. De Falla was the most widely renowned Spanish composer of the twentieth century. By the time of his death he had increasingly withdrawn from the public eye and was composing in Castilian style, but the warm and colorful Andalusian works of his early career form the cornerstone of his reputation as a composer. De Falla was born in Ca´diz in southern Spain. As a child he took music lessons from his mother and from other teachers. He subsequently moved to Madrid and began to study under Felipe Pedrell (1841–1922), an influential composer and musicologist deeply rooted in many forms of traditional Spanish music. Pedrell became one of the primary influences on de Falla’s work. In 1905 de Falla won recognition from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes in Madrid, which honored him for his first opera, the lyrical drama La vida breve (Life Is Short). The opera, first performed in 1913, shows strong influences of Andalusian music. Its story centers around Salud, a gyspy girl who dies at the feet of the lover who deserted her. De Falla also composed zarzuelas, or traditional Spanish musical comedies. From 1905 to 1907, he taught piano lessons in Madrid. In 1907, he moved to Paris, where he gained the friendship of several French composers, including CLAUDE DEBUSSY, whose impressionistic compositions were to influence his later work. De Falla returned to Spain in 1914. De Falla’s ballet Wedded by Witchcraft (1915) is noted for its rhythmic variety, which the composer uses to create interesting
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rhythmic contrasts, and draws from Andalusian dance rhythms. In the story, Cande´las, a gypsy girl, is haunted by memories of her deceased lover, a cruel and unfaithful Andalusian. When a new lover, Carme´lo, appears, so does her dead lover’s ghost. Carme´lo is only able to win her affections when he enlists her friend, Lucı´a, to distract the ghost by seducing him. One of de Falla’s most famous compositions was the score for LE´ ONIDE MASSINE’s ballet, El sombrero de tres picos (1919; The Three-Cornered Hat), staged by SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes with a set designed by PABLO PICASSO. Among his other works is the widely performed Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1916) for orchestra and piano. The music for El retablo de Maese Pedro (1924; Mastro Pedro’s Puppet Show), a oneact puppet show based on an episode in the second part of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, was written for a small orchestra and makes extensive use of muted instruments. Concerto for Harpsichord (1926) drew from the work of the Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757). His other work includes the vocal pieces Siete canciones populares espan˜oles (1915; Seven Popular Spanish Songs) and guitar music. After moving to Granada, de Falla co-organized a festival of cante jondo, or deep song, a traditional form of Andalusian folk music, with FEDERICO GARCı´A LORCA in 1922. In 1939 de Falla moved to Argentina. He was working on Atla´ntida, a choral work, when he died in 1946.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Demarquez, Suzanne, Manuel de Falla, 1968; Pahissa, Jaime, Manuel de Falla: His Life and Works, 1954; Trend, J. B., Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music, 1929.
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Fassbinder, Rainer Werner (May 31, 1946–June 10, 1982) Director, Actor, Playwright, Screenwriter leading German film director in the post–World War II era, Rainer Werner Fassbinder earned critical acclaim for his films, which indict middle-class values and probe social themes such as oppression and homosexuality. A prolific writer, actor, and director, he made more than one hundred films, plays, and television shows during his short lifetime, and was a major force in postwar German film. Fassbinder was born in Bad Wo¨rishofen, Germany. His father, who left the family when he was 6, was a doctor who practiced in the red-light district and often treated prostitutes, some of whom the young Fassbinder befriended. His mother suffered from tuberculosis and spent periods of time in the sanatorium. Being a student proved difficult for Fassbinder, and he transferred from school to school before he finally quit at the age of sixteen. In 1967 he helped found the Antitheater, an avant-garde theatrical group. The actors and actresses from the Antitheater, notably the actress Hanna Schygulla, later appeared frequently in his films. Fassbinder finished the first of his forty-one full-length films, Liebe is ka¨lter als der Tod (Love Is Colder Than Death), in 1969. The same year he finished Katzelmacher (1969), the first of what he called his “bourgeois films,” in which he sharply satirized middle-class norms. The story concerns a working-class Greek who bursts into the lives of a group of bored German middle-class people living silly lives. The Third Generation (1978–1979) is a satiric commentary on capitalism. In the story, an enterprising computer dealer attempts to boost his sales to the government by financing its terrorist enemies. Exploration of sexu-
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ality is another major theme is Fassbinder’s films. Erwin/Elvira, the main character of In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden (1979; In a Year of 13 Moons), is a transexual in confusion and despair following a sex change. Die Ehe der Maria Braun (1979; The Marriage of Maria Braun), one of Fassbinder’s best-known films, relates the story of a troubled relationship between a German soldier and his wife, ending with their destruction. Fassbinder worked feverishly, producing an enormous output of plays and films during his short career. He directed, acted in, and often wrote the screenplays for his films, which carry a strong line of commentary on social, political, economic, and sexual matters. His other films include Die bitteren Tra¨nen der Petra von Kant (1972; The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant); Angst essen Seele aut (1974; Fear Eats the Soul), about the relationship between an elderly cleaning lady and a Moroccan garage mechanic; Lola (1981); and Veronika Voss (1982), based on the life of the German actress Sybille Schmitz. In addition to his films and plays, he also wrote for television and radio. His major television work is the fourteen-part adaptation (1978–1979) of Alfred Do¨blin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, about the efforts of the convicted criminal Franz Biberkopf to fit into society after his release from prison.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hayman, Ronald, Fassbinder Film Maker, 1984; Thomsen, Christian Braad, Fassbinder: The Life and Work of a Provocative Genius, 1997; Watson, Wallace Steadman, Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Film as Private and Public Art, 1996.
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Faulkner, William Cuthbert (September 25, 1897–July 6, 1962) Novelist, Poet, Playwright ne of the most important and influential American authors in the first half of the twentieth century, William Faulkner helped mold the American novel by interweaving a wide variety of techniques into complex literary fabrics and devoting careful attention to crafting dialogue. In 1949, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel.” One of the most important “Southern writers,” Faulkner dealt with the decline of the “Old South” and the decadence of the “New South” following the Civil War. Faulkner was born William Falkner in New Albany, Mississippi. The traditional family surname lacked the “u” he later adopted. By his adulthood, he had thoroughly absorbed the culture and history of Mississippi and the South with great interest. His great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, served as a colonel in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, founded a railroad, and was something of a writer himself. The town of Falkner, Mississippi, bears his name, and he lost his life in a duel in the Mississippi streets. Faulkner’s father owned both a hardware store and a livery station before taking a post as the business manager of the University of Mississippi in Oxford. Faulkner left high school in the eleventh grade, intending to serve in World War I. However, the U.S. Army rejected him for not being tall enough. He persisted in his quest to serve, however, and instead joined the Canadian Division of the Royal Air Force and later the British Royal Air Force. Although he attained the rank of second lieutenant, he never saw military combat during the war. It was around the time he entered military service that Faulkner added the “u” to the spelling of his last name. Several reasons may have contributed to the decision to alter the
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spelling. Some have posited that he liked the result of a typist’s or an editor’s error and kept the spelling, while others claim that he wanted his name to look and sound more British while trying to enlist in the Royal Air Force. Following his military service, he entered the University of Mississippi but did not finish. Intelligent but bored with schoolwork, he began to write short stories and poems for school publications. After he dropped out, he continued to write while working in a series of odd jobs, a notable one of which was a doomed position as a postmaster between 1922 and 1924. Faulkner quickly gained a rep-
William Faulkner (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ6242485)
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utation for losing mail and neglecting his duties. With financial backing and some stringpulling from his friend Phil Stone, Faulkner published his first book, a collection of verse entitled The Marble Faun, in 1925. That same year, he settled in New Orleans, where he wrote the unsuccessful World War I novel Soldier’s Pay (1926). Following a trip to Europe, Faulkner traveled back to Mississippi and in 1927 published Mosquitoes, which satirized the New Orleans literary and artistic community. With Sartoris (1929), his third novel, Faulkner reached back to his Mississippi roots and firmly established himself as an author. He crafted the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on his native tromping grounds in northern Mississippi, and modeled the character of Colonel John Sartoris on his great-grandfather. The novel’s protagonist, a World War I veteran, finds himself at odds with the people in his hometown following his return. Around the time he married Estelle Oldham in 1929 and settled down with a family, he wrote perhaps his best-known novel, The Sound and the Fury (1929), a pioneer in narrative style that incorporated multiple and varied perspectives on a deteriorating family. As I Lay Dying, which Faulkner wrote hastily while working at a power plant, followed in 1930 and employed stream-of-consciousness narrative to further the theme of the disintegration of the Old Southern family. In 1931, following a difficult struggle with the manuscript, Faulkner published Sanctuary, a story of small-town corruption in a legal case that ends in tragedy. Sanctuary was Faulkner’s first commercial success. With Light in August (1932), Faulkner crafted what was perhaps the most complex juxtaposition of literary technique and plot in his work to date. Using flashbacks and time shifts, Faulkner probed the struggles of Joe Christmas, whose troubles begin as an orphan whose racial identity is in question. Absalom, Absalom! (1936) finds one of his previous
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protagonists, Quentin Compson, trying to unravel the story of a fallen aristocrat’s death. The Unvanquished (1938) marked a shift in Faulkner’s emphasis on novels to short fiction, and Go Down, Moses followed in 1942. Although his work gained popularity in the United States, it wasn’t until 1949, when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, that Faulkner gained an international readership. A Fable (1954) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955, and his final novel, The Reivers (1962), was awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1963. Another of Faulkner’s noted works is the Snopes trilogy, consisting of The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959), which chronicle the story of an upand-coming poor but crass and immoral white family. The trilogy presented Faulkner’s vision of a corrupt, emerging new South after the Civil War. Faulkner’s other writings include Intruder in the Dust (1948), an examination of the moral consequences of racial prejudice; and Requiem for a Nun (1951) a play that serves as a sequel to The Sanctuary; the short story collection These 13 (1932); the detective/mystery collection Knight’s Gambit (1949); Collected Stories (1951), which won the National Book Award; and the poetry collection A Green Bough (1933). In the later years of Faulkner’s life, he was a writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia and frequently represented the U.S. State Department at international cultural events. He died of a heart attack in Mississippi at the age of sixty-four and was buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Oxford.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Blotner, Joseph, Faulkner: A Biography, 1991; Dowling, David, William Faulkner, 1989; Gray, Richard, The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography, 1994; Inge, M. Thomas, William Faulkner, 2006; Minter, David, William Faulkner: His Life and Work, 1997; Parini, Jay, One
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Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner, 2004..
www.faulknersociety.com.
Fellini, Federico (January 20, 1920–October 31, 1993) Director, Screenwriter orking with ROBERTO ROSSELLINI, Federico Fellini was initially associated with the Neorealist movement in Italian film. With such movies as La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, La Strada, and Fellini-Satyricon, he developed his own cinematic style, which blended the worlds of imagination, dreams, and reality. Fellini was born in Rimini, Italy, and spent much of his childhood there among a large, middle-class family. He attended a Catholic boarding school in Fano. Fellini’s first aspirations were in the field of journalism. In 1938 he moved to Florence and began to work on science–fiction and humor periodicals. The following year he moved to Rome and began selling caricatures to restaurants. In 1940, he became the editor of a weekly satire magazine, Marc’Aurelio. Three years later he married Giulietta Masina, who had appeared in one of his radio scripts. His film career began around that time when he gained the friendship of the director ROBERTO ROSSELLINI, a leader in Italy’s Neorealism movement in cinema. Fellini worked with him on films such as Paisan (1946; Peasant) and L’Amore (1948) and began to write scripts for other directors. One of them, Alberto Lattuada, asked Fellini to work with him on the production of Variety Lights (1950). Fellini’s films contained many autobiographical elements. The White Sheik (1952) was his first production on his own. His next film, I Vitelloni (1953), was based in part on his own experiences with his friends when he
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was young. The story centers around five men in their twenties who live with their families, lack the ambition to look for jobs, and are doomed to remain in their hometown. The film became Fellini’s first success, and it won an award at the Venice Film Festival. La Strada (1954), one of Fellini’s most famous films, was the first to earn widespread international fame and an Academy Award. His wife, who starred in many of his movies, played a naive girl named Gelsomina who joins a traveling circus under the brutal Zampano (Anthony Quinn). Gelsomina dutifully remains with Zampano in spite of his repeated cruelties, rejecting several opportunities to escape him. In the end, Zampano abandons her. In 1956, Fellini finished The Nights of Cabiria, again starring his wife, who this time played a Roman prostitute. The strong character portraits of these two films are characteristic of his early work. Beginning with La dolce vita (1961; The Sweet Life), Fellini began to work with Angelo Rizzoli. The film is set in Rome and sharply satirizes an array of unscrupulous high society characters—intellectuals, the wealthy, journalists, paparazzi, and others. The principal character in Fellini’s next film, 8 1/2, is a film director who encounters a creative block; he is tormented by a series of dreams and flashbacks relating to his past and his relationships with women. The fantasy-like Juliet of the Spirits (1965) was Fellini’s first film shot in color. The star, a housewife named Juliet (again Fellini’s wife), is troubled by an inattentive husband and a series of supernatural
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Federico Fellini (쑖 Topham / The Image Works)
visions. Fellini-Satyricon (1969), set in preChristian Rome, was loosely based on Petronius’s Satyricon, written in the first century A.D. during Nero’s rule, and like the Satyricon, it depicts the hedonism and decadence
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of ancient Rome. Fellini’s next major project was an autobiographical film for television, The Clowns (1971). Among Fellini’s later films are Roma (1972), Casanova (1976), Prova d’Or-chestra
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(1979), The City of Women (1980), The Ship Sails On (1983), Ginger and Fred (1986), and Intervista (1987). The storylines in Fellini’s films, most of which he wrote or co-wrote, are loosely constructed and the plot is sometimes left hanging. More important to his message are the elaborate and emphatic costumes, film se-
quences, and sets that make symbolic statements. Fellini’s work earned four Academy Awards and many other international film awards. He received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baxter, John, Fellini: A Life, 1993.
Ferrier, Kathleen (April 22, 1912–October 8, 1953) Singer athleen Ferrier’s warmth with her audiences and rich contralto voice made her a favorite among concertgoers in postwar Europe and America. She is best known for her contralto parts in oratorios and for her interpretations of Bach, Sir EDWARD ELGAR, and Gustav Mahler’s song cycles, but she also performed folk songs and appeared in operas. Her career was cut short by cancer in 1953. Ferrier was born in Higher Walton, Lancashire, England. Her first ambition was to play the piano professionally, and she won a number of prizes. But for many years she earned a living as a telephone switchboard operator. She sang with a local choral society and attracted the attention of Malcolm Sargent, who advised her to go to London to study—advice which Ferrier took, and won a competition at Carlise in 1937. She did not, however, make her professional singing debut until 1942. The following year she debuted in London, performing in The Messiah at Westminster Abbey. Ferrier soon gained an international reputation, touring both the United States and Europe. She often performed at parish churches in England and in major festivals, such as the Edinburgh Festival. It was for her that
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Kathleen Ferrier (쑖 ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
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BENJAMIN BRITTEN wrote his opera The Rape of Lucretia, which was performed at Glyndbourne in 1946, one of only two operas that she ever appeared in, the other being Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice. Among the works in her extensive repertoire were her postwar performances of Mahler’s song cycles, which she learned under the direction of BRUNO WALTER—notably Das Lied von der Erde. Ferrier recorded many works for Decca, which released a major compilation of her music entitled The Decca Ferrier Edition in 1997. “Blow the Wind
Southerly” is the best known of the folk songs she recorded. After having many operations Ferrier lost her battle with breast cancer in 1953. In the middle of her final performance earlier that year, in Orfeo at Covent Garden, she broke her hip, but she still managed to finish the show.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cardus, Sir Neville, Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir, 1969.
Feuchtwanger, Lion (July 7, 1884–December 21, 1958) Novelist, Playwright, Journalist, Critic, Translator ost famous for his novels, Lion Feuchtwanger wrote historical fiction that addresses personal and political issues he faced during his lifetime—his Jewish identity, the rise of Hitler in Germany, the relationship of artists and intellectuals to society, and the place of political action. Feuchtwanger also wrote a number of plays. Feuchtwanger was born into an orthodox Jewish family in Munich. His father, a wealthy industrialist, inherited a fortune gained in margarine manufacturing. When Feuchtwanger was 6, he entered the Sankt Anna Schule; four years later he enrolled in the Humanistic Wilhelms-Gymnasium. Feuchtwanger was an outstanding student but found himself in perpetual conflict with his family, who did not approve of his ambition to write. Their strict religious observance did not suit his nature either, and Feuchtwanger left to study literature and philology at the University of Munich, where he later earned his doctorate. In 1903, Feuchtwanger helped found the Phoebus, a literary society. He was later instrumental in the establishment of the Phoe-
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bus’s paper Der Spiegel (The Mirror). From 1908 to 1911 he worked for Die Schaubu¨hne (The Stage). Writing for Der Spiegel and other reviews, Feuchtwanger gained a reputation for harsh and pointed criticism. His first efforts as a writer were in the theater, and plays such as Die Prinzessin Hilde, the antiwar play Die Kriegsgefangener (Prisoners of War), and Ko¨nig Saul (King Saul) were staged in Munich. However, he later gave up the theater and devoted his time to literature. In 1912 he married Marthe Lo¨ffer. Two years later he was taken prisoner of war in Tunis. From the outset, Feuchtwanger the novelist wrote in an even-handed style, often using historical interpretation to comment on the contemporary climate. His first historical novel, Die Ha¨ssliche Herzogin (The Ugly Duchess), appeared in 1923; it examines the character of Margaret Maultasch, Duchess of Tirol. Hampered by her unattractiveness, the duchess struggles with her beautiful rival, Agnes of Flavon. The duchess’s sharp intelligence cannot save her from defeat at the hands of her competitor. Feuchtwanger, self-
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conscious about his short, frail, constitution, struggled with the duchess’s problem himself. The book brought Feuchtwanger his largest success to that date. Jew Su¨ss and Power (1925) evolved from Feuchtwanger’s earlier play Jud Su¨ss. The central character is Joseph Su¨ss Oppenheim, a powerful Jewish financier who works for the Duke of Wu¨rttemberg. Su¨ss refuses to convert to Christianity and is tried and executed by his enemies. Feuchtwanger’s story was adapted as a film in Britain, and the Nazis later produced a distorted, propagandistic, antisemitic version. Erfolg (1930; Success) attacks the German justice system; it was inspired by an actual incident in Feuchtwanger’s life. While he was dining in Munich with acquaintances, the group suddenly found itself at the mercy of soldiers who stormed in and accused them of radical political activity. Feuchtwanger was later called to testify against his hostess, whom the police had arrested on trumped-up charges. In the novel an art critic is arrested on false charges and sentenced to five years in prison. Feuchtwanger spent much of 1932–1933 in the U.S., and with the rise of the Nazis in 1933, he and his wife fled to France. Feuchtwanger found himself in danger on several accounts—as a Jew, a socialist, and a vocal critic of National Socialism. His struggles of this period are depicted in The Oppermanns (1933), about Gustav Oppermann, a pensive intellectual who leads a relatively pleasant life until the Nazis come to power. When his family suffers, Gustav resolves to take action, but he finds he is lost when it comes to knowing exactly what to do. French authorities imprisoned Feuchtwanger several times as tensions grew between France and Germany. He was released the first time after protests from abroad but not granted an exit visa. With the help of American diplomats in Marseilles, Marta, who was interned for a time herself, engineered his fi-
nal escape from Nıˆmes. The U.S. deputy consul smuggled him out dressed as an elderly woman. The Feuchtwangers later escaped through Spain and Portugal to the United States; Lion was himself instrumental in the escape of Heinrich Mann, brother of THOMAS MANN. Feuchtwanger’s The Devil in France (1941) portrays these events. During these tumultuous years, Feuchtwanger worked on The Josephus Trilogy (1932–1945), a fictional interpretation of the life of the first-century Jewish scholar and historian Josephus. Feuchtwanger’s Josephus is a rational man who envisions a society that transcends sectarian nationalism but still retains a certain pride in his Jewish identity. In his later works, Feuchtwanger turned to other historical subjects, including the Salem witch trials (The Devil in Boston) and the French Revolution. Among these are Waffen fu¨r Amerika (1947; The Proud Destiny), written shortly after his arrival in the United States and originally titled Arms for America This is the Hour (1951), a portrait of an artist and his relationship to society using the figure of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828); and Jeffa und seine Tochter (1957; Jephthah and His Daughter) on a story from the Hebrew Bible. Feuchtwanger’s other works include the novels The Pretender (1936); Moscow 1937, written after his visit to the Soviet Union and interview with Joseph Stalin; Paris Gazette (1939); ’Tis Folly to Be Wise; and Raquel. With his close friend BERTOLT BRECHT, he translated Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. Feuchtwanger earned critical acclaim for his penetrating analysis of the human psyche and exploration of Jewish culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kahn, Lothar, Insight and Action: The Life and Work of Lion Feuchtwanger, 1975; Spalek, John M., Lion Feuchtwanger, The Man, His Ideas, His Work: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1972.
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Ffrangcon-Davies, Gwen (January 25, 1891–January 27, 1992) Actress n an acting career that spanned 80 years and a lifetime that spanned 101, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies appeared in an array of roles on both the stage and screen. She was particularly noted for her portrayals of leading Shakespearean and Shavian women, and her best-known role was that of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Ffrangcon- Davies also appeared in modern dramas. Ffrangcon-Davies was born in London and was the daughter of the Welsh clergyman and oratorio singer David-Thomas Ffrangcon-Davies. She made her debut as an actress with a minor part in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1911). Over the next several years she continued to play supporting parts, gradually working her way up to leading roles. She appeared with great success in the role of Etain in Rutland Boughton’s music drama The Immortal Hour, and the following year she acted the part of Phoebe Thrassel in J. M. Burrie’s Quality Street in London. She appeared regularly with the Birmingham Repertory Company, which she joined in 1921, and in 1923 played the original Eve in GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s Back to Methusaleh (1923). The following year Ffrangcon-Davies played her first major Shakespearean role, appearing as Cordelia in King Lear, and around the same time starred in a production of Romeo and Juliet opposite Sir JOHN GIELGUD. She continued to play Shakespeare heroines, including Ophelia in Hamlet, Portia, Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, and Queen Katharine.
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Aside from her Shakespearean roles, Ffrangcon-Davies appeared in contemporary roles. In 1927 she appeared as Eliza Dolittle in Shaw’s Pygmalion and Anne Witefield in Shaw’s Man and Superman. Among others, she played Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930), Mrs. Manningham in Patrick Hamilton’s Gas Light, Gwendolen in Sir JOHN GIELGUD’S production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1939; with EDITH EVANS and Gielgud), Madame Ranevskaya in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, and Amanda Wingfield in TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’s The Glass Menagerie (1965). In 1958 she appeared as Mary Tyrone in a production of EUGENE O’NEILL’s A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and three years later she appeared in the London premiere of JEAN GIRAUDOUX’s Ondine with the Royal Shakespeare Company. After appearing as Madame Voynitsky in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the Royal Court Theatre in 1970, Ffrangcon-Davies retired from the stage. She continued to appear in films, on the radio, and on television. Among her films are Terence Fisher’s Devil Rides Out and The Master Blackmailer (1992). She was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1991.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hartnoll, Phyllis, The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 4th ed. “Ffrangcon-Davies, Gwen,” 1983.
FIELDS, GRACIE
Fields, Gracie (January 9, 1898–September 27, 1979) Actress, Singer nown to millions as “Our Gracie,” the English-born comedienne Gracie Fields entertained British and American audiences with music hall ballads and light comedy in films, live performances, radio and television appearances, and recordings. Fields was a popular wartime entertainer during the World War II era, and her career spanned more than seventy years. Fields was born Grace Stansfield in Rochdale, Lancashire, England. From a young age she was exposed to the music hall scene, and she first made a name for herself playing Sally Perkins with the touring review Mr. Tower of London, with which she appeared between 1918 and 1925. Her fame already established in England, she appeared regularly in the United States from 1930 onward. During World War II Fields was a popular entertainer, often giving benefit performances for British war relief efforts. Fields made many recordings of songs (such as “Singing In The Bathtub,” “You’ve Got To Be Smart To Be In The Army,” “Smile When You Say Goodbye,” “My Blue Heaven,” “The Biggest Aspidistra in the World,” and the ballad “Sally”) as well as sketches that reflect the culture of her native Lancashire. Fields appeared regularly on the radio and scored her biggest film success with Sing as We Go (1934). Among the films she appeared in are Sally in Our Alley (1931), Looking on the Bright Side (1931), Love, Life and Laughter (1933), Look up and Laugh (1935), Queen of Hearts (1936), This Week of Grace
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(1938), We’re Going to Be Rich (1938), The Show Goes On (1938), Holy Matrimony (1943), Stage Door Canteen (1943), Paris Underground (1945), and Molly and Me (1945). Sing As We Go, Fields’s autobiography, was published in 1960. She was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1938.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bret, David, Gracie Fields: The Authorized Biography, 1996; Fields, Dame Gracie, Sing As We Go, 1960; Moules, Joan, Our Gracie: The Life of Dame Gracie Fields, 1983.
Gracie Fields (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
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Firbank, Ronald (January 17, 1886–May 21, 1926) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright rthur Annesley Ronald Firbank’s eccentric novels never achieved success during his lifetime, but they gained recognition after his death for their comic burlesques, unique structure and language, and rich characterizations. Firbank was born in London into a family that had risen from rags to riches. His grandfather escaped straitened circumstances as a coal miner’s son and became a wealthy railroad contractor. Firbank’s mother tutored him at home until he was 14; he later studied at the Mortimer Vicarage School in Eton, Buckinghamshire, and then at Uppingham as well as with private tutors. In 1898, Firbank wrote Lady Appledore’s Mesalliance, a story about the wealthy Wildred Forrester, who loses all of his money and takes a pleasant job as a gardener on Lady Appledore’s estate. His identity is only revealed to Lady Appledore when his aunt comes to visit her. In 1901 he traveled to France to continue his studies. His first work to appear in print, “The Artificial Princess,” was published in Les Esais after he moved to Paris in 1904. In 1905 Firbank began to publish fiction at his own expense. His first volume contained the stories Odette D’Antrevernes and A Study in Temperament. The former is about a young orphan girl who passes her youth in a convent and envies St. Bernadette. More than anything, Odette wants to see a vision of the Blessed Virgin. When she goes to receive the vision, she is surprised to find instead a painted lady who teases her. Upon understanding Odette’s earnestness, the woman is repentant. Firbank revised and republished Odette in 1916. From 1906 to 1909, he studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was a contemporary of RUPERT BROOKE, and published short pieces in The Granta.
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Firbank was an eccentric both in person and on paper, given to heavy drinking and extreme shyness. The innocent Odette stands in sharp contrast to the many grotesque burlesques and exaggerations of socialites, clergy, artists, writers, and other figures that appear in his works, for example, in the novel Vainglory (1915). His plots generally take second place to his multitude of characterizations, and his writing style is marked by odd usages of words. Like Vainglory and almost all of Firbank’s work, Caprice (1917) was published at his own expense and illustrated by AUGUSTUS JOHN. Its main character, Sarah Sinquier, is the daughter of staunchly Victorian parents. Sarah dreams of escaping her family and playing Juliet on the West End. Her parents disapprove of her aspirations, so she pawns some of their silverware and uses the money to escape. Sarah finally realizes her dream of playing Juliet and dies the following day. Valmouth (1919) takes place in the west of England at a resort where the wealthy go to recover their health. The action takes place around a central event: the marriage of Dick Thoroughfare to the mysterious Niri-Esther. Santal (1921), written while Firbank was in Tunisia, takes place in the North African setting and temporarily departs from the character burlesques. The central character is Cherif, a young Arab boy who embarks on an unsuccessful spiritual journey to find a holy prophet. The Flower beneath the Foot (1923) is an unheroic portrait of St. Laura de Nazianzi. Sorrow in Sunlight (1924) is the only novel Firbank did not pay to publish. The story takes place in the exotic and decadent setting of Tacarigua and its capital, Cuna-Cuna, which is struck by an earthquake. Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926) again returns to satirizing the clergy.
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Firbank died in Rome in 1926. Among his other works are The Princess Zoubaroff (1920), about two couples vacationing in Florence, Adrian and Nadine Sheil-Meyer and Eric and Enid Tresilian, who break up when the wives enter a convent under the influence of Princess Zoubaroff; The New Rhythum, a novel set in New York, which he began in Rome and never finished; and Inclinations (1916).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Benkovitz, Miriam J., Ronald Firbank: A Biography, 1969; Kiechler, John Anthony, The Butterfly’s Freckled Wings: A Study of Style in the Novels of Ronald Firbank, 1962; Merritt, James Douglas, Ronald Firbank, 1969.
Fitzgerald, Ella (April 25, 1917–June 15, 1996) Singer ubbed by admirers as “The First Lady of Song,” the American singer Ella Fitzgerald was one of the twentieth century’s leading female jazz vocalists. Her precise, versatile voice ranged three octaves, and she could imitate nearly any instrument. During her prolific career as a recording artist that spanned more than fifty-five years, she sold more than forty million and recorded more than two hundred albums. Fitzgerald was born Ella Jane Fitzgerald in Newport News, Virginia. Her parents were bound by a common-law marriage but separated not long after she was born. The young Fitzgerald moved to Yonkers, New York, with her mother, and they moved in with her longtime boyfriend Joe Da Silva. Da Silva took on the role of her stepfather, and he dug ditches and worked as a part-time chauffeur while her mother helped support the family with odd jobs. From her youth, Fitzgerald loved to listen to the popular jazz recordings of such noted artists as LOUIS ARMSTRONG and BING CROSBY. She was particularly fond of Connee Boswell (1907–1976), the lead singer of The Boswell Sisters. As a teenager, she took the train to Harlem, where she watched performances at
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the Apollo Theater. Tragedy struck in 1932, when her mother was killed in a car accident, and Fitzgerald soon went to live with her aunt. Her grades in school plummeted with the tumultuous circumstances in her personal life, and her later youth proved to be troubled. She found herself at odds with the law, then at a reformatory school where she was sometimes beaten. After she escaped from the reformatory school, she fought to survive on the street. Nevertheless, she found her way into a singing career, making her debut in 1934 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem after winning a weekly drawing for the opportunity to perform at the theater’s Amateur Night. She won the competition and its prize of twenty-five dollars with renditions of Hoagy Carmichael’s (1899–1981) “Judy” and “The Object of My Affection”—songs she knew from listening to The Boswell Sisters’ records—and soon became a weekly star there. In a twist of irony, Fitzgerald had originally intended to dance instead of sing but felt another act would outperform her. By the following year, after entering several talent shows, she was invited to perform with
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Ella Fitzgerald (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-119281)
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the Tiny Bradshaw Band at the Harlem Opera House. There she met bandleader Chick Webb, who reluctantly hired her to sing and travel with his band. Fitzgerald’s singing career took off from there. She sang with Webb’s entourage regularly, notably at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, and began to record hit songs like “Love and Kisses” and “(If You Can’t Sing It) You Have to Swing It.” The year 1938 brought her biggest hit to date, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.” which sold more than a million copies. After Webb’s death in 1939, the band continued as Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra, and she recorded almost 150 songs with the band as its leader before she left to embark on a solo career in 1942. Decca soon signed her, and she churned out hits both herself and with other artists. In 1941, Fitzgerald married Benny Kornegay, a dockworker and convicted drug dealer. The marriage was annulled two years later after Fitzgerald discovered his criminal past. Fitzgerald married bass player Ray Brown, whom she had met while on tour with DIZZY GILLESPIE, in 1947, and the two adopted a son, Ray Jr. She soon began working for jazz impresario Norman Granz, joining his “Jazz at the Philharmonic Tour” and singing regularly in his concerts. Granz eventually replaced Milt Gabler (of Decca) as her manager. At this point in her career, Fitzgerald found herself in the middle of a change in musical climate, and she set her eyes on the future. The Swing era was on the decline, and bebop began its ascension. She worked with Gillespie’s big band and used her voice in innovative ways, from imitating horns in the band to improvising vocals that accompanied scat singing, a form of vocalization that soulfully expresses sounds and “nonsense” words. The year 1956, with the release of Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook, marked another major turning point in Fitzgerald’s career. Having left Decca the previous year, she, with Granz, formed the jazz record company Verve. For Verve, Fitzgerald would record eight total “songbooks” through
1964. These songs formed an integral part of the Great American Songbook and were highly successful both commercially and critically. DUKE ELLINGTON himself played with Fitzgerald on Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook (1957). Although not part of the Verve “songbook” series, Fitzgerald also recorded albums dedicated to songs of the likes of COLE PORTER (1972; Ella Loves Cole), Johnny Mercer, and GEORGE GERSHWIN (1983, Nice Work If You Can Get It). Aside from her “songbooks,” Fitzgerald recorded numerous other songs and albums for Verve, notably Ella at the Opera House (1957), Ella in Rome (1958), Ella in Berlin: Mack the Knife (1960, for which she won a Grammy), Ella at Juan-Les-Pins (1964), and Ella and Duke at the Cote D’Azur (1966). Her touring schedule was as demanding as her recording schedule. She was known to perform from forty to forty-five weeks in a year and sometimes twice in the same day. The American actress MARILYN MONROE was instrumental in securing Fitzgerald’s place as the first African-American to perform at the Mocambo. In 1963, MGM purchased Verve, and they dropped Fitzgerald from the label four years later. Other labels were anxious to sign her, and she recorded for such companies as Capitol, Reprise, Atlantic, and Columbia. Her Capitol recordings include Brighten the Corner (1967), Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas (1967), 30 By Ella (1968), and Misty Blue (1968). The songs were as diverse as Christian hymns to songs infused with country and western influences. For Reprise, Fitzgerald recorded Ella (1969) and Things Ain’t What They Used to Be (1970). Her Atlantic records include Ella Loves Cole (1972), and for Columbia, she recorded Newport Jazz Festival: Live at Carnegie Hall (1973). In 1972, Fitzgerald’s successful record Jazz at Santa Monica Civic ’72 inspired Granz to form Pablo Records, for which the singer recorded approximately twenty albums. With diabetes taking a serious toll on her health, Fitzgerald recorded her last record in
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1989 and performed her final concert at Carnegie Hall in 1991. Two years later, doctors had to amputate both of her legs. She died in 1996 and was buried at the Sunset Mission Mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. Aside from singing and touring, Fitzgerald also appeared in film and on television. Her most famous film role, that of singer Maggie Jackson, came in Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955). She made numerous appearances on television shows, such as The Frank Sinatra Show, The Bing Crosby Show, and The Dinah Shore Show. In the 1980s, she played a role in the television drama The White Shadow. She also starred in commercials, her most famous being advertisements for Memorex, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and American Express. Fitzgerald received numerous honors and awards, both during her lifetime and posthumously. She won thirteen Grammy Awards
and received several honorary doctorates, and in 1979 was inducted into the Down Beat magazine Hall of Fame. President Ronald Reagan awarded her the National Medal of Art, and President George H. W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The city of Yonkers bears a statue of Fitzgerald, and the U.S. Postal Service issued an Ella Fitzgerald postage stamp bearing a portrait of the singer by Paul Davis in early 2007.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Nicholson, Stuart, Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz, 1993; Nicholson, Stuart, Ella Fitzgerald: The Complete Biography, 2004; Fidelman, Geoffrey Mark, First Lady of Song: Ella Fitzgerald For the Record, 1994; Haskins, Jim, Ella Fitzgerald: A Life Through Jazz, 1991; Pinkney, Andrea Davis, Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa, 2002. www.ellafitzgerald.org
Fleming, Ian (May 28, 1908–August 12, 1964) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Writer of Children’s Books he British novelist Ian Lancaster Fleming invented James Bond, the flashy British Secret Service agent 007. His dozen novels have sold more than 18 million copies, and Bond’s taste for high living and fast-paced, high-drama adventures has made him a popular motion picture hero since the 1960s. Since Fleming’s death, a number of other authors have continued to write James Bond stories. Fleming was born in London and studied at Eton, where he was an excellent athlete. In the early 1930s, he worked for Reuters as a journalist; his most notable assignment sent him to Moscow to cover the trial of British citizens accused of spying. During World War
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II, Fleming held a high rank in British Naval Intelligence and helped orchestrate a number of secret missions. After the war ended, Fleming moved to Jamaica, living in a house called “Goldeneye.” There Fleming indulged his taste for fast living, his love of alcohol and tobacco, and interests that ranged from black magic to biology. He continued as a journalist, working as foreign manager for the London Sunday Times until 1959. It was in Jamaica that he wrote his first book, Casino Royale (1953), a Cold War thriller set in France. The novel introduces the strong and cold-hearted James Bond, who differs dramatically from the suave playboy de-
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picted on the movie screen. Bond is a British Secret Service agent licensed to kill; in Casino Royale he battles the villainous Le Chiffre. He loves fine cuisine, women, danger, and fine cigarettes. The origin of his name is thought to be the James Bond who wrote The Birds of the West Indies. The fictional Bond’s code name 007 probably came from a short story by RUDYARD KIPLING, in which a train was numbered “007.” In 1957, Fleming wrote a non-Bond work, The Diamond Smugglers, about diamond smuggling in Africa. A series of the immensely popular James Bond stories continued until Fleming’s early death in 1964. From Russia, with Love (1957) pits Bond against Soviet SMERSH agents. Dr. No (1958), set on a tropical island, was the first of many of Fleming’s Bond stories to appear on screen. Goldfinger (1959) introduces the evil character Auric Goldfinger, with whom Bond crosses paths as he tries to solve the murder of a woman. The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) is narrated by Vivienne Michel, whom Bond saved from the villains Slugsy and Horror. Other Bond novels include Diamonds Are Forever (1956), Thunderball (1961), Moonraker (1955), You Only Live Twice (1964), and The Man with the Golden Gun, published posthumously in 1965. Fleming also wrote a number of short stories featuring Bond. “The Living Daylights,”
originally titled “Berlin Escapes,” finds Bond trying to protect another agent from a KGB assassin. The story appeared with two others, “The Property of Lady” and “Octopussy,” in a collection entitled Octopussy. The volume For Your Eyes Only (1960) consists of five stories, including “From a View to Kill,” the basis for the film A View to a Kill (1985). Fleming’s death did not put an end to the James Bond series. Several other well-known writers have written novels featuring 007, including John Gardner, Raymond Benson, and KINGSLEY AMIS (under the pseudonym Robert Markham). On screen, several actors have portrayed the popular spy-hero—Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and most recently Pierce Brosnan. Among Fleming’s other works are the children’s story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1964); the travel book Thrilling Cities (1964); and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963). Fleming died of heart failure at the age of 56.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bryce, Ivar, You Only Live Once: Memories of Ian Fleming, 1975; Lycett, Andrew, Ian Fleming, 1995; McCormick, Donald, 17F: The Life of Ian Fleming, 1993; Rosenberg, Bruce A., Ian Fleming, 1989.
Fo, Dario (March 24, 1926– ) Playwright, Actor, Director ince World War II Dario Fo has entertained audiences in his native Italy and around the world with his semi-improvisational productions that combine mime, acting, and social commentary. His bawdy, outrageous, and often sacrilegious plays have
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made him a highly controversial figure and resulted in numerous conflicts with the authorities. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 for “strength in the creation of texts that simultaneously amuse, engage, and provide perspectives.” The committee also de-
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scribed him as one “who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden.” Fo was the son of a railway worker born in Leggiuno-Sangiamo, Italy. The chief sources of diversion in his rural native region were the puppeteers, actors, and traveling storytellers who entertained peasants with, among other things, tales that mocked their wealthy landlords. Both the tradition of the traveling entertainer and the element of social protest were to be strong influences on Fo’s work. Originally, Fo studied architecture at the Brera Gallery’s art school in Milan, but he soon abandoned it and pursued his interest in the theater. He took jobs working as a comic mime in satirical reviews and was soon appearing regularly on the radio as Poer Nano (Poor Dwarf). The satirical Il dito nell’occhio (1953; Finger in the Eye) was Fo’s first major independent production and mocked the prevailing versions of history put out by the authorities. From this production Fo took away two significant influences: the “black mime” style of pantomime advanced by Jacques Lecoq, and his acquaintance with his future wife and collaborator Franca Rame. Rame and Fo married in 1954 and continued to stage their work. Their often outlandish productions combined satire, farce, comedy, social protest, and mime, drawing from the traditions of the commedia dell’arte, the traditional Italian improvisational theater, and the guillare, a sort of medieval jester. Fo’s performances of the same work differed from night to night (as they still do) and sometimes involved audience participation and discussion. His merciless criticism of the then-ruling Christian Democratic regime, the pope, the Church, and the Vatican earned him many enemies and brought frequent trouble with the authorities. Both Fo and Rame had strong ties to the Communist Party, and their work grew increasingly political. I sani da legare (Fit to Be Tied, 1954) poked fun at the Red Scare and other efforts to silence dissent. In 1959 they founded the Campagnia Dario Fo–Franca
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Rame, opening the same year for a season at Milan’s Odeon Theatre. Fo acted the lead in the production, Gli arcangeli non giocano a flipper (Archangels Don’t Play Pinball). Both also appeared in satirical roles on the television show Canzonissima. Plays such as Isabella, tre caravelle e un cacciaballe (1963; Isabella, Three Ships, and a Con Man) mocked the traditional story of Columbus’s discovery of America and poked fun at the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. His final production for conventional theater, La signora non e` da buttare (1967; The Lady’s Not for Discarding), attacked the United States and resulted in another brush with the authorities. Dissatisfied with the conventional theater, Fo and Rame formed the short-lived Nuova Scena in 1968. The group was closely tied to the Communist Party and toured not in theaters but in unions, factories, and parks. Both internal dissension and disagreement with the Party led to the group’s breakup in 1970. That year Fo and Rame formed Colletivo Teatrale la Comune and continued to tour public places. They now considered themselves members of the “unofficial left.” The most successful of Fo’s productions from this period was Mistero Buffo (1974; Comic Mystery), a one-man show that irreverently mocks the life of Christ and borrows from the medieval mystery plays known as misteri buffi. Morte accidentale di un anarchico (1974; Accidental Death of an Anarchist), another of Fo’s popular successes, was inspired by the death of the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli. Pinelli fell out of a window while under interrogation. Fo’s tale concerns the death of such an agitator and a harsh satire of the official attempts to cover it up. He treated the theme of civil disobedience in Non si paga, non si paga! (1974; We Can’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!). Also among Fo’s later works are Storia di una tigre (1980; Story of a Tiger), an allegorical monologue based on a Chinese folk tale; L’uomo nudo e l’uomo in frak (1985; One Was Nude and One Wore Tails); and Coppia aperta (1983; The Open Couple—Wide Open
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Even). Il papa e la strega (1989; The Pope and the Witch), with the everpresent anticlerical bent in his work, examines the problem of drug addiction and potential solutions. Johan Padan a la desoverta de le Americhe (1992; Johan Padan and the Discovery of America) returns to the Columbus theme. In the story a guillare stows away on Columbus’s ship. When they arrive in America, he instigates a rebellion of the Native Americans against the Conquistadors. Rame has been perhaps even more politically active than her husband. In 1973 she was kidnapped by Fascists and badly beaten. She tours with Fo and has written her own shows, including Tutta casa letto e chiesa (1977;
She’s All Church, Home, and Bed) and Female Parts (1981). Together they have written more than sixty plays. Among Fo’s other works is Manvale minimo dell’attore (The Tricks of the Trade), in which he relates his extensive research on the history of jesters and political clowns. In 2006, Fo lost a bid for mayor of Milan, finishing second in the election.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hirst, David L., Dario Fo and Franca Rame, 1989; Hood, Stuart, Introduction to The Pope and the Witch, 1992; Jenkins, Ron, Dario Fo and Franca Rame: Artful Laughter, 2001; Mitchell, Tony, File on Fo, 1989.
Fokine, Michel (April 26, 1880–August 22, 1942) Choreographer, Dancer he most influential choreographer in the early twentieth century, Michel Fokine reformed the classical Russian ballet style in which he was trained. After creating The Dying Swan for ANNA PAVLOVA, Fokine joined SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes as its chief choreographer in 1909. In both his ballets for Diaghilev’s company and his later works, he sought to integrate all elements of the production into a cohesive whole. Fokine was born Mikhail Mikhaylovich Fokine into a middle-class family in St. Petersburg, Russia. The youngest of five children, he enjoyed playing ballet with his siblings. Fokine’s father, a prosperous businessman, objected to his ambition to dance. His mother, however, prevailed upon him to send Fokine to the Imperial Ballet School at the Mariinsky Theatre. The school accepted him in 1889. Fokine took his first classes from Platon Karsa-
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vin, father of the renowned ballerina TAMARA KARSAVINA. Fokine’s varied talents—painting, dancing, and mime—soon emerged at the school. He performed from time to time as part of the corps de ballet and in 1898 passed his final exam. His debut with the Imperial Russian Ballet came on his eighteenth birthday. Pavlova first partnered with Fokine in such productions as Harlequinade at the Mariynsky. At this time Fokine was dancing, teaching classes, and beginning his work in choreography. In 1905 he achieved his earliest choreographic success with The Dying Swan, a solo dance he created for Pavlova. He had already begun choreographing for his students—Acis et Galate´e, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (in which VASLAV NIJINSKY danced), and The Animated Gobelins—and was soon orchestrating works for the Maryinsky. The year 1908 saw the production of three major Fokine ballets:
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Le pavillon d’Armide; Une nuit d’E´gypte (Cle´opaˆtre), in which he danced the role of Amoun and Pavlova danced Berenice; and Chopiniana (Les Sylphides), a classical ballet with music by Fre´de´ric Chopin (1810–1849). Diaghilev enlisted Fokine’s talent for his Ballets Russes, and in 1909 the company performed revised versions of all three ballets in Paris. Fokine remained with the Ballets Russes as principal choreographer until 1914, creating such works as L’oiseau de feu (1910; The Firebird) and Petrushka (1911), both with music by IGOR STRAVINSKY; Daphnis et Chloe´ (1912), to which MAURICE RAVEL contributed the score; Sche´he´razade (1910), with music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; Le spectre de la rose (1911); Le carnaval (1911); Le le´gende de Joseph (1913); and Le coq d’or (The Golden Cockerel, 1914). The Ballets Russes performed Fokine’s creations all over the world. Fokine was trained in the conservative classical style, as taught by Marius Petipa (1818–1910), the longtime head of the St. Petersburg Ballet. Petipa emphasized dance steps above all else in his ballets, subordinating costumes, sets, and music to movement. Fokine, in contrast, sought to equalize and integrate these elements. He tried to render movement more expressive and interpretive of the action of the ballet. “For such interpretive dancing,” he said, “the music must be equally inspired. In place of the old-time waltzes, polkas, pizzicati, and galops, it is necessary to create a form of music which expresses the same emotion as that which inspires the movement of the dancer.” To achieve the unified effect he envisioned, Fokine employed leading composers and artists of his day for the music and set design. His interest in ancient legend led him to draw
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from old myths and stories for his plots. He was meticulous in the creation of his ballets, often showing up at early rehearsals with complete, detailed pictures of what he envisioned for the ballet. Dancers sometimes found him demanding and difficult to work with. Fokine left the Ballets Russes in 1914, after which other choreographers such as LE´ ONIDE MASSINE extended his work. He left Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and spent much of 1919–1920 in Sweden and Denmark. In 1921 he and his wife, the ballerina Vera Fokina, moved to the United States. They danced the leading roles in his The Thunder Bird, which premiered in New York the same year. From then on Fokine worked mainly in the United States, both dancing and choreographing, although he also continued to work with companies in Europe. He and his wife formed the Fokine Ballet. His other works include Adventures of Harlequin (1922); Frolicking Gods (1923); The Return from the Carnaval (1923); Medusa (1924), with music by Tchaikovsky; The Immortal Pierrot (1925); ´ preuve d’amour (1936); and Don Juan L’E (1936). Vera Fokina appeared in many of her husband’s productions, and he choreographed many dances specifically for her. Upon his death in 1942 Fokine was working on his final ballet, Helen of Troy, which later premiered in Mexico City. In revised form, many of his ballets have become part of the standard repertory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Beaumont, Cyril W., Michel Fokine and His Ballets, 1981; Horwitz, Dawn Lille, Michel Fokine, 1985.
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Fonteyn, Margot (May 18, 1919–February 21, 1991) Dancer nown for her technical precision as a dancer and her fifteen-year partnership with RUDOLF NUREYEV, Dame Margot Fonteyn rose to stardom on the British stage in the 1930s. Stepping comfortably into leading classical roles left vacant by ALICIA MARKOVA’S departure from the Vic Wells Ballet, she also appeared in numerous ballets choreographed by FREDERICK ASHTON. Fonteyn was born Margaret Hookham in Reigate, Surrey, England. Her father was a businessman and engineer for a British cigarette company. From her mother, who was part-Irish and part-Brazilian, Fonteyn took her name, an anglicized form of her mother’s name, Fontes. At the age of 4 Fonteyn was taken by her mother to Miss Grace Bosustow’s dance school to learn tap dancing. Eventually, Fonteyn studied in both China and England under such well-known teachers as Serafima Astafieva and Ninette de Valois. Through Valois Fonteyn was apprenticed to the Vic Wells Ballet in London. Fonteyn went on to make her professional debut with the Vic Wells. When Markova left in 1934, Fonteyn soon stepped into her spot, dancing the lead in Giselle and other parts. Fonteyn’s biggest success up to that time, however, came in 1939 when she danced Aurora with ROBERT HELPMANN in The Sleeping Beauty. Impressed with Fonteyn, Frederick Ashton recruited her for many of his productions. Among these are Le baiser de la fe´e (The Kiss of the Fairy), Horoscope, Symphonic Variations, Daphnis and Chloe¨, and Ondine. Fonteyn continued to dance classical roles as well, including Coppe´lia and Les Sylphides. In 1955 Fonteyn married Roberto Emilio Arias, who was the son of a former Panamanian president and became Panama’s ambassador to England shortly after their marriage. They had met and fallen in love nearly twenty
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years earlier when Arias was studying in England. After having returned to Panama and married, he saw Fonteyn perform with the Royal Ballet in New York in 1953 and rekindled their romance. In 1964 Arias was shot in an assassination attempt and paralyzed from the neck down. Fonteyn nursed him through the initial trauma and remained devoted to him for the rest of his life. Her celebrated partnership with Nureyev began in 1962, the year after he defected from the Soviet Union. Because she was nearly twenty years his senior, she harbored serious doubts about their ability to work together. However, her technical perfection proved to
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be the perfect match for Nureyev’s energetic flamboyance, and their partnership won international popularity that lasted for fifteen years. They danced together in productions of Swan Lake (in which she appeared as the Swan Queen), Raymonda, Le Corsaire pas de deux, and Marguerite and Armand. Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet (1965) proved to be one of their biggest hits. At its performance in London’s Covent Garden she and Nureyev took forty-three curtain calls. After having danced a farewell performance at the Royal Opera House in London, Fonteyn retired from the ballet at the age of 60. She had already become president of the Royal Academy of Dancing in 1954 and been created Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 1956. The Royal Ballet awarded her the title of prima ballerina assoluta in 1979. Fon-
teyn wrote several books, among which are Margot Fonteyn: Autobiography (1975), A Dancer’s World (1979), and The Magic of Dance (1979). Among the other ballets in which she appeared are Apparitions (with Helpmann); MICHEL FOKINE’S The Firebird and Petrushka; and JOHN CRANKO’S Poe`me de l’extase (1970; Poem of Ecstasy). Fonteyn appeared in numerous films, including The Royal Ballet (1959), two versions of Romeo and Juliet in 1966 and 1982, Swan Lake (1967), and I Am a Dancer (1973).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bland, Alexander, Fonteyn and Nureyev: The Story of a Partnership, 1979; Fonteyn, Dame Margot, Margot Fonteyn: Autobiography, 1976.
Ford, Ford Madox (December 17, 1873–June 26,1939) Novelist, Poet, Critic, Essayist, Editor he English writer Ford Madox Ford published eighty-one books during his lifetime. His novels, poetry, and essays touch on history, the European cultural climate of the World War I generation, literature, and other subjects. In addition to his own writing, he was well known for promoting the work of young authors in the two major literary reviews he edited, the English Review and the Transatlantic Review. Ford was born Ford Madox Hueffer, the eldest of three children, in Merton, Surrey, England. An artistic and intellectual atmosphere prevailed in his home. His mother, Catherine Brown, was the daughter of the painter Ford Madox Brown, and his father was a German musicologist, librettist, and music critic for the Times. Ford’s younger brother, Oliver, also became a successful au-
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thor. Beginning in 1881 Ford attended the Praetorius School at Folkestone, Kent, and he later attended University College School in London. Thanks to his home life as well as his schooling, Ford acquired a broad education. The year 1891 saw the publication of Ford’s first major work, the fairy story The Brown Owl. A second fairy story, The Feather, appeared in 1892, as did his first novel, The Shifting of the Fire. The same year he joined the Roman Catholic Church, and he remained a less-than-devout Catholic for the rest of his life. In 1893 he published the poetry collection The Questions at the Well and a third fairy story, The Queen Who Flew. He married Elsie Martindale in 1894. Ford met the Polish-born writer JOSEPH CONRAD in 1898, around the time the latter retired from sea life and was just beginning his
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literary career. The two writers eventually collaborated on three works, The Inheritors (1901), Romance (1903), and The Nature of A Crime (1909). After Conrad’s death in 1924, Ford published Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance (1924). With Arthur Marwood, Ford founded the English Review, an influential literary journal he edited in 1908 and 1909. The Review published the works of both young and established writers; among them were Thomas Hardy, D. H. LAWRENCE, E. M. FORSTER, and H. G. WELLS. In this position and in his later editorship of the Transatlantic Review (1924–1925), Ford helped bring to public notice the work of many writers who later became famous. Ford joined the army in 1915, the same year his novel The Good Soldier was published. Critics, who sometimes fault Ford for hasty, mediocre writing, often consider this novel, which examines the flaws in human relationships, his best piece of work. His poetry and writing, modern for his time, is generally characterized by careful attention to technique, at times at the expense of content. Among his other most noteworthy novels are a trilogy set in the time of Henry VIII, which begins with The Fifth Queen (1906), and the wartime tetralogy Parade’s End (1924–1928). The latter series reflects Ford’s pessimistic
perceptions of Western civilization during and after World War I. Ford had actually taken part in the war himself; in 1916 he suffered gassing and shellshock at the Battle of the Somme. Three years later, Ford, then still using the name Hueffer, changed his name to Ford Madox Ford. In 1922 he moved to France with his mistress, the Australian painter Stella Bowen, and their daughter, Julie. Ford spent his last years living in France (where he founded the Transatlantic Review) and the United States. In 1938 he received an honorary professorship in Michigan. His other works include a biography of his grandfather, Ford Madox Brown (1895); the novel The Rash Act (1933), about an individual who assumes the identity of a wealthy man who commits suicide, and its sequel, Henry for Hugh (1934); the critical works The Critical Attitude (1911), Henry James (1914), and The March of Literature from Confucious’ Day to Our Own (1938); the long poems Antwerp (1915), A House (1921), and Mister Bosphorous and the Muses (1923); and his Collected Poems (1936). Ford died in France in 1939.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Judd, Alan, Ford Madox Ford, 1990.
Forman, Milosˇ (February 18, 1932– ) Director, Screenwriter, Actor, Producer ilosˇ Forman is a Czech-born American director, actor, screenwriter, and producer whose films include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, and The People vs. Larry Flynt. Although he is best known for his American-made films in the English-speaking world, his early Cze-
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choslovakian films made between 1960 and 1967 still enjoy popularity in the Czech Republic. Forman was born Jan Toma´sˇ Forman in Cˇa´slav, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). His father was Jewish, and his mother was Protestant. His parents both died at
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the German concentration camp at Auschwitz during World War II, leaving him to be raised by other family members. Following the war, Forman attended King George College public school in Podeˇbrady. He went on to study screenwriting at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in Prague and directed a number of Czech comedies, including Cerny´ Petr (1963; Black Peter), La´sky jedne´ plavovla´sky (1965), and Horı´, ma´ panenko (1967). Forman escaped the oppression of communist censorship, as he was in Paris negotiating the terms of his first American film when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring in 1968. After being let go from the Czech firm for which he had been working, he moved to Hollywood, where he took up directing in the United States. His American debut was with the moderately successful Taking Off (1971). He scored his first major success with the 1975 film adaptation of KEN KESEY’S One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Starring Jack Nicholson (1937) as a renegade sanitarium inmate and Louise Fletcher as the dictatorial, rule-obsessed Nurse Ratchet (1934), the film won five Academy Awards. Nicholson and Fletcher took home the awards for Best Actor and Best Actress, while Forman won for Best Director. “Nurse Ratchet” has become a common derogatory nickname for difficult medical staff. Although not a prolific director, Forman (who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1977) has generally garnered respect for his films. In 1979, he directed Hair, the film version of the 1960s cult classic Broadway musical. Ragtime (1981), an adaptation of E. L. Doctorow’s (1931– ) novel, explores the tribulations of a black pianist in early twentiethcentury New York and was nominated for eight Academy Awards. British dramatist Peter Shaffer (1926– ) adapted the screenplay from his own play for Forman’s Amadeus (1984), a partially fictionalized story about the life of the German com-
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poser Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) as seen through the eyes of his insane archenemy Antonio Salieri (1750–1825). Forman won an Academy Award for Best Director for the film, which earned another seven Academy Awards and was nominated for three more. Parts of the movie were filmed in Prague, marking his first return to the city since his departure in 1968. After the success of Amadeus, he took a post as a film professor at Columbia University. Among his students there was the director and screenwriter James Mangold (1963– ). He did not, however, give up directing and returned to the screen in 1989 with Valmont, one of several films adapted from French novelist Choderlos de Laclos’s (1741–1803) Les liaisons dangereuses (1782; Dangerous Liaisons). Forman’s film was followed by The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), a partially fictionalized story about the embattled Hustler magazine and pornography publisher Larry Flynt (1942– ) and his crusade for free speech. For the film, Forman received another Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Among Forman’s later films are Man on the Moon (1999), which starred Jim Carrey (1962– ) as the legendary comic Andy Kaufman (1949–1984); and Goya’s Ghosts (2006), based on the life of the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828). The drama Amarillo Slim is slated for release in 2008. Forman has also produced films and had several minor acting roles, including Dmitri in Mike Nichols’s (1931– ) Heartburn (1986); Laszlo in Henry Jaglom’s (1941– ) New Year’s Day (1989), and Father Havel in Edward Norton’s (1969– ) Keeping the Faith (2000). His autobiographical work Turnaround: A Memoir was published in 1993. BIBLIOGRAPHY Slater, Thomas J., Milosˇ Forman: A Bio-Bibliography, 1987; Forman, Milosˇ, Turnaround: A Memoir, 1993; www.milosforman.com.
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Forster, E. M. (January 1, 1879–June 7, 1970) Novelist, Essayist, Critic, Journalist, Editor, Librettist he English writer Edward Morgan Forster is most famous for two of his novels, Howard’s End and A Passage to India, which explore the intricacies of human relationships, especially when people of different classes or cultures meet. Forster was also a noted critic and essayist. Forster was born in London and lost his father before he was 2. His upbringing fell to three women in particular: his mother; his great-aunt, Marianne Thornton, who came from a family of wealthy bankers and about whom Forster wrote a biography in 1956; and his grandmother, whose cleverness and vivacity he particularly liked. He attended a preparatory school in Eastbourne, followed by Tonbridge School in Kent. At King’s College, Cambridge, he later studied classics and history. Forster’s years at Cambridge were crucial to his development as a writer. He rejected the evangelical Protestant influences of his background and adopted the agnostic and secular outlook that underlies his work. At Cambridge Forster also acquired a dislike of the educational system to which he had been exposed, a dislike that is evident in his novel The Longest Journey (1907). His first published pieces appeared in college periodicals. After his graduation, Forster traveled extensively in Europe. In England, he associated himself with the unconventional Bloomsbury Group, an informal social and intellectual group whose other writers, artists, critics, and theorists included VIRGINIA WOOLF and the economist John Maynard Keynes. His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), introduces the theme of social and cultural clash common throughout his work. An upper-middle-class English family, the Herritons, strongly oppose Lilia Herriton’s marriage to an Italian, Gino. This theme continues in A Room with a View (1908), a light and humorous story about a woman torn between
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the man she loves and the man convention would have her marry. The complexities of human relationships are the dominant theme of Forster’s fiction. Class, ethnicity, gender, and conflicting values complicate the connections between his characters. In his smooth and concise writing style, he frequently contrasted materialism with the ideals of rich imagination and appreciation of nature. Some characters remain hopelessly trapped in their faults, but the lifechanging experiences of others move them in the direction of these ideals. Forster fully developed these motifs in the first novel to bring him success, Howard’s End (1910). A sharp divide exists between the cultured, imaginative sisters Margaret and Helen Schlegel and the materialistic Wilcoxes. The exception to the rule in the Wilcox family is Ruth Wilcox, the owner of the beautiful country house, Howard’s End, who becomes particularly attached to Margaret and leaves the house to her. The surviving Wilcoxes refuse to honor her request, but Margaret acquires the house anyway after she marries Henry Wilcox. By that time, Henry’s lifestyle has beaten him down, and he symbolically and physically connects to the beauty and continuity that Margaret and the house symbolize. The novel’s message, stated in an epigraph, is “only connect.” The house in Howard’s End is modeled on Forster’s childhood home, Rooksnest. Director James Ivory’s excellent film version of the novel was released in 1992. During World War I, Forster spent three years in Alexandria working for the Red Cross. His experiences there are reflected in the travel book Alexandria: A History and a Guide (1922). After the war, he became increasingly active in leftist thought and activity. He edited the Labour Party newspaper the Daily Herald, was a member of the Humanist
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Society, and served twice as the President of the National Council for Civil Liberties. Before he wrote A Passage to India (1924), Forster had traveled to India twice, and he was to return again in 1945. In the story, Adela Quested is a young English visitor to India, then part of the British Empire. Her personal conflict with a respected Indian, Dr. Aziz, whom she accuses of attacking her, represents and causes larger cultural conflicts between the British and Indians, a conflict that Forster handled adeptly and delicately. A Passage to India wan the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1925. Part of what put Forster at odds with conventional British society was his homosexuality. Forster wrote several works that address homosexual themes but left them unpublished when he died. Maurice, written just before World War I, was not published until 1971. The novel concerns two college-age men who fall in love in a society that does not tolerate homosexuality. The Life to Come, a volume of short stories published in 1972, also treats homosexual themes.
During World War II Forster vocally opposed the Nazis. In 1946 he received an honorary fellowship from King’s College that enabled him to live in financial comfort. His other works include the short-story collections The Celestial Omnibus (1914) and The Eternal Moment (1928); the travel book The Hill of Devi (1953), based on his experiences in India; Abinger Harvest (1932), a collection of previously published articles and reviews; and Two Cheers for Democracy (1951). In 1927 he gave the Clark Lectures at King’s College, resulting in the critical work Aspects of the Novel (1927). He also wrote Billy Budd (1951), a libretto based on the classic work by Herman Melville (cowritten with Eric Crozier for an opera by BENJAMIN BRITTEN). Many of Forster’s novels were adapted for theater and radio during his lifetime and made into films in the 1980s and 1990s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackerley, J. R., E. M. Forster: A Portrait, 1970; Colmer, John, E. M. Forster: The Personal Voice, 1975.
Fowles, John (March 31, 1926–November 5, 2005) Novelist, Essayist, Poet ohn Robert Fowles was best known for two of his novels, The Magus and the award-winning The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which combine engaging storylines with psychological portraits. Fowles’s works have proved particularly popular in the United States, and several have been adapted for the screen. In addition to novels, Fowles has written text for photographic books, poems, and a number of essays.
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Fowles was born into a middle-class family in Leigh upon Sea, Essex, England. His father was a tobacco importer, who held orthodox religious beliefs against which Fowles rebelled. Fowles studied at Bedford School from 1939 to 1944, concentrating on French and German. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant in the Royal Marines and studied at the University of Edinburgh. After the war, Fowles entered New College, Oxford, where he earned his B.A. in 1949. French writers ranging from Gustave Flaubert
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to the existentialist ALBERT CAMUS were Fowles’s main interests at the university. From 1950 to 1963, Fowles taught in England and on the Greek island of Spetsai (1951–1952). He married Elizabeth Whitton in 1954. Although he had begun to write The Magus and other novels much earlier, his first published novel, The Collector, appeared in 1963. A typical Fowles plot is tightly constructed with unexpected twists and focuses on the psychological and sexual aspects of his characters. Fowles’s love of nature and a Zen-influenced humanistic philosophy underlies his works. He moved to the country setting of Underhill Farm, near Lyme Regis, Dorset, in 1966 and has been active in environmental and ecological causes. The Collector (1963), adapted for film in 1965, explores the psychosexual obsessions of a young, lower-class antihero, Clegg. The novel immediately established Fowles’s reputation as a writer, and it received favorable reviews from the Times Literary Supplement and other publications. Aside from his entomological hobbies, Clegg develops an obsession for the middle-class Miranda Grey. When Clegg wins a large sum of money in a football pool, he quits his job and eventually buys an isolated country house. After having fitted its old chapel as a prison, he kidnaps Miranda and keeps her there, where she becomes an object for Clegg’s sexual obsessions. Miranda dies, and the story ends with a new seed of obsession germinating in Clegg’s head. Fowles accomplishes a multifaceted view of Miranda’s ordeal by interrupting Clegg’s firstperson narrative with her own perspective on her life and her imprisonment. The main action of The Magus (1965), also adapted for film (1968), takes place on a Greek island. The semiautobiographical protagonist Nicholas Urfe has just finished his studies at Oxford and gone to Greece. The enigmatic millionaire Maurice Conchis draws him into a mysterious and far-reaching game involving many players, leading Urfe to redis-
cover himself and forcing him to define his relationship with his girlfriend Alison. The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), filmed in 1981, is Fowles’s best-known work, was a bestseller in the United States, and won the W. H. Smith literary award in 1970. The mysterious Sarah Woodruff, a farmer’s daughter who has nevertheless acquired an education, is the woman of the title. Woodruff, the former lover of a married French lieutenant, has an affair with the engaged and wealthy paleontologist Charles Smithson. Critics praised Fowles’s novel not only for its engaging story, but for its depiction of the Victorian England atmosphere in which it is set. Daniel Martin (1977), one of the most straightforward of Fowles’s works, stands out among his later novels. The central character is the middle-aged Daniel Martin, whom Fowles traces through his complicated relationships and self-analysis. Other later novels include A Maggot (1985), a story set during the eighteenth century. Fowles also wrote poems, essays, novellas, and text for books of photographs. Among his other works are the book of nonfiction sketches The Aristos (1964); Poems (1973); Shipwreck (1975), a pictorial record of shipwrecks off Britain’s coasts; Islands (1978), a study of the island metaphor in literature; The Tree (1979); The Ebony Tower (1974), a volume of novellas; the novel Mantissa (1982), and Wormholes (1998), a collection of essays. Fowles has also translated Charles Perrault’s Cinderella (1974) and Claire de Durfort’s Ourika (1977). His The Journals - Volume 1 was published in 2003 and covers the period of his life between 1949 and 1965.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barnum, Carol M., The Fiction of John Fowles: A Myth for Our Time, 1988; Foster, Tom C., Understanding John Fowles, 1994; Fowles, John, The Journals - Volume 1, 2003; Huffaker, Robert, John Fowles, 1980; Tarbox, Katherine, The Art of John Fowles, 1988; Warburton, Eileen, John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds, 2004.
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France, Anatole (April 16, 1844–October 12, 1924) Novelist, Poet, Critic
Anatole France (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-17674)
ynicism, irony, and pointed satire mark the novels of Anatole France, who began his writing career with a skeptical, humanistic outlook and ended it as an impassioned social critic and political activist. France also wrote poetry and criticism; he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921, “in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament.” France was born Jacques-Anatole-Franc¸ois Thibault. His father was a Paris bookseller, and his father’s book shop, which specialized in works on the French Revolution, introduced him to literature at a young age. From 1855 to 1862, France studied at the Colle`ge Stanislas, where he received a classical education. His first book, Alfred de Vigny (1868),
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was a biography of the nineteenth-century French Romantic poet and author. In the 1870s, France published poetry largely influenced by the Parnassians, advocates of classical verse and a strict, disciplined approach to poetic style. Two of his poems appeared in Le Parnasse contemporain in 1869, and his own collection, Les Poe`mes dore´s (Gilded Poems) was published in 1873. France’s verse incorporates myth and legend, as in “La Fille de Caı¨n” (“The Daughter of Cain”) as well as contemplation of nature, God, the universe, and death. A second volume of poetry, Les noces corinthiennes (The Corinthian Wedding), was published in 1876. The two novelettes published as Jocaste et le chat maigre (1879; Jocasta and the Thin Cat) were his first major works of fiction. Of his early fiction, Le crime de Sylvestre Bon-
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nard (1881) proved to be one of the most successful and won a prize from the Acade´mie Franc¸aise the same year. The story, told in the form of diaries written by the scholar and antiquarian Sylvestre Bonnard, recounts the path that leads him away from the academic achievement toward which he aims. The first part of the book finds Bonnard in furious pursuit of a fourteenth-century manuscript of great value to his work. When he loses all hope of obtaining the manuscript, it shows up as a gift from a formerly impoverished woman to whom he had shown kindness years before. It is the events of the second part that lead Bonnard to abandon his scholarly work. He takes an interest in Jeanne-Alexandre, the orphaned granddaughter of his former lover. After a series of mishaps and an illness, he becomes her legal guardian. Bonnard sells his library (the “crime” of the title being his secret removal of some of the books before the sale) to finance Jeanne-Alexandre’s dowry and gives up his life as a scholar. In 1886, France began to write for Le Temps. La Roˆtisserie de la Reine Pe´dauque (1893; At the Sign of the Reine Pe´dauque), one of his most acclaimed novels, is set in eighteenth-century France. In the character of the fraudulent M. d’Astarac, France derides occult beliefs and practices. The protagonist of the story is the Abbe´ Je´roˆme Coignard, an unlucky and unorthodox Catholic. With his pupil, Jacques, who narrates the story, Coignard becomes involved with the unscrupulous occultist M. d’Astarac, leading both of them into intrigues that end in his death. Coignard is again the central character in Les opinions de Je´rome Coignard (1893); other novels of this period are Thaı¨s (1890), set in Egypt; Le Lys rouge (1894; The Red Lily), a love story set in Florence; and Le Jardin d’Epicure (1894; The Garden of Epicurus). With his major series L’Histoire contemporaine (1897–1901), which presents the government, church, and other contemporary institutions in an unfavorable light, France began to turn his attention to contemporary po-
litical and social matters. The series begins with L’orme du mail (1897; The Elm-Tree on the Mall), and focuses on the first of two major plot threads, the political rivalry between the Abbe´ Lantaigne and the more conniving Abbe´ Guitrel over the post of Bishop of Tourcoing. The second thread concerns M. Bergeret, a scholar turned socialist activist. The second volume, Le mannequin d’osier (1897; The Wicker Work Woman), involves Bergeret’s unhappy relationship with his dressmaker wife, who comes from a higher social background, and their ultimate parting. The narrative of the third volume, L’anneau d’ame´thyste (1899; The Amethyst Ring), returns to the fight for the bishop’s post. Bergeret emerges as a political advocate in Monsieur Bergeret a` Paris (1901; Monsieur Bergeret in Paris), in which, like his creator, he becomes a vocal defender of Alfred Dreyfus. (Dreyfus was a Jewish-French army officer wrongly convicted of divulging military secrets to the Germans in 1894. A victim of the anti-Semitism so prevalent at the time, in fact convicted on the basis of documents forged by anti-Semites, he was defended by some of the most important writers in France and only vindicated twelve years later, after a struggle that almost brought down the French Republic.) From the period of the Dreyfus Affair onward, France developed increasingly radical political beliefs, which eventually lead him to join France’s Communist Party. The novel Le livre de mon ami (1885; My Friend’s Book) began another of France’s series, followed by Pierre Nozie`re (1899), Le Petit Pierre (1918; Little Pierre), and La Vie en fleur (1922; The Bloom of Life). Among his other works are the comedy Crainquebille (1903); La Vie de Jeanne d’Arc (1908), a life of Joan of Arc; L’Iˆle des Pingouins (1908; Penguin Island), a satire on French history; Les Dieux ont soif (1912; The Gods are Athirst), a tragic story set during the French Revolution; and Le Re´volte des Anges (1914). France was elected to the French Academy in
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1896 and to the Royal Society of Literature in London in 1908.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jefferson, Alfred Carter, Anatole France: The Politics of Skepticism, 1965; Tylden-Wright, David, Anatole France, 1967; Virtanen, Reino, Anatole France, 1968.
Franklin, Aretha Louise (March 25, 1942– ) Singer, Songwriter, Pianist nown affectionately as “The Queen of Soul,” the American singer Aretha Franklin is often credited with being one of the greatest female vocalists of the twentieth century. She has been described as “a singer of great passion and control whose finest recordings define the term soul music in all its deep, expressive glory.” While Franklin concentrated primarily on rhythm and blues music early on in her career, she has demonstrated her versatility in recording music in other genres such as pop, rock, gospel, and soul. Franklin was born Aretha Louise Franklin in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father was a Baptist minister, and her parents separated when she was six. Her mother died of a heart attack four years later. Her father, the Reverend C. L. Franklin, moved the family to Buffalo, New York, before settling in Detroit, Michigan. There, Reverend Franklin became a nationally known minister. Franklin’s musical talents were evident at an early age. Along with her older sister Emma and younger sister Carolyn, she frequently sang at her father’s New Bethel Baptist Church. She was influenced as a youth by her aunt, Clara Ward (1924–1973), and Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972). Both singers frequented the Franklin home. She was just fourteen when Checker Records—the company that recorded her father’s sermons and gospel vocals—offered her a deal. The result was her
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first record, The Gospel Soul of Aretha Franklin (1956). In her teens, Franklin became pregnant with the first of her four sons, who was born in 1955. She gave birth to her second in 1957. Although her teenage pregnancies put a temporary hold on her career, by 1960 she had multiple offers from record companies on the table and decided to sign with Columbia. Her first album with the label, The Great Aretha Franklin, appeared in 1960. Franklin’s early recordings were jazz-infused tunes inspired by the likes of Dinah Washington (1924–1963). A few of her first recordings, such as “Won’t Be Long,” “Today I Sing the Blues,” and “Operation Heartbreak” edged their way into the Billboard R&B charts, and she scored a top-forty hit with Al Jolson’s (1886–1950) “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody.” But by and large, her years at Columbia brought little lasting popular success, and Franklin was regarded as more of an entertainer than an R&B artist. In 1966, the year after her contract with Columbia ended, Franklin’s career took a decisive turn with her decision to sign with Atlantic Records. With the help of producer Jerry Wexler (1917– ), she reinvented herself as a true R&B artist and added her prowess on the piano to her singing. The following year saw the release of the hit single “I’ve Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” the title song of her first Atlantic album. Recorded at Muscle
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Shoals, Alabama, the song spent seven weeks on top of the R&B singles chart. Franklin next scored a major hit with her rendition of Otis Redding’s (1941–1967) “Respect” in 1967, and her second Atlantic album Aretha Arrives was released later that year. She kept the hits coming with “Chain of Fools,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and “Baby I Love You.” Her other 1960s Atlantic hits include “The House That Jack Built,” “Think,” and “I Say a Little Prayer.” For “Respect,” Franklin earned two Grammys in 1968, including the first ever Grammy awarded for Best R&B Female Vocal Performance. Franklin’s string of top-ten hits continued into the 1970s, by which time she had earned her famous nickname “The Queen of Soul.” Franklin had also made a number of fulllength albums by this time. Among these are Spirit in the Dark (1970), Live at Fillmore West (1971), Young, Gifted and Black (1972), and the double-LP Amazing Grace (1972). She recorded Amazing Grace with James Cleveland & the Southern California Community Choir, and it not only remains one of the best-selling gospel albums of all time but marked an unusual success in the gospel-pop crossover genre. While she had established herself as one of the best-selling R&B artists of her time, she has lent her talents to a wide range of material, particularly in her later career. Her covers of rock, blues, gospel, soul, and pop songs expanded her public appeal, Franklin continued to churn out hit singles in the early 1970s, including “Day Dreaming,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and “Spanish Harlem.” Her 1974 hit “Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)” became a gold record and topped the R&B charts yet again. During the mid-1970s, Franklin hit a sales slump as trends in the music industry changed and companies began to promote younger singers. In 1976, singer/songwriter Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) produced Franklin’s gold-album soundtrack to the motion pic-
ture Sparkle. From the album, the single “(Giving Him) Something He Can Feel” reached number one on the R&B charts. The success of the soundtrack was the exception to the rule for Franklin in the later 1970s. Albums such as Sweet Passion (1977), Almighty Fire (1978), and La Diva (1979) failed to impress critics or the public. In 1978, she married Glynn Turman, but the shortlived union ended in divorce in 1982. To compound her career troubles, Franklin found herself in trouble with the IRS for failing to pay back taxes, her contract with Atlantic ended in 1979, and her father suffered serious injuries from a gunshot wound the same year during an attempted robbery that left him in a coma until his death in 1984. Before long, however, Franklin was back in the limelight with an appearance in the classic movie The Blues Brothers (1980). The same year, she signed with Arista Records. She scored a number of hits over the next few years, the biggest of them coming from her number-one award-winning album Jump To It (1982). The title track was produced by famed R&B singer-songwriter Luther Vandross (1951–2005). Vandross also produced the lesssuccessful Get It Right (1983) before Franklin scored another mega-success with the platinum flashy pop album Who’s Zoomin’ Who? (1985), which yielded such popular hits as the title track, “Freeway of Love,” and her duet with the rock band Eurythmics, “Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves.” The following year, Franklin released the number-one pop single “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” which appeared on her album Aretha, with British pop star George Michael (1963– ). She recorded a string of other hits, such as her cover of THE ROLLING STONES’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” In 1987, she recorded the gospel album One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism live at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, where her father had served as the minister. Since the late 1980s, Franklin’s commercial successes have been sporadic. Sales of her albums Through the Storm (1989) and What
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You See Is What You Sweat (1991) fared poorly. Her hits have included “A Deeper Love” (1993) from the soundtrack to Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit (1993) and “Willing to Forgive” (1994). Her album A Rose Is Still A Rose (1998) was her biggest success in several years, producing the title-track hit. Her last full-length album was So Damn Happy (2003), which attracted neither critical praise nor public enthusiasm. A Woman Falling Out of Love is scheduled to be released on her newly formed label Aretha Records in late 2007. Franklin is one of the most decorated singers in show business. In 1987, she became the first female to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2005 she became the second woman to be inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. In 1994, she became the youngest individual to win the Kennedy Center Honors. U.S. President Bill Clinton award-
ed her the National Medal of Arts in 1999 (and she had performed at his inauguration in 1992), and President George W. Bush awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. Franklin has also received numerous honorary doctorates. She has won more than a dozen Grammy Awards and has more wins for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance than any other singer to date. Her number-one R&B singles total twenty to date. Aretha: From These Roots, her autobiography, was published in 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bego, Mark, Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul, 1989; Franklin, Aretha, Aretha: From These Roots, 1999; www.aretha-franklin.com. www.rockhall.com/inductee/aretha-franklin.
Friel, Brian (January 9, 1929– ) Playwright, Short-Story Writer, Teacher nown for his masterful treatment of everything Irish in plays and short stories, Brian Friel places his characters against the backdrop of his native Irish landscape, sketching character portraits and examining the cultural, historical, and political climate of Ireland. Among his best known plays are Philadelphia, Here I Come!, The Loves of Cass McGuire, and Translations. Friel was born to a schoolteacher near Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He studied at Long Tower School and Saint Columb’s College before entering Ireland’s national seminary, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. His unpleasant years at the seminary ended with a degree in 1948, after which he attended St. Joseph’s Teacher Training Col-
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lege in Belfast. Upon the completion of his studies in 1950, he taught in Londonderry for the next decade. Friel married Anne Morrison in 1954. While still teaching, Friel began to write short stories and plays. His first play, a radio play called A Sort of Freedom, was broadcast on the BBC in 1958. The Francophile (A Doubtful Paradise) was Friel’s first effort for the stage, and following an unsuccessful production at the Group Theatre in Belfast in 1958, it was adapted for radio and broadcast on the BBC in 1962. The Blind Mice, another early work for the stage, premiered at the Eblana Theatre in Dublin in 1963. The Enemy Within marked Friel’s first success as a playwright. A three-
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act play that premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1962, the drama is Friel’s character study of the sixth-century Irish missionary St. Columba, who founded a monastery on the Scottish island of Iona. Friel portrays a flawed Columba, torn between his spiritual work and the worldly distractions his family imposes on him, although ultimately able to choose the former. In 1963, Friel traveled to the United States, where he spent several months studying with the British director TYRONE GUTHRIE at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. His American travels provided the inspiration for two of his popular works, Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1963) and The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966). Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1963), Friel’s most commercially successful play, was first produced by the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1964. The play later moved to Broadway in New York and to the West End in London. The protagonist of the story is the young Irishman Gar O’Donnell, of whom the audience learns through a series of flashbacks, conversations, and glimpses into the future. Gar, bound for Philadelphia, is about to flee the emotional vacuum of his home, a vacuum created by his strained relationship with his pragmatic father and his failed relationship with Kate Doogan. The aged female protagonist of The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966), also produced on Broadway, returns to Ireland after having lived most of her adult life as a waitress in New York City. Her reunion with her inhospitable family is anything but happy, and she soon finds herself in a home for the elderly, Eden House. After listening to two of the other inmates, Trilbe Costello and Mr. Ingram, deliver idealized versions of their lives, Cass, too, is reduced to believing an illusory version of her own past. Friel’s dramas unfold in Ireland and Northern Ireland, particularly in Donegal, where he made his home. Many of his early plays amount to individual character studies, whereas later plays turn to political and other
themes. Several of his plays employ unusual dramatic devices, as in Philadelphia, Here I Come!, where two different actors portray Gar’s public and private aspects. The story of Faith Healer (1979), about the life and death of faith healer Frank Hardy, unfolds in a series of monologues delivered by three different characters. Friel’s political plays include The Freedom of the City (1973), inspired by Bloody Sunday in Ireland in 1972, and The Mundy Scheme (1969). The unscrupulous cast of characters in the latter form the substance of Friel’s satire on Ireland’s political climate. The intrigue and power plays of the story center around a scheme to alleviate a troublesome financial situation by converting barren Irish land into an international burial ground, a plan advanced by Michael Maloney, Minister of Foreign Affairs. Translations (1980), winner of the EwartBiggs Memorial Award, was the first play performed by the Field Day Theatre Company, which Friel founded with Stephen Rea. The play takes place at an Irish hedge school and attempts to show the impact of English culture on Ireland. Molly Sweeney (1994) relates the story of a woman blind from birth who gains her sight through the efforts of an alcoholic surgeon. Friel, better known for his plays, began to publish short stories around the same time he wrote his first dramatic works. His first story, “The Skelper,” appeared in The New Yorker in 1959. Among his volumes of short fiction are A Saucer of Larks (1962), the title story of which depicts two Germans who come to Donegal to find the burial site of a World War II casualty. A second collection, The Gold and the Sea, was published in 1966. Friel was elected to the Irish Academy of Letters in 1972, received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland in 1983, and was nominated for a seat in the Irish Senate in 1986. His other plays include Lovers: Winners and Losers (1967), Crystal and Fox (1968), The Gentle Island (1970), Volunteers (1975), Living Quarters (1977),
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Aristocrats (1979), The Communication Chord (1982), Making History (1988), and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). In the past several years, he has completed a number of adaptations of the plays of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), including Afterplay, produced in 2002.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Andrews, Elmer, The Art of Brian Friel: Neither Reality Nor Dreams, 1994; Dantanus, Ulf, Brian Friel: A Study, 1988; Coult, Tony, About Friel: The Playwright and the Work, 2006; Duncan, Dawn, Studies in the Plays of Brian Friel, 1994; O’Brien, George, Brian Friel, 1990; Pine, Richard, Brian Friel and Ireland’s Drama, 1990.
Frost, Robert (March 26, 1874–January 29, 1963) Poet ne of the most influential American poets of the twentieth century, Robert Frost used the backdrop of rural New England life as a setting for his philosophically complex poetry. Upon his death in 1963, he had arguably attained the status of America’s most acclaimed and respected poet. Frost, the eldest child in his family, was born in San Francisco. His father, William Prescott Frost, Jr., claimed as one of his ancestors a Frost from Devonshire who had emigrated to America in 1634. His mother, Isabelle Moodie, was of Scottish ancestry.
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Growing up with the elder Frost as his father proved to be emotionally traumatic for the budding young poet. At various times a teacher, a politician, and a journalist (notably, he was city editor of the San Francisco Daily Evening Post), his father was, in his personal life, given to strict discipline, gambling, and alcoholism. After his death from tuberculosis in 1885, the young Frost’s mother moved the family to eastern Massachusetts, where his paternal grandparents lived. Frost’s mother, a teacher, enriched his time at home reading poetry, literature, and Bible stories. She raised her children in the Swedenborgian church, but Frost rejected it as he grew older. His first poems were published in Lawrence, Massachusetts, while he was a student at Lawrence High School. In 1890, his poem “La Noche Triste,” inspired by William H. Prescott’s The Conquest of Mexico (1843), was published in the high school bulletin. Frost eventually became the editor of the publication. He excelled in all aspects of scholastic life, from Greek, Latin, and the debating society to sports. Frost briefly attended Dartmouth College in 1892 but soon returned home, dabbling in teaching and odd jobs. The year 1894 brought the sale of his first poem, “My Butterfly: An
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Elegy,” to The New York Independent, which paid him fifteen dollars for the work. In December 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who was his covaledictorian at Lawrence High School. White had rejected Frost’s earlier proposal, wanting to finish college first, after which the despairing poet embarked on a harrowing journey to the Dismal Swamp in Virginia. He and his wife taught school together until 1897, when he enrolled at Harvard University. Suffering from acute chest and stomach pain and with his mother in poor health and his wife expecting a child, Frost cut his studies at Harvard short after less than two years and settled on a farm his grandfather had purchased for him in Derry, New Hampshire. A series of personal tragedies marked the years between 1899 and 1901. His mother was diagnosed with advanced cancer in 1899 and died a year later. The year 1900 also brought the death of their young son Elliott from cholera. Frost’s grandfather passed away in 1901. With the passing of his grandfather, Frost continued to operate the farm at Derry and spent his days trying to earn a living as a poultry farmer. Farming failed to bring in a sufficient income to support his family, so Frost took a job teaching English at secondary school Pinkerton Academy from 1906 to 1911. When he found spare time, he wrote poetry. For the next two years, he taught at the New Hampshire Normal School (now Plymouth State University) in Plymouth, New Hampshire. In spite of his lack of financial success at Derry, the New England setting was important in forming the backdrop for some of his earliest poetry. “The Trial by Existence” and “The Tuft of Flowers,” two of his noted early poems, were published in 1906. In 1912, after selling the farm in Derry, Frost and his family emigrated to a cottage dubbed “The Bungalow” in Beaconsfield, near London. The following year, David Nutt published Frost’s first volume of poetry, A Boy’s Will, a collection of thirty-two poems chroni-
cling such themes as maturity and loss that earned favorable reviews. The poetry volume North of Boston, containing the notable poems “Home Burial” and “Mending Wall,” was published the following year. One writer described its poems as “dialog-narratives in a style of living speech new to the language, exploring the inward lives of ordinary people in the New England countryside.” In London, he met such notables as T. E. Hulme (1883–1917), F. S. Flint (1885–1960), Edward Thomas (1878–1917), and EZRA POUND. Pound and Thomas in particular were instrumental in promoting Frost’s poetry, writing laudatory reviews of his first two volumes. Pound published his review in the American monthly Poetry, and he and Flint introduced Frost to noted poets such as W. B. YEATS and FORD MADOX FORD. Thomas became one of his closest friends. In England, Frost also befriended members of the Georgian school of poets, including Lascelles Abercrombie (1881–1938), Wilfrid Gibson (1878–1962), and RUPERT BROOKE. Gibson and Abercrombie convinced Frost to move to the more rural setting of Gloucestershire, a decision enhanced by his financial straits. Frost quickly established his reputation as a leading poet in England, and his work gained favorable reviews in both England and the United States. Financial troubles and the looming war in Europe forced Frost to return to the United States in 1914. He and his family settled on a farm he purchased in Franconia, New Hampshire. The widespread acclaim for Frost’s work drew the attention of New York publisher Henry Holt, who published an American edition of North of Boston in 1915 and would continue to print Frost’s works throughout his life. Frost was also instrumental in publicizing his own verse. The same year he began a long English professorship at Amherst College in Massachusetts that would last until 1938. In addition, Frost spent most of his summers teaching at the Bread Loaf School of En-
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glish in Middlebury College in Ripton, Vermont. Frost also taught at Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan. His third volume of poetry, Mountain Interval, was published in 1916 and contained such notable poems as “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “The Road Not Taken,” “The Hill Wife,” “The Oven Bird,” “Putting in the Seed,” “Birches,” and “Out, Out—.” The publication of his fourth poetry volume, New Hampshire (1924), contained the noteworthy poems “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Axe-Helve” and earned him his first Pulitzer Prize. He also won Pulitzer Prizes for West-Running Brook (1928), Collected Poems (1930), and A Further Range (1936). The poems of both New Hampshire and West-Running Brook evince a decidedly bleak outlook. A Further Range drew criticism from the left for its alleged disdain for social programs such as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives. In spite of his enormous popularity as a poet and congenial appearances in public at the time, Frost’s personal life was marked by turmoil in the 1930s and early 1940s. His daughter Marjorie, who suffered from a variety of illnesses during her life, died a slow and agonizing death from puerperal fever in 1934 after her first child was born. A heart attack took his wife’s life in 1938. Frost’s son Carol fatally shot himself in the head with a deerhunting rifle in 1940. Like Frost’s sister Jeanie, his daughter Irma was institutionalized for mental disorders. The tragic events of his personal life frame the dark tone of A Witness Tree (1942), often considered Frost’s last significant volume of verse. Dedicated to Kathleen Morrison, to whom he unsuccessfully proposed after his wife’s death, the volume included the poems “The Silken Tent,” “Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same,” “I Could Give All to Time,” and “The Most of It.” Steeple Bush (1947) showcased one of Frost’s last major poems, “Directive.” Frost invested less effort into poetry during his later years but still penned some notable verse. In 1961 he recited
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“The Gift Outright” at the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy. In the Clearing, Frost’s final collection of poetry, was published in 1962. Frost delivered his last public reading in Boston later that year. The day after the recital, he was admitted to the hospital for prostate issues. He suffered a heart attack and a series of embolisms and died on January 29, 1963. He was buried in Bennington, Vermont, at the Old Bennington Cemetery. As a poet, Frost was a firm proponent of the importance of sound, vernacular, and dialog. In his vision, the sound of a sentence conveyed more than the words that comprised it. He believed the words of a poem should flow when recited aloud and placed emphasis on the noises the human ear heard—a phenomenon he called “the sound of sense.” Frost often recited his poems in public, combining the readings with musings on the verse and on other issues. Although he explored philosophical themes, the base of his poetry derived from earthy imagery, particularly the New England rural landscape. Frost received a host of honors and awards throughout his lifetime. Aside from his four Pulitzer Prizes, he received forty-four honorary degrees and numerous government recognitions. His farm near the Bread Loaf campus is a national historic site. Aside from his work as a poet and teacher, Frost also served in diplomatic functions. In 1962, he participated in a meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Upon his return, the tired and ailing Frost remarked publicly that Khrushchev “said Americans were too liberal to fight,” which offended President Kennedy to the point that he refused to speak to Frost. He also traveled to Brazil, England, and Greece on goodwill missions in the 1950s and early 1960s. After Ezra Pound was indicted for treason, Frost and other poets were instrumental in lobbying for his pardon. The Notebooks of Robert Frost, published in early 2007, contains hundreds of previously unpublished Frost writings.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Barry, Elaine, Robert Frost, 1973; Bloom, Harold, ed., Robert Frost, 2003; Faggen, Robert, The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, 2001;
Lathem, Edward Connery, ed., Interviews with Robert Frost, 1997; Meyers, Jeffrey, Robert Frost: A Biography, 1996; Parini, Jay, Robert Frost: A Life, 1999.
Fry, Christopher (December 18, 1907–June 30, 2005) Playwright, Actor, Director, Screenwriter, Translator t the height of his career in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Christopher Fry produced a series of successful verse dramas on London’s West End that attracted top British actors of the era. His West End plays and others often carried religious themes and used historical settings. After 1961, Fry devoted himself primarily to writing adaptations, screenplays, and television plays. Fry was born Christopher Harris in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England. His father, a builder and a minister, died when he was 3. Following his father’s death, Fry’s mother moved the family to Bedford, where Fry attended the Froebel Kindergarten. As a student his main interests were music and Greek, and for a time he contemplated going into the ministry. In 1918, Fry entered the Bedford Modern School. He adopted the name of his maternal grandmother. At the age of 18, he went to work as a teacher. Over the next several years, Fry held a number of odd jobs around the theater. He began to write plays in the early 1920s and also acted and directed. In 1934 he accepted a position as director of the Tunbridge Wells Repertory Players. The same year, his own play Youth and the Peregrins was billed with the British premiere of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s A Village Wooing. His other early plays include Open Door (1935) and the musical comedy She Shall Have Music (1935). Fry married Phyllis Hart in 1936.
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Fry’s The Boy with a Cart was first performed in Chichester in 1939. The play tells the story of St. Cuthman, who, as a boy, travels with his widowed mother, pulling her in a homemade cart. Cuthman’s complete trust in the guidance and wisdom of God enables him to overcome his adversities. The play conveys a recurring theme in Fry’s work, presenting a vision of an ordered universe in which God’s hand guides all for the best, even in tragedy. In this respect Fry’s outlook directly conflicted with the dominant view of contemporary European absurdist playwrights (see EUGE` NE IONESCO, ALBERT CAMUS, and JEAN-PAUL SARTRE), who took an atheistic perspective and viewed the world as chaotic and meaningless, or only to be given meaning by the individual who insists on living an authentic life. The Boy with a Cart, though not initially successful, was performed at the Lyric Theatre in 1950, with RICHARD BURTON in the leading role. In style, too, Fry’s plays differed from those of his absurdist contemporaries. Whereas absurdist dialogue often consists of idle or incoherent chatter whose only purpose seems to be to make a point about the absurdity of ordinary human life, Fry wrote his plays in polished verse. He became director of the Oxford Playhouse in 1939 and continued to write plays, among which was The Tower (1939). The following year he was drafted into the army as a noncombatant; he received a medical discharge in 1944. The Mercury Theatre
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staged his play A Phoenix Too Frequent in 1946. Fry’s first real success as a playwright came with the comedy The Lady’s Not For Burning (1948), with a story set in the year 1400. The young and attractive Jennet Jourdemayne, accused of turning a man into a dog, finds herself the victim of a witch-hunt. During her attempt to escape, Jourdemayne meets and falls in love with Thomas Mendip, who, disgusted with a corrupt world and wanting to escape it by death, has confessed to murdering two men he did not kill. Jourdemayne’s love for Mendip and her own resolve to live cure Mendip of his desire to die. The play was produced at the Globe Theatre in 1949 with JOHN GIELGUD as Mendip. The play, popular on the American stage as well as on the West End, won the Shaw Prize (1951) and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play Award. Thor, with Angels (1948), along with several of Fry’s other plays, was written for a religious festival. The story unfolds amidst the competing forces of paganism and Christianity in sixth-century England. St. Augustine has arrived to reconvert the island to Christianity. The tragic hero Hoel finds himself caught in the middle—he is a Briton and a Christian convert captured by a family of pagan Jutes. The Jute captors are amazed to find themselves acting against their own wills in their treatment of Hoel and eventually convert to Christianity. The conversion, however, comes too late for Hoel, who is murdered. The Firstborn (1948), another of Fry’s plays for a festival, is an adaptation of the biblical story of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. A series of other plays in the 1950s marked the peak of Fry’s career as a dramatist. Venus Observed (1950) was produced at the St.
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James Theatre with LAURENCE OLIVIER and was followed by A Sleep of Prisoners (1951). The Dark Is Light Enough (1954), staged at the Aldwych Theatre with EDITH EVANS, unfolds around the characters of the Countess Rosmarin, her acquaintances Jakob, Belmann, and Dr. Kassel, and Gettner, an author-turneddrunk and army deserter. Fry finished the historical play Curtmantle in 1961. Aside from his own creations, Fry adapted and translated the work of others. Among them are JEAN ANOUILH’s L’invitation du chaˆteau, as Ring Round the Moon (1950); Anouilh’s The Lark in 1955; several plays by JEAN GIRAUDOUX, including Duel Angels (1963) from Pour Lucre`ce and Tiger at the Gates (1955) from La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place); Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1970); and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1975). Fry finished a number of screenplays and plays for radio and television. He wrote screenplays for The Beggar’s Opera (1953), Ben Hur (1959), Barabbas (1962), and The Bible: In The Beginning (1966). His television adaptation of Anne Bronte¨’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall aired in 1968, and he completed a series of four television plays entitled The Bronte¨s of Haworth (1973). Fry’s other works include the play A Yard of Sun (1970); Can You Find Me: A Family History (1978) and the children’s book The Boat That Mooed (1965). Fry received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1962 and the Benson Medal in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Emil, Roy, Christopher Fry, 1968; Leeming, Glenda, Christopher Fry, 1990; Leeming, Glenda, Poetic Drama, 1988.
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Fuentes, Carlos (November 11, 1928– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Critic, Diplomat he chief theme in the work of Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, best known for novels that reach into the past to analyze the present, is the history and culture of Mexico. His use of innovative combinations of literary techniques, such as flashback, stream of consciousness or interior monologue, and blurred chronology, to create his narratives made him one of the most popular Latin American writers of the twentieth century and won him international audiences as well. His writings are among the most popular and influential in Latin America. Fuentes was born to a middle-class diplomat and his wife in Mexico City. His father’s career took the family all over the Americas and Europe when he was young. Fuentes attended schools in many North and South American capitals as a boy, earned a law degree at the University of Mexico, and pursued further study in law in Geneva, Switzerland. Early in his career he rejected his upbringing and became an avowed Marxist. He worked chiefly in political posts in the years immediately following his graduation and represented Mexico in a number of international delegations. His most important post, as ambassador to France, lasted from 1975 to 1977. In addition, Fuentes edited several literary journals. Fuentes’s first collection of stories, The Masked Days, appeared in 1954. The first of his novels, Where the Air is Clear (1958), is a harshly critical portrait of twentieth-century Mexico City; it secured his fame in his native country. The Good Conscience followed in 1959. The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) was widely translated and made Fuentes an international success. The novel’s unheroic protagonist, Artemio Cruz, is a wealthy and powerful veteran of the Mexican Revolution who has betrayed its ideals. As he lies dying, Cruz
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recalls the major events of his life and is tormented by his ruthless actions. Fuentes used doubles in several subsequent works. Aura (1962) is a fantastic, dreamlike love story steeped with elements of witchcraft and sorcery. The four central characters are in reality two sets of doubles who represent different aspects of the same individual. The doubles in the psychological novel Zona Sagrada (1967), which explores the sexual obsessions of a young man, and Birthdays (1969) are even more complex. In A Change of Skin (1967) and Terra Nostra (1975), Fuentes returned to Mexican culture and history. The Old Gringo (1985) was inspired by the mysterious disappearance of the American writer Ambrose Bierce in Mexico in 1914. Christopher Unborn (1987) takes place in dismal, polluted, and overpopulated Mexico City. A man who had the honor of being the first child born on the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the West narrates the story. The Campaign (1991) is set in the revolutionary climate of nineteenthcentury Latin America. In the autobiographical Diana, The Goddess Who Hunts Alone (1995), Fuentes treats his brief affair with the American actress Jean Seberg. Fuentes’s latest work, The Crystal Frontier: A Novel in Nine Stories (1997), focuses on the relationship between the United States and Mexico. The unifying character in all nine stories is Leonardo Barroso, a powerful boss with extensive connections on both sides of the border. Fuentes’s later works include En esto creo (2002; This I Believe) and Contra Bush (2004). Most recently, he published Todas las Familias Felices (2006), a short-story collection that treats controversial social situations. In addition to his novels and short stories, Fuentes has also written several plays. Among them is Orchids in the Moonlight
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(1982), set in Los Angeles, about two failed Mexican actresses who move to Hollywood and deceive themselves about their success. His other books include the critical work The New Hispano-American Novel (1969), House With Two Doors (1970), Mexican Time (1971), his essay Buried Mirror (1992), a detective novel called The Hydra Head (1978), the novel Distant Relations (1980), The Orange Tree (1994), and A New Time for Mexico (1996). Fuentes was awarded the Belisario Domı´nguez Medal of Honor, the highest
award bestowed by the government of Mexico, in 1999.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brody, Robert, and Rossman, Charles, eds., Carlos Fuentes: A Critical View, 1982; Faris, Wendy B., Carlos Fuentes, 1983; Gonza´lez, Alfonso, Carlos Fuentes: Life, Work, and Criticism, 1987; Williams, Raymond L., The Writings of Carlos Fuentes, 1996.
Fugard, Athol (June 11, 1932– ) Playwright, Actor, Director he South African playwright Harold Athol Lannigan Fugard has produced a steady stream of anti-apartheid plays since the early 1960s. His dramas examine the social consequences of South Africa’s apartheid laws and use representative characters to probe particular segments of society. Although constrained by poverty and prejudice, Fugard’s characters do not live in a hopeless world. His latest play, Valley Song, looks toward the future of postapartheid society in South Africa. Fugard was born in Middleburg, Great Karroo, Cape Province, South Africa and grew up in the industrial town of Port Elizabeth. His father, a former jazz pianist of British descent, was handicapped and could not work. In order to support the family his mother, of Afrikaaner ancestry, managed a boarding house and later ran a tearoom. The racism he observed in his mother’s tearoom had a profound impact on shaping his attitude toward apartheid. Fugard studied at a Catholic elementary school, studied motor mechanics at the Port Elizabeth Technical College, and
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eventually enrolled at the University of Cape Town. There he majored in philosophy and social anthropology. Before he finished, however, Fugard went north to Port Sudan and joined the crew of a British merchant vessel, the SS Graigaur. As the only white crew member, he made friends with a number of his African shipmates and came to thoroughly oppose apartheid. From 1955 to 1957 he worked as a journalist for the Evening Post, and from 1958 to 1960 he worked as a clerk in the Native Commissioner’s Court in Johannesburg. His observance of the poor treatment of blacks in that position further strengthened his resolve against apartheid, and he determined to combat the apartheid system with his dramas. Fugard’s initial success came in 1961 with The Blood Knot (1961), the first in a trio of plays entitled The Family Trilogy. The story demonstrates South Africa’s racial divide in the characters of two brothers. In The Blood Knot, Morris, intelligent, practical, and very literate, is so light-skinned that he passes for white. His brother Zach, a dejected and illiter-
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ate figure, is so dark he is considered black. The two begin a pen-pal correspondence with a white girl named Ethel—using Morris’s words and Zach’s name—which inevitably causes problems. In a second episode, Morris and Zach act out a series of roles that parody the expected behaviors of blacks and whites. The Blood Knot immediately won international attention and was produced for television in 1967. Hello and Goodbye (1965) and Boesman and Lena (1969) completed the trilogy, later published as Three Port Elizabeth Plays (1974). Boesman and Lena, which premiered in South Africa in 1969, is set during a night in the life of the title characters, just after their shanty town has been destroyed. The strong antiapartheid statements of Fugard’s plays, coupled with his use of black and white actors together, inevitably led to conflict with the authorities. The government confiscated his passport from 1967 to 1971. Other early plays include No-Good Friday and Nongogo, which appeared as Two Early Plays (1977). Fugard usually acts in and directs his plays. The characters in his dramas are symbolic of strains, trends, or laws in society and are not developed as individuals. There is little action in his dramas—more important is the confrontation of the symbolic forces embodied in the characters. Set among the lower and working classes, the plays employ sparse scenery that reflects the circumstances in which the characters live. A dead tree, for example, stands as the dominant visual symbol of the characters’ desolation in Boesman and Lena. In Sizwe Bansi Is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973), Fugard collaborated with the black actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. Kani and Ntshona supplied dialogue for Fugard’s scenarios. In the former, Sizwe Bansi is an illiterate man from Port Elizabeth looking for work. He gets a chance to better his lot when he finds the pass book of a deceased man. The man had more legal privileges than he has, and Siswe takes on the new identity. Kani and Ntshona won a Tony in 1975 for their performances in these two plays. To-
gether with Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act, they were published as Three Plays in 1974. “Master Harold” . . . and the Boys (1982) enjoyed success in both London and New York. Based on Fugard’s own childhood mistreatment of a Basuto waiter at his mother’s tea shop, which he felt terrible about, the play concerns the relationship between the 17year-old Hally (the Master Harold of the title), who is white, and his family’s two black servants, Sam and Willie (“the Boys”). In Valley Song (1995), Fugard examines life in post-apartheid society. The story takes place in a valley town in the Karoo region, and each of the three characters represents a strain in the new society. Abraam Jonkers is an older black farmer whose family has worked a small piece of land for generations. Abraam, a representative of the older generation, is dedicated to the land. His daughter Veronica, however, is a member of the younger generation and aspires to bigger things—she wants to become a singer. The Author is a white playwright who represents a third sector of the new society. In the original production Fugard acted the parts of both Abraam and The Author, and he instructs that the same actor is to play both in his stage directions. Among Fugard’s other plays are Dimetos (1977); Orestes (1978); A Lesson from Aloes (1978); The Road to Mecca (1985); My Children, My Africa! (1988), inspired by a real-life story and about a black teacher who dies at the hand of a mob; Playland (1992); The Captain’s Tiger (1997); Exits and Entrances (2004); and Victory (2007). Fugard has appeared in several films, including The Killing Fields (1984) and Gandhi (1982). Fugard’s other writings include the novel Tsotsi (1980) and his Notebooks, 1960–1977 (1983). The film version of Tsotsi won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006. He received an honorary doctorate of literature from the University of Port Elizabeth, and the city also gave him the Freedom of the City.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Benson, Mary, Athol Fugard and Barney Simon: Bare Stage, A Few Props, Great Theatre, 1997; Gray, Stephen, ed., Athol Fugard, 1982; Vanden-
broucke, Russell, Truths the Hand Can Touch: The Theatre of Athol Fugard, 1985; Walder, Dennis, Athol Fugard, 2003; Wertheim, Albert, The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World, 2000.
Fuller, Roy (February 11, 1912–September 27, 1991) Poet, Novelist, Teacher, Essayist, Journalist oy Broadbent Fuller emerged as a poet in England during World War II, part of the generation between the Thirties poets and the Movement poets of the 1950s. The war and political issues inspired his early verse, and he later wrote more personal and contemplative poetry. Although he was better known for his poetry, he also wrote a number of novels. Fuller was born in Failsworth, Lancashire, England. Although he was an avid reader with intellectual interests, his lower-middle-class origin deprived him of the luxury of attending fine schools. Fuller’s father worked for a rubber-proofing firm; he died when Fuller was eight. His mother moved the family to Blackpool after his death, and there Fuller enrolled in the Blackpool High School. Anxious to leave the area, he decided to pursue a career in law. At the same time, he nursed an interest in poetry, and his first published poem appeared in the Sunday Referee in 1928. In 1935, Fuller went to work in Kent, and he married Kathleen Smith the following year. In 1938, he became assistant solicitor for the Woolwich Equitable Building Society, a position he held for twenty years, becoming solicitor in 1958 and holding that post until 1969. In his early years as a poet and lawyer, Fuller was active with Socialist political groups. He admired the Thirties poets with similar political leanings, such as STEPHEN SPENDER and W. H. AUDEN, both of whom influenced his early verse.
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With the outbreak of World War II, Fuller served in the Royal Navy, providing him with the experiences for his early volumes of poetry. The first, Poems, was published in 1939 and attracted little attention. It was followed by the more successful The Middle of a War (1942), a book of war-inspired verse that evokes the bombing of London, giving a semiautobiographical view of his early experiences during the war. Fuller wrote the verse for a third volume, A Lost Season (1944), while he was stationed in Africa. The African landscape of the poems contrasts with the English atmosphere of those in the previous volume and adds a new dimension to his war poetry. Fuller’s African experience also inspired his children’s work Savage Gold (1946). With Epitaphs and Occasions (1949), Fuller began to move away from the political orientation of his earlier verse. Counterparts (1954), although it still contains some political poems such as “Socialist’s Song,” marked a turn to more introspective and philosophical verse. The nature of art, poetry, and the poet’s place in society emerge as themes. Fuller addressed poems to cultural figures he admired, such as ANDRE´ GIDE. Brutus’s Orchard (1957), often considered his finest work, completed Fuller’s introspective turn. At this point, Fuller often framed his verse in sonnet form. Buff (1965), which contains a series of Shakespearean sonnets entitled “The
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Historian,” followed the publication of his Collected Poems 1936–61 (1962). His later volumes of poetry include New Poems (1968), Tiny Tears (1973), From the Joke Shop (1975), written in iambic stanzas, and New and Collected Poems, 1934–84 (1985). Although better known for his poetry, Fuller completed a number of novels. Thrillers such as The Second Curtain (1953) and Fantasy and Fugue (1954) appeared in the early 1950s. Image of Society (1956), informed by his work in the legal profession, in part concerns a power struggle between two men, one a pragmatic, unfeeling soul and the other a careless egotist. Among his other novels are The Ruined Boys (1959), The Father’s Comedy (1961), The Perfect Fool (1963), and The Carnal Island (1970). My Child, My Sister (1965) was Fuller’s favorite of his own works. Narrated by the protagonist Albert Shore, it concerns a novelist’s attempt to sort through the emotional wreckage of his life. Shore is a successful and aging novelist living in the difficult milieu left from
family strife. His son, Fabian, marries Frances Leaf, the stepdaughter of Fabian’s mother and Shore’s ex-wife. Opposed to the union at first, he later finds the marriage a source of healing and comfort. Shore’s own relationship with the much younger art student Flip, the Leafs’ daughter, proves tragic when Flip loses her sanity and is confined. Fuller taught poetry at the University of Oxford from 1968 to 1973. His lectures from those years are collected in the volumes Owls and Artificers (1971) and Professors and Gods (1973). Throughout his career, he contributed reviews, articles, and essays to numerous periodicals. His four volumes of memoirs were published between 1980 and 1991. Fuller was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1970.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Austin, Allan E., Roy Fuller, 1979; Powell, Neil, Roy Fuller: Writer and Society, 1995; Tolley, A. T., ed., Roy Fuller: A Tribute, 1993.
Furtwa ¨ ngler, Wilhelm (January 25, 1886–November 30, 1954) Conductor, Composer ne of the foremost conductors of the first half of the twentieth century, Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwa¨ngler, to give him his full name, was best known for his exuberant interpretations of the Romantic composers and for his long association with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Widely criticized in the United States for remaining in Germany during World War II, he was more successful with European audiences than with American ones. Furtwa¨ngler also composed his own music. Furtwa¨ngler was born the son of a distinguished archaeologist in Berlin. He was edu-
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cated privately and studied for a time under the German theorist Heinrich Schenker. As a teenager his first ambition was to become a composer, and a large symphony was an early effort in the body of work he composed over his career. His Symphonic Largo was featured in his conducting debut with the Kaim Orchestra in 1906. From 1907 to 1909 Furtwa¨ngler assisted the conductor Felix Mottl. He worked in Lu¨beck between 1911 and 1915 before taking a directorship at the Mannheim Opera (1915–1918). In 1920 he replaced RICHARD STRAUSS as conductor of the Berlin Opera concerts. The year
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Wilhelm Furtwa ¨ ngler (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-37829)
1922 brought appointments as conductor of the Gewandhaus Concerts in Leipzig and,
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more importantly, as Chief Conductor for Life of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
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Furtwa¨ngler’s years at the Berlin Philharmonic are usually considered his greatest as a conductor. Under his direction the orchestra developed a lush string sound and excelled in the works of the Romantics. The works of Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms (particularly the First Symphony), Richard Wagner, Ludwig von Beethoven, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were central in Furtwa¨ngler’s repertoire. In 1930 Furtwa¨ngler began conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1933 he took a conducting post at the Berlin State Opera. He was also associated with the Bayreuth Festival (1931–1932) and the Salzburg Festival (after World War II). His decision to remain in Germany under the Nazi regime haunted him for the rest of his life. Furtwa¨ngler never joined the National Socialist Party, and he used his influence to help several Jewish associates escape from Germany. He was cleared of involvement with the Nazis
in denazification hearings after the war, but his residence in Germany under Hitler cost him conducting posts at the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Furtwa¨ngler’s denazification hearings were the subject of Ronald Harwood’s 1994 play Taking Sides. Furtwa¨ngler made many recordings of his work, particularly of his live performances. He died of bronchitis at the age of sixty-eight. Wilhelm Furtwa¨ngler: Notebooks, 1924–54 was published in 1989. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ardoin, John, The Furtwa¨ngler Record, 1994; Furtwa¨ngler, Elisabeth, About Wilhelm Furtwa¨ngler, 1993; Furtwa¨ngler, Wilhelm, Wilhelm Furtwa¨ngler: Notebooks, 1924–54, 1989; Shirikawa, Sam H., The Devil’s Music Master: The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwa¨ngler, 1992.
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Gabin, Jean (May 17, 1904–November 15, 1976) Actor ean Gabin emerged as one of the most popular actors on the French screen in the mid-1930s. From that time until his death in 1976, he appeared in more than ninety films. His strong, tough image led to many roles as social outcasts, criminals, and gangsters. Gabin was born Jean-Alexis Moncorge´ into a family with intimate ties to the theater in Paris. His father was a music-hall comedian who also used the stage name Jean Gabin. By 1923 Gabin had decided to pursue a career in the theater, and he appeared regularly at the Folies-Berge`re in Paris as well as in cabarets and vaudeville shows. In 1928 he appeared in his first film, Ohe´! Les Valises (1928). By the time he made Chacun sa chance (1930), he had decided to give up the theater for film. His first success on screen came in 1934, when he appeared in Maria Chapdelaine. In Julien Duvivier’s Pe´pe´ le Moko (1937), set in French Algiers, Gabin again scored a success as the Casbah-based gangster Pe´pe´. In JEAN RENOIR’s classic antiwar film Grande Illusion (Grand Illusion, 1937), he was among a group of prisoners in a World War I German prison camp. Gabin appeared in various popular roles over the next several years—entangled in a love triangle in La Beˆte Humaine (1938), as an army deserter in Marcel Carne´’s Quai des brumes (American title Port of Shadows, 1938), and as a loner-murderer in Carne´’s Le Jour se le`ve (Daybreak, 1939). He served in World War II, took part in the invasion of Normandy, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Gabin’s later films include La Marie du port (1950); Le plaisir (1951); Touchez pas au
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Grisbi (1953); Des gens sans importance (1956); Les Mise´rables (1957); Speaking of Murder (1959); Money, Money, Money (1962); The Upper Hand (1967); The Sicilian Clan (1969); and L’anne´e sainte (Pilgrimage to Rome, 1976). Inspector Maigret (1958) inaugurated a series of films in which he starred as Inspector Maigret. Awards for Best Actor at the Venice and Berlin Festivals are among the honors Gabin received.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barbier, Philippe, and Moreau, Jacques, Jean Gabin: Album Photos, 1983; Thomas, Nicholas, ed., International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1992.
Jean Gabin (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
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Gable, William Clark (February 1, 1901–November 16, 1960) Actor he famous American film actor Clark Gable, nicknamed “The King of Hollywood,” was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars during the 1930s and 1940s. Though he played many memorable roles, he is most famous for his portrayal of Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind (1939), in which he starred opposite actress Vivien Leigh (1913–1967). Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, to William Henry “Bill” Gable and Adeline Hershelman. His father was an oil well driller, and his mother died of a brain tumor when he was seven months old. At the age of six months, he was baptized as a Roman Catholic, but after his mother’s death, the elder Gable refused to raise him in the faith. In 1903, he married Jennie Dunlap and settled in her family’s hometown of Hopedale, Ohio. With an uncertain financial situation, Gable’s father gave up drilling for oil and pursued farming in Ravenna, Ohio. By this time, Gable was in high school, and his restless independence led him to drop out of school. He took various jobs, mostly in tire factories in Akron. Although he had wanted to act much earlier in his life, having been inspired by a performance of the play The Bird of Paradise, he was unable to pursue a career until he was twenty-one and received an inheritance. While working in oil fields, he also toured with various stock and theater companies. His travels eventually landed him in Portland, Oregon, where he met actress Laura Hope Crews (1879–1942) while working as a necktie salesman. Crews encouraged Gable to give the theater companies another try. Following her advice, he again entered the theater scene. Gable fell under the influence of acting coach Josephine Dillon, who remade his appearance and put him through strenuous training. Dillon, seventeen years Gable’s senior, took the
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young actor to Hollywood in 1924 and eventually married him. At first, he was only able to obtain small parts in silent films, and his lack of success convinced him to return to the stage. Gable soon befriended actor Lionel Barrymore (1878–1954), with whom he would remain close throughout his life. In 1930, he delivered a memorable performance as Killer Mears in a Los Angeles production of the play The Last Mile, prompting MGM to offer him his first film contract. He and Dillon divorced the same year. A few days later, he married Texas socialite Ria Langham, who was also a number of years older than he. The pair settled in California. Gable appeared in his first film role in the Western The Painted Desert (1931). He received a considerable amount of fan mail for his performance and subsequently secured a series of villainous supporting roles. When actress Joan Crawford (1905–1977) requested Gable as her costar Jake Luba in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931), Gable got his big break. The same year, he played a gangster in A Free Soul, starred with Greta Garbo (1905–1990) in Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise), and appeared again with Crawford in Possessed (1931). In 1932, his sexy role as Dennis Carson opposite Jean Harlow (1911–1937) in Red Dust skyrocketed his popularity. Another major success with Harlow, After the Hit Hold Your Man (1933), cemented the pair’s onscreen magic in the public mind, and they would go on to costar in China Seas (1935), Wife vs. Secretary (1936), and Saratoga (1937). Gable and Harlow’s onscreen romance lasted for six films and extended behind the scenes. Harlow died suddenly and tragically of kidney failure after collapsing on the set just before the filming for Saratoga was completed.
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Having established himself as a major star, Gable appeared as Peter Warne in Frank Capra’s (1897–1991) It Happened One Night (1934), costarring with Claudette Colbert (1903–1996). For his performance, he won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1934. He was on loan from MGM to Columbia at the time. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), in which Gable played Fletcher Christian, earned him another Academy Award nomination. His portrayal of Rhett Butler opposite Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939) was by far Gable’s most famous role, and it earned him yet another Academy Award nomination. Produced by DAVID O. SELZNICK with Gable again on loan from MGM, it was the actor’s first time working in Technicolor. Gable both stunned and thrilled American audiences with his famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” which violated public sensibilities of the time. In 1939, Gable married actress Carole Lombard (1908–1942). Their short marriage proved to be a happy one, and the pair moved to a ranch in Encino, California. Tragedy cut the couple’s lives together short in 1942, when Lombard’s plane smashed into Table Rock Mountain near Las Vegas. During World War II, Gable joined the U.S. Army Air Force, attaining the rank of major. He headed up a movie unit that made a gunnery training film and flew five combat missions in Europe. For his service, he earned the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross. After World War II ended, Gable returned to the screen as Harry Patterson in Adventure
(1945), which proved to be a failure both among critics and the public. In 1947, however, he delivered a successful performance as Victor Albee Norman in The Hucksters. His role as Philip Sutherland in Never Let Me Go (1953) marked another success, as did his portrayal of Victor Marswell in Mogambo (1953). The latter was a remake in Technicolor of his earlier success Red Dust. In 1949, Gable married Sylvia Ashley, the widow of American actor Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1939). After an unhappy few years together, they divorced in 1952. Gable married his fifth wife, Kay Spreckels, in 1955. Dissatisfied with MGM, Gable left the studio in 1953 to make films on his own and was less successful. His last appearance on screen was as Gay Langland in ARTHUR MILLER’S The Misfits (1961), which costarred Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) and Montgomery Clift (1920–1966) and was directed by John Huston (1905–1987). Having previously suffered three heart attacks, Gable succumbed to a fourth and fatal one in 1960. He is buried next to Lombard in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Harris, Warren G., Clark Gable: A Biography, 2002; Jordan, Rene´, Clark Gable, 1973; Spicer, Chrystopher J., Clark Gable: Biography, Filmography, Bibliography, 2002; Tornabene, Lyn, Long Live the King: A Biography of Clark Gable, 1976; Wayne, Jane Ellen, Clark Gable: Portrait of a Misfit, 1993.
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Galsworthy, John (August 14, 1867–January 31, 1933) Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Short-Story Writer, Essayist est known for his two trilogies of novels about the propertied Forsyte family, John Galsworthy scrutinized upper-middle-class British society and treated other socioeconomic themes in his fiction and dramas. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932 “for his distinguished art of narration, which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga.” Galsworthy was born in Kingston Hill, Surrey, England. His father was a solicitor whose family acquired a considerable fortune. Galsworthy was tutored at home until he was 9, when he enrolled in the Saugeen Preparatory School at Bournemouth. As at the schools at
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John Galsworthy (Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin)
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which he later studied, he was an above average student with interests in acting and athletics. Galsworthy later attended Harrow and New College, Oxford, where he studied law and obtained a degree in 1889. Law was his father’s choice for Galsworthy’s career, but the legal profession did not suit the younger Galsworthy. He was called to the bar in 1890 and, with the idea of pursuing marine law, decided to travel around the world. While aboard the S. S. Torrens, Galsworthy met the author JOSEPH CONRAD, then serving as the ship’s first mate. Conrad’s career at sea was drawing to a close, and he was subsequently to become a dedicated friend to Galsworthy. Galsworthy gave up law and devoted his time to writing. A volume of short stories, From the Four Winds, appeared in 1897. Using the pseudonym John Sinjohn, he published his first novel, Jocelyn, in 1898, followed by Villa Rubein in 1900. Island Pharisees (1904) appeared under his own name and addressed themes that recur throughout his work—the complacency of upper-class English society and failures of romantic relationships. The protagonist, Shelton, is an uppermiddle-class Englishman engaged to be married and increasingly disillusioned with the class divisions of society and with his own family. In 1905, Galsworthy married Ada Pearson, his cousin’s former wife, with whom he had been having an affair for ten years. The following year saw the publication of the first in a long series of novels about the Forsyte family. The first series, a trilogy with two shorter interludes, is collectively known as The Forsyte Saga. The Man of Property (1906), its first novel, introduces the strong-willed, narrow-minded patriarch Soames Forsyte, a solicitor and the owner of a considerable amount of property. Soames’s wife, Irene, has
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an affair with the architect Philip Bosinney, who incurs Soames’s wrath and later dies in an accident. After serving with the Red Cross during World War I in 1916 and refusing a knighthood in 1917, Galsworthy continued the story in the interlude “Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (1918), the novel In Chancery (1920), the interlude “Awakening” (1920), and the novel To Let (1921). The first interlude takes place in 1892, when Irene separates from Soames and grows close to Jolyon Forsyte. Irene and Soames divorce in In Chancery, which also recounts another significant event in The Forsyte Saga—the birth of Soames’s daughter Fleur. Jon Forsyte, Irene’s son, is a central character in “Awakening,” and To Let recounts the troubled romance between Jon and Fleur and Fleur’s marriage to Michael Mont, the son of a baronet and a man she does not truly love. The first Forsyte trilogy is primarily concerned with relationships and attitudes in the Forsyte circle. In the second trilogy, A Modern Comedy, Galsworthy expanded the sphere to the realm of political and social issues. The White Monkey (1924) begins the series, focusing on the relationship between Fleur and Michael. Again, Galsworthy separated the novels with interludes. “A Silent Wooing” finds Jon Forsyte growing peaches in South Carolina, where he meets and marries Anne Wilmot, daughter of a prominent southern family. Her brother, Francis, travels to England in The Silver Spoon (1926), the second novel in the trilogy. But the main story revolves around Michael, who has abandoned his publishing career and decided to go into politics. He wins a seat in Parliament but grows disillusioned with his inability to effect change. As a politician Michael espouses “Foggartism,” which some critics have seen as a satire on Fabian socialism (see GEORGE BERNARD SHAW). Also central to The Silver Spoon is the libel case that rages between Soames and Fleur on one side, and the aristocrat Marjorie Ferrar and her fiance´ on the other. Although
Fleur wins a legal and moral victory, a society Galsworthy viewed as corrupt awards the victory to Marjorie. “Passers By,” a second interlude, brings the major Forsyte characters together in a Washington, D.C., hotel, where Fleur, Soames, Jon, Anne, and Irene happen to be staying at the same time. The interlude was followed by Swan Song (1928), the last of Galsworthy’s Forsyte novels. Michael, who often reflects Galsworthy’s own philosophy, defends striking underpaid miners during the General Strike of 1926, while the romance between Jon and Fleur rekindles. Swan Song also recounts the death of the aged patriarch Soames. Galsworthy’s Forsyte novels became very popular in both Britain and the United States, and the Forsyte Saga was the basis of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s major production of the same title in 1967. His other novels include The Country House (1907); The Patrician (1911); The Freelands (1915); Beyond (1917), about a woman’s troubled marriage to a Swedish violinist; and the trilogy End of the Chapter (1934). Aside from novels, Galsworthy also wrote many plays. Justice (1910) was one of his most influential social commentaries, inspired by his own visits to Britain’s prisons. In the story, a young clerk, Falder, falsifies a check to obtain money to move to South America with a woman whose husband beats her and her children. After his arrest and conviction, he is sentenced to a prison term. The brutal environment in which he finds himself leaves permanent psychological scars, and he is unable to function normally when he is released. Falder commits suicide when he faces a second arrest for failing to report to his parole officer. Galsworthy particularly objected to the practice of solitary confinement, and he corresponded with British prison officials about reforms. The Skin Game (1920)—about a property conflict between the wealthy, established Hillcrists and the newly rich Hornblowers, who want to build a factory that will ruin the view
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from the Hillcrist home—premiered at St. Martin’s Theatre and was one of Galsworthy’s most successful plays. His other plays include The Silver Box (1906), a critical commentary on the English justice system; Strife (1909); The Pigeon (1912); The Mob (1914); Loyalties (1922); and The Roof (1929). Galsworthy’s other works include the volumes of poetry Moods, Songs, and Doggerels (1912), and The Bells of Peace (1921); the short-story collections A Man of Devon (1901), Five Tales (1918), and Captures (1923); and the essay
collections The Inn of Tranquility (1912), A Sheaf (1916), and Castles of Spain (1927). In 1921 Galsworthy became the first president of the writers’ club PEN. He received honorary degrees from Dublin University, Cambridge, Princeton, Oxford, and other universities, and in 1929 he was made a member of the Order of Merit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gindin, James, John Galsworthy’s Life and Art, 1987
Gance, Abel (October 25, 1889–November 10, 1981) Director, Screenwriter bel Gance was the most experimental of the post–World War I generation of film makers in France and a significant technical innovator in the development of film. Although he continued working well into the eras of sound and color, his masterpieces, such as I Accuse! and Napoleon, belong to the era of silent film. Gance was born in Paris and attended the Colle`ge de Chantilly and the Colle`ge Chaptal. His father tried to steer him into a career in the legal profession, but Gance quickly rejected law and turned to the theater. By 1907 he had decided to pursue acting, and in 1909 he acted in his first film, Molie`re. The major work of his theater period was the lengthy play Victoire de Samothrace. Gance began writing screenplays and, after recuperating from tuberculosis, founded the company Le Film Franc¸ais in 1911. His codirected first film, The Dike (1911) with Pierre Renoir, brother of the film maker JEAN RENOIR and son of the major Impressionist painter PierreAuguste Renoir. The comic farce La Folie du Docteur Tube (1916; The Folly of Dr. Tube) marked the be-
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ginning of Gance’s long period of technical innovation. The story, about a scientist who discovers a means of altering people’s shapes, spurred Gance to experiment with mirrors to achieve the required distortions. Another early film, Barberousse (1916), first used the horizontal wipe, while in Mater Dolorosa (1917; Sorrowful Mother) Gance experimented with contrasts. Typical of Gance’s early subject matter is the drama La Dixie`me Symphonie (1918; Tenth Symphony), which concerns a composer who marries a woman with a secret that ultimately jeopardizes their relationship. In his film-making style, Gance was particularly influenced by the American director D. W. Griffith, whom he met in New York in 1921. J’Accuse (1919; I Accuse!), an antiwar statement inspired by World War I, was Gance’s most technically innovative film to date, incorporating montages (see also SERGEI EISENSTEIN), tinting, superimposed images, and other techniques. The public and critics responded favorably to the film, and it was Gance’s first international success. (Gance
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was to produce another antiwar work in his first major sound film, La Fin du monde (1931; The End of the World). La Roue´ (1923; The Wheel) turned to another issue in the early twentieth century—the increasing mechanization of society. The story itself centers around three characters, Sisif, a railway mechanic; his son, Elie; and his adopted daughter, Norma. The rhythm of Gance’s carefully orchestrated montages mimics the repetitive turning of the wheel of fate, which leads to disaster in the film. In this work, he removed cameras from their tripods and placed them on moving trains. Gance’s epic Napole´on vu par Abel Gance (1927; Napoleon as Seen by Abel Gance) was shown in Polyvision, a technique Gance designed (and had patented the year before) in which three projectors showed three images on an enlarged screen. Polyvision never became popular due to its high cost and the advent of sound, but it anticipated Cinerama in the 1950s and 1960s, in which films were shown from three projectors on a curved screen. Napoleon earned as much praise for its portrayal of Napoleon Bonaparte as it did for its technical aspects. Gance researched
his life extensively and presented a heroic portrait of Bonaparte in his early life, although some critics fault him for sacrificing historical accuracy. Un Grand Amour de Beethoven (1936; The Life and Loves of Beethoven), a sound film about the composer, was Gance’s other major biographical work; he never finished his long-planned film on Christopher Columbus. The advent of sound ended Gance’s greatest period of creativity and popularity, although he continued to produce films. He made sound versions of earlier films such as Sorrowful Mother, I Accuse, and Napoleon, but these never gained the popularity or critical acclaim of their silent predecessors. His later films include La Tour de Nesle (1954; The Tower of Nesle); Austerlitz (1960; The Battle of Austerlitz), his first major film in color; and Cyrano et d’Artagnan (1963; Cyrano and d’Artagnan).
BIBLIOGRAPHY King, Norman, Abel Gance: A Politics of Spectacle, 1984; Welsh, James M., and Kramer, Stephen P., Abel Gance, 1978.
Garcı´a Lorca, Federico (June 5, 1898–August 19/20, 1936) Poet, Playwright n spite of his early death in 1936, Federico Garcı´a Lorca remains one of the most popular literary figures in Hispanic culture. His popular trilogy of plays, Blood Wedding, Yerma, and The House of Bernarda Alba, are still widely performed. As a member of the Spanish poets dubbed the Generation of 1927, he wrote poetry and plays inspired by the Andalusian peasant culture that sur-
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rounded him in his youth, and was instrumental in reviving cante jondo, a traditional form of Spanish song. Garcı´a Lorca was born into a Catholic family in Fuente Vaqueros, near Granada, in the province of Andalusia in southern Spain. His mother was a teacher and his father a prosperous farmer. Garcı´a Lorca was an introverted child and liked to write poems and play music. His mother taught him how to play the piano. After the family moved to nearby Gra-
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nada in 1909, he attended a Jesuit school, and he later continued his studies in law at the University of Granada. In 1918, he paid to publish Impresiones y Viajes (Impressions and Landscapes), a collection of prose inspired by his travels in Castile. The Residence of Students at the University of Madrid, where he transferred in 1919, provided Garcı´a Lorca with the creative platform he needed to launch his literary career. He met other Spanish artists and writers, such as SALVADOR DALı´ and Rafael Alberti, and frequented cafe´s where the Spanish literary vanguard held discussions. Garcı´a Lorca became well known among his circle of friends for his poetry readings but did not publish any poetry until his Libro de Poemas (1921; Book of Poems). Its seventy-nine poems, most of them written in 1918–1919, intimately addressed themes connected with Andalusian peasant life—the passing of time, women, death, fate, and melancholy. It was the culture of the Andalusian peasantry that inspired most of Garcı´a Lorca’s work. With the Spanish composer MANUEL DE FALLA in 1922, he organized a festival of Andalusian gypsy songs known as cante jondo, or deep song. The publication of his Romancero gitano (1928; Gypsy Ballads), and Poema del cante jondo (1931; Poem of the Cante Jondo), poems based on the cante jondo, brought him his first international acclaim. The former used the traditional Spanish ballad form to convey Andalusian gypsy themes. In addition to his poetry readings, Garcı´a Lorca began writing and performing plays. His first, the two-act El maleficio de la mariposa (Butterfly’s Evil Spell), debuted in 1920 in Madrid and flopped on its first night. Far more successful was his verse drama Mariana Pineda (1927), performed in Barcelona and Madrid with a set designed by Dalı´. In the story, Mariana Pineda, a widow, refuses to denounce a group of rebels led by the man she loves, who has fled, and pays with her life. Dalı´ also helped Garcı´a Lorca organize an exhibition of the latter’s drawings the same year.
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Garcı´a Lorca spent 1929–1930 in New York and in Cuba, where he wrote a series of pessimistic poems, critical of the mechanization of modern civilization, that were not published until after his death, Poeta en Nueva York (1940; Poet in New York and Other Poems). His experiences in America left a negative impression on him, and in 1931 he returned to Madrid and began working with a government-sponsored theater group commissioned to bring excellent theater to the provinces. The group, known as La Barraca and composed of students, performed the classic works of Spanish dramatists such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Miguel de Cervantes, and Pedro Caldero´n de la Barca. In addition to his work for La Barraca, Garcı´a Lorca continued to write and stage his own plays. A true story inspired Bodas de Sangre (performed in 1933; Blood Wedding), celebrated by many critics for its masterful blend of tragedy, verse, music, and surrealism and widely considered Garcı´a Lorca’s dramatic masterpiece. In the play, a farm girl leaves her groom for her lover, a member of a family involved in a longstanding feud with her own, on her wedding day. The two men end up killing each other. The same year, Garcı´a Lorca traveled to Buenos Aires and watched another company perform the play there. Yerma (1934) is a tragedy in verse about a woman who kills a husband who refuses to give her a child. In Don˜a Rosita the Spinster (1935), a girl naively waits for more than twenty-five years for her cousin to return from South America to marry her, only to find out in the end he had married someone else. Meanwhile, 1935 had seen the publication of Llanto por Ignacio Sa´nchez Mejı´as (Lament for Ignacio Sa´nchez Mejı´as), a poem widely considered one of the best in Hispanic literature. A touching elegy for a bullfighter who Garcı´a Lorca had known, its drumlike refrain, “at five in the afternoon,” repeats itself like clockwork throughout the poem, driving home the time of the bullfighter’s death. Garcı´a Lorca did not live to see the performance of his final play, La Casa de Bernarda
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Alba (1936; The House of Bernarda Alba), in which five rebellious sisters are ordered to mourn their deceased father for eight years by their cruel and spiteful mother, Bernarda Alba. Spanish nationalists arrested and executed Garcı´a Lorca sometime on the morning of August 19–20, 1936, during the fury of the Spanish Civil War. His other works include the comedy La Zapatera prodigiosa (The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife), first performed in 1930; Amor de don Perlimplı´n con Belisa en su jardı´n (Love of Don Perlimplı´n), first performed in 1933; the poetry collection
Diva´n del Tamarit (1936; Divan of Tamarit); and two puppet plays, Los tı´teres de cachipurra (The Billy Club Puppets), and Retabillo de Don Cristo´bal (The Puppet Play of Don Cristo´bal).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Mildred, Garcı´a Lorca: Playwright and Poet, 1977; Cobb, Carl, Federico Garcı´a Lorca, 1967; Gibson, Ian, Federico Garcı´a Lorca: A Life, 1989; Morris, C. Brian, Son of Andalusia: The Lyrical Landscapes of Federico Garcı´a Lorca, 1997.
Garcı´a Ma ´ rquez, Gabriel (March 6, 1928– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Journalist ne of the most influential literary figures in the Spanish-speaking world, the Colombian writer Gabriel Jose´ Garcı´a Ma´rquez developed a literary style known as “magical realism” that combines elements of realism and fantasy. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez (쑖 Timothy Ross / The Image Works)
1982 “for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent’s life and conflicts.” Garcı´a Ma´rquez was the first child of an impoverished telegraph operator. He was born in Aracataca, a small banana town in northern Colombia. Aracataca, where his maternal grandparents lived, was his home for the first seven years of his life. As a child he was generally shy and enjoyed listening to his grandparents tell stories. His grandfather was a war veteran, and his grandmother was a superstitious woman who, with his aunts, frequently told stories about ghosts and spirits. The matter-of-fact style in which his grandmother delivered her fantastic stories was to significantly shape Garcı´a Ma´rquez’s later writing style. The violence and economic hardship that followed the end of the banana boom in 1928 was also to have a strong impact on his stories. After his grandfather’s death, Garcı´a Ma´rquez returned to his parents and enrolled
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in a boarding school. At age 12, he began attending a Jesuit school north of Bogota´. He later studied law and journalism at the National University of Colombia and the University of Cartagena but never graduated from either. Instead, he spent most of his time away from his studies writing and talking with other budding artists and writers. Garcı´a Ma´rquez identifies one of the formative experiences of his career as his reading of FRANZ KAFKA’s “The Metamorphosis,” which freed his mind from the notion that literature has to follow certain forms. He began to write professionally in Bogota´ and contributed the first of many stories, “The Third Resignation,” to El Espectador in 1946. After moving to Cartagena he wrote newspaper articles for El Universal. In 1950, Garcı´a Ma´rquez moved to Barranquilla, began to associate with a small literary circle, and read the works of authors such as WILLIAM FAULKNER, JAMES JOYCE, and VIRGINIA WOOLF. He was particularly influenced by Faulkner’s style. He also continued working as a journalist for El Heraldo, writing under the pseudonym “Septimus.” Garcı´a Ma´rquez spent the next few years primarily as a journalist in Europe, the United States, Colombia, Venezuela, and Cuba. In 1958 he married Mercedes Barcha Pardo, to whom he is still married. In addition to his journalistic articles he began to publish short stories. In La hojarasca (1955; Leaf Storm), a novella, a colonel carries out a promise to bury a disgraced doctor in spite of a hostile town’s wishes to the contrary. The imaginary town of Macondo, used frequently in Garcı´a Ma´rquez’s works, first appears in Leaf Storm. No One Writes to the Colonel (1961) recounts the unhappy plight of an impoverished Colombian war veteran waiting for his promised pension check. In In Evil Hour (1962), again set in Macondo, the town suffers a new wave of political oppression after they have lived through a period of relative peace. In the early 1960s Garcı´a Ma´rquez moved to Mexico, where he continued working as a journalist and began to take an interest in
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screen writing. He also wrote what is perhaps his most famous work, the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1968). It was Garcı´a Ma´rquez’s first novel to win international acclaim and his first novel to employ magical realism. The story revolves around the Buendı´a family and is again set in the fictional town of Macondo. A young member of the Buendı´a family founds Macondo with his wife, who is also his cousin. The people of Macondo suffer from the same hardships that in fact plagued Latin Americans under colonial rule. Garcı´a Ma´rquez became increasingly active in leftist political causes all over Latin America after the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude. He founded HABEAS, an organization dedicated to assisting political prisoners. Political activism did not, however, keep him from his writing. He moved to Barcelona in 1973 and subsequently moved back to Mexico. Several collections of his stories appeared in the 1970s, including Innocent Ere´ndira and Other Stories (1972) and Eyes of a Blue Dog (1972). Using a more developed style of magical realism, Garcı´a Ma´rquez wrote his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), a harsh portrayal of the corruption, intrigues, and paranoia of a stereotypical Latin American dictator. The novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) takes place in a small Colombian town. Two brothers plot to kill the alleged lover of their sister, a bride who is rejected by her new husband when he discovers she is not a virgin. By the time the murder takes place, everyone but the victim has heard about the plot, but nobody takes the brothers’ intention seriously until it is too late. Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) recounts the lives of two lovers, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. After a teenage romance, the two marry other spouses. Not until the death of Fermina’s husband many years later do they end up together. The General in His Labyrinth (1989) is a historical novel about the last months of Simo´n Bolı´var’s life. Bolı´var succeeded in throwing off Spanish rule in Colombia in 1820 and became the country’s first president.
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In 1981 Garcı´a Ma´rquez settled in Mexico City. The following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Garcı´a Ma´rquez’s other works include the screenplay Viva Sandino (1982), based on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Garcı´a Ma´rquez was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999. The first part of his autobiography, Vivir para contarla (Living to Tell the Tale), discusses his life from 1927 to 1950 and was published in 2002. Recent writings include Strange Pilgrims (1992) and Love and Other Demons (1994). His latest
novel, Memorias de mis putas tristes (2004; Memories of My Melancholy Whores), explores the relationship between an older journalist and a young girl.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bell, Michael, Gabriel Garcı´a Ma´rquez: Solitude and Solidarity; Bell-Villada, Gene H., Garcı´a Ma´rquez: The Man and His Work, 1990; Garcı´a Marquez, Gabriel, Living to Tell the Tale, 2002; Strathern, Paul, Garcı´a Marquez in 90 Minutes, 2004.
Garland, Judy (June 10, 1922–June 22, 1969) Actress, Singer amous for her appearances in Hollywood film musicals and on stage in concert, the American actress Judy Garland is best known for her role as the young and innocent Dorothy Gale in the classic film The Wizard of Oz (1939). Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Both her mother, Ethel Marion Milne, and her father, Frank Gumm, were former vaudeville actors and had purchased their own theater in Grand Rapids. Garland was their youngest child and was named for them. Her penchant for the stage manifested itself when she was young, and she sang several verses of “Jingle Bells” in a Christmas show with her two older sisters at the young age of two. Soon thereafter, the trio was performing in local theaters. In 1926, the family moved to Lancaster, California, where Garland’s parents bought another theater. She took acting and dancing lessons around Los Angeles, and Ethel Gumm booked the girls for local radio shows and theater performances. At the age of seven, Garland made her film debut with her sisters
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(the trio was now known as “The Gumm Sisters”) in the short subject Starlet Revue (1929). Several other film appearances in short subjects followed. Garland acquired part of her stage name after a performance at the World’s Fair in Chicago, where actor George Jessel (1898–1981) encouraged them to choose a more appealing name than “Gumm” after he noticed muffled laughter from the audience when their name was announced. From then on, the trio was known as “The Garland Sisters.” Keeping the Garland name, she later added “Judy” from the 1938 Hoagy Carmichael (1899–1981) song “Judy.” After one of her sisters married and the sisters’ act dissolved, Garland set off to pursue a solo career with her mother’s assistance. In 1935, following a string of auditions for various studios, Garland signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after enchanting her judges with a rendition of “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart”—a song that became part of her standard repertoire. She appeared in her first feature film, Pigskin Parade, in 1936.
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That same year, Garland signed a record deal with Decca. Her first release was a 1936 record of “Stompin’ at the Savoy” and “Swing Mr. Charlie” with Bob Crosby and his orchestra. Somewhere in between her concert performances, radio shows, film roles, and other public appearances, Garland found time to record more than ninety sides for Decca and additional albums for Capitol Records over her career. Garland starred with a youthful Mickey Rooney (1920– ) in a series of musicals. Their first joint appearance was in Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (1937). With soaring popularity, they starred together again in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) and in director Busby Berkeley’s (1895–1976) Babes in Arms (1939). They eventually appeared in a total of nine films together. Garland continued playing small film parts before landing her famous role as Dorothy Gale in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz (1939). At the young age of sixteen, Garland became an instant star for her performance of the innocent Kansas girl haplessly swept up with her dog Toto by a tornado and transported to the land of Oz. In Oz, she and a cast of misfits— the Tin Man in need of a heart, the Scarecrow in need of a brain, and the Cowardly Lion who needs courage—embark on a journey to see the great and powerful wizard Oz. Dorothy seeks a means back home to Kansas, while the others hope the wizard can impart to them the qualities they lack. On the way, they battle the Wicked Witch of the West but receive help from the Good Witch of the North. The film still remains a classic and is often reaired on television to this day. The tragedy of drug addiction began early in Garland’s life. The hectic pace of filmmaking placed undue demands on actors and actresses, and Garland, along with others, was given amphetamines to keep her awake during the day and barbiturates to help her sleep at night. Garland’s long-term drug addiction not only took its toll on her physical health but probably contributed to her constant bouts of self-doubt.
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Garland appeared in three films in 1940, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Strike Up the Band, and Little Nellie Kelly. Somewhat hampered by her girlish roles in her early films, she had difficulty transitioning into adult roles for public audiences. That metamorphosis began in the early 1940s, however, and she made three more successful films in 1941— Ziegfeld Girl, Life Begins for Andy Hardy, and Babes on Broadway. In 1942, she starred with actor Gene Kelly (1912–1996) in his first film role in For Me and My Gal. In 1941, Garland married her first husband, David Rose. During World War II, she toured many military camps. Having divorced Rose in 1944, she married Vincente Minnelli in 1945. The pair’s daughter, Liza Minnelli (1946– ) became a famous singer and actress. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) became one of her most famous films and featured the classic songs “The Trolley Song,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and “The Boy Next Door.” Costarring with Robert Walker (1918–1951), she appeared in The Clock (1945), marking her first and one of her only appearances in a non-musical drama. Garland had risen to fame performing in singing roles, and she returned to musical films. Other 1940s films include The Harvey Girls (1946), The Pirate (1948), Easter Parade (1948), and In the Good Old Summertime (1949). In 1947, Garland suffered her first of a series of nervous breakdowns while filming The Pirate. Her declining mental health eventually led her to part ways with MGM, which did not have much tolerance for her medical condition. Her last film for the studio was Summer Stock (1950). Before she could complete Annie Get Your Gun, the studio fired her. In 1951, Minnelli and Garland divorced. The following year, she married her then-manager Sid Luft. Their marriage would last for the next decade before they divorced. Garland reinvented herself following her departure from MGM, turning to live concert performances and gaining popularity in the British Isles. She sang in leading venues in the United States
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and England, including New York’s Palace Theatre and the London Palladium. Garland appeared in television specials in the early 1950s before returning briefly to the big screen with A Star Is Born (1954). Directed by George Cukor (1899–1983), it was Garland’s only film for Warner Brothers and only film between 1951 and 1961. Many critics consider it her finest. For her performance, she was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical. A recording of a 1961 appearance at Carnegie Hall yielded a gold record, retained the number one spot on the Billboard charts for thirteen weeks, and won five Grammy Awards. Garland also scored successes with appearances in television specials in the 1960s, and CBS eventually offered her her own show—The Judy Garland Show. Due to the fact that it aired opposite NBC’s hit series Bonanza and CBS refused to move it to a different time slot, the show failed after fewer than thirty episodes. With exaggerated media hype, enormous sums of money, and Garland’s own emotional dedication invested in the show, its demise in 1964 was devastating to her. Following the show, Garland returned to the stage and television. In 1964, she per-
formed with her daughter Minnelli at the London Palladium. She appeared on many famous shows of the day, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, The Hollywood Palace, and The Merv Griffin Show. Her last films include Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), the animated film Gay Purr-ee (1962), A Child Is Waiting (1963), and I Could Go On Singing (1963). Her brief marriage to Mark Herron in 1965 lasted only six months. By this stage in her life, alcohol, drug abuse, and legal and financial battles had taken a serious toll on her. Her fifth and last husband, Mickey Deans, found her dead of a drug overdose in her London home on June 22, 1969, just months after they had married. She is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Clarke, Gerald, Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland, 2000; Edwards, Anne, Judy Garland: A Biography, 1975; Finch, Christopher, Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy Garland, 1975; Gerold, Frank, Judy, 1999; Shipman, David, Judy Garland, 1992. www.jgdb.com.
Garnett, David (March 9, 1892–February 17, 1981) Novelist, Editor avid Garnett, one of many English Garnetts who achieved literary recognition, was associated with the Bloomsbury Group in the early twentieth century. He enjoyed popularity with his fantastic stories Lady into Fox and A Man in the Zoo in the 1920s and went on to write more than
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twenty novels. Garnett also edited the letters of T. E. Lawrence and fellow Bloomsbury member Dora Carrington. Garnett was the son of Edward and Constance Garnett, born in Brighton, East Sussex, England. The Garnetts had a long and distinguished literary history. Constance was the noted translator of nineteenth-century Rus-
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sian literature, and Edward established himself as a famous literary critic. When he was young, Garnett was introduced to many prominent literary figures through his parents’ acquaintances. He grew up with FORD MADOX FORD and met older writers such as JOSEPH CONRAD and JOHN GALSWORTHY. Garnett attended schools sporadically, first in Limpfield and then in France, where his mother went to recover her health. He later studied at University College, London. Garnett attended the Royal College of Science and studied botany. Having learned Russian and French from his mother, he earned money translating. During the World War I era, Garnett associated himself with the Bloomsbury Group, whose members included the economist John Maynard Keynes, VIRGINIA WOOLF and her husband Leonard, Lytton Strachey, DUNCAN GRANT, and Clive and Vanessa Bell. He later married the Bells’ daughter, Angelica, but his first wife was Ray Marshall, whom he married in 1921. He began to write, sometimes just to make money, as with the story Dope Fiend under the pseudonym Leda Burke. Illustrated with his wife’s woodcuts, Garnett’s fantastic novel Lady into Fox (1922) was his first success and remains one of his most popular works. The story’s protagonist is a man whose wife turns into a fox. A Man in the Zoo (1924), about a man placed on exhibition as homo sapiens in the London Zoo,
was also successful. The Sailor’s Return followed in 1925. Garnett achieved less success with his later novels, which include No Love (1929), The Grasshoppers Come (1931), Beany-Eye (1935), Two By Two: A Story of Survival (1963), Ulterior Motives (1966), and A Clean Slate (1971). Aspects of Love (1955) unfolds in Italy and France and treats the relationships among four people. The Golden Echo, the first of Garnett’s three-volume autobiography, was published in 1953. Completed by The Flowers of the Forest (1955) and The Familiar Faces (1962), the work outlines the impressions of his youth, his parents, his relationships with the other Bloomsbury members, and his first successes in writing. Great Friends: Portraits of Seventeen Writers (1979) contains Garnett’s sketches of other writers of his acquaintance. He edited the correspondence of both T. E. Lawrence and Dora Carrington, The Letters of T. E. Lawrence (1938) and Carrington: Letters and Extracts from Her Diaries (1978). His other works include A Rabbit in the Air, a journal he kept while he was learning to fly. Garnett helped found the Nonesuch Press and served as literary editor of the New Statesman.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Garnett, David, The Familiar Faces, 1962; Garnett, David, The Flowers of the Forest, 1955; Garnett, David, The Golden Echo, 1953.
Gehry, Frank (February 28, 1929– ) Architect, Designer
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rank Gehry is an architect and designer whose bold, sculptural work has attracted international acclaim.
He was born Frank Owen Goldberg in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on February 28, 1929. In 1947, his family moved to Los Angeles. From 1949 to 1954, he studied architecture at
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the University of Southern California. He then went to Harvard to study city planning from 1956 to 1957. He worked at several architectural firms before starting his own company, Frank O. Gehry & Associates, in 1962. Along with several of his contemporaries, he rejected the cold, conventional Modernist aesthetic that had shaped many urban landscapes. Instead, he experimented with uncommon expressions and sought a unique style. His early work emphasized context and human scale. He built unusual, quirky structures, like the chain-link and corrugated steel frame he created for his Santa Monica house, complete with asymmetrical protrusions of steel rod and glass. The traditional bungalow seemed to have exploded wide open. His developed his characteristic vocabulary in early residential commissions in which he explored the potential of modest materials and created a sense of movement. His practice expanded to include commissions for exhibition design, furniture, libraries, office buildings, restaurants, schools, and visual and performing arts venues. Gehry won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989. Beginning in the early 1990s, sophisticated computer software facilitated the construction and engineering of complex building systems and helped to realize the gestural quality of his work in built form. His firm’s work can be found in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.
Gehry is known for his obviously flamboyant shapes as well as the functionality of his spaces. Some of his most well-known buildings are the Guggenheim Bilbao (1997) and Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003). His warped forms and love for PICASSO and cubism have linked him with the Deconstructionist and Postmodern movements, but he rejects any association with a particular movement. He is currently working on the Barclays Center, the new NBA arena for the New Jersey Nets, to be located in Brooklyn, New York. He is a Distinguished Professor of Architecture at Columbia University in New York City and also teaches at Yale University.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dal Co, Francesco, Frank O. Gehry: the Complete Works, 1998; Gehry, Frank, Gehry Draws, 2004; Greenberg, Jan, Frank O. Gehry: Outside In, 2000; Jencks, Charles, ed., Frank O. Gehry: Individual Imagination and Cultural Conservatism, 1995; Stungo, Naomi, Frank Gehry, 1999; http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9002407. www.foga.com/. www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/past_ exhibitions/gehry. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ gehry_f.html. http://eng.archinform.net/arch/220.htm?scrwdt= 1280.
Gershwin, George (September 26, 1898–July 11, 1937) Composer uring his short life, George Gershwin established himself as one of the most influential American composers of the twentieth century. Trained as a pianist,
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George Gershwin (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-54141)
musical study under different composers throughout his career. Though relatively few of his own recordings survive, his works are widely performed and recorded to this day. Gershwin was the second of four children, born Jacob Gershowitz to Russian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. His father emigrated to the United States from St. Petersburg and in 1895 married Rose Bruskin, also a Russian immigrant. He later changed the family name to Gershwin. The young Gershwin took up an interest in music at the age of ten after hearing a friend’s violin recital. He started to play a piano that his parents bought in 1910 for his older brother Ira, who would later become his lyricist for many of his compositions. After studying the piano with a series of local teachers, Gershwin became the student of Charles Hambitzer, a pianist in the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Hambitzer served as Gershwin’s mentor, taught him classical techniques, and introduced him to the works of modern and classical composers.
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Following Hambitzer’s death in 1918, Gershwin studied under classical composer Rubin Goldmark (1872–1936) and avant-garde composer-theorist Henry Cowell (1897–1965). Gershwin would inject elements of his studies with all three men into his future work. Gershwin attended New York High School for Commerce until 1914, when he dropped out to go to work as a song plugger for Jerome H. Remick’s & Co., a Tin Pan Alley music publisher in New York. His first published song was “When You Want ’Em You Can’t Get ’Em, When You’ve Got ’Em, You Don’t Want ’Em” (1916), earning him five dollars. In 1917, Gershwin took a position as a rehearsal pianist for JEROME KERN’S and Victor Herbert’s (1859–1924) Broadway show Miss 1917. The following year, the Harms music publishing company contracted with him for the future publishing rights to his songs. By 1919, he had written his own Broadway score for La La Lucille and also garnered some successes as a songwriter, including the hit “Rialto Ripples,” followed by the even more popular “Swanee,” which Al Jolson (1886–1950)
Letter from George Gershwin to Eva Gauthier Aug 16, 1933 (Library and Archives Canada/Eva Gauthier fonds/MUS 81 쑖 Public Domain nlc-2473)
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popularized and Gershwin himself recorded with the Fred Van Eps Trio in 1919. La La Lucille kicked off a long string of music scores between 1919 and 1925, among which were the musical comedy Lady, Be Good! (1924), which premiered at Liberty Theatre and popularized such songs as “The Man I Love,” “Oh, Lady, Be Good!,” and “Fascinating Rhythm”; and music for George White’s Scandals (1920–1924). Over the next few years, Gershwin and his brother Ira collaborated on Oh, Kay! (1926), Funny Face (1927), Strike Up the Band (1927), Girl Crazy (1930), and Of Thee I Sing (1931). “I Got Rhythm” from Girl Crazy became a popular jazz standard, and Of Thee I Sing was the first musical awarded a Pulitzer Prize. He and Ira also wrote the score for the Hollywood film Delicious (1931). During this time, Gershwin composed classical works as well. In 1924 he created the jazz work Rhapsody in Blue for orchestra and piano. With arrangements by pianist Ferde Grofe´ (1892–1972), it premiered with Paul Whiteman (1890–1967) and his Palais Royal Orchestra in New York as part of Whiteman’s “Experiment in Modern Music” concert at Aeolian Hall and became his most popular work. The unique combination of syncopated rhythms, Tin Pan Alley-style writing, and his diverse training background charmed Whiteman’s audience and was key in establishing Gershwin’s fame. In 1928, while in Paris, where he wrote the tone poem An American in Paris (1928). Gershwin admired French composers such as CLAUDE DEBUSSY and MAURICE RAVEL, and the admiration was mutual with Ravel. Although they had a measure of influence over his work, Gershwin continued to draw from all of his composition and training experience when he composed. From 1932 to 1936, he studied with the Russian composer Joseph Schillinger (1895–1943), who was to have a significant influence on the last works of his career. While studying under Schillinger, he also worked at a feverish pace on other projects.
In 1932, he published George Gershwin’s Song-book. Most notably, he and Ira cowrote the folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935). In spite of its initial financial failure, many regard the show as the most significant American opera of the twentieth century. Based on the American author DuBose Heyward’s (1885–1940) novel Porgy, the play is set in an AfricanAmerican neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina, and combines opera with AfricanAmerican folk music. In early 1937, Gershwin began experiencing crippling headaches, dizziness, and depression—the effects, it turned out, of a brain tumor. Gershwin had moved to Hollywood to work on film scores, which included the FRED ASTAIRE films Shall We Dance (1937) and A Damsel in Distress (1937). He was busy on the score for The Goldwyn Follies when he collapsed. He died on July 11 of that year following brain surgery and was buried in the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-onHudson, New York. Gershwin was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006. The George Gershwin Theatre on Broadway commemorates him. In 2007, the Library of Congress named their Prize for Popular Song after George and Ira Gershwin, the first of which was awarded to singer-songwriter Paul Simon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ewen, David, George Gershwin: His Journey to Greatness, 1986; Gauthier, Andre´, George Gershwin, 1973; Gilbert, Steven E., The Music of Gershwin, 1995; Greenberg, Rodney, George Gershwin, 1998; Hyland, William, George Gershwin: A New Biography, 2003; Jablonski, Edward, Gershwin, With a New Critical Discography, 1998; Jablonski, Edward, Gershwin Remembered, 1992; Kimball, Robert, The Gershwins, 1973; Oxford University Press, The George Gershwin Reader, 2004; Pollack, Howard, George Gershwin: His Life and Work, 2006; Rosenberg, Deena, Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin, 1997; Schwartz, Charles, Gershwin: His Life
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and Music, 1979; Wood, Ean, George Gershwin: His Life and Music, 1996;
www.gershwin.com. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/datasbase/ gershwin_g.html.
Genet, Jean (December 19, 1910–April 15, 1986) Novelist, Playwright, Poet ean Genet stands apart from most authors in that he completed much of his work as a prisoner. His shocking, anarchistic, and often obscene subject matter depicts the life he lived as a tramp, thief, and homosexual prostitute in the streets and prisons of Europe, and the criminal acts his characters commit are often elevated to religious acts. Genet was born in Paris to a prostitute, Gabrielle Genet, who abandoned him in his infancy. He did not discover his identity until he was 21. His supervision fell to the National Foundling Society, and he was raised by a peasant family in the Morvan region of France. Genet’s long career as a criminal began at the age of 10, when he was caught
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Jean Genet (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
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stealing. When his behavior grew too unbearable for his adoptive family, they sent him to the strict Mettray Reform School. Having escaped from the school in 1929, he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in order to get the enlistment bonus, but quickly deserted to return to the streets of Europe. During the 1930s, Genet traveled in Europe and engaged himself in criminal activity. Until 1948, Genet spent much of his time in and out of prison for theft and prostitution. For Genet crime evolved into much more than a means of survival. Thefts and forbidden sexual experiences became religious acts of self-assertion against society, as they so often are for the characters in his works. While serving time in Fresnes prison, he wrote his first poem, “Le Condemne´ a Mort” (“The Man Condemned to Death”). There he also wrote his first novel, Notre Dame des Fleurs (1943; Our Lady of the Flowers), on the paper used to make brown bags. The narrator of the story admires the toughest, most fearless criminals, such as Our Lady of the Flowers. Our Lady of the Flowers is a young murderer who boldly faces his fate, execution. Genet’s next novel, Miracle de la rose (1945–1946; Miracle of the Rose) describes his experience at the reform school in Mettray and was written in a Paris penitentiary. Pumpes fune`bres (1947; Funeral Rites) is set during the Paris Liberation and unfolds over two days after the death of the narrator’s lover. The main character in Querelle de Brest (1947; Quarrel of Brest) is George Quarrel (a
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character based on Genet’s lover Jean Descamin), a heroic murderer and drug smuggler, and the story examines the dynamics of homosexual relations. The Thief’s Journal (1949), Genet’s last novel, recounts his own sordid existence as a prostitute and thief. In these novels, Genet’s narrative is fragmented, utilizing flashbacks, stream of consciousness, confused time elements, and street jargon. In 1948, Genet was convicted a tenth time for theft, which in France carried a sentence of life in prison. However, his novels had by then impressed a number of leading French artists and writers, including JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, ANDRE GIDE, and JEAN COCTEAU. Sartre, Cocteau, and others successfully petitioned France’s president for Genet’s pardon. After his release, Genet turned to writing absurdist plays. The characters in his early dramas resemble those of his novels. Les Bonnes (1947; The Maids) was inspired by two servant girls who murdered their master and mistress. Genet transformed the real-life story into a psychological and spiritual treatment of two sisters, Claire and Solange, who enjoy acting the part of their mistress and her maid and plan to murder the mistress. When she refuses to drink the poisoned tea they have prepared for her, they ritually and religiously prepare for Solange to murder Claire with the tea while the latter plays the mis-
tress. In Haute Surveillance (staged in 1949; Deathwatch), set in a prison cell, Lefranc and Maurice vie for the love of Green Eyes, whom they idolize because he killed a prostitute in a fit of rage. Different motives have led each character to crime. The motivations of Snowball, who has murdered out of calculation and greed, are presented as superior to the motives of other characters who have comitted crimes out of rage and other reasons. Genet’s later plays, Le Balcon (1956; The Balcony), Les Negre`s (1958; The Blacks), and Les paravents (1961; The Screens), are more structurally complex. The Blacks creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and unreality, using techniques designed to shock, offend, and confuse the audience. Genet designed the play as a clown show, cast all black actors, and intended the play for a white audience, stipulating that at least one white person be present in a crowd wherever it was performed. In his later life, Genet traveled widely, lending support to the Palestinians in the Middle East and the Black Panthers in the United States. He died of throat cancer in 1986.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Knapp, Bettina L., Jean Genet, 1989; White, Edmund, Genet, 1993.
Giacometti, Alberto (October 10, 1901–January 11, 1966) Sculptor, Painter he Swiss-born sculptor Alberto Giacometti established himself among Paris’s avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s, producing a series of Surrealist–inspired sculptures between 1930 and 1935. After parting ways with the Surrealists,
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he began to sculpt male and female figures characterized by their excessive height, extreme thinness, and appearance of frailty. Giacometti was born to parents of Italian ancestry in Borgonovo, Switzerland. He was deeply attached to his mother and gained early exposure to the world of art from his fa-
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Alberto Giacometti (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
ther, a Postimpressionist painter. Giacometti grew up in the Swiss village of Stampa, where he passed a very happy childhood. He began to draw at a young age and eagerly devoured the art books in his father’s library. Among the numerous works he copied was Albrecht Du¨rer’s Knight, Death, and the Devil. In 1914 he made his first sculpture—of his brother Diego, who was later to serve as his assistant. As a child he studied at the Evangelical Secondary School in Schiers, excelling in all his studies but focusing especially on art. In 1919 Giacometti went to Geneva to study art. He again traveled to Italy with his father in 1920 and 1921 and during that time devel-
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oped an interest in Egyptian art. By this time he was sculpting busts on a regular basis. Giacometti did his military service in 1922 and the same year landed in Paris. Paris was to become the primary center of his work as he absorbed the city’s diverse artistic influences. From 1922 to 1925 he attended the Acade´mie de la Grande-Chaumie`re, and among his teachers there was E´MILE-ANTOINE BOURDELLE. Giacometti frequented the Louvre and investigated African, Egyptian, Cycladic, and Oceanic Art. These influences are evident in one of his best-known early works, the abstract spoon-shaped figure entitled The Spoon-Woman (1926). He was sensitive to
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many different artistic trends in Paris. The Cubist experiments begun by GEORGES BRAQUE and PABLO PICASSO manifested themselves in his Torse and Composition Cubiste (Deux Tetes) (1925; Cubist Composition [Two Heads]), Cubist Composition (1926), and other works. The works of CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI, Henri Laurens, and the Dadaists also shaped Giacometti’s style. In the late 1920s Giacometti sculpted abstract, often flat compositions in wood and metal. The exaggerated vertical dimensions of his later works had not yet appeared. Around 1930 he fell under the influence of the Surrealists (see SALVADOR DALı´) and began to produce pieces that more obviously reflected emotional and psychological states. In The Suspended Ball (1930), a ball missing a wedge-shaped piece from the bottom dangles from the top of a cage over a larger wedge resting on a platform. The Suspended Ball was one of several “caged” works Giacometti finished during his Surrealist period. The Cage (1931) consists of a wooden cage housing an array of suspended objects. The Palace at 4 a.m. (1932–1933) is a caged work in wire, wood, and string. In another Surrealist work, The Displaced Table (1933), the head of a woman rests on a table with a displaced hand and other objects. Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932) is one of Giacometti’s most violent works. Dissatisfied with what he considered inadequate representation of the human figure, Giacometti broke with the Surrealists in 1935 and sought a new method working from nature. Over the next decade he produced very little sculpture, instead devoting himself to paintings and drawings. Among his notable paint-
ings of the era are his Apple on a Sideboard (1937) and Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (1937). His new conception of the human figure was partly shaped by his stay as a patient in a hospital in Geneva, where he observed the movements of injured patients. In the mid-1940s Giacometti returned to sculpture. Some works, such as Head of a Man on a Rod (1947), resemble the abstract sculptures from the late 1920s. The Nose (1947) features a suspended figure with a long, thin nose. At this time Giacometti also began creating the tall, thin, vertical figures for which he is best known. Stationary female figures and walking male figures (such as Walking Man I in 1960) recur throughout the sculptures of the 1950s and 1960s. His other works include The Chariot (1950), Women of Venice (1956), and many Tall Figures. In 1959 the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York commissioned him to sculpt three large figures. After several changes in plan Giacometti planned to proceed with a standing woman more than twenty-five feet tall, but he never finished the commission. He also designed the set for SAMUEL BECKETT’s Waiting for Godot in 1963. Although his work was known among the Paris avant-garde during the 1930s, Giacometti was not known to international audiences until the 1940s. Two New York exhibitions in 1948 and 1950 brought his work to a wider audience. Many of his works are now housed in the Art Gallery (Kunsthaus) in Zu¨rich and the Beyeler Gallery in Basel, Switzerland.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lord, James, Giacometti: A Biography, 1983; Sylvester, David, Looking at Giacometti, 1995.
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Gide, Andre ´ (November 22, 1869–February 19, 1951) Novelist, Playwright, Critic, Short-Story Writer, Editor, Translator, Essayist ndre´-Paul-Guillaume Gide helped found the French literary review La nouvelle revue franc¸aise, which was instrumental in popularizing the work of many French avant-garde writers. Through the revue and through his own writing, Gide was one of the most influential writers in France in the pre–World War II generation. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947 “for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight.” Gide was an only child born in Paris. His father, who died when he was a child, was of Huguenot, that is, French Protestant, ancestry. His mother came from an established Catholic family but was raised as a Protestant, and her religious devotion dominated
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Gide’s environment as a child. His upbringing in the Protestant moral atmosphere had a marked effect on his life and career. Many of Gide’s works deal with the conflict between human desire and moral strictures as well as his own search for spiritual fulfillment. He enrolled in the E´cole Alsacienne in Paris when he was eight, and a tutor supplemented his education during his frequent illnesses. After Gide finished his studies, he decided to pursue a career in writing. The protagonist of his first book, the autobiographical Les cahiers d’Andre´ Walter (1891; The Notebooks of Andre´ Walter), is a troubled and isolated young man who loses his sanity and dies. The work also introduced Gide’s often-used journal form. That same year, Gide fell under the influence of the Symbolists, who used fluid literary forms, rather than the strict forms of the classical French tradition, and emphasized the role of the imagination in creativity. Gide’s early works influenced by the Symbolists include Traite´ du Narcisse (1891; Narcissus) and The Lovers’ Attempt (1893). In 1893, Gide traveled to Tunisia, where he experienced a feeling of liberation from his moralist upbringing. He returned for a second visit in 1894, when he met the Irish writer Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. They encouraged Gide to open himself up to his homosexuality, a theme that appears in his writings. Corydon (1924), a defense of homosexuality, caused an uproar when it was published. Nevertheless, he married his cousin, Madeleine Rondeaux, upon his return to France in 1895. The lyrical prose work Les Nourritures terrestres (1897; Fruits of the Earth) captures the sense of liberation Gide felt after his travels to North Africa. It consists of eight chapters pulsing with energy, and in it Gide advocated freedom to satisfy human desires. At this point in his life and career, Gide was pri-
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marily concerned with individual moral and spiritual questions. Gide wrote many tales he called re´cits, characterized by narration in the first person and a central character grappling with moral dilemmas. Among these are L’immoraliste (1902; The Immoralist), La Porte E´troite (1909; Strait is the Gate), and La Symphonie pastoral (1919; The Pastoral Symphony). The latter examines questions of religion, morality, and love. The main character is a married clergyman who falls in love with a blind girl, Gertrude, whom he has sheltered and taught. His obsession with Gertrude violates his religious mores and disturbs his family. Like his re´cits, Gide’s plays, including Philote`te (1897; Philoctectes), the verse drama Le Roi Candaule (1901; The King Candaule), and Saul (1903), are marked by their engaging character portraits. Les Caves du Vatican (1914; The Caves of the Vatican) is a work of unconventional structure consisting of a number of parallel episodes. While the characters lead their own lives unaware of each other, their lives and fates are intertwined without their knowledge. After its publication, Les Caves du Vatican was widely attacked for anticlericalism. The complex story of the only work Gide called a novel, Les Faux-Monnageurs (1926; The Counterfeiters), explores human hypocrisy and false images. Gide also established himself as a literary critic and translator. In 1909 he helped found the Nouvelle revue franc¸aise, which, until
World War II, published many prominent progressive and avant-garde French writers. His studies of other literary figures include Dostoı¨evsky, articles et causeries (1923; Dostoevsky). Among his translations are Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Hamlet; portions of Walt Whitman’s poetry; and William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. After a 1925–1926 journey to French Equatorial Africa, Gide returned to France and published Voyage au Congo (1927) and Le Retour du Chad (1927), both of which appeared in English as Travels in the Congo (1929), and criticized the French presence in Africa. Gide’s brief optimistic espousal of Communism dimmed when he visited the Soviet Union in 1936. His travels to and thoughts on the Soviet Union are reflected in Retour de l’U.R.S.S. (1936; Return from the U.S.S.R) and Afterthoughts on the U.S.S.R. (1937). While the Germans occupied France during World War II, Gide lived in North Africa, where he completed Theseus (1946). Gide’s four volumes of journals, which he began keeping in 1889, were published in 1950. His other works include Prometheus Misbound (1899); Isabelle (1911); Marshlands (1894); and the autobiography Si le grain ne meurt (1926; If It Die).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bre´e, Germaine, Andre´ Gide, 1963; Painter, George Duncan, Andre´ Gide: A Critical Biography, 1968.
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Gielgud, John (April 14, 1904–May 21, 2000) Actor, Director, Producer ost famous on the stage for his portrayals of Hamlet and other leading Shakespeare roles, Arthur John Gielgud rose to prominence on London stages in the late 1920s. His reputation as both an actor and a director subsequently grew worldwide. Gielgud has also acted in numerous films and television shows. Gielgud was born into a family with a history in theater in London. His father, a stockbroker of Lithuanian ancestry, was a less formative influence on his life than was his mother, a relative of the actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928). Gielgud and his three siblings built a play theater and staged their own productions as children. He attended the Hillside preparatory school, where he acted his first role as the Mock Turtle in Alice and Wonderland. After studying at the Westminster
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John Gielgud (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-103970)
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School, he enrolled at Lady Benson’s dramatic school. Gielgud finished his education at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. With the reluctant support of his parents, who in spite of the theatrical successes in the family preferred more stable methods of earning a living, Gielgud devoted himself to the theater. His professional acting debut came in 1921, when he played the Herald in Shakespeare’s Henry V at the Old Vic Theatre in London. For Gielgud, the debut marked both the first of many professional roles in Shakespeare productions and the first of many roles at the Old Vic. In 1924–1925, Gielgud appeared in more than a dozen productions with the Oxford Playhouse, mostly plays by modern dramatists such as GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. The year 1924 also saw him in his earliest performances as Romeo (opposite GWEN FFRANGCON-DAVIES’s Juliet). Some critics charged that his calculated stage manner limited his portrayal of the passionate Romeo. More successful were his many portrayals of Hamlet, especially his performance in the Broadway production of 1936. Other noteworthy successes in the 1920s were his roles as Trofimov in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1925); as an understudy to NOE¨ L COWARD in the latter’s The Vortex (1925); and as Lewis Dodd in a West End production of The Constant Nymph (1926), adapted from a Margaret Kennedy novel. In his early career, Gielgud worked to overcome difficulties with diction and movement, eventually earning acclaim for the precision and clarity of his speech on stage. His Broadway debut came in 1924, when he played Alexander in a disappointing production of Alfred Neumann’s The Patriot in 1927. Although he acted in a number of modern plays, Gielgud strongly preferred the classics. He
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acted with the Old Vic company from 1929–1931, playing many leading Shakespearean and Shavian roles. Particularly successful were his Richard II and, as was mentioned before, Hamlet. Gielgud’s first directing effort came in 1932 with the Oxford University Dramatic Society—Romeo and Juliet. He later directed many shows on the West End, at the Old Vic, and elsewhere in both Britain and North America. In 1937–1938 he directed the season at the Queen’s Theatre in London, and in 1944–1945 he directed the season at the Haymarket Theatre. With TYRONE GUTHRIE, Gielgud directed Shakespeare productions at the Old Vic in 1940. He also worked with HARLEY GRANVILLE-BARKER and directed the first major English version of Hector Berlioz’s opera The Trojans. By the 1940s, Gielgud was touring the world as both an actor and director. His other noteworthy roles include Nicholas in Dear Octopus in 1938–1939; Leontes in The Winter’s Tale (1951); Gaev in The Cherry Orchard (1961); Joseph Surface in Richard Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (1962); the Headmaster in ARNOLD BENNETT’s Forty Years On
(1968); and Spooner in HAROLD PINTER’s No Man’s Land (1975). Gielgud first performed his one-man Shakespeare show Ages of Man at the Edinburgh Festival in 1957. Over the next several years, the show took him around the world, winning significant popularity on Broadway. Gielgud’s career in film and television began with silent films, and in 1936 he appeared in ALFRED HITCHCOCK’s The Secret Agent. During the 1950s he played Cassius in Julius Caesar (1952) and the Duke of Clarence in Richard II (1955). Other roles came in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Chariots of Fire (1980), Arthur (1981, for which he earned an Academy Award for best supporting actor), and Prospero’s Books (1991). Gielgud’s writings include his autobiography Early Stages (1938), Stage Directions (1963), Distinguished Company (1972), and Shakespeare: Hit or Miss (1991; also published as Acting Shakespeare). He was knighted in 1953.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bandredth, Gyles Daubeney, John Gielgud: A Celebration, 1984; Tanitch, Robert, Gielgud, 1988.
Gill, Eric (February 22, 1882–November 17, 1940) Sculptor, Typographic Designer, Graphic Artist, Essayist, Illustrator s the designer of the Stations of the Cross at Westminster Cathedral in London, Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was an accomplished sculptor of figures and basreliefs. Gill also illustrated books for his own presses and for others with wood engravings and created lettering for them. His work in lettering produced a number of modern typefaces, including Perpetua and Gill Sans Serif. Gill was born into a large family in Brighton, Sussex, England. His father, at the time
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of Gill’s birth a Congregationalist minister, enjoyed painting and encouraged his son’s artistic ambitions. Formal study interested Gill very little. Along with his siblings, he attended a local school before moving on to the Arnold House School, Hove. As a child he began to draw and developed an interest in lettering, evident in his carefully lettered drawings of locomotives. His father joined the Church of England in 1897 and moved the family to Chichester.
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In Chichester, Gill studied at the Chichester Technical and Art School. In 1900, he was apprenticed to William Caro¨e, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Bored with both architecture and the Church, he studied stonemasonry and inscription cutting at the Westminster Technical Institute. He also studied lettering at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where the most important influence on him was his instructor Edward Johnston. With Johnston Gill came to share a dislike of modern type, which they believed removed the beauty of natural writing from the letters. By 1902, Gill was carving letters and tombstones as well as dabbling in book design. During this period Gill attended meetings of the Fabian Society (see GEORGE BERNARD SHAW), read H. G. WELLS, and for a time embraced a Socialist philosophy. In 1904, he married Ethel Mary Moore. He began sculpting figures around 1909 and achieved his first major success with Mother and Child in 1912. He rejected an offer to study with ARISTIDE MAILLOL, who, unlike Gill, worked from clay models. The major influence on Gill’s subsequent work was his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1913. Although he disliked the cathedral’s architecture, he designed and carved the Stations of the Cross, a series of bas-reliefs, for the Westminster Cathedral in London (1914–1918). Gill created his relief Christ Driving the Money-Changers Out of the Temple (1922–1923), in which he presented politicians, financiers, and other figures in contemporary clothing, as a war memorial at the University of Leeds. Gill completed his famous torso Mankind (1928) in Hoptonwood stone, a medium he used for many other sculptures. In 1929 he carved three “winds” at St. James Park Underground Station. Two years later he finished his relief Prospero and Ariel (1931), drawn from two characters in Shakespeare’s Tempest, over the main entrance of Broadcasting House, London. Gill was also commissioned to create bas-relief panels for a hotel at Morecambe (1933) portraying the story of Nausi-
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caa and Ulysses as well as a series of carved panels for the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem (1933). Later works include The Creation of Adam (1935–1938), a series of three bas-reliefs at the Palace of Nations in Geneva. Gill also continued his work in printing. With Douglas Pepler, he founded St. Dominic’s Press in 1915. To the press’s books Gill contributed many wood engravings—elegant but not complex—including twenty-two for Frances Cornford’s book of poems Autumn Midnight (1923). His association with Golden Cockerel Press also produced many woodcuts and examples of elegant lettering. Among the works he illustrated for them are Sonnets and Verses (1925), a book of poetry written by his sister, Enid Clay; an edition of the biblical Song of Songs (1925) with eighteen wood engravings; an edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1927); and an edition of the Four Gospels (1931). The Golden Cockerel printed Gill’s own essay Art and Love (1928). With his son-in-law Rene´ Hague, Gill founded a private press in 1931. Gill designed nearly a dozen typefaces, among which are Perpetua (1925), Gill Sans Serif (1927), and Joanna (1930). His own essay Art Nonsense (1929) was printed in Perpetua type. Throughout his adult life he also wrote articles and essays on many different subjects, such as art, religion, clothes, architecture, typography, pacifism, and the industrialization and mechanization of society. Gill was a passionate and opinionated writer who generated controversy with his ideas and his manner. He contributed to a number of periodicals, including The Game, Order, and The Listener. His longer writings include Christianity and Art (1927); Money and Morals (1934); The Necessity of Belief (1936); Work and Property (1937); and his Autobiography (1937). Among Gill’s other works are erotic drawings and sculptures; nudes, some of which appeared in Twenty-Five Nudes (1938); a memorial tablet to Lady Ottoline Morrell; and il-
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lustrations for G. K. CHESTERTON’S poem Gloria in Profundis (1927). He was made associate of the Royal Academy in 1937. Gill died of lung cancer in 1944, having designed his own gravestone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY MacCarthy, Fiona, Eric Gill, 1989; Speaight, Robert, The Life of Eric Gill, 1966; Yorke, Malcolm, Eric Gill: Man of Flesh and Spirit, 1981.
Gillespie, Dizzy (October 21, 1917–January 6, 1993) Jazz Musician, Composer, Performer merican jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie revolutionized jazz and helped found the bebop movement. He was instrumental in moving American jazz music away from its roots in swing and into the new style of bop in the 1940s. Gillespie also popularized the Afro-Cuban, Caribbean, and Brazilian music that plays a large part in modern jazz music today. Gillespie’s improvisational style on the trumpet was widely imitated and largely influential. Moreover, Gillespie’s good humor and charisma won over crowds and attracted his fans. Dizzy was born John Birks Gillespie in Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He came from a musical family: his father, who died when Dizzy was ten, was a bandleader on the weekends. Gillespie taught himself to play the trombone, trumpet and cornet as a boy. His trumpetplaying skills won him a scholarship at the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. When he was eighteen he moved to Philadelphia with his family and joined a band there called Frankie Fairfax’s Band. The band’s trumpet player, Charlie Shavers, taught Gillespie the trumpet solos of Roy Eldridge, building the younger musician’s repertoire. Gillespie picked up more than just jazz techniques while with the Philadelphia band: his goofy antics earned him his nickname, Dizzy.
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Dizzy Gillespie (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-92016)
Two years later he moved to New York, where he played with Teddy Hill’s big band. He quickly gained experience, as the band toured Europe just a few months after Gillespie arrived. On his return to New York Gillespie played briefly with Alberto Socarras’s
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band, an Afro-Cuban group that gave Dizzy early exposure to the fusion music he would later champion. After another stint with Teddy Hill, Gillespie joined Cab Calloway’s big band in 1939. The group achieved some notoriety for being the most highly paid black band in New York at the time. While with that band Gillespie also met Maurio Bauzi, another musician in Calloway’s group who developed Gillespie’s interest in the fusion of jazz and Afro-Cuban music. While on tour in 1940 Gillespie met and played with other young musicians like Charlie Parker, THELONIOUS MONK and Kenny Clarke, a group (including Gillespie) that would go on to be the most influential jazz musicians of their time. Their 1941 recording Kerouac represented a new style of jazz called bop. Gillespie left Calloway’s group in 1941 and worked with greats like ELLA FITZGERALD, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Charlie Barnet, Le Hite, Lucky Millinder, Earl Hines and DUKE ELLINGTON. Along with Millinder, Gillespie recorded a bop solo on the 1942 swing band album Little John Special. In 1945, Gillespie formed his own big band. He again approached the fusion music theme. Along with rhythmist Chana Pozo he recorded Cubana Bel/Cubana Bop and Manteca. Before tight funds dissolved the band in 1950, Gillespie had employed a range of illustrious jazz musicians for his band. Collaborators included J. J. Johnson, Sonny Stitt, James
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Moody, Jimmy Heath, Paul Gonsalves and John Coltrane. Gillespie was known for his uniquely shaped trumpet. In 1953 somebody fell on his trumpet stand, bending the bell up. Gillespie liked the sound of his misshapen trumpet so much that he had all his other trumpets custom made with bent bells from then on. This shape created the unique trumpet sound for which Gillespie is known. Gillespie was the first jazz artist to be sent abroad on a goodwill mission by the U.S. Government. He put together a big band and toured Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia and parts of Latin America with funding from the State Department. He did not always remain in the good graces of the State Department, however. Later in life Gillespie, who had long been enamored of Cuban music, paid a visit to Fidel Castro. In the later years of his life Gillespie performed and made special appearances. He died in 1993 of pancreatic cancer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Maggin, Donald L., Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie, 2005; Shipton, Alyn. Groovin’ High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie, 2001; Gillespie, Dizzy and Al Fraser, To Be or Not to Bop: Memoirs of Dizzy Gillespie, 1985. http://dizzygillespie.org/. www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_gillespie_ dizzy.htm. www.jazzandbluesmasters.com/dizzy.htm; http://www.cabcalloway.cc/dizzy_gillespie.htm.
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Ginsberg, Allen (June 3, 1926–April 5, 1997) Poet llen Ginsberg was a prominent American poet and a defining force in the Beat Movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He best known for his long poem Howl (1956). Members of the Beat Generation rejected the conformity and commercialism of post-World War II society and the strict mores of the McCarthy era, asserting instead a spirit of anarchic individualism and heightened sensory knowledge. As such, the Beat Movement was a natural precursor to the hippie counterculture movements that arose in the United States in the1960s. Ginsberg was born into a family of Russian Jewish background in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Paterson, New Jersey. His father was a lyric poet and high school English teacher. His mother, who suffered both from mental illness and epileptic seizures, was an active member of the Communist Party and often took the young Ginsberg and his brother to Party meetings and gatherings of other radical leftist groups during the Depression Era. Her illness was extreme, to the point that she claimed there were wires in her brain through which people could hear her thinking. As a junior in high school, he asked to accompany his mother on a visit to her therapist at a rest home in New Jersey, which proved to be a harrowing experience for him. His mother spent most of the last fifteen years of her life in mental institutions, where she was subjected to a lobotomy and to electric shock therapy. Her tragic plight deeply affected Ginsberg, sentiments of which he later reflected in his poem “Kaddish.” In 1943, Ginsberg graduated from Eastside High School in Newark. The American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892), whose verse he began to read in high school, was one of his earliest literary influences. His lifelong interest in politics and social issues, inspired by
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both his upbringing and his sensibility, prompted him to write letters on various issues to The New York Times as a teenager. After his graduation from high school, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Paterson awarded him a scholarship to study at Columbia University. Having originally intended to pursue studies in labor law, Ginsberg changed his major to literature and studied under Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Van Doren (1894–1972). He contributed to both the Columbia Review (a literary journal) and the humor magazine Jester, and he was president of the campus literary and debate group, the Philolexian Society. More importantly, though, he met a circle of friends that was to form the core of the Beat Movement. Among the figures he met during his Columbia years were Lucien Carr (1925–2005), a key figure of the Beat Generation; JACK KEROUAC; John Clellon Holmes (1926–1988); Neal Cassady (1926–1968), with whom he fell in love; William S. Burroughs (1914–1997); the criminal and heroin addict Herbert Huncke (1915–1996); and Gregory Corso (1930–2001), who would also become prominent in the Beat Movement. It was Kerouac who coined the term “beat,” which referred to the spiritual exhaustion they felt in the midst of postwar materialism and conformity they saw as oppressive to the human spirit. In a Harlem apartment in 1948, Ginsburg claims to have had an auditory hallucination of the English poet William Blake (1757–1827) reading his poem “Ah, Sunflower.” People later referred to this experience as his “Blake vision,” and he claimed to have had a number of other visions throughout his life. Ginsberg’s association with Huncke, a lifelong heroin addict and criminal, led to his 1949 arrest as an accessory to Huncke’s of-
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fenses, which included storing stolen goods in his apartment. Ginsberg’s connections at Columbia secured for him a sentence at a psychiatric institute in lieu of jail time. It was while institutionalized that he met the Dadaand Surrealist-inspired writer Carl Solomon. Solomon suffered from bouts of depression and was being treated at the hospital with insulin shock, among other radical therapies. Solomon’s plight was a major influence on Howl, which was originally titled “Howl for Carl Solomon.” Following his return from a trip to Mexico in 1953, Ginsberg settled in San Francisco the following year. There he met and fell in love with an artist’s model, Peter Orlovsky (1933– ), who was to become his lifelong lover. In San Francisco, Ginsberg met other members of the San Francisco Renaissance and poets later associated with the Beats. The poet William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), a major influence on Ginsberg’s work under whom he had studied, wrote an introductory letter to Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982), a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance movement. Rexroth then introduced Ginsberg into the San Francisco poetry world. Inspired by Kerouac’s long jazz poem “Mexico City Blues,” he began work on “Howl for Carl Solomon.” Oddly enough, Ginsberg became known through Kerouac’s and others’ character portrayals in their own works before he established his own literary reputation. During the time period between his graduation from Columbia and 1956, he worked a series of odd jobs as a dishwasher, a welder, and a merchant sailor before deciding to dedicate his life to poetry. Once he did so, however, he actively wrote in addition to promoting the works of other Beat Generation writers such as Corso, Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassady, Orlovsky. Bob Kaufman (1925–1986), Diane di Prima (1934– ), LEROI JONES, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919– ), Michael McClure (1932– ). Included in the wider circle of Ginsberg’s associations were poets connected to the
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Black Mountain College near Asheville, in the mountains of western North Carolina— among them Robert Creeley (1926–2005) and Denise Levertov (1923–1997). The well-traveled Ginsberg also embraced the work of New York poets such as Frank O’Hara (1926–1966) and Kenneth Koch (1925–2002) as well as the verse of San Francisco poets Gary Snyder (1930– ), Philip Whalen (1923–2002), and Lew Welch (1926–1971). Wally Hedrick (1928–2003), a painter and cofounder of the Six Gallery, asked Ginsberg to organize a poetry reading there in 1955. Although reluctant at first, Ginsberg relented and organized the “Six Poets at the Six Gallery,” which took place on October 7, 1955. It was one of the most significant events in Beat Generation history and was afterward known as “The Six Gallery Reading.” The famous six were Rexroth, Snyder, McClure, Whalen, Philip LaMantia (1927–2005), and Ginsberg, who read Howl for the first time that night. Kerouac wrote about the notorious event in his 1958 novel The Dharma Bums and described Ginsberg as reading passionately while intoxicated. Throughout his life, Ginsberg’s poetry readings in general were highly expressive, incorporating the influences of music and chanting inspired by his interest in Eastern religions. He often played a harmonium and was accompanied by a guitarist during his highly popular appearances. Howl impressed Ferlinghetti, who operated the City Lights publishing house in North Beach, California, and it was published as Howl and Other Poems in 1956. The volume featured an introduction by Williams and also included the satirical poem on American values entitled “America”; the politically charged anti-Vietnam War poem “Wichita Vortex Sutra”; “A Supermarket in California”; and “Sunflower Sutra.” It was Howl that established Ginsberg’s reputation as a poet, and the work became a hallmark of the Beat Generation. The poem is written in long lines (a departure from his earlier, more formal style) and is a scathing indictment of society as he saw it—materialistic
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and militaristic. From these forces in society, Ginsberg lamented in the famous opening lines of the poem what he saw as “the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. . . .” While the publication of Howl itself brought Ginsberg acclaim in the United States, it was fraught with vulgar language that resulted in a highly publicized obscenity trial (which implicated Ferlinghetti for publishing and selling the book) that would make his name known around the world. Although the judge eventually ruled that the poem had redeeming social value, the stress of the litigation involved in the ordeal toughened Ginsberg’s resolve for the rest of his life not only as a First Amendment rights activist, but a political spokesman for gay rights, a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, an advocate for the legalization of marijuana and the use of LSD (see also TIMOTHY LEARY), an environmentalist, and an antinuclear activist. Kerouac’s novel On the Road (see JACK KEROUAC), in which Ginsberg figured prominently as the character Carlo Marx, was published shortly after the trial and helped solidify his fame. Although Kerouac had been Ginsberg’s mentor, he somewhat disliked the public spotlight that Ginsberg felt more at ease in, and it was Ginsberg who eventually became known as a key spokesperson of the Beat Generation. In 1957, Ginsberg left San Francisco for Morocco and later moved to Paris with Orlovsky and Corso. They took up residence in a lodging house that was later dubbed the “Beat Hotel.” Burroughs and others joined them shortly thereafter. It was a productive period and was well-documented through the photographic efforts of Harold Chapman (1927– ). During this time period, Ginsberg and Orlovsky traveled to Tangiers to help Burroughs with a manuscript he was working on that would later become his famous Naked Lunch (1959). Ginsberg returned to New York in 1958, haunted by his mother’s death in his absence
abroad. Perhaps second to Howl in fame, his poem “Kaddish” was an homage to his mother after her death at Pilgrim State Hospital in 1956. The inner torment she suffered as a result of her mental illness profoundly affected Ginsberg. The poem was published as Kaddish and Other Poems, 1958–1960 in 1961. Over the next several years, he experimented with psychedelic drugs to enhance his poetry and traveled the world with Orlovsky. The most important place he visited in terms of his own development was India, where they stayed for two years, as he deeply admired Eastern religion. There he learned meditation techniques that he believed would help him in writing poetry. In 1962 and 1963, Ginsberg and Orlovsky traveled around the Far East, where the interest they had already acquired in Zen Buddhism intensified. Ginsberg was also politically active during the mid-1960s, traveling to Communist countries to promote free speech (he was deported from both Cuba and Czechoslovakia for his activities there) and presenting himself as an FBI target at home. Ginsberg moved seamlessly from his Beat years to actively participating in the counterculture of the 1960s. He befriended and toured with some of its leading writers and musicians, among whom were TIMOTHY LEARY, KEN KESEY, Rod McKuen (1933– ), and BOB DYLAN. He is credited with coining the term “flower power” and wrote and recorded his own music. In New York City in 1971, Ginsberg met the Tibetan Buddhist master Cho¨gyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939–1987), who became his friend and teacher for the remainder of his life. He cofounded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, with the poet Anne Waldman (1945– ) in 1973 and taught summer poetry workshops there. Ginsberg’s other volumes of poetry include Reality Sandwiches (1963), The Yage Letters (1963; with Burroughs), Planet News (1968), Airplane Dreams: Compositions from Journals (1968), Indian Journals (1970), The
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Gates of Wrath: Rhymed Poems 1948–1952 (1972), Plutonian Ode (1982), White Shroud: Poems 1980–1985 (1986), and Cosmopolitan Greetings (1994). The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965–1971 (1973) won a National Book Award. In 1994, Rhino Records released a four-disc set of his spoken word recordings entitled Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems and Songs (1949–1993). During the 1960s, he appeared in experimental films such as Pull My Daisy (1959; written by Kerouac). He was also an enthusiastic photographer, and a number of his photographs were published in Photographs (1991) and Snapshot Poetics (1993). In 1993, the French Minister of Culture awarded him the medal of the Order of Arts and Letters. Ginsberg was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and taught as a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College in New York. He died of liver cancer related to complications from hepatitis on
April 5, 1997, in his East Village loft in New York City. BIBLIOGRAPHY Burns, Glen, Great Poets Howl: A Study of Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry, 1943-1955, 1983; Caveney, Graham, Screaming With Joy: The Life of Allen Ginsberg, 1999; Duncan, Michael, Allen Ginsberg, 2005; Felver, Christopher, Beat, 2007; Foster, Edward Halsey, Understanding the Beats, 1992; George-Warren, Holly, ed., The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture, 1999; Heims, Neil, Allen Ginsberg, 2005; Hyde, Lewis, ed., On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg, 1984; Kyger, Joanne, Allen Ginsberg, 1997; Latham, Aaron, Allen Ginsberg: Birth of a Beatnik, 1998; Levine, Philip, Allen Ginsberg, 1926-1997, 1997; Merrill, Thomas F., Allen Ginsberg, 1969; Miles, Barry, Ginsberg: A Biography, 1989; Vendler, Helen Hennessy, American X-rays: Forty Years of Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry, 1996; www.allenginsberg.org.
Giraudoux, Jean (October 29, 1882–January 31, 1944) Playwright, Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Critic, Essayist, Diplomat yppolyte-Jean Giraudoux, as he was christened, introduced his impressionistic plays to a French theater then under the influence of Realism. Drawn largely from Greek and Roman myth and biblical sources, they derive their originality from his carefully constructed dialogue, irony, and exploration of universal contrasts. Giraudoux also wrote novels, essays, and literary criticism. Giraudoux was born in Bellac, France. His father, a civil servant, moved the family around as his job required. Giraudoux attended a local school in Bellac and in 1893 entered the lyce´e of Chaˆteauroux. After completing
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his studies at the E´cole Normale Superie´ure at Lakanal, he went to the University of Munich on a scholarship. During this time he developed a particular interest in German culture and literature. A year at Harvard University in 1907–1908 finished his academic career, after which he entered the diplomatic service. Giraudoux fought in World War I and suffered slight wounds. Giraudoux established himself as a writer of fiction before he embarked on his more famous work in the theater. His early works include L’e´cole des indiffe´rents, consisting of novellas, and Suzanne et le Pacifique (1921). Siegfried et le limousin (1922; My Friend
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from Limousin), an allegorical story about the relationship between France and Germany, is one of his best-known works of fiction and is the basis for his first successful play, Siegfried (1928). Giraudoux also published short stories in French literary reviews. A desire for freedom from the constraints of everyday routine permeates Giraudoux’s other novels. In Aventures de Je´rome Bardini (1930), the prosperous protagonist grows tired of his monotonous life and leaves his family. Among the characters he meets on his sojourns is Kid, a symbol of complete independence. Male´na, the main character of Combat avec l’ange (1927; Combat with the Angel), is wealthy and attractive but fundamentally dissatisfied with her life. She develops an obsession for Jacques of which she is finally cured, and then settles in to accept her life. A desire for freedom recurs in subsequent generations in Choix des Elues (1939). Edme´e, the protagonist, leaves her husband Pierre and their two children, Jacques and Claudie. When she returns to the family many years later, she finds the grown Claudie pining for freedom as she had. Giraudoux entered the theater with the modestly successful Siegfried in 1928. Many of his subsequent plays draw from Greek and Roman mythology as well as biblical and apocryphal sources. Amphitryon 38 (1929) draws from the myth of Jupiter and Alcmene, and the tragedy La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place) uses the story of the Greek embassy to Troy that tried in vain to prevent the Trojan War by persuading the Trojans to return Helen, whom the Trojan prince Paris had stolen from her Greek husband. The English playwright CHRISTOPHER FRY translated this work ´ lectre (1937) is as Tiger at the Gates in 1955. E based on the story of Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces in the Trojan War who was killed by his unfaithful wife on his return home. Electra helps her brother to avenge her father by killing their mother.
In his plays, laden with humor and sometimes described as impressionistic, Giraudoux crafted the dialogue and structure to explore ideas and orchestrate confrontations of opposites, not necessarily aiming to present a realistic drama. The structure of his 1937 play L’Impromptu de Paris provided him with a platform to express ideas on the theater. In the story, the employees at a theater answer questions from a government official who has come to ask about the theater’s work. Giraudoux’s biblical and apocryphal plays include Judith (1931), Sodom and Gomorrha (1943), and Cantique des cantiques (1938; Song of Songs). Judith tells the story of the apocryphal Israelite heroine who kills Holofernes, general of the enemy Assyrian army. In Sodom and Gomorrha (1943), Giraudoux dramatized incompatibility between men and women in the characters of Lia and Jean. The lovers of the biblical Song of Songs, King Solomon and the Shulamite, are modernized characters in Giraudoux’s play, the former as Monsieur le Pre´sident and the latter as a modern woman. Giraudoux’s most famous play, La Folle de Chaillot (1946; The Madwoman of Chaillot), reflects his distaste for the exploits of the wealthy and powerful. Several such characters plot to destroy the area of Chaillot in order to search for oil they believe awaits them under the surface. The “madwoman” Aure´lie and her cohorts will have none of it, and they lure the prospectors into her home and slam a trap door over them. Their symbolic action heralds a new era of peace and happiness. Among Giraudoux’s other plays are Intermezzo (1933) and Ondine (1939). His other works include the film scripts La duchesse de Langeais (1942) and Les anges du pe´che´ (1944; The Angels of Sin); essays on political and other subjects; and literary criticism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY LeSage, Laurent, Jean Giraudoux: His Life and Works, 1959; Mankin, Paul A., Precious Irony:
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The Theatre of Jean Giraudoux, 1971; Reilly, John H., Jean Giraudoux, 1978.
Glass, Philip (January 31, 1937- ) Composer merican avant-garde composer Philip Glass is widely known for his early minimalist style that was heavily influenced by Eastern music after his youthful meeting with sitarist Ravi Shankar. The prolific Glass has composed across the musical spectrum, from movie scores to operas, ballets, concerts and recordings, and has collaborated with artists ranging from WOODY ALLEN to David Bowie. Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland, where his father, Ben, ran a record store. Recordings that didn’t sell made their way home (and Glass, as an adolescent, worked there), so the youngster had early access to a range of music. He was studying music at an early age, including at Peabody Conservatory. At the young age of 15, Glass entered the University of Chicago, learned composition, and graduated with a degree in mathematics and philosophy. He went on to the Julliard School of Music in New York City, where many of his early compositions were performed and he earned an M.A. in composition. Glass went on to Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship to study with composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, whose other students had included AARON COPLAND, Quincy Jones, and MARC BLITZSTEIN. In addition to studying counterpoint and harmony from Boulanger, Glass discovered Indian music when he was hired to transcribe Ravi Shankar’s score for Chappaqua. As a result, the young composer mounted his own experiments in musical expression, composing in rhythmic, recycling figures that were almost hypnotic. The struc-
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tured rhythms of Indian music transformed the young man’s approach to his own work, and, along with influences including classical music and rock, gave birth to Glass’s early signature style, often referred to as minimalism. Glass also discovered experimental theater at about this time, which provided an outlet for his new rhythmically inspired work. In 1967, a theater group he’d become involved with (which included his then- wife JoAnne Akalaitis) moved to New York City and became known as Mabou Mines. Among their performances were works by SAMUEL BECKETT, whom Glass later gave considerable due for his influence: “Non-narrative theater or non-narrative art is not based on theme and development but on a different structure. The influences are not Indian alone. Beckett was a huge influence. So was BRECHT. GENET, too,” he told Helen Tworkov in 1991. The Philip Glass Ensemble formed in New York City in 1968, and continues to perform concerts. He retained his association with Mabou Mines, but otherwise wrote for his group into the late 1970s. Galleries and museums often provided the stage. And Glass didn’t flinch from working to support his music. Among other jobs, he drove a taxi. Glass’s first major recognition arrived after his four and a half-hour opera, Einstein on the Beach (1976), a collaboration with mixed media-inclined theater director Robert Wilson, wowed Europe during its premiere at the Festival d’Avignon. In the fall of that year, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City per-
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formed the piece, which was completely unique. Basically, it was a poetic look at the scientist’s life and legacy, as Glass’s own website explains, a musical profile of Einstein but without a plot. This was the first of Glass’s trilogy of operas about three men who changed the world through their ideas of science, politics, and religion. The second came in 1980 and premiered in Rotterdam by the Netherlands Opera and the Utrechts Symfonie Orkest. Called Satyagraha, which means “truthful,” the piece tells the tale of Mahatma Ghandi’s 20 years in South Africa from the time he was a young man and first developed his ideas about nonviolent protest. The third, Akhnaten, which premiered in 1984 in Stuttgart, Germany, tells of the first monotheist, the Pharoah Akhnaten who was overthrown for his religious vision. Many of Glass’s compositions also have become dance scores, drawing choreographers such as TWYLA THARP and JEROME ROBBINS. In addition, his scores have appeared in movies, including Notes on a Scandal, The Hours, Kundun, and The Truman Show. For all but the last of these, Glass earned an Oscar nomination. His schedule and output remain impressive: Symphony No. 8 was recently recorded and represents a return to orchestral music. In the spring of 2007, Glass’s opera-ballet for children, The Witches of Venice, which was first performed at La Scala, was released on Glass’s own label, Orange Mountain Music,
along with a book. In the fall of 2007, the American Ballet Theatre will perform to Glass’s musical tribute to Chuck Close—an old friend for whom Glass has been a subject in return. And the Metropolitan Opera will revive Satyagraha in the 2007-2008 season in a co-production with the English National Opera. Glass remains involved in his community. In 1996, The New Yorker described how Glass, who with wife Holly has two young children, held something of a master class for the Philharmonia students at the Third Street Music School Settlement in New York. The students performed a string quartet Glass had written for a 1983 Beckett play called Company. For the performance, he sat in the front row.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Glass, Philip. Music by Philip Glass, 1995; Kostelanetz, Richard and Flemming, Robert, Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism, 1999; Maycock, Robert, Glass: A Portrait, by Robert Maycock, 2002; Writings on Glass, ed. By Richard Kostelanetz, 1997. www.glasspages.org. www.newyorker.com. www.nytimes.com. www.peabody.jhu.edu/index.php?searchCriteria= Philip%2BGlass. www.nndb.com. http://research.umbc.edu/_tmoore/glass1.html. www.themodernword.com.
Godard, Jean-Luc (December 3, 1930– ) Director, Critic he filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard has been a prominent figure in the French cinema since the early 1960s. His first ` bout de souffle (1959; feature film, A
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Breathless), established him as the leader of the New Wave, the movement that revitalized the French cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s.
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Godard was born into an upper-middleclass family in Paris and spent much of his childhood in Switzerland. He studied ethnology at the University of Paris, but spent much of his time in discussion at cafe´s and in cinema clubs. Godard taught himself to make films using a small camera he owned and contributed film criticism to the New Wave journal Cahiers du Cine´ma (Notes on the Cinema). Godard’s job working on a dam inspired his first short film, Ope´ration Be´ton (1954). His ` bout de souffle, was profirst feature film, A duced by FRANC¸ OIS TRUFFAUT. Its main character, Michel Poiccard, shoots a police officer and moves in with his American girlfriend, Patricia. He wants to go to Rome, but Patricia turns him in to the authorities, who shoot him. The actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, who appeared in many of Godard’s films, plays Michel. Truffaut, Godard, and other New Wave directors shot their films in an informal style, often improvising scenes and dialogue. Jump cuts, long tracking shots, and sparse, unpol-
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ished production were important elements of New Wave cinema. New Wave directors involved themselves in all aspects of a film’s production. Until 1968, Godard employed an experimental narrative style in his films. Critics sometimes fault him for producing indecipherable plots, but his efforts as a director established him as a leading innovator in modernist cinema. Godard’s films are generally pessimistic and critical of people and society. In Un femme est une femme (1961; A Woman Is a Woman), the actress Anna Karina plays a stripper, Angela, who would like to marry her boyfriend and start a family. Karina, to whom Godard was married for a period of time, starred in leading female roles in many of his movies. When Angela’s husband refuses, she turns to another man to help her conceive a baby. The Austrian director Fritz Lang plays himself in Contempt (1963), based on a story by the Italian writer ALBERTO MORAVIA. Alphaville (1965) is framed in a futuristic scenario that takes place in a town run by a computer, Alpha–60. Lemmy Caution is dispatched to kill Alpha–60’s administrator, Dr. von Braun. Caution destroys Alpha–60, throwing the town into chaos. After killing von Braun, he escapes with his daughter. The main characters in Pierrot le fou (1965; Pierrot the Fool), Ferdinand and Marianne, flee from the lives they have been living in Paris and move to the south of France. Marianne has been involved with gangsters, and her Paris life soon catches up with her. The ensuing turmoil eventually leads to her death, after which Ferdinand resolves to kill himself. He changes his mind too late—the explosives he has strapped to himself ignite. Godard made many other films during the 1960s. Among them are Le petit soldat (1960; The Little Soldier), which deals with the subject of torture in political groups; My Life to Live (1962), concerning a Paris prostitute played by Karina; Une femme marie´e (1965; The Married Woman); Made in U.S.A. (1966), a sordid tale of murder and intrigue set in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Two or Three Things
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I Know About Her (1966); La Chinoise (1967), about young Maoists in Paris; Weekend (1967), a bizarre story of greed, death, murder, and cannibalism meant as a commentary on French society; and One Plus One (1968), featuring THE ROLLING STONES. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Godard abandoned his earlier narrative style and began making didactic and propagandistic films that reflected his increasing devotion to Marxism. Most famous among these is The Joy of Knowledge (1968), consisting of discussion between two people in a dimly lit room. Godard returned to feature films in the late 1970s. His later films include Sauve qui peut la vie (1979; Every Man for Himself); Je vous salve Marie (1984; Hail Mary), a revised and
modernized account of the biblical Mary and Joseph; King Lear (1986); Nouvelle vague (1990; New Wave); Helas pour moi (1993; Woe is Me); JLG by JLG (1994); Forever Mozart (1996); L’Origine du XXIe`me sie`cle (2000; Origin of the 21st Century); E´loge de l’amour (2001; In Praise of Love); Liberte´ et patrie (2002; Liberty and Country) Notre musique (2004; Our Music); and Vrai faux passeport (2006; True False Passport).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cameron, Ian, ed., The Films of Jean-Luc Godard, 1969; Collet, Jean, Jean-Luc Godard, 1970; Kreidel, John Francis, Jean-Luc Godard, 1980; MacCabe, Colin, Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy, 2004.
Golding, William (September 19, 1911–June 19, 1993) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Critic, Essayist, Teacher, Actor ir William Gerald Golding, to give him the title he eventually won as well as his full name, achieved popular success with his novel The Lord of the Flies, a story about a group of boys who become savages after being stranded on an island. This and Golding’s subsequent novels give vivid and memorable pictures of fallen societies in which evil seems to triumph over good. Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 “for his novels, which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today.” Golding was born in St. Columb Minor, near Newquay, Cornwall, England. His mother actively campaigned for women’s suffrage, and his father was a multitalented teacher with interests that ranged from the sciences to music. Golding studied at the Marlborough
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Grammar School, where his father taught, and then at Brasenose College, Oxford. At the latter he abandoned the science course his father wanted for him and studied literature. His first work, Poems, was published in 1934. Upon his graduation, Golding spent several years acting with small theater groups. In 1939, he married Ann Brookfield and began teaching English and philosophy at Bishop Wordsworth’s School in Salisbury. He enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1940 and served in World War II. After the war, Golding returned to his teaching post and began to read Greek literature. The Lord of the Flies (1954) was Golding’s first published novel and proved to be one of his most popular. The title derives from Beelzebub, lord of the flies, a devil figure in ancient religious traditions. The story concerns a group of young boys who have not yet reached their teenage years. During a nuclear
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war, they find themselves stranded on an island with no adults. The boys polarize into factions, one led by the savage and evil hunter Jack Merridew and the other by the more noble Ralph, who advocates a sort of democratic organization. Jack’s hunters triumph, and their cruelty culminates in the murder of Simon, an intelligent boy who wears glasses and is utterly helpless in the face of savagery. The Inheritors (1955), inspired by Golding’s reading of H. G. WELLS’s Outline of History, paints another picture of an amoral, evil human race. Golding had less faith in humanity than Wells, who believed education might steer humanity in a progressive direction. The focus of the novel is the end of the gentle Neanderthal man, according to evolutionary theory the immediate predecessor of homo sapiens, and the dawn of the era of the violent homo sapiens. Wells saw evolution as taking the world in a positive direction and presented the Neanderthals as morally inferior, but Golding, using one of the Neanderthals as his narrator, suggests otherwise. Pincher Martin (1956) switches its focus to a single individual. Told in the form of flashbacks, the story is about Christopher Hadley Martin, the only survivor of a torpedoed British war ship who at the beginning of the novel is drowning. The novel alternates between the story of his desperate and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to survive and flashbacks to his former life. Flashback is also important in the presentation of Free Fall (1959), about Sammy Mountjoy’s quest to find out what in his troubled past caused him to lose his freedom and become trapped in greed. Golding received his M.A. in 1961 and retired from teaching to devote himself to writing. He reviewed books for the Spectator from 1960 to 1962. His next novel, The Spire (1964) adapts its form from a Greek tragedy. Its protagonist, Jocelin, is obsessed with building a spire on the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary. His unwise pursuit of the project leads to tragedy.
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Darkness Visible (1979) is a violent, allegorical novel. Its two main characters are the tragic figure Matthew Septimus, reader of the Bible and victim of trouble in the world, and the less sympathetic Sophy Stanhope. Sophy, who leads a careless life and believes in nothing, involves herself in a failed plot to kidnap the son of an oil sheik. The aftermath of the scheme leaves Matthew dead. The Paper Man (1984) is Golding’s attack on the academic world. The overambitious professor Rick L. Tucker relentlessly goes after the story’s protagonist, novelist Wilfred Barclay. Golding’s other works include The Pyramid (1967); The Scorpion God (1971), consisting of three stories set in ancient civilizations; Rites of Passage (1980); A Moving Target (1982); An Egyptian Journal (1985); Close Quarters (1987); and Fire Down Below (1989). His play The Brass Butterfly (1958) was adapted from “Envoy Extraordinary,” one of the stories in The Scorpion God. Golding was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1955, received an honorary doctorate of letters from Sussex University in 1970, and was knighted in 1988. He has been most admired for his willingness to be completely honest about his vision of the dark side of human nature and the utter absence of any sign of God, an honesty that was particularly striking in the 1950s, when many thinkers in England and the United States were expressing a more positive view. Those who saw their efforts as based on denial were among Golding’s greatest admirers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Boyd, S. J., The Novels of William Golding, 1990; Dick, Bernard F., William Golding, rev. ed., 1987; Gindin, James Jack, William Golding, 1988; McCarron, Kevin, William Golding, 1994; Subbarao, V. V., William Golding: A Study, 1987.
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Goldwyn, Samuel (August 17, 1879–January 31, 1974) Producer amuel Goldwyn, one of the best-known names among Hollywood producers, pursued a unique and successful career with the establishment of his own independent studios. After beginning his film career at the inception of the development of Hollywood, he discovered and promoted many actors, writers, and directors who would later become famous. One of six children of a used furniture dealer, Goldwyn was born Schmuel Gelbfisz into a Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland. He left home when he was young, having hardly any money to his name and no transportation. Goldwyn eventually found his way to Birmingham, England, where he had relatives. He lived with them for a number of years as Samuel Goldfish after they Anglicized his name. By 1898, Goldwyn had scrounged enough money together to cross the Atlantic and emigrate to the United States via Canada. He took a job sweeping floors in a glove factory in Gloversville, New York, before taking a sales position in the industry. Goldwyn’s strong talents as a salesman quickly moved him up the ladder of business success, and within several years he had worked his way up to vice president of sales and become one of the most successful glove salesmen in the United States. After becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1902, Goldwyn developed an interest in the fledgling film industry. Having moved to Manhattan, he married Blanche Lasky, the sister of vaudeville actor-turned-producer Jesse L. Lasky (1880–1958), in 1910. Their marriage would end in divorce in 1915. He frequently attended movies and eventually formed a business partnership with his brother-in-law, and with theater owner Adolph Zukor (1873–1976). Working with a budding young talent in director CECIL B. DEMILLE, they made their first feature film entitled The
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Squaw Man (1914) for a young Hollywood. The film was one of Hollywood’s first fulllength feature films. Goldwyn, who was easily provoked and had an explosive temper, left the partnership after several years—a decision that was also attributable to the disintegration of his marriage to Lasky. The fledgling company he left behind eventually evolved into Paramount Pictures. Goldwyn, for his part, formed a business relationship with two Broadway producers, Edgar (1875–1944) and Archibald Selwyn (1877–1959), in 1916. Combining their surnames, they dubbed the company “Goldwyn Pictures Corporation.” Goldwyn liked the name and legally changed his own to match it. The company enjoyed a measure of success, and the roaring “Leo the Lion” trademark that originated with it still appears at the beginning of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films today. Marcus Loew’s (1870–1927) Metro Pictures Corporation acquired Goldwyn Pictures Corporation in the 1920s, and in 1924 it acquired Louis B. Mayer’s production company, thus resulting in the name Metro-GoldwynMayer. Although Goldwyn’s name remained in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer title, he was never a part of the enterprise. He was forced from the company before its merger and split off to form Samuel Goldwyn Inc. He opened a studio on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, from where he would operate a successful film business for thirty-five years. His penchant for locating or utilizing talent that would sell led to his discovery of actor Gary Cooper (1901–1961). He employed some of the best directors of his day, including William Wyler (1902–1981), and hired talented writers such as LILLIAN HELLMAN, Sidney Howard (1831–1939), and Ben Hecht (1894–1964).
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Among Goldwyn’s successful early films were Arrowsmith (1931), Dodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937), Stella Dallas (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Little Foxes (1941), and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). The last of these won seven Oscars, and a number of his other films were nominated for Academy Awards. United Artists released all of Goldwyn’s films during the 1930s, but RKO took over that role in 1941. Goldwyn also took up the practice of charging other producers to use stars he had under contract. By the 1930s, Goldwyn had developed an interest in musicals. He made a number of them with Danny Kaye (1913–1987) and in 1938 released The Goldwyn Follies, a film about a movie producer who chooses a young woman to review his films from an average person’s perspective. He produced, through MGM, the 1955 smash hit Guys and Dolls, featuring an all-star cast consisting of MARLON BRANDO, Jean Simmons (1929– ), FRANK SINATRA, and Vivian Blaine (1921–1995). Goldwyn’s last production, a 1959 film version of GEORGE GERSHWIN’S opera Porgy and Bess, starred singer Pearl Bailey (1918–1990), Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925–1990), SIDNEY POITIER, and Dorothy Dandridge (1922–1965). Although the film won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture, it proved to be a popular and financial failure. In 1925, Goldwyn had married actress Frances Howard, and the pair remained together for the rest of his life. Their son, Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., became part of his father’s film business and established a company dedicated to preserving his work after his death. Goldwyn passed away at his Los Angeles home at the age of ninety-two. Warner Brothers purchased Samuel Goldwyn Studios in the 1980s.
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Ironically, the vast majority of Goldwyn’s involvement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer came posthumously after the company acquired the rights to most of his films. Throughout his career, Goldwyn earned a reputation as a heartless and relentless businessman who was difficult to get along with— traits that led to numerous problems in his business relationships. For these reasons, Goldwyn functioned best outside of partnerships. As the boss of his own company, he prospered for about thirty-five years and produced more than seventy films. His lack of formal education, combined with the fact that English was not his first language, led to numerous famous misstatements stemming from poor mastery of the language. Although ruthless in his business ventures, he was quite savvy and possessed an uncanny knack for orchestrating projects that would bring financial success. Aside from the numerous Oscars his films won, Goldwyn received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1946 and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1957. His will established the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation, a well-funded charitable entity that sponsors writing awards and Hollywood benefit projects.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Berg, A. Scott, Goldwyn: A Biography, 1989; Easton, Carol, The Search for Sam Goldwyn: A Biography, 1989; Epstein, Lawrence J., Samuel Goldwyn, 1981; Marx, Arthur, Goldwyn: A Biography of a Man Behind the Myth, 1976. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ goldwyn_s.html. www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com.
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Goodman, Benjamin David (May 30, 1909–June 13, 1986) Bandleader, Clarinetist ubbed the “King of Swing” in the 1930s, Benny Goodman was the driving force behind the Swing Era and left an indelible imprint on American music in the first half of the twentieth century. Goodman was also among the most technically gifted clarinetists of his time and influenced a generation of players who followed him. Goodman was the ninth of twelve children, born Benjamin David Goodman in Chicago, Illinois, into a poor Jewish family. His father, David Goodman, was an immigrant from Warsaw and worked both in stockyards and as a tailor. Goodman’s father signed him and two of his brothers up for music lessons at a local synagogue when he was ten, and it was then that he first began to play the clarinet. David Goodman’s death in a car accident in 1926 was to prove devastating to his son, who was on the brink of success and had hoped to be able to help his father financially. Clarinetist Franz Schoepp, a classically trained musician who played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, taught Goodman beginning in 1919. In 1920, he began playing in the Boys Club band at Jane Addams’s Hull House, taking lessons there from director James Sylvester. From his youth, Goodman admired New Orleans jazz musicians who had moved north to Chicago, particularly clarinetists such as Johnny Dodds (1892–1940), Leon
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Benny Goodman (seated) (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-130041)
Roppolo (1902–1943), and Jimmie Noone (1895–1944). Goodman began to play clarinet professionally at a young age. In 1921, his onstage imitation of vaudeville clarinetist Ted Lewis (1890–1971) established him as a performer. The following year, he played with the Austin High School Gang, which included cornetist Jimmy McPartland (1907–1991), drummer Dave Tough (1907–1948), clarinetist and saxophonist Frank Teschemacher (1906–1932), and tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Bud Freeman (1906–1991). In 1923, Goodman met and performed with cornetist and pianist Bix Beiderbecke (1903–1931), who proved to be another formative influence on his style. When Goodman was sixteen, he joined the Ben Pollack Orchestra, which was then based in Los Angeles. Pollack (1903–1971) was a noted drummer and bandleader. The group eventually returned to Chicago and then moved on to Manhattan. Goodman recorded his first songs with Pollack’s orchestra in 1926 and two years later began making records under his own name. His first solo recording, “He’s the Last Word,” was released in 1928. In the late 1920s, Goodman settled in New York City, where he made a name for himself playing as a session musician at recording studios, for radio programs, and in Broadway shows. In 1934, he assembled his own big band. He later auditioned for NBC’s popular radio program Let’s Dance. His agent, producer John Hammond (1910–1987), helped bolster his career with a suggestion that Goodman hire pianist and bandleader Fletcher Henderson (1897–1952) to write arrangements for his band. Goodman took his band on the road for what was to be—until its end—an unsuccessful tour sponsored by the Music Corporation of America. Disillusioned with the band’s fail-
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ures around the United States, he was on the verge of quitting when he made his last scheduled appearance at the Palomar Ballroom in 1935. Goodman and the band, accompanied by some additional well-known musicians of the day, created a phenomenon playing to a wildly enthusiastic crowd. For the next few years, his band was one of the hottest commodities on the music market. Goodman’s performances at the Palomar are considered to mark the beginning of the Swing Era. In 1938, he and his band played a concert regarded by some as one of the most influential and significant in the history of jazz at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The lineup featured, among other musicians, members of COUNT BASIE’S and DUKE ELLINGTON’S bands. Director Busby Berkeley’s (1895–1976) musical Hollywood Hotel (1938), in which the main character is a saxophonist in Goodman’s band, earned rave reviews and further popularized the group. On the suggestion of the stride pianist and arranger Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981), Hammond attended a performance by guitarist Charlie Christian (1916–1942) in Oklahoma City in 1939. Goodman showed no interest in Hammond’s initial attempts to bring the two musicians together. One evening, however, Hammond brought Christian onstage with Goodman’s band unbeknownst to the latter. Christian pleasantly surprised Goodman with his guitar work, and the band’s performance electrified that evening’s audience. He remained with Goodman’s band for the next two years before striking out on his own and soon thereafter succumbing to an early death from tuberculosis. Goodman’s popularity soared in the late 1930s. He played with various musical setups, including a trio, a quartet, a sextet, and a big band. As the Big Band and Swing eras declined, their musical evolutions such as bebop and cool jazz gained popularity. Initially, Goodman kept an open mind about the changes in popular musical taste and made critically acclaimed bop recordings for Capitol Records with such musicians as pianist
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Buddy Greco (1926– ), saxophonist Zoot Sims (1925–1985), and saxophonist Wardell Gray (1921–1955). Soon, however, Goodman rejected the new musical trends and returned to his beloved Big Band and Swing arrangements. He also turned to classical clarinet influences. In 1949, Goodman undertook a period of study with renowned British classical clarinetist Reginald Kell (1906–1981). As a result of his studies, he adjusted his embouchure and learned new fingering techniques. Goodman began to commission and premiere works for clarinet and symphony orchestra by some of the world’s leading composers, including BE´ LA BARTO´ K, PAUL HINDEMITH, and AARON COPLAND. He recorded songs by IGOR STRAVINSKY, LEONARD BERNSTEIN, CLAUDE DEBUSSY, and other internationally famous composers and played with leading American orchestras. Goodman generally performed swing music in his later years but also performed classical music on occasion. He continued to record and perform with small groups. The exception to this was his work with the singer and guitarist George Benson (1943– ) on his album Seven Comes Eleven (1975). Early on in his career, Goodman earned a reputation as a tenacious, consistent, and reliable musician and bandleader. On the flip side, those who played with him sometimes resented what they considered his arrogant and demanding nature. Goodman left another important mark on American music as a pioneer in bringing together racially mixed musical lineups. In addition to touring, he portrayed Professor Magenbruch in the film A Song Is Born (1948) and appeared as himself in numerous other movies and television specials. Goodman’s songs remain popular choices for movie and television soundtracks to this day. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1982 and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1986. After his death, his musical papers were donated to Yale University.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Collier, James Lincoln, Benny Goodman and the Swing Era, 1989; Connor, D. Russell, Benny Goodman: Listen to His Legacy, 1988; Connor,
D. Russell, Benny Goodman: Wrappin’ It Up, 1996; Firestone, Ross, Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life & Times of Benny Goodman, 1993; www.bennygoodman.com.
Gordimer, Nadine (November 20, 1923– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Essayist n a narrative style often characterized as humorless, unsentimental, complex, and challenging, the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer sets a variety of characters against the backdrop of South Africa’s political and social climate and shows in intimate and often startling detail the impact of the policies of apartheid on individual lives. Her works examine many facets of racial relations and the consequences of racial segregation policies. Her aim is not to suggest solutions but to deepen our understanding of the problem as it affects human beings like ourselves. Gordimer received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991; the committee described her as one “who through her magnificent epic writing has—in the words of Alfred Nobel— been of very great benefit to humanity.” Gordimer was born in the mining town of Springs, Transvaal, South Africa. Her mother was English, and her father was a Jewish-Lithuanian immigrant and a jeweler. Gordimer liked to read and write as a child, and her first story appeared in print when she was 15. She studied English literature at the University of Witwatersrand. By this time, she had already developed her opposition to the policies of apartheid in South Africa, and the impact of the country’s racial segregation laws on the lives of its citizens is the major theme in her writing. Gordimer’s first book of short stories, The Soft Voice of the Serpent, was published in 1952, followed by Six Feet of the Country
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(1956). Her first novel, The Lying Days, appeared in 1953. The protagonist of A World of Strangers (1958) is typical of her many naive and liberal-minded characters. Toby Hood, a London publisher who has come to South Africa to visit an extension of his firm, becomes involved in South Africa’s dilemmas and decides to remain there permanently. Occasion for Loving (1963), which earned Gordimer more critical acclaim than anything she had yet written, examines the lives of two couples. Ann Davis, who is married to Boaz Davis, researcher of African musical instru-
Nadine Gordimer (쑖 Topham / The Image Works)
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ments, has a brief affair with the black artist Gideon Shibalo. The other couple consists of a professor who studies the history of southern Africa and his wife, Jessie. The Late Bourgeois World (1966), banned in South Africa, was the first of Gordimer’s novels to win international acclaim. The narrative unfolds during a pivotal day in Liz Van De Sant’s life and is set against the backdrop of the failure of liberalism in South Africa. Liz’s ex-husband, Max, was a member of an outlawed political group in South Africa. Liz learns that Max has drowned himself and taken with him some incriminating papers. When surviving members of his group approach her for financial help, she ultimately chooses to assist them. Burger’s Daughter (1970), noteworthy for its experimental syntax in which Gordimer leaves out quotation marks, examines the life and self-discovery of Rosa Burger, the daughter of parents who were political activists. Her father was imprisoned for his activities and died behind bars. Rosa, too, grows up and finds herself jailed for political activity. Gordimer’s 1973 novel A Guest of Honour won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The action takes place in a Central African setting but examines the same racial divisions present in her South African novels. Evelyn Bray is a former British administrative officer who had been active in working for the country’s independence. Bray returns to the newly liberated country as a guest of honor, takes a minor post in the new government, and finds himself in opposition to the Neocolonialists. In the end, Bray strays from his ideals and dies in the tumultuous political atmosphere. In July’s People (1981), Gordimer orchestrates a racial role reversal. When political tensions rise in South Africa, Bam and Maureen Smales, who have always treated their longtime black servant, July, very kindly, find themselves under July’s protection. Again, Gordimer omits quotation marks in the text, substituting dashes instead. My Son’s Story (1990) relates the emotional and psychological struggle of Will, a black youth who finds
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his father with a white woman who, like his father, is an antiapartheid activist. With None to Accompany Me (1994), Gordimer begins to write about the postapartheid era in South Africa, taking as her protagonist Vera Stark, an aging white attorney with the Legal Activist Foundation who is working for the restoration of land taken during government relocation programs. Vera’s personal life is as chaotic as the social climate. Her son in London is getting divorced, she is unhappy with her husband, and her daughter begins a relationship with a woman. Her black friends, Didymus and Sibongile Maqoma, have been exiled members of “the Movement” and have their own problems to overcome within the group and outside of it. The House Gun (1998) also takes place in post-apartheid South Africa. In her story, Harald and Claudia Lindgard have been living in an illusion. Liberal-minded but complacent, they have distanced themselves from South Africa’s political turmoil. The shocking arrest of their son, Duncan, an architect, turns their lives upside down. Duncan, accused (and guilty) of murdering an ex-lover, forces his parents to confront their historically violent surroundings. In The Pickup (2001), Gordimer explores racial and societal themes through the story of a woman who forms a relationship with an auto mechanic after her car breaks down in the midst of a busy street. Her latest novel, Get a Life (2005), concerns a protagonist who is an environmental activist and endures a period of quarantine at his parents’ home after undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer. Among Gordimer’s other works are the novels Friday’s Footprint (1960), Not for Publication (1965), The Conservationist (1974; winner of the Booker McConnell Prize), and A Sport of Nature (1987); the short-story collections A Soldier’s Embrace (1980), Loot: And Other Stories (2003), and Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black: And Other Stories (2007); The Black Interpreters (1973), a study of African literature; and Writ-
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ing and Being (1995), a collection of essays. She has lectured widely in the United States.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Clingman, Stephen, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History From the Inside, 2d ed., 1992; Cooke, John, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer:
Private Lives/Public Landscapes, 1985; Head, Dominic, Nadine Gordimer, 1994; Heywood, Christopher, Nadine Gordimer, 1983; Newman, Judie, Nadine Gordimer, 1988; Oliphant, Andries Walter, ed., A Writing Life: Celebrating Nadine Gordimer, 1998; Temple-Thurston, Barbara, Nadine Gordimer Revisited, 1999.
Gorky, Maxim (March 28, 1868–June 14, 1936) Novelist, Playwright, Essayist he Soviet writer and revolutionary Maxim Gorky was instrumental in founding the literary school of Socialist Realism, the Soviet Union’s only officially sanctioned literary style for more than fifty years. His work exerted a profound influence on later Soviet writers. Gorky was born Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. His father, an upholsterer, died when he was five years old, and he spent the remainder of his childhood with his maternal grandparents, both of whom had a profound influence on him. Gorky’s grandfather, a former Volga boatman and a dyer, taught him to read, and his grandmother’s love of telling stories helped shape his sensibility. He received less than two years of schooling and was sent to work at odd jobs before his tenth birthday. At the young age of 12, Gorky left home and took a job washing dishes on a Volga steamer. His boss, a cook named Smury, sparked his interest in literature. Gorky moved to Kazan in 1884 and continued working in menial jobs while he tried to educate himself by reading on his own. After surviving a suicide attempt in 1887, he left Kazan and became interested in the revolutionary ideas gaining popularity in Russia. He first associated with a Populist revolutionary, Mikhail Romas.
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Gorky adopted his pseudonym (meaning “bitter”) in 1892, the year his first story, “Makar Chudra,” was published in The Caucasus. In 1896, he married Ekaterina Pavlovna Vol-
Maxim Gorky (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-04931)
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zhina. The publication of Sketches and Stories two years later brought him widespread fame in Russia. Romantic portrayals of the Russian lower classes, outcasts, criminals, and the poor, among whom Gorky had spent much of his time, characterized his early stories. One of his most famous, “Twenty-Six Men and a Girl” (1899), depicts harsh working conditions in a Russian bakery modeled on a bakery in which Gorky worked in the 1880s. In Foma Gordeyev (1899), Gorky’s first novel, the confused son (Foma) of a wealthy merchant (Ignat Gordeyev) rebels against his father’s lifestyle and values, preferring instead to seek out meaning in life. Mother (1906), the most revolutionary of his early novels, glorifies the revolutionary spirit then growing in Russia and portrays socialism as a necessary step for the people of the country. Among Gorky’s many plays, the most famous is The Lower Depths (1902), a title that stemmed from his observations of what he called “the lower depths” of society he observed during his post–suicide attempt wanderings around Russia. By the time of its production, Gorky was a familiar figure to tsarist censors, who had all but banned his play Smug Citizens. The censors permitted The Lower Depths, however, and it became an international success. The characters in the play lead miserable lives working for the tyrranical Mikhail Kostylev. A roaming philosopher, Luka, appears on the scene full of comforting words and advice for the sufferers. The character of Satin scoffs at Luka’s passive acceptance of oppressive circumstances and reflects Gorky’s own advocacy of revolutionary action. In the early 1900s Gorky became interested in Marxism and joined the Social Democratic Party; when the party split into two factions, he sided with the more revolutionary Bolsheviks. Tsarist police arrested him for his participation in the 1905 revolution, and his release followed a storm of international protest. In St. Petersburg he founded the Bolshevik paper Novaya Zhizn (New Life), and in 1906 he traveled to the United States with his mis-
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tress, Maria Andreeva. The incident sparked an uproar and resulted in expulsion from their hotel. He subsequently settled in Capri, Italy, where he founded a sort of Bolshevik training school. He returned to Russia in 1914. Gorky’s autobiographical trilogy (1914–1923) covers the early years of his life. My Childhood (1914) concerns his difficult early years from age 3 to age 11, a time span that included the deaths of both of his parents and the family’s plunge into poverty. The second volume, In the World (1916) covers his adolescence. My Universities (1923), the third, details Gorky’s years living in Kazan, his suicide attempt, and the beginning of his devotion to revolutionary action. In these works, he made more of an attempt to bring out the personalities of individual characters than he had done in previous novels. The Artomonov Business (1925) depicts the rise of a large family enterprise—a linen factory—after the freeing of the serfs in 1861 and its subsequent demise after the Bolshevik Revolution. From 1925 to 1936 Gorky worked on The Life of Klim Samgin, a comprehensive view of the Russian intelligentsia in the years leading up to the 1917 revolution. The central character, Klim Samgin, is a liberal intellectual whom Gorky portrays as a weakminded, selfish, and hypocritical opponent of real change through revolution. Due to poor health, Gorky spent several years in Sorrento, Italy, in the 1920s. He returned to Russia in 1928, was instrumental in the formation of the Soviet Writers Union, and became its first chairman in 1934. He was a major contributor to the development of Socialist Realism, the literary style Soviet leaders would demand of the country’s writers until the 1980s. Gorky’s other works include Three of Them (1900), The Life of Matvey Kozhemyakin (1910), essays, and biographical works on Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, and Leonid Andreyev.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Borras, F. M., Maxim Gorky: The Writer, 1967;
Levin, Dan, Stormy Petrel: The Life and Work of Maxim Gorky, 1986; Scherr, Barry P., Maxim Gorky, 1988.
Graham, Bill (January 8, 1931–October 25, 1991) Rock Concert Promoter y the end of his life, the German-American Bill Graham’s company Bill Graham Presents had become the most successful concert promoting outfit in American history. He was responsible for popularizing many of the biggest names in rock and roll, among other genres, during his lifetime and was also noted for his efforts to organize large-scale benefit concerts. Graham was born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin. He was the youngest son of a Russian Jewish family that settled in Germany before Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. His father died in an accident just two days after he was born. Faced with the increasing difficulties Jews had in making a living in Nazi Germany, Graham’s mother placed him and his younger sister in a Berlin orphanage so she could obtain work. Both he and his sister were in France as exchange students when the German army invaded, but they escaped the Holocaust by making a harrowing journey with a Red Cross worker and the other students across the Pyrenees. Not all of the children, including Graham’s sister, survived. Their mother died at the camps at Auschwitz. Two of his older sisters survived the Holocaust and eventually joined him in the United States. Graham made his way to New York City and for a time stayed in a foster home in the Bronx. After other children teased him about his last name, he changed “Grajonca” to “Graham.” He attended DeWitt Clinton High School and later the City College of New
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York. In 1951, Graham was drafted into the U.S. Army, though he was not yet a U.S. citizen. He served in the Korean War, earning the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. Following the war, he worked as a waiter in Catskill Mountains resorts in New York before moving to San Francisco, where his sister Rita lived, in the early 1960s. He soon reunited with his other sister who had escaped to the United States. In San Francisco, Graham, having studied business, tried his hand at a corporate job. His aims changed, however, when he attended a free concert at Golden Gate Park, where he met the San Francisco Mime Troupe and took a considerable pay cut to assume the role of its manager in 1965. His first concert production was a benefit for the group in a San Francisco loft that far surpassed anyone’s expectations of success and starred 1960s counterculture figures such as ALLEN GINSBERG, the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919– ), and the rock bands Jefferson Airplane and The Fugs. In addition to managing the mime troupe, Graham started producing concerts. He partnered with Chet Helms (1942–2005) to produce one of his first shows, featuring the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. With the success of the concert, Graham (without Helms’s prior knowledge) continued to promote the band with the permission of its manager, Albert Grossman (1926–1986), BOB DYLAN’S longtime manager. Graham poured his efforts into promoting major artists and bands of the 1960s counter-
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culture, including Janis Joplin (1943–1970), the GRATEFUL DEAD, Country Joe and the Fish, THE ROLLING STONES, and Jefferson Airplane. Enormously successful at his chosen profession, he soon became the top promoter of rock and roll music. Few ideas were too unusual for Graham, as he brought together different genres of music into single events and ensured that his concerts employed the best sound, lighting, and other amenities available. As owner of the famous venues Fillmore West and Winterland in San Francisco, as well as New York’s Fillmore East, he had little difficulty attracting the most promising up-andcoming bands to play during the 1960s. Graham also used the venues to promote unknown acts on off nights, and he was instrumental in popularizing the band Santana, singer Eddie Money (1949– ), and countless others. Over the course of his lifetime Graham managed the R& B singer Aaron Neville (1941– ), the Arizona-based rock band Gin Blossoms, guitarist Joe Satriani (1956– ), and countless other artists and bands. A longtime promoter of the Rolling Stones tours, Graham felt snubbed when lead singer Mick Jagger dropped him for the band’s Steel Wheels tour in favor of Canadian promoter Michael Cohl’s (1948– ) The BCL Group in 1989. In the 1970s, Graham closed his Fillmore venues in New York and San Francisco in an effort to take time off. After a short stay on a Greek island, he grew restless and threw himself back into promoting concerts—primarily at small venues at first. His return to larger venues came when he promoted the SNACK concert, starring Dylan, NEIL YOUNG, and members of The Band. In the 1980s, he helped found the Shoreline Amphitheatre in San Francisco, which became a major venue for outdoor rock concerts in the Bay Area. In the later years of his life, Graham focused on promoting large-scale benefit concerts, including the American part of the Live Aid Concert for African Famine Relief (1985), the Amnesty International tours
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A Conspiracy of Hope (1986) and Human Rights Now! (1988), and In-Concert Against AIDS (1989). Graham’s efforts to mastermind large humanitarian benefit concerts did not diminish his fierce competitive nature when it came to contenders for his spots. He has been described as a “difficult personality” and was known to burst into fits of anger when events failed to go according to plan. He used his “Day on the Green” shows on the West Coast to challenge rival promoters, to whom he derogatorily referred as “Joe Schlitz.” By the end of his career, he had all but monopolized concert promotions, including establishing agreements with universities that prevented student organizations from promoting their own shows. During the 1980s, he helped mastermind a ticket selling monopoly in the Bay Area by teaming up with BASS Tickets (which later became TicketMaster) to demolish small ticket distribution companies and significantly drive up the price of concert tickets. The price-gouging angered and disgusted many musicians, and the American grunge band Pearl Jam waged the most vocal protest against the TicketMaster monopoly. His masterful talents as a concert promoter were indisputable, however, and he was said to care about his acts and their fans. Graham was the first promoter to demand that medical personnel be available at his shows, and he contributed generously to the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. Aside from masterminding concert productions, Graham pursued a number of side interests. He was involved in the manufacture and distribution of psychedelic concert posters. Graham’s interest in acting bore fruit in 1979, when he appeared as a concert promoter in director FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of the Polish-English author JOSEPH CONRAD’S novel Heart of Darkness (1902). He also played a small part as a promoter in director Oliver Stone’s (1946– ) film The Doors (1991) and appeared
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as Lucky Luciano in director Barry Levinson’s (1942– ) film Bugsy (1991). In 1991, Graham, his girlfriend Melissa Gold, and pilot Steve Kahn died when their helicopter crashed into a high-voltage tower in poor weather near Vallejo, California. Following several transformations after his death, Graham’s company Bill Graham Presents evolved into Live Nation and became the largest concert promotion company in the world. The San Francisco Civic Auditorium was renamed the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in his honor. Many noted rock stars were present for his well-attended funeral at Golden Gate Park. Among the numerous honors and awards Graham received during his lifetime were
MTV’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Humanitarian Award of B’nai B’rith, the City of Hope Spirit of Life Award, and the American Friends of Hebrew University’s Scopus Award. The Bill Graham Foundation was established after his death and awards grants to various nonprofit groups that focus on the arts, education, music, and the environment.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Glatt, John, Rage & Roll: Bill Graham and the Selling of Rock, 1993; Graham, Bill, Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out, 2004. www.billgrahamfoundation.org.
Graham, Martha (May 11, 1894–April 1, 1991) Choreographer, Dancer n an era when American dance was poorly defined and considered little more than popular entertainment, Martha Graham’s revolutionary techniques in choreography, costuming, musical accompaniment, and set design defined contemporary dance and lent it status as an art form equal in importance to European ballet. Graham was the eldest daughter born into a strict but prosperous Presbyterian family in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Her father, George Graham, was a psychiatrist, and her mother was Jane Beers. Graham was well-educated, and her father loved to play music and sing for the family. However, his enthusiasm for entertainment did not make him an advocate of his daughter pursuing an artistic career. In an effort to alleviate her sister’s respiratory illness, Graham’s family moved to Santa Barbara, California, in 1908. After seeing a poster for a dance performance by Ruth St.
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Denis, Graham asked her father to take her. The performance was a turning point in her life, and from that time onwards, to her father’s chagrin, she determined to devote herself to dance. It was not until her father’s death in 1916, however, that she was fully able to do so. After graduating from high school in 1913, Graham attended Cumnock School, a junior college that offered both academic and artistic training. Upon her graduation in 1916, she enrolled at the Denishawn Dance School in Los Angeles, where she studied under St. Denis and Ted Shawn. St. Denis and Shawn ran the only dance school at the time that did not place emphasis on traditional ballet, and the pair disagreed on Graham’s potential (it was Shawn who held a positive view of her abilities). Graham was twenty-two years old—an advanced age for a beginning dancer—when she
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Martha Graham (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62116601)
began to dance at Denishawn, Some of her instructors told her she had passed the ideal age to start dancing and that her body was not that of a dancer’s. Undeterred, Graham worked hard to train her body and refine her technique. In 1920, Shawn crafted an Aztec dance entitled Xochitl for her. During the 1920s, she toured with the dance school’s company, and she settled in Greenwich Village in New York in 1923. There she made her way onto Broadway dancing with the Greenwich Village Follies. In 1924 she took a teaching position in Rochester at the Eastman School of Music, where she took on direction of the school’s fledgling dance department and began to create her own dances. After eventually growing dissatisfied with the school’s rules, she returned to New York and taught dance from a classroom at
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Carnegie Hall. She made her concert debut at the 48th Street Theater in New York in 1926. In 1927, Graham founded the Dance Repertory Theater, later called the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance. At that time she befriended Rothschild heiress Bethsabe´e de Rothschild, who later founded the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel (1965) and made Graham its first director. When Graham entered the choreographic world, American dance was relatively ill-defined compared to well-established European dance. European dance derived from stiff tradition and was considered a higher form of art than American dancing, which had absorbed various informal influences such as folk dance and vaudeville. But the loosely defined American dance style, combined with the talent and charisma of American dancers like Isadora Duncan and St. Denis, provided Graham with a perfect environment for her choreographic career. Duncan, St. Denis, and Shawn drew on exotic influences—Greek mythology, Native American tradition, Asian, and other cultures—for their onstage work. Noted early dances such as Revolt (1927) and Fragments (1928) saw Graham beginning to develop her stark, angular style of abstraction that derived from controlled breathing and movement . She really came into her own, however, with Heretic (1929), in which her white garb contrasted sharply with the black costumes of opposing dancers. The composer and pianist Louis Horst (1884–1964), who would become a lifelong collaborator in Graham’s productions, accompanied on piano. Graham danced a solo part on a bare stage in Lamentation (1930) dressed in a tube of jersey fabric, portraying the very embodiment of anguish and torment. That same year she appeared in a critically acclaimed production of IGOR STRAVINSKY’S Rite of Spring. As with any new development in art, audiences and critics were initially skeptical of Graham’s early presentations. Characterized by a sparsity and lack of flair audiences were unused to, her performances nevertheless
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demonstrated revolutionary, highly emotional movement that began to redefine dance. The 1930s proved to be successful years for Graham, bringing Americana-infused productions such as Primitive Mysteries (1931), American Provincial (1934), and Frontier (1935). With Frontier, she began a long and fruitful collaboration with sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988). Talented composers such as AARON COPLAND and SAMUEL BARBER began to lend their musical scores to her creations. Chronicle (1936), a pioneer work in bringing social issues to the dance stage, marked another major milestone in Graham’s career. During the 1930s, Graham also taught at both Bennington College and New York University. The American dance instructor Martha Hill (1900–1995) directed the dance departments at both schools and served as the longtime dance director at the Juilliard School. Graham helped found the dance department at Juilliard. Among her students at the various places she taught were Betty Ford (wife of President Gerald Ford), actor GREGORY PECK, singer Madonna, and director/actor WOODY ALLEN. The literary community inspired later works such as Letter to the World (1940), Deaths and Entrances (1943), Cave of the Heart (1946), and Errand into the Maze (1947). The year 1958 saw Graham’s largest and most complex work to date, Clytemnes-
tra, accompanied with a score from the Egyptian-American composer Halim El-Dabh (1924– ). The same year, however, marked the beginning of a series of personal tragedies, as she lost her mother, Horst, and her lighting designer Jean Rosenthal all in the next decade. As age took its toll on Graham’s dancer’s body, she began to take on less demanding roles. But she remained active in dance until her death in 1991, when she died of cardiac arrest at the age of ninety-six. Graham delivered her last performance as a dancer at the age of seventy-five and finished her final ballet, Maple Leaf Rag, in 1990. Graham’s legacy includes more than 180 works as creator and/or director. In 1996, Gerald Ford awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given by the United States Government. She also received the Medal of Honor from the city of Paris. Her autobiography, Blood Memory, was published posthumously in 1991.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Graham, Martha, Blood Memory, 1991; DE MILLE, AGNES, Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham, 1991; Freedman, Russell, Martha Graham: A Dancer’s Life, 1998; McDonagh, Don, Martha Graham: A Biography, 1973; Stodelle, Ernestine, Deep Song: The Dance Story of Martha Graham, 1984.
Grahame, Kenneth (March 8, 1859–July 6, 1932) Writer of Children’s Books, Short-Story Writer emembered chiefly for his classic children’s tale The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame published relatively little in his lifetime. The work was preceded
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by his two major volumes of short stories, The Golden Age and Dream Days, mostly tales of the happy lives of a family of children in turn-of-the-century England.
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Grahame was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. After his mother’s death from scarlet fever in 1864, his father, a barrister who paid little attention to his children, sent them to live with their grandmother in England. Grahame was tutored privately in his early childhood and later attended St. Edward’s School, Oxford. Caving into family pressure, he decided to pursue a career at the Bank of England, where he worked from 1879 to 1908 and eventually obtained the position of secretary of the bank. From the time he started to work at the bank, he pursued writing on the side. In 1880 he became honorary secretary of the Shakespeare Society. His first known published essay, “By a Northern Furrow,” appeared in the St. James Gazette in 1888. Two years later, he began to publish in the Scots Observer, edited by the conservative-minded man of letters William Ernest Henley. Henley’s Observer was later called the National Observer and published many of Grahame’s pieces, collected in Pagan Papers in 1893. Two collections of short stories preceded The Wind in the Willows (1908)—The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898)—and feature five English children in rural, late-nineteenth-century England. The children’s story “The Reluctant Dragon” first appeared in the latter. In the narrative, a shepherd tells his son, called Boy, about a large creature he has found resting by a cave. Boy understands this creature to be a dragon and resolves to go and talk to it. He befriends the benevolent beast but encounters trouble with the arrival of St. George. St. George is won over, and to combat superstitions about dragons, they stage a successful mock battle; in the eyes of the villagers, the dragon is defeated and “reformed,” and they are able to accept him. The Headwoman (1898), first published in the Yellow Book four years earlier, is an adult story set in the sixteenth century in the fictional French town of St. Radegonde. The attractive and competent Jeanne inherits her job as executioner, a post she accepts over many protests. She meets the seigneur of the
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village and is attracted to him, but when he is mistakenly brought for execution the following day, she resolves to do her duty. He is rescued from death in the nick of time, and his attraction to Jeanne only increases. They marry, and Jeanne eventually quits her job, leaving it to a cousin. Grahame married Elspeth Thomson in 1899. Their marriage was a troubled one complicated by the emotional problems of their son, Alastair, who died at the age of 20. As a child, Alastair was the first to hear the stories of the animal characters who appear in The Wind in the Willows (1908), Grahame’s most popular work. Despite initial difficulties in finding a publisher, the story has become a children’s classic in the English-speaking world. In the story, the industrious Mole is enticed to give up his spring cleaning and leave behind his dark hole by the smell of spring in the air. As he wanders enchanted beside a river, he meets the Water Rat, who likes to write poetry. Ratty invites the Mole to stay in the larger world as his friend and housemate. Nearby lives the rich and adventurous Toad, owner of Toad Hall, who has just taken up as his latest craze journeying on the country roads in a horse-drawn caravan. He persuades the pair to set out on the road with him, but is soon distracted by the car that tips their caravan and abandons Mole and Rat, who return home while Toad disastrously pursues his infatuation with cars. Later, Mole and Rat end up at the home of Badger during a snowstorm, and together the three animals unsuccessfully try to mend Toad’s ways by holding him captive. Toad escapes, wrecks a car, is imprisoned, escapes, and again ends up with Mole, Rat, and Badger. The animals successfully recapture Toad Hall, which, in the newly reformed Toad’s absence, has fallen into the hands of weasels, and all settle down again to the idyllic country life Grahame describes with such charm. A. A. Milne dramatized the story as Toad of Toad Hall (1930), and Walt Disney made it into a movie in the 1950s.
GRAHAME, KENNETH
Grahame’s later life was marked by ill health and family difficulty, and he produced little writing. In 1916 he edited The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children. But he had already done enough to win himself lasting fame and great influence on later children’s literature. Moreover, the skill with which Grahame evokes the beauty of his benevolently ordered world and brings alive his characters won him admirers among adults as well as children even before the publication of The Wind in the Willows. Theodore Roosevelt, then president of the United States,
wrote to him after The Wind in the Willows appeared to say that he had been unhappy to hear that the new book was not about the same family of children as the earlier books, but that in fact he had found it even more delightful.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Green, Peter, Beyond the Wild Wood: The World of Kenneth Grahame, Author of The Wind and the Willows, 1983; Kuznets, Lois R., Kenneth Grahame, 1987; Prince, Alison, Kenneth Grahame: An Innocent in the Wild Wood, 1994.
Grant, Duncan (January 21, 1885–May 10, 1978) Painter, Designer, Costume Designer xhibiting in a Postimpressionist show in England two years after the label was first applied to the works of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and the French artists Paul Ce´zanne and Paul Gauguin, the British painter Duncan James Corrowr Grant (to give him his full name) helped inaugurate Postimpressionism in England. His paintings share with the French Postimpressionists an emphasis on free, expressive forms and the use of color to create atmosphere and evoke subjective experience. Grant, an only child, was born in Rothiemurchus, Inverness, Scotland. His father was a well-read military officer and talented musician, and his mother, to whom he was closer, was frequently complimented for her beauty. A governess tutored Grant during the part of his early childhood he spent in India. In 1894, he went to England and lived with his grandmother while he attended the Hillbrow Preparatory School, Rugby, where his classmates included the future poet RUPERT BROOKE. From 1899 to 1901, he studied at St. Paul’s School, London, and lived with the family of
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Sir Richard and Lady Strachey, his aunt and uncle. From his childhood, Grant showed an inclination toward art. In the Strachey home, creativity was encouraged at every turn, and it was his aunt who suggested he go to art school. Grant was also encouraged to pursue his artistic inclinations by his cousin Lytton, the biographer and the most famous of the Strachey children, to whom he became attached during this time. From 1902 to 1905, he studied at the Westminster School of Art. In 1906, he studied briefly under Jacques-E´mile Blanche in France. His decorative style, however, was influenced less by his academic studies than by paintings—such as Massacius—that he saw and copied during a trip to Italy in 1902–1903 and by the French Postimpressionists. After finishing his studies, Grant opened his own studio. Through Lytton Strachey, Grant was immersed in both the creative climate and the tangled web of relationships and affairs in the Bloomsbury Group. The group’s members included Clive and Vanessa Bell, Leonard and
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VIRGINIA WOOLF, DAVID GARNETT, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and the art critic Roger Fry. Fry organized a controversial and widely publicized exhibition of Postimpressionist art in 1910, and Grant’s paintings, among which was a portrait of Fry’s daughter, appeared in a second Postimpressionist exhibit in 1912. Grant was now exhibiting with increasing frequency, and his reputation as an artist began to grow. In 1911 he joined the Camden Town group, which was influenced by the French Impressionists and Postimpressionists and included AUGUSTUS JOHN. The same year, Grant completed two murals, Bathing and Football, for the dining room of the Borough Polytechnic. By 1913, Roger Fry had organized his Omega Workshop, to which Grant, Vanessa Bell, and others contributed designs for pottery, fabrics, and other decorative art. Grant was to continue working in the decorative arts for the rest of his life, and among his more successful designs was his Apollo and Daphne (1932–1933), winner of an award at the Paris International Exhibition in 1937. Grant’s works vary considerably in style and medium. A number of early paintings are rendered in abstract style, including Abstract Kinetic Collage Painting With Sound (1914) and In Memoriam: Rupert Brooke (1915), the latter a tribute to his classmate, who had died of blood poisoning during World War I. His later Postimpressionistic work applies expressive form, contour, and color to nudes and erotica, particularly studies of the male form; bathing scenes; still lifes; and land-
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scapes such as The French Window, Charleston (1953). Grant was also well known for his ability to convey a strong sense of the inner reality of his subjects in his portraits, as in, for example, John Maynard Keynes (1909), David Garnett (1918), and many portraits of Vanessa Bell. With Vanessa Bell, Grant maintained a close relationship that lasted until the end of her life. Beginning in the 1920s, they worked together on numerous interior design commissions. With Bell or working on his own, Grant designed interiors in restaurants, churches, Keynes’s rooms at Cambridge, and the homes of Adrian and Karin Stephen and Lady Dorothy Wellesley (1931). Grant’s work extended to the theater and to ballet. He designed costumes and scenery for a Jacques Coupeau production of Twelfth Night (1914) as well as costumes for the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova. A somber Lopokova, who married Keynes, was also the subject of a Grant portrait (1923). When SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes came to London in the years before World War I, Grant met the dancer VASLAV NIJINSKY, whom he commemorated in his Still Life with Nijinsky (1972).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Shone, Richard, Bloomsbury Portraits: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Their Circle, 1993; Spalding, Frances, Duncan Grant, 1997; Turnbaugh, Douglas Blair, Duncan Grant and the Bloomsbury Group, 1987; Watney, Simon, The Art of Duncan Grant, 1990.
GRANVILLE-BARKER, HARLEY
Granville-Barker, Harley (November 25, 1877–August 31, 1946) Director, Playwright, Actor, Theorist, Producer, Critic arley Granville-Barker revolutionized English theater in the first two decades of the twentieth century, stripping his productions of elements designed to entertain in an effort to capture the heart of a play and present audiences with a genuine work of art. Many of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s plays premiered under Barker’s direction or with his help. Barker was also a playwright himself and wrote a number of dramas with a strong vein of social commentary. Barker was born in Kensington, Middlesex, England. His mother was an entertainer, and his father was an architect. Many details of Barker’s early life are mysterious. At the age of 13 he joined an acting troupe, and the following year enrolled in a theatrical school at the Theatre Royal, Margate. He first entered the theater as an actor and delivered his first London performance at the Comedy Theatre in a production of Charles Brookfield’s The Poet and the Puppets in 1892. Throughout the 1890s, Barker acted with several theater companies in London, including Florence Farr’s company at the Avenue Theatre and Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s Company. Lillah McCarthy, Barker’s future wife, played lead female roles in Ben Greet’s Company, with which he toured in 1895. Among his early acting roles were Gordon Jayne in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and Richard II in Shakespeare’s Richard II. In 1900, Barker joined the progressive Stage Society, which opposed mainstream theaters and sought to establish a forum for the production of plays with artistic merit. As Marshbanks in Candida the same year, Barker played the first of many roles in productions of Shaw’s dramas. Shaw became Barker’s patron and lifelong friend, and many of Shaw’s plays were originally performed in conjunction with Barker. Among Barker’s oth-
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er Shaw roles were Captain Kearney in Captain Brassbound’s Conversion in 1900; Napoleon in The Man of Destiny (1901); and Frank in Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1902). In 1904, Barker became manager (with J. E. Vedrenne) of the Court Theatre in London, a position he held until 1907. Several of Shaw’s plays premiered at the Court Theatre under his own direction, with Barker acting in them and sets designed by GORDON CRAIG. Barker also directed plays by Henrik Ibsen, the Belgian dramatist MAURICE MAETERLINCK, and many others. He acted his 1905 role of Jack Tanner in Shaw’s Man and Superman opposite McCarthy, whom he married the following year.
Harley Granville-Barker (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-00601)
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Aside from the works of other playwrights, Barker wrote and staged many of his own. He cowrote his earliest dramas with Herbert Thomas, including A Comedy of Fools, The Family of the Oldroyds, The Weather-Hen; or Invertebrata (1897), and Our Visitor to ‘Work-a-Day’. Of these, only The WeatherHen; or Invertebrata was produced. The tone of social commentary in Barker’s plays is much like that found in Shaw’s. Barker shared many of Shaw’s philosophical beliefs and in 1901 joined the socialist Fabian Society (cofounded by Shaw). Barker’s first major play to see production (for the stage society) was The Marrying of Ann Leete (1901), a commentary on turn-of-the-century English society. The story revolves around Ann Leete, the daughter of a Whig-turned-Tory politician, Carnaby Leete. Carnaby secretly seeks to further his new political connection by marrying Ann to the son of a Tory politician. Ann backs out of the marriage at the last minute and decides to marry the gardener. The dialogue in the play is sparse and artificial, in accordance with the shallow natures of the characters. Barker wrote several other plays before World War I, including The Voysey Inheritance (1905), Prunella (1906), Waste (1907), and the comedy The Madras House (1910). He continued to direct at various theaters around London—the Duke of York’s Theatre, the Court Theatre (to which he returned in 1911 to direct Shaw’s Androcles and the
Lion), the St. James’s Theatre, and the Kingsway Theatre. Barker kept the exaggerated theatricality that had been so common on the English stage out of his productions, aimed to create a unified atmosphere with the players and action on the stage, and used relatively little scenery. He applied these principles to his famous Shakespeare productions at the Savoy Theatre between 1912–1914, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After World War I, Barker never resumed the same level of activity in the theater. He divorced McCarthy in 1918 and married Helen Huntington, a rich American, with whom he moved to Paris. Barker was elected president of the British Drama League in 1919, became director of the British Institute at the University of Paris in 1937, and lectured in the United States and Canada. His most significant works from the postwar period are his six volumes of Prefaces to Shakespeare, written from the perspective of a stage director.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kennedy, Dennis, Granville Barker and the Dream of Theatre, 1985; McDonald, Jan, The New Drama, 1900–1914: Harley Granville Barker, John Galsworthy, St. John Hankin, John Masefield, 1986; Salmon, Eric, Granville Barker: A Secret Life, 1983.
Grass, Gu ¨ nter (October 16, 1927– ) Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Essayist, Graphic Artist u¨nter Wilhelm Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, is Germany’s most prominent novelist from the World War II generation, “whose frolicsome black fables,” in the words of the
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Swedish Academy, “portray the forgotten face of history.” A follower of no particular literary style, Grass combines realism with elements of fantasy and the grotesque in experimental narrative structure to, in general, explore the
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Gu¨nter Grass (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library/Jeffrey Morgan / The Image Works)
German political and social climate from the World War II era on. Grass has also authored plays and poetry. Grass was born in Danzig, Germany, now Gda´nsk, Poland. His father was a grocer. He was five when Adolf Hitler rose to power and 11 when the National Socialists took control of Danzig, and he went through the Hitler Youth Program as an adolescent. At the age of 16, he volunteered for the German Air Force, was wounded, and was taken to an American prisoner of war camp. The war experience brought Grass a profound sense of disillusionment, and he subsequently worked in a series of odd jobs, including apprenticing to a stonemason and drumming in a jazz band. Grass enrolled in the Academy of Art in Du¨sseldorf in 1949 and later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. In 1954 he married Anna Schwarz, a ballet student. Die Gruppe 47 (Group 47), a writers’ association, gave Grass the assistance he needed to launch his literary career. In 1956 he went to
Paris, where he published a volume of poetry and several plays. In 1959 he finished his first novel Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum), which, with his next two volumes, unified by their Danzig settings, formed the Danzig Trilogy. The Tin Drum won a prize from Die Gruppe 47 and was made into a film in 1979. “When Gu¨nter Grass published The Tin Drum in 1959,” the Swedish Academy stated upon announcing Grass as the Nobel Prize winner, “it was as if German literature had been granted a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction.” Entertainingly and vividly written, the story is at once an account of individual protest and the impact of the encroachment of Nazism on the German-Polish culture of Danzig. The main character in The Tin Drum is the dwarf Oskar Matzerath, who narrates from a mental hospital, and Grass interweaves Oskar’s past with his observations on his present circumstances in postwar German society. The tin drum, which Oskar bangs incessantly, is his symbol and weapon of protest. Katz und Maus (1961; Cat and Mouse) and Hundejahre (1963; Dog Years) completed the Danzig Trilogy. A portrait of adolescence in wartime Germany, Cat and Mouse uses the incident of a cat landing on a young boy’s oversized Adam’s apple to trigger a chain of events that ultimately lead to his status as a hero. The epic novel Dog Years examines the German mentality through the rise and fall of National Socialism. Aus dem Tegebuch einer Schnecke (1972; From the Diary of a Snail) probes a number of themes connected with Germany, from the Holocaust to Grass’s own involvement with the politics of the Social Democratic Party in the 1960s. Das Treften in Telgte (1979; The Meeting at Telgte) takes place in 1647, in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War, among German writers and musicians, and it presents an unkind portrait of intellectuals engaged in rivalries and quarrels. ¨ rtlich Grass’s other novels include O Beta¨ubt (1969; Local Anaesthetic), which blends fantasy and reality in a story told
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through the eyes of a patient sitting in a dentist’s chair; Der Butt (1977; The Flounder), a tale about relationships between men and women in both the past and present; Kopfgeburten, oder die Deutschen sterben aus (1980; Headbirths, or, the Germans Are Dying Out); and Die Ra¨tten (1987; The Rat). Two of Grass’s later works, Unkenrufe (1992; The Call of the Toad) and Ein weites Feld (1995; A Broad Field), examine contemporary political issues in Germany. The former paints a portrait of greed in Danzig in the flawed efforts of the German man Alexander Reschke and the Polish woman Alexandra Piatkowska to establish a memorial cemetery for both Polish and German Danzigers. A Broad Field probes the German reunification process, about which Grass was openly critical. In 1999 Grass published Mein Jarhundert (My Century), a collection of 100 different stories, each of them told by a different person from each year of the twentieth century. With his novella Im Krebsgang (2002; Crabwalk), Grass enjoyed his greatest literary success in years. The story, based on true events, concerns the sinking of a Nazi ship carrying wartime refugees during World War II and the impact of the disaster on a German family. His latest work, the memoir Peeling the Onion, was published in 2007. Grass’s plays include Hochwasser (1956; Flood), and Die bo¨sen Ko¨che (1961; The
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Wicked Cooks), both of which appeared in Four Plays (1967). Among his collections of poetry, which he illustrated himself, are the volumes Die Vorzu¨ge der Windhu¨hner (1956; The Advantages of Windfowl); Gleisdreieck (1960; Railroad-Track Triangle); Questioned (1967), a book of political poems; Inmarypraise (1973); and Tested By Love (1974). Grass had close ties with the Social Democratic Party in West Berlin and was a personal friend of Willy Brandt, chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. His outspokenness on political issues has long made him a controversial figure in Germany. In the 1960s he opposed the introduction of nuclear missiles in his country, and he was critical of the German reunification process. He stirred further controversy in 2006, when he revealed his past membership in the Nazi Waffen-SS. His essays and political writings appear in Speak Out: Speeches, Open Letters, Commentaries (1968); and Writing and Politics (1985). BIBLIOGRAPHY Hayman, Ronald, Gu¨nter Grass, 1985; Keele, Alan Frank, Understanding Gu¨nter Grass, 1988; Lawson, Richard H., Gu¨nter Grass, 1985; Preece, Julian, The Life and Work of Gu¨nter Grass: Literature, History, Politics, 2001.
GRATEFUL DEAD
Grateful Dead Musicians
Contanten, Tom
Kreutzmann, Bill
(March 19, 1944– ) Keyboardist
(April 7, 1946– ) Drummer
Garcia, Jerry
Lesh, Phil
(August 1, 1942–August 9, 1995) Guitarist, Vocalist
(March 15, 1940– ) Bassist, Vocalist
Godchaux, Donna
McKernan, Ron “Pigpen”
(August 22, 1945– ) Vocalist
(September 8, 1945–March 8, 1973) Keyboardist, Harmonica Player, Vocalist
Godchaux, Keith
Mydland, Brent
(July 14, 1948–July 21, 1980) Keyboardist
(October 21, 1952–July 26, 1990) Keyboardist, Vocalist
Hart, Mickey
Weir, Bob
(September 11, 1943– ) Drummer, Percussionist
(October 16, 1947– ) Guitarist, Vocalist
Hunter, Robert
Welnick, Vince
(June 23, 1941– ) Lyricist
(February 22, 1951–June 2, 2006) Keyboardist
he American rock band the Grateful Dead, formed in 1965 in San Francisco, California, was an integral part of the 1960s hippie-counterculture movement. Affectionately known as “The Dead,” the group started out in the same musical vein as Jefferson Airplane and other psychedelic bands. The Dead was unique, however, in that it became one of the first rock groups of the era to abandon the psychedelic sound in favor of roots- and folk-oriented music. The Dead’s real mastery was not in the studio, but in the countless live performances characterized by long jam sessions they performed. They attracted a dedicated group of followers known as “Deadheads,” some of whom followed the band around the United States for months or years at a time. Lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia was widely seen as the group’s bandleader and unifying force, although that was an image he
disliked. Garcia was a warm, friendly, and charismatic figure onstage who naturally attracted an audience’s attention. He grew up in the Excelsior District of San Francisco and started playing the guitar at age fifteen. His early influences were 1950s rock and roll, folk music, and particularly bluegrass. As the early songs of bands like THE BEATLES and THE ROLLING STONES rose to prominence in the mid-1960s, Garcia took an interest in them as well. The Grateful Dead had its genesis in Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, a band that formed after Garcia and Bob Weir performed at a 1963 New Year’s Eve jam session at a music store in Palo Alto, California. In 1964, Garcia, Weir, and other future members of the Grateful Dead started performing as the Warlocks. Because of a conflict with another band’s name, they changed their name to the Grateful Dead in 1965.
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The original lineup of the Grateful Dead consisted of Garcia, Weir, organist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummer Bill Kreutzmann. In their beginnings, they linked the literary principles of the 1950s Beat Movement (see ALLEN GINSBERG and JACK KEROUAC) with the musical explosion of the 1960s hippie-counterculture movement. The Dead began to play in psychedelic ballrooms, at outdoor concerts in parks, and on the streets of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. The Dead were among the first popular psychedelic bands in the United States. In their early years, they provided musical settings for the acid tests of KEN KESEY and his Merry Pranksters (see KEN KESEY). BILL GRAHAM, who was responsible for bringing together concerts for quite a few 1960s rock bands, produced the first of many shows the Dead would perform at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in December of 1965. In 1966, they performed at the Trips Festival with other psychedelic bands such as Jefferson Airplane. Later that year, they released their first single, “Stealin’.” The following year saw the release of their first album, the self-titled The Grateful Dead (1967), which mixed psychedelic elements with the band’s blues and bluegrass roots. Being based in San Francisco, they were at the core of the burgeoning hippie movement, and the Dead quickly became a primary part of it through performances inspired by the improvisational approach of jazz, the psychedelic experience of the 1960s, and the energy that emanated from 1950s rock and roll artists such as ELVIS PRESLEY. Phil Lesh joined the band as its bassist shortly after it formed in 1965. From 1967 to 1971 and from 1975 onward, Mickey Hart provided additional drums and percussion to the band and introduced elements of Eastern music into their songs. Lyricist Robert Hunter (with whom Garcia frequently wrote) penned the Dead’s famous early song “Dark Star,” a favorite in varying extended forms in the
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band’s live performances, after joining them in 1967. The Dead’s keyboardist spots turned out to be tragic positions for several musicians who sat in them over the years. For most of the period between 1968 and 1973, Pigpen was joined on keyboards either by Tom “TC” Constanten (between 1968 and 1970) or Keith Godchaux, who remained with the band from 1971 to 1979. Pigpen died from complications related to alcohol abuse in 1973, and Godchaux (whose wife Donna joined the Dead as a backing vocalist in 1972) died in a car accident after the couple left the band in 1979. Brent Mydland replaced Godchaux on keyboards and played with the Dead until his death from a speedball (heroin and cocaine) overdose in 1990. Vince Welnick, who joined the Dead after Mydland’s death, was the band’s final keyboardist and remained with them until Garcia’s death in 1995. He, too, succumbed to tragedy, committing suicide in 2006. After a few years of performing in the psychedelic vein, evinced in their early studio album Anthem of the Sun (1968), the Dead became the first major psychedelic band to transition to folk- and country-inspired music. Unlike any other rock band in history, they became known as the consummate live rock band, and fans and critics alike know them for their live performances more than their studio albums. They played at two of the most famous musical festivals of the 1960s—the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and the Woodstock Festival in 1969. There are currently sixty-one live albums available from the Grateful Dead’s online store, and their commercially unreleased performances are widely bootlegged. Following the release of Live/Dead (1969) and Aoxomoxoa (1969), however, they produced their two best-known studio albums. Workingman’s Dead (1970), a country and folk influenced record, featured the popular song “Casey Jones.” American Beauty (1971) is widely considered to be the band’s best studio album and introduced their well-known
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songs “Box of Rain,” “Sugar Magnolia/Sunshine Daydream,” “Friend of the Devil,” and “Truckin’.” Their radio hits were few and far between, though, and the most commercially successful of them was “Touch of Grey” from In the Dark (1987). The Dead’s extended tours—mostly in the United States—attracted droves of fans, many of whom followed them around for weeks, months, or years. Their loyal devotees became known as “Deadheads.” With their Volkswagen minibuses, tie-dyed tee-shirts, and general hippie attire, Deadheads were a noticeable presence when they arrived in towns and cities where the band played. The Dead were unique among early rock and roll bands, too, in that they openly allowed taping and trading of their shows. The overabundance of tapers’ microphones near the soundboard forced the band to designate special spots for them to set up in. But more ambitious tapers still set up illegally near the soundboard, producing what are known as FOB recordings. The FOB tapes often provided the best sound quality among the tapers’ recordings and have been in high demand by bootleggers. The Dead are one of the few major bands to allow recordings of live performances available for free download on www.archive.org.The band’s online store has to date released thirty-six CDs consisting of live archived material as part of the “Dick’s Picks” series (named for the group’s late tape archivist Dick Latvala, 1943–1999). The group took a break from touring in 1975, when they performed only two shows. Aside from that hiatus, they toured continuously for thirty years, mostly remaining in the United States and crossing international borders only occasionally. Over the years, the band members evolved their own distinct styles that contributed to the Dead’s overall sound. At their live performances, each musician often improvised his own extended solos. It was Garcia’s onstage charisma and resonance with crowds that
made him the distinct personality of the band, however. Offstage, Garcia’s life was a troubled one. His early life was marked by a series of personal tragedies. As a boy of five, he witnessed his father’s death by drowning while fishing in the Russian River. In a freak accident, he lost his middle finger in his youth. He was nearly killed in a car accident later on. During his adult life, Garcia battled drug abuse. He was arrested for drug possession in 1985, and the following year he collapsed into a diabetic coma that nearly took his life. He died of a fatal heart attack at a drug rehabilitation center in Forest Knolls, California, where he had gone to seek help for heroin addiction. The Dead had played their final concert the previous month at Soldier Field in Chicago. The Grateful Dead formally disbanded after Garcia’s death in 1995, although surviving members have pursued their own solo projects. Former members of the Dead have also reunited and toured as “The Other Ones,” and they recorded The Strange Remain (1998) from the Furthur Festival. In 2003, the members of the band renamed itself simply “The Dead.” The Grateful Dead left in its legacy a subculture in various musical genres that led to the loosely termed “jam band” movement. Whatever the genre—rock, folk, bluegrass, progressive music, heavy metal, country, or other forms of music—jam bands typically deliver long, improvised live performances. Modern jam bands such as Phish and Widespread Panic, as well as numerous jam band music festivals, owe a debt to the Grateful Dead. All twelve members of the Grateful Dead were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. On February 10, 2007, the Grateful Dead received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brightman, Carol, Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead’s American Adventure, 1998; Gans, Da-
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vid, Conversations With the Dead: The Grateful Dead Interview Book, 2002; Harrison, Frank, The Dead, 1991; Jackson, Blair, Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip, 2003; Lesh, Phil, Searching for the Sound: My Life With the Grateful Dead, 2005; McNally, Dennis, A Long, Strange
Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, 2002; Ruhlmann, William, The History of the Grateful Dead, 1990; Troy, Sandy, Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia, 1994; www.dead.net.
Graves, Robert (July 24/26, 1895–December 7, 1985) Poet, Novelist, Scholar, Short-Story Writer rimarily known for his love poetry and his novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God, Robert von Ranke Graves was born in London and grew up in the strict religious atmosphere his mother created. He shared his father’s love of poetry and literature, particularly of the Celtic tradition. After attending numerous primary schools, he enrolled in the Charterhouse School in London at the age of 14. At the latter he began to write poems, experimenting with different styles. Graves enlisted in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and served as a British officer during World War I. During this time he met the young antiwar poet SIEGFRIED SASSOON, who for a time was one of his closest friends. An exploding shell nearly ended his life at the Battle of Somme in 1916, an experience recounted in poems such as Escape (1916), which begins: “But I was dead an hour or more / I woke when I’d already passed the door.” The same year saw the publication of his first volume of poetry, Over the Brazier, which, along with Fairies and Fusiliers (1917) was based on his war experiences. After his recuperation, Graves studied at Oxford, where he earned his doctorate. His subsequent marriage to Nancy Nicholson produced four children but was unhappy and fraught with troubles. Graves’s autobiography Good-Bye to All That (1929) recounts his early life with particular emphasis on his trau-
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matic experience in trench warfare during World War I. The work’s success enabled Graves to move to Mallorca with the American writer Laura Riding, with whom he maintained a difficult relationship for the next ten years. Of Graves’s fifteen novels, the historical novel I, Claudius (1934) is his most well known and became the basis for a popular television series. The story takes place in the corrupt political atmosphere of Rome during the rules of the Roman autocrats Augustus (63 B.C.–14 A.D.), Tiberius (42 B.C.–37 A.D.), and Caligula (12 A.D.–41 A.D.), as seen through the eyes of the ineffectual Claudius. Its sequel, Claudius the God (1934), continues into Claudius’s own reign. The Story of Marie Powell: Wife to Mr. Milton (1942) is an unsympathetic portrait of the poet John Milton, told from the point of view of his first wife, Marie Powell. Among Graves’s other novels are Count Belisarius (1938), a fictional biography of the Byzantine military leader; and Hercules, My Shipmate (1944), originally published in Britain as The Golden Fleece; and Homer’s Daughter (1955). Crucial to the understanding of Graves’s later poetry and novels is his work The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948). The White Goddess, Graves argued, is a feminine force that has existed from ancient to modern times. In his philoso-
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phy, the goddess is the source of truth and the poetic muse found in pagan traditions. Christianity and Greek philosophy, Graves argued, had destroyed the muse—or at least done their best to destroy her. In the novel King Jesus (1946), Graves portrays Jesus’s crucifixion as a consequence of his defiance of the White Goddess. King Jesus was also colored by Graves’s friendship with Joshua Podro, a Polish Hebrew scholar with extensive knowledge of rabbinical tradition. With Podro he also coauthored the nonfiction work The Nazarene Gospels Restored (1945). In form Graves’s poetry followed English tradition, with careful attention to form and meter, and he is most remembered for his melancholy love verses. His collections of poetry number more than fifty and include Whipperginny (1923) and Poems About Love (1969) as well as his earlier war poetry and several volumes of collected poems. Graves outlined his ideas on poetry in works such as On English Poetry (1922) and taught poetry at Oxford from 1961 to 1966. During the 1960s, Graves developed an interest in several new areas. He had long been interested in hallucinogenic mushrooms used in religious rites and began experimenting with mind-altering drugs himself. Graves shared a belief with other intellecutals such as ALDOUS HUXLEY that hallucinogenic drugs led one to deeper spiritual insight, an idea that became popular among a generation of youth in the 1960s.
In addition to psychedelic drugs, Graves turned to a series of young female “muses,” whom he believed embodied the White Goddess, for inspiration in his poetry. His most controversial work of this period, a new translation of The Ruba´iya´t of Omar Khayya`m (1967), quite different from the one done in the nineteenth century by Edward Fitzgerald, stemmed from his growing interest in Sufism, the mystical tradition of Islam. Fitzgerald had taken Omar’s praise of love and wine completely literally, but Graves claimed superior knowledge; the Sufi poet Omar AliShah, who claimed to be a direct descendant of Mohammed, had given Graves copies of the Ruba´iya´t’s verses, and communicated the tradition that Omar, like other Sufi poets, was really singing of the love of the Divine and the intoxication of direct contact with it. Shah’s refusal to produce the original manuscript he claimed was in his family’s possession led to widespread critical objection to Graves’s translation. Graves’s other works include a biography of T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence and the Arabs (1927); Greek Myths and Legends (1968); and short stories.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Canary, Robert H., Robert Graves, 1980; Graves, Richard Perceval, Robert Graves, 1986; Graves, Richard Perceval, Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1995; Seymour, Miranda, Robert Graves: Life on the Edge, 1995.
Greene, Graham (October 2, 1904–April 3, 1991) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Poet
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enry Graham Greene achieved success as a writer with the 1932 publication of his “entertainment”
Stamboul Train. The engaging narratives of his novels and stories are shaped by his Catholicism; they focus on characters grappling
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Graham Greene (쑖 Brian Seed / Lebrecht / The Image Works)
with moral and spiritual dilemmas. Greene’s essentially pessimistic outlook is reflected in the decay and chaos which form the backdrops of his work. Greene was the fourth child of six, born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England. He attended the Berkhamsted School, where his father taught and where Greene was miserable. Greene was a rebellious child, in trouble at school and at home, and toyed with suicide on several occasions in his adolescence. At the age of 17, Greene entered Balliol College, Oxford and became active in the University’s literary scene. The poetry collection Babbling April, Greene’s first published work, appeared in 1925. His first novel, The Man Within (1929), gained a measure of popularity in England and was followed by The Name of Action (1930) and The Rumour at Nightfall (1931). Meanwhile, Greene had also converted to Roman Catholicism (1926), married Vivien Dayrell-Browning (1927), and begun a career in journalism. He worked for the London Times from 1926 to 1930 and subsequently wrote lit-
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erary and film criticism for the Spectator and Night and Day. Not until the publication of Orient Express (1932; British title Stamboul Train) did Greene achieve popular success. The story unfolds around passengers on a train to Istanbul, among whom are the currant merchant Carleton Myatt and the chorus girl Coral Musker. Greene called this and his next three novels “entertainments.” The novels—A Gun for Sale (1936), The Confidential Agent (1939), and The Ministry of Fear (1943)—are mainly fast-paced thrillers. A Gun for Sale pits James Raven against the detective Mather, who is engaged to Anne Crowder. Raven is hired to kill the minister of a European nation and is betrayed by all who know him. Greene’s characters throughout his fiction are flawed, morally fallen, and struggling with spiritual dilemmas. The political and social orders in which they live are equally flawed. With Brighton Rock (1938), he began to examine questions of heaven and hell, faith and faithlessness, and good and evil. Its protagonist, the teenage gangster Pinkie Brown, was raised as a Catholic and consciously chooses hell. A trip to Mexico inspired Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940), about the downfall and execution of a soul-searching, alcoholic priest who tries to perform his clerical duties under the threat of death at the hands of Communists. Greene worked in the Foreign Office during World War II and was stationed in West Africa, the locale that provided the setting for The Heart of the Matter (1948). The protagonist, Henry Scobie, deputy commissioner of police, is a sympathetic character forced to choose between his wife, Louise, and Helen, with whom he has an affair. His feelings of guilt over this dilemma and other matters lead him to choose damnation and commit suicide. Greene presents The End of the Affair (1951), which explores the question of sainthood, through alternate perspectives. The formerly agnostic Bendrix tells the story of an affair he had with Sarah, who is married to Henry Miles. Sarah dies with a faith strong
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enough to elevate her to sainthood, and through his affair with her, Bendrix comes to accept belief in God. Querry, the protagonist of A Burnt-Out Case (1961), undergoes a spiritual awakening when he goes to a leprosarioum in the Belgian Congo. Many of Greene’s later novels are set in scenes of impending revolution. These include The Quiet American (1956), set in Vietnam; Our Man in Havana (1958), which takes place in pre-Communist Cuba; and The Comedians (1966), set in Haiti during the rule of Franc¸ois “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Among his other novels are the entertainment Travels With My Aunt (1969); The Honorary Consul (1973); The Human Factor (1978); Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (1980); Monsignor Quixote (1982); and The Tenth Man (1985).
Aside from novels, Greene wrote short stories and plays that continue the themes he addressed in his novels. His short-story collections include Nineteen Stories (1947) and May We Borrow Your Husband? and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life (1967). Among his plays are The Living Room (1952), which centers around a love triangle in which Michael Dennis struggles between his love for Rose Pemberton and his pity for his wife; The Potting Shed (1957); Carving a Statue (1964); and The Return of A. J. Raffles (1975). His memoirs, A Sort of Life and Ways of Escape, were published in 1971 and 1980.
BIBLIOGRAPHY DeVitis, A. A., Graham Greene, rev. ed., 1986; McEwan, Neil, Graham Greene, 1988; Watts, Cedrick Thomas, A Preface to Greene, 1997.
Grierson, John (April 26, 1898–February 19, 1972) Producer, Director, Teacher he originator of the term “documentary,” John Grierson introduced documentary filmmaking to Great Britain and founded the documentary film movement in that country. He directed his first film in 1928 and thereafter spent most of his time finding talent and resources for the production of other films. Over the course of his career, he worked for the governments of Britain and Canada as well as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Grierson was born in Deanston, Stirlingshire, Scotland. His father, a teacher, was headmaster at the school he entered in 1903. Grierson’s mother, also a teacher, was a feminist and an early advocate of suffrage for women. A good student with a strong person-
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ality, Grierson attended the High School in Stirling beginning in 1908. During World War I, he did munitions work before joining the crew of a minesweeper as a telegraphist. With the end of the war, Grierson entered the University of Glasgow and studied philosophy. He joined the university’s chapter of the Fabian Society, which sought to promote socialism in Britain through nonviolent means (see GEORGE BERNARD SHAW). When the chapter dissolved, Grierson became involved with the New University Labour Club, which backed H. G. WELLS as a candidate for Lord Rector in university elections. Wells lost the election, but Grierson developed a reputation for his boisterous speeches and vocal and physical taunting of the opposing candidates.
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In 1923, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded Grierson a research fellowship that enabled him to study in the United States. Over the next five years, Grierson traveled extensively in America, studying in Chicago, Wisconsin, and New York (at Columbia University). His area of concentration was sociology, and in particular the effect of mass communication on society. In 1925, he met Walter Lippmann in New York and developed an interest in the potential use of film in influencing the public. While in the United States, Grierson began to contribute articles and film reviews to a number of periodicals. It was in a review of the film Moana (1926) for the New York Sun that he first used the term “documentary” in describing a film. He returned to England in 1928 and went to work for the Empire Marketing Board (E.M.B.), putting together its film unit. Grierson directed his first documentary, Drifters, in 1928. The film, about the lives of herring fishermen in the North Sea, was shown at the Film Society before SERGEI EISENSTEIN’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). Eisenstein, with whose work Grierson had become familiar in the United States, attended the showing. Drifters earned praise from film critics and inspired a number of young directors to begin working in the same vein. In 1930 Grierson married Margaret Taylor, who had helped him edit Drifters. Grierson believed documentaries should both entertain and educate. During his lifetime he was involved with productions of propaganda films, public interest pieces, documentaries of the lives of ordinary people, and many other projects, though seldom directing the films himself. He supervised the work of many other filmmakers and worked with other noteworthy figures in film, including JORIS IVENS and the Brazilian director Alberto Cavalcanti. Those who worked under him knew him as demanding, passionate, and sometimes difficult.
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When the E.M.B. dissolved in 1933, the film unit fell under the General Post Office. Grierson headed the G.P.O.’s film office and produced many films for the British government. He solicited financing for films and sought out new directors to undertake projects. In 1935, he founded the Film Centre in London, which coordinated and financed other documentary film units. Grierson also founded and published World Film News, wrote film criticism, and lectured to other groups. Grierson’s efforts in film shifted to Canada in the late 1930s. In 1939 he helped draft the National Film Act in Canada and was responsible for its main ideas. The same year, he helped found the National Film Board of Canada and served as its head. During World War II, he produced and supervised a number of government propaganda films. From 1946 to 1948, Grierson worked for UNESCO. He returned to the British government in 1948, working as film controller at the Central Office of Information until 1950. With John Baxter the following year, Grierson headed Group 3 of the National Film Finance Corporation and was involved in promoting the work of young filmmakers and actors, among whom was the actor Peter Sellers. In 1957, Grierson began his program This Wonderful World. He taught at McGill University in Canada from 1968 to 1971 and died of cancer in 1972.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Evans, Gary, John Grierson and the National Film Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda, 1984; Forman, Sir Denis, John Grierson: The Man and the Memory, 1978; Hardy, Forsyth, John Grierson: A Documentary Biography, 1979; Sussex, Elizabeth, ed., The Rise and Fall of British Documentary: The Story of the Film Movement Founded by John Grierson, 1975; Winston, Brian, Claiming the Real: The Griersonian Documentary and Its Legitimations, 1995.
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Gris, Juan (March 23, 1887–May 11, 1927) Painter, Graphic Artist, Illustrator uan Gris was a lesser-known figure in the group of painters who worked in the Cubist style developed by PABLO PICASSO and GEORGES BRAQUE, but his Synthetic Cubist still lifes, which combine harsh, angular forms with bold, vibrant colors, formed an important contribution to the body of Cubist art in the World War I era. Gris was of Castilian and Andalusian ancestry, born Jose´ Victoriano Gonza´lez in Madrid. From 1902 to 1904 he studied engineering at the Madrid School of Arts and Sciences. During this time he began to contribute drawings to such publications as Blanco y Negro and Madrid Comico. Jose´ Maria Carbonero, under whom he studied painting from 1904 to 1906, gave Gris his only formal art training. He moved to Paris in 1906, settling in Montmartre in Le Bateau Lavoir, where his countryman Picasso also lived. At this time, Gris had not yet begun to paint in earnest. His drawings, with which he primarily concerned himself, derived from the Art Nouveau style then popular in Germany. The Cubist experiments of Picasso and Braque, however, were soon to transform Gris into a Cubist painter, and he began painting seriously in 1910. Through Picasso he also met such avant-garde figures as Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob. In 1908 he met Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, his most important early patron, who in 1912 purchased all his works. The American expatriate Gertrude Stein also admired Gris’s work and enthusiastically promoted it. Gris essentially followed Picasso and Braque through Analytical and Synthetic Cubism. The curvilinear forms of his earlier drawings gave way to severe, angular creations in his paintings. Early Cubist works such as Still Life with Bottle (1910) and Portrait of Picasso (1912), the latter of which employs a blue, monochromatic color scheme, are rendered
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in the Analytical Cubist style. Even at this point, however, Gris used more striking colors than the grays and muted earth tones Picasso and Braque preferred. When Picasso and Braque began to employ brighter colors in their Synthetic Cubist works, Gris used even bolder colors. Violin and Guitar (1913), an oil on canvas, mixes brilliant reds, blues, greens, and purples reminiscent of the color palettes of the Fauves. In his mature style, Gris also distinguished himself from Picasso and Braque by his use of more severe and angular forms. In 1912 Gris spent a summer with Picasso and Braque in Ce´ret, France. There they began to experiment with papier colle´—shapes cut from paper. The three of them were soon affixing shapes cut from wood, glass, and paper to their works, and the resulting “collages” dominate Gris’s work in 1914. He combined paper, wood, and glass, intermingling them with watercolor, charcoal, pencil, or crayon. He affixed a piece of mirror to The Marble Console (1914). Because he was a Spanish citizen, Gris was not required to fight in World War I. He passed the war in Paris, living in near-poverty. While the works of Picasso and Braque brought large sums of money, Gris remained virtually unknown outside of Paris art circles. He did not have his first one-man show until 1919, after which he exhibited frequently. Although still lifes undoubtedly dominated Gris’s subject matter, he also painted landscapes and cafe´ scenes, such as his The Man in the Cafe´ (1912) and Landscape (1917). After 1920 Gris’s severe geometric compositions gave way to looser, curvilinear forms, as in Pierrot with Guitar (1922) and Seated Harlequin (1923). Between 1922 and 1924 he designed two sets for SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes, Les tentations de la berge`re (The
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Temptations of the Shepherdess) and La colombe (The Dove). Among Gris’s other works are book illustrations; lithographs; and a single Cubist sculpture, Harlequin (1917). Gris died of blood poisoning in 1927.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Green, Christopher, Juan Gris, 1992; Soby, James Thrall, Juan Gris, 1958.
Gropius, Walter (May 18, 1883–July 15, 1969) Architect, Theorist, Teacher, City Planner s the founder and director (1919–1928) of the Bauhaus, the most influential school in modern architecture, Walter Adolph Gropius exerted a profound influence on the development of twentieth-century public buildings. The International Style, to which he was a major contributor, was the dominant force in architecture between the two world wars; it is marked by its rejection of the then-prevalent decorative approach in favor of a strong emphasis on functionality. His major works include the school building and faculty housing at the Bauhaus in Dessau (1925–1926), the Graduate Center at Harvard University, the United States Embassy in Athens, Greece (1960), and the University of Baghdad (1960). Gropius was the son of an architect, born in Berlin. He studied architecture at the Universities of Munich (1903–1904) and BerlinCharlottenburg (1905–1907). He worked in an architect’s office in Berlin in 1904 and soon afterward did his military service. He began to design buildings before he graduated, notably the farm laborers’ cottages in Pomerania in 1906. In 1907 he joined PETER BEHRENS’s office in Berlin and worked as his chief assistant until 1910. That year he opened his own office, and in 1911 he joined the German Labor League (Deutscher Werkbund). The Labor League’s goal fit in with the purpose Gropius held to
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throughout his career as an architect: to bridge the gap between designers and the requirements of the modern machine age. Gropius’s mature style emerged early in his career, in the Fagus Works at Alfeld-an-derLeine (1911) and the model office and factory buildings in Cologne (1914), both collaborative efforts with Adolph Meyer. The Fagus Works, a rectangular structure, is noteworthy for its massive use of glass and its horizontal bands of windows divided by steel supports. The Cologne buildings are less functional but also use a large amount of glass. The office building features a large, circular, glass-enclosed staircase. In World War I Gropius served as a cavalry officer on the Western Front; during his period of service he was injured by a bomb explosion and received the Iron Cross for bravery. In 1915 he married Alma Schindler Mahler, the widow of composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). Their short marriage ended in 1919 following her affair with FRANZ WERFEL, and the only child of their marriage, Alma Manon, died tragically in 1935. Gropius married Ise Frank in 1923. In 1918 he founded the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar by uniting two schools, the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Applied Arts and the Grand Ducal Academy of Arts, of which he was director. For the next fifteen years, the Bauhaus would train hundreds of architects
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and craftsmen and exert a profound influence on modern architecture. Gro-pius was responsible for the Bauhaus curriculum, which sought to train students to create architecture for the modern machine age. First and foremost, every student underwent training in the crafts at the Bauhaus’s numerous craft shops. An architect, Gropius believed, was first a craftsman. Gropius engaged for the Bauhaus faculty the most prominent figures of progressive art in his day, including PAUL KLEE, WASSILY KANDINSKY, and LA´ SZLO´ MOHOLY-NAGY (who later established the New Bauhaus in Chicago). His aim of designing buildings for the machine age was born of his belief in creating structures for the requirements of the social environment rather than from any fixed preference for mechanization. The complexity and large-scale demands of modern buildings, Gropius believed, required collaboration with other architects, and he rarely worked alone. A centerpiece of the Bauhaus curriculum was a design course formulated by the Swiss painter and sculptor Johannes Itten, who encouraged exploration of rhythm, color, contrast, and form. Gropius, arguably better known for his teaching and ideas on architecture than for his actual designs, continued to design buildings in the 1920s. Among these designs are the Chicago Tribune Tower in 1922 and the Siemensstadt Housing in Berlin (1929). He also designed furniture and smaller items such as silverware and door handles, many for commercial production. Among his more unusual projects were a self-propelled diesel railroad car (1913), a sleeping car for the Germany Railway (1914), and a car, the Adler Cabriolet (1930). Although he did some work on private dwellings, his major focus was public buildings and city planning. When the Bauhaus relocated to Dessau in 1925, Gropius designed what was to become his best-known work, the school building and faculty housing (1925–1926). The asymmetrical, flat-roofed, white buildings are based on rectangular shapes, and, like many of his de-
signs, feature horizontal bands of windows. These characteristics are hallmarks of the International Style (also sometimes referred to as the Bauhaus Style or the Functional Style), which emerged as the dominant force in architecture between World War I and World War II. When the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s, the Bauhaus was quickly closed, and its style was labeled “art Bolshevism.” Gropius’s functional style was looked upon unfavorably by people in other quarters as well— charges of inhumanity, overmechanization, and coldness were not uncommon in critical descriptions of his work. Gropius fled with his wife to Italy and ultimately settled in England in 1934. There he worked in association with Maxwell Fry on the design for the Village College at Impington, Cambridgeshire (1936). Gropius moved to the United States in 1937, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and accepting a professorship of architecture at Harvard University. In 1938 he became chairman of the department. In accordance with his belief that buildings should serve the needs of the current social climate, he rejected all historical reference in architecture and attempted, unsuccessfully, to purge the class on architectural history from the curriculum. Although he was able to teach the philosophical tenets of the Bauhaus at Harvard, he remained unable to establish the training in crafts he espoused. Gropius became an American citizen in 1944. His later buildings were all collaborative efforts. From 1937 to 1940 he worked with Marcel Breuer, a former Bauhaus student and fellow teacher. Together they designed Gropius’s home in Lincoln, Massachusetts as well as Black Mountain College, Lake Eden, North Carolina. In the decade between 1942 and 1952 he served as vice president of the General Panel Corporation, a company that manufactured prefabricated housing. The center of his work, however, was The Architects Collaborative (TAC), which he founded in 1946 with six former Harvard students and remained involved with until his
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death. TAC designed the Harvard University Graduate Center (1949–1950) as well as the U.S. Embassy in Athens (1960) and the University of Baghdad (1960). Gropius received innumerable awards for his work throughout his life. Among these are honorary doctorates from the Hannover Institute of Technology (1929), Western Reserve University in Cleveland (1951), Harvard University (1953), and the University of Sydney in
Australia (1954). From 1929 to 1957 he was vice president of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) in Zurich.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fitch, James Marston, Walter Gropius, 1960; Giedion, Siegfried, Walter Gropius: Work and Teamwork, 1954; Sharp, Dennis, Bauhaus, Dessau: Walter Gropius, 1993.
Grosz, George (July 26, 1893–July 6, 1959) Painter, Graphic Artist, Illustrator nfluenced by the German Expressionists, the Dadaists, and his own vision of the corruption and decadence of German society, the artist and painter George Grosz framed his violent social and political criticism in expressive line drawings and paintings with jagged, angular forms and grotesque caricatures. Intermingled with these works, particularly in his later years, were landscapes, portraits, and other less violent works. Grosz was born Georg Ehrenfried Gross in Berlin. After the death of his father in 1900, he moved with his mother to Stolp in Pomerania in 1902. He attended a local grammar school and took drawing lessons. A talent for satire and caricature emerged in Grosz early on and first manifested itself in cartoons. He sold his first to Ulk in 1910 and continued selling them to other magazines. Grosz enrolled in the Royal Academy in Dresden, but more influential in his development was his time of study at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin, beginning in 1912. In Berlin he began to sketch objects and barren cityscapes as well as sympathetic portraits of down-and-outs, such as Unemployed Men (1912). Circus drawings, nudes, sex scenes
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(Orgy, 1913), and violent murder sketches (Murder, 1912–1913) also began to appear in his work. In 1913, Grosz went to Paris, where he was further influenced by his studies at the Ate´lier Colarossi and his acquaintance with the draftsman JULES PASCIN. By this time, Grosz had already become a harsh and vehement social critic. His graphic sketches portrayed chaos and decay, a vision that his disastrous years of military service would only make more negative. Grosz enlisted during World War I, was released on a medical discharge, and was recalled in 1917 before being permanently discharged. The horrors of war began to dominate his drawings, such as Landscape with Dead Bodies (1915) and The Shell (1915). War veterans, prostitutes, profiteers, and complacent, ignorant middle-class figures appeared in grotesque form in his work. Beginning with two volumes of lithographs published in Berlin in 1917, he began to publish his drawings. Subsequent collections include Republican Automatons (1920), The Face of the Ruling Class (1921), and Ecce Homo (1923; Behold the Man). The Expressionists had influenced Grosz earlier (see ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER), but two later move-
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ments influenceed his work during the 1920s. In 1918, he joined both the Communist Party and the Dadaists, the latter an anarchistic artistic movement sharply critical of all facets of postwar society. He married Eva Peter in 1920. Burlesques by Grosz of religious establishments, the bourgeois, militarists, and capitalists, such as the paintings Diamond Racketeer (1920) and Pillars of Society (1926), appeared frequently. At this time, Grosz turned more of his attention to drawings than he did to painting. Through his political drawings, such as The Bourgeois Stirs up Trouble and The Proletarian Must Shed His Blood (1923), his name became well known, and he was arrested and tried for his outspoken criticism more than once. Toward the end of the 1920s, however, Grosz lost his enthusiasm for Communism and began to create less highly charged subjects along with his controversial material. Among his “less offensive” works of the 1920s are a series of portraits and self-portraits, a painting of the boxer Max Schmeling (1926), and the costumes for GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s Androcles and the Lion in 1924. The emergence of Adolf Hitler provided Grosz with a new enemy, and critical sketches of the future dictator, such as Hitler the Savior (1930), appeared in his work several years before Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Having thought of emigrating to the United States for several years, Grosz finally made the move in 1933, the same year the Nazis deprived him of his German citizenship. His works were exhibited widely in Germany up until this time; in 1937 the Nazis included them in an exhibit of “degenerate art,” and many were subsequently destroyed.
Although he continued to produce politically charged works, Grosz toned down his social criticism in the United States. Photographs of New York, paintings of New York scenes and people (New York Types, 1934), and landscapes all began to emerge in his work. He painted more than he had in Germany but also continued to sketch. This new and less controversial mode provided him with little popular success, and he turned to teaching to earn money. In 1953 he opened an art school on Long Island. Even after he moved to the United States, however, Grosz still set his pen and paintbrush to work against the Nazis, as in Letter to an Anti-Semite (1935). He Was a Writer (1934) was inspired by the death of his friend Erich Mu¨hsam in a concentration camp. The Spanish Civil War formed the subject matter of another series of works, such as The Radio General (1937), a savage caricature of General Francisco Franco. Toward the end of Grosz’s life, attacks on American commercialism appeared in his work. Grosz’s autobiography A Little Yes and a Big No was published in 1946, and he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954. Among his other works are the illustrations for BERTOLT BRECHT’s children’s book The Three Soldiers (1930) and Heinrich Mann’s Kobes (1925).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Flavell, Kay, George Grosz: A Biography, 1988; Lewis, Beth Irwin, George Grosz:, Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic, 1971; Schneede, Uwe M., George Grosz: His Life and Work, 1979.
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Guilbert, Yvette (January 20, 1865–February 4, 1944) Singer, Actress, Novelist he French artist Henri de ToulouseLautrec memorialized Yvette Guilbert in his poster of the singer in her characteristic black gloves and yellow dress. Guilbert gained fame in late nineteenth-century Paris as a cabaret singer performing innuendo-filled songs. In her later career she appeared on screen, recorded her songs, and wrote novels and autobiographical works. Guilbert was born Emma Laure Esther Guilbert in Paris. Her father was of peasant background and worked in several unsuccessful business ventures. From him Guilbert received her first exposure to music as she sang to his instrumental accompaniment. When she was 12, however, her father abandoned the family, leaving her with her mother, a seamstress. Guilbert attended the Pension Couard as a day student and worked with her mother in the shop. At the age of 16 Guilbert took a modeling job, and she later went to work as a sales-girl. After watching a performance by Sarah Bernhard, she began to think about singing professionally. M. Landrol, a member of the company at the Gymnase, took her on as a student, and in 1887 she made her professional debut as Madame de Nevers in La Reine Margot at the Bouffes-du-Nord.
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The French author Guy de Maupassant suggested she use the stage name Yvette, and from her debut onward she was known as Yvette Guilbert. In 1891–1892 she gave a series of successful performances at the Horloge. Guilbert soon became a popular cabaret singer, appearing at the Moulin Rouge, the Folies-Berge`re, the Ambassadeurs, and elsewhere. From the mid-1890s on she appeared on international stages as well. Later in her career Guilbert made popular recordings of her songs (many written by Le´on Xanrof and Aristide Bruant), made international appearances, and appeared in such films as Les Mise´rables (1934) and Peˆcheurs d’Islande (1934). Her writings include Struggles and Victories (1910; with Harold Simpson), L’art de chanter une chanson (How to Sing a Song, 1918), the autobiography La chanson de ma vie (Song of My Life: My Memories, 1929), and the novels La vedette and Les demi-vieilles.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Guilbert, Yvette, Song of My Life: My Memories, 1929; Knapp, Bettina, and Chipman, Myra, That Was Yvette: The Biography of Yvette Guilbert, the Great Diseuse, 1964.
Guille ´ n, Jorge (January 18, 1893–February 6, 1984) Poet, Teacher, Critic, Scholar he Spanish poet Jorge Guille´n released most of his poetry in three major collections, Canticles, Clamor, and Homages. His lyrical, exuberant verse is rich
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in metaphor and extols his natural surroundings, celebrates the joys of love, and
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considers the passing of time. Guille´n also lectured at major universities all over the world. Guille´n was born the son of a newspaper publisher in Valladolid, Castile, Spain. At the age of 10, he enrolled in the Institute of Valladolid, and from 1909 to 1911, he studied with the french Fathers of the Oratory in Friebourg, Switzerland. Returning to Spain in 1911, Guille´n lived at the Residencia de Estudiantes and studied at the University of Madrid. In 1913, he earned a licentiate in letters from the University of Granada, and in 1923 he returned to the University of Madrid to earn his doctorate (1924). Guille´n’s first collection of poetry, Ca´ntico (Canticle), was published in 1928. The first edition contained seventy-five poems, and after undergoing three expansions over period of more than twenty years, the final edition appeared in 1950 with 334 poems. The Canticle poems are musical, rhythmic, contemplative celebrations of life. The cycles of nature form an important part of them, as in “April of the Ash,” describing the spring leaves emerging on the ash tree. “Beyond” finds the poet enraptured with his surroundings as the day dawns. Many poems, such as “I Close My Eyes,” are introspective and evoke dreams, whereas others, such as “A Springtime of Salvation” and “Love Fulfilled,” are sensual. The passage of time (“Along the Illustrious Shores”) and his own mortality (“Death in the Distance”) are also frequent themes in Canticles. In poetic style Guille´n was influenced in part by the Spanish poet JUAN RAMO´ N JIME´ NEZ, whose painstaking attention to craftsmanship lent his poetry a lyrical, sonorous quality. Guille´n’s poetry, too, was carefully tailored to bring out musical qualities that complemented his subjects. He turned to a more negative tone in Que´ van a dar en la mar (1960; That Flow into the Sea) and A la altura de las circunstancias (1963; The Rise to the Occasions). Like many other Spanish writers and intellectuals, Guille´n found himself an exile during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). He was ar-
rested in Pamplona in 1936 and two years later moved to the United States; he did not return permanently to Spain until 1978. From 1957 to 1963, Guille´n published his second major series of poetry, the three-volume Clamor: Time of History. As a whole, the poems of the three volumes of Clamor are more pessimistic than those of Canticles. In the first volume, Guille´n offered his first social criticism. In a series of “Clover Leaves,” or short, often humorous poems, Guille´n attacks the excesses of modern civilization. The prose poem “The Holdup Men” questions the American dream. In “The Power of Perez” and “Police Chorus,” Guille´n criticizes Spain’s Fascist police state. His poetic commentary led Spanish authorities to ban Pandemonium. The two volumes that complete the Clamor trilogy back away from social themes and return to the more personal subjects considered in the Canticles. The former contains a section entitled “In Remembrance,” dedicated to the memory of Guille´n’s first wife, Germaine Cahen, who died in 1947. Many poems in To Rise to the Occasion again evince the optimistic, exuberant spirit of the Canticles, as do the poems in Guille´n’s last major collection, Homenaje (1967; Homage: A Gathering of Lives), which pays poetic homage to writers and also has love lyrics written to his second wife. Guille´n’s lifelong academic career started in 1917, when he began lecturing at the Sorbonne in Paris. He lectured at universities all over the world: from 1926 to 1929, he taught Spanish language and literature at the University of Murcia; from 1929 to 1931 he taught at Oxford; from 1931 to 1938 he was professor of Spanish literature in Seville. Guille´n was a professor at Wellesley from 1940 to 1957; he also lectured in Romania, Colombia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico as well as many other universities in the United States. Guille´n’s other works include Aire nuestro (1968; Our Air), a massive volume that includes Canticles, Clamor, and Homages; The Poetry and the Poet (1979), a selection of his
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poetry; And Other Poems (1973); and the critical works Language of Poetry: Some Poets of Spain (1961) and The Theme of the Work (1961). Guille´n received the Miguel de Cervantes Prize from the Spanish Royal Academy in 1976.
BIBLIOGRAPHY MacCurdy, G. Grant, Jorge Guille´n, 1982; Matthews, Elizabeth, The Structured World of Jorge Guille´n: A Study of Ca´ntico and Clamor, 1985.
Guinness, Sir Alec (April 2, 1914–August 5, 2000) Actor, Producer, Director
Alec Guinness (쑖 ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
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he English actor Alec Guinness was a private personality with a talent for portraying pensive, introverted char-
acters. He lacked the flashiness and dramatic flair of LAURENCE OLIVIER and other British actors of his generation, but was recognized
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for his versatility and was also a popular personality in The Lavender Hill Mob and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Like many of the English actors of his generation, he established himself on the British stage before earning international fame as a film star, particularly in the films of DAVID LEAN and in the Star Wars trilogy. Guinness was born in Marylebone, England. He was the illegitimate child of a mother named Agnes and a father he rarely saw but who provided for him—a Scottish bank director. He spent his childhood moving with his mother from one boarding house to another in England. At the age of six, he was sent to the boarding school Pembroke Lodge at Southbourne. Soon afterward he fell ill with colitis. During his illness he began constructing model theaters, dreaming up dramatic plots, and acting them out himself. After his recovery, he returned to school and entertained his fellow students with his dramatic performances. At the age of 12 Guinness entered Roborough, near Eastbourne, where he became involved with the school’s dramatic society. He did well in school but was not at the top of his class, and he abandoned formal study when he was 17. While working as a copywriter for the advertising agency Arks Publicity, he attended theater performances whenever he could, particularly at London’s Old Vic Theatre. Guinness soon began to consider a career in theater seriously. He called JOHN GIELGUD to ask him for his advice, and from then on, Gielgud helped him. He was eventually invited to join Gielgud’s company at the New Theatre in 1934. With that company he appeared in a variety of Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean roles, beginning first as a versatile character actor. Guinness joined the Old Vic company in 1936 and appeared in a number of plays directed by T YRONE GUTHRIE and Michel Saint-Denis. He was especially successful as Sir Andrew Aguecheek (opposite Olivier’s Sir Toby Belch) in Twelfth Night in 1937.
With Gielgud’s company, he appeared in such plays as Richard II (1937), The School for Scandal (1937), The Three Sisters (1937), and The Merchant of Venice (1938). He took his first leading role as Louis Dubedat in GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s The Doctor’s Dilemma in 1938. The same year he starred in the title role in a popular modern-dress version of Hamlet at the Old Vic. Guinness’s first major West End role was in Clemence Dane’s Cousin Muriel at the Globe Theatre in 1940. Guinness served in the Royal Navy during World War II and while on leave made his stage debut in New York in TERENCE RATTIGAN’s Flare Path (1942–1943). PETER BROOK directed Guinness’s own stage adaptation of Fyodor Dostoeyvsky’s The Brothers Karamazov at the Lyric Theatre, in which he starred as Mitya in 1946. In 1948 he produced Twelfth Night, his first directorial effort, for the Old Vic. Later stage roles include the poet DYLAN THOMAS in Dylan (1964). In his first major film role (1946), Guinness appeared as Pip’s friend Herbert Pocket in a screen version of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. (Guiness later adapted the story for the stage.) In Oliver Twist (1948), he costarred as Fagan. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) was one of several Ealing studio comedies to bring him international recognition. Guinness would appear in a number of films directed by Lean, including Dr. Zhivago (1963), in which he portrayed General Yegraf Zhivago. Other films in which he appeared include The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Academy Award for best actor; Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), as Prince Feisal; FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI’s Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973), as the pope; Lean’s A Passage to India (1984), as Professor Godbole; and Little Dorrit (1987), in which he acted the part of William Dorrit. Guinness also played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the trilogy Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983).
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He was knighted in 1960. His autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, was published in 1986. Guinness died of liver cancer in 2000. BIBLIOGRAPHY Guinness, Alec, Blessings in Disguise, reissue, 1996; O’Connor, Garry, Alec Guinness: A Life, 2002; O’Connor, Garry, Alec Guinness: Master
of Disguise, 1994; Read, Piers Paul, Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography, 2003; Tanitch, Robert, Guinness, 1989; Taylor, John Russell, Alec Guinness: A Celebration, 1984; Von Gunden, Kenneth, Alec Guinness: The Films, 1987.
Guthrie, Tyrone (July 2, 1900–May 15, 1971) Director, Producer, Actor ost famous for his Shakespeare productions, William Tyrone Guthrie established himself as a major director at the Sadler’s Wells and Old Vic theatres in London. In his later life, he brought his Shakespearean productions to Canada and the United States and helped reestablish repertory theater in both countries. Guthrie also produced operas and other works by modern playwrights. Guthrie was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. His mother, the daughter of a general, came from a theater-going family and introduced him to the theater at a young age. One excursion in particular excited his interest in the theater—a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard when he was eight. Guthrie was a successful student and attended a local school before studying at the preparatory schools of Hurstleigh and Templegrove, Eastbourne. With the outbreak of World War I, the 14-year-old Guthrie entered the military college of Wellington. When the war ended, Guthrie entered the University of Oxford, where he studied history, joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and began to act. In 1924 he took a job with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and over the next two years put together a number of radio productions, including
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Euripides’s Iphigenia in Tauris and his own A Night in a Mid-Victorian Drawing-Room. In 1926, Guthrie began a season of directing with the Scottish National Players. Among his many productions there was The Glen is Mine, by the Scottish playwright John Brandane. He continued to write material for the BBC, among which is his “microphone play” Squirrel’s Cage, about a man who dreams of traveling to Africa but submits to an average daily work routine under the influence of his father. His The Flowers Are Not For You To Pick (1929) depicts a young minister’s final minutes before he drowns. Guthrie began to develop his mature directing style when in 1929 he took the position of artistic director of the Anmer Hall Company, which performed at the Festival Theatre in Cambridge, and later at the Westminster Theatre in London. He preferred to work with actors who worked together over a period of time and got to know one another, and he did not like to use extras. Whereas later directors such as BERTOLT BRECHT purposely tried to establish distance between the performers and the audience, Guthrie tried to cultivate a relationship between the two. To foster this relationship, he preferred the thrust stage, designed to create a sense of intimacy between performers and spectators.
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Among Guthrie’s successful productions with the Anmer Hall Company was his first major independent production, James Bridie’s The Anatomist (1931). His production of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1932) also proved a success. Follow Me (1931), Guthrie’s own play about a Scottish working-class man, fared less well. During this time Guthrie married the actress and playwright Judith Bretherton, who was from then on intimately involved in her husband’s work. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Guthrie directed many plays at the Old Vic and Sadler’s Wells theatres in London. Under the management of Lilian Baylis, the Old Vic staged mainly Shakespeare’s plays and English language operas. Its management later passed to the French director Michel SaintDenis. Productions of Shakespeare’s plays were always in Guthrie’s repertory during these years, but he also produced many works by Anton Chekhov as well as plays written by modern figures such as W. H. AUDEN, JOYCE CARY (Sweet Aloes, 1934), and GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. By this time Guthrie had emerged as a major director and attracted prominent actors to his productions. LAURENCE OLIVIER starred as Hamlet at an Old Vic production in 1937. From time to time Guthrie directed his own plays, which never proved very successful. Among these was Top of the Ladder, staged at the St. James Theatre in London in 1950, about an executive ruined by the influences of his parents. Along with plays, Guthrie produced many operas, the most successful of which were Gi-
useppe Verdi’s La Traviata; BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S Peter Grimes (1946), the first show at the Sadler’s Wells after World War II; Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1946), with a set designed by his longtime collaborator Tanya Moisiewitsch; and an English version of Bizet’s Carmen, staged at the Sadler’s Wells in 1949, the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1952, and The Opera House in Du¨sseldorf in 1968. Throughout his career, Guthrie sought to bring both theater and opera to the general English-speaking public. In the last fifteen years of his life, he increasingly devoted his energies to establishing repertory theater in North America. For several seasons, beginning in 1953, he served as artistic director at the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ontario, dividing his time between Canada, Britain, and the United States. The Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis opened in 1963, with Guthrie as artistic director of the Minnesota Repertory Theatre Company. Among Guthrie’s writings are Theatre Prospect (1932), A Life in the Theatre (1959), and Tyrone Guthrie on Acting (1971). Guthrie was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1948, was knighted in 1961, and received honorary degrees from many universities in Britain and North America.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Forsyth, James, Tyrone Guthrie: A Biography, 1976; Guthrie, Tyrone, A Life in the Theatre, 1959; Rossi, Alfred, Astonish Us in the Morning: Tyrone Guthrie Remembered, 1977.
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Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson (July 14, 1912–October 3, 1967) Singer, Songwriter, Novelist, Poet lthough his influence and popularity grew much stronger after his death than it ever became during his lifetime, the American singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie is perhaps the most important figure in early twentieth century folk music. His Dust Bowl era-inspired songs embraced the plight of the working classes, outlaw ramblers who pursued justice outside of an unjust system, outcasts, and everyday people. He was of particular influence on 1960s folk-rock musicians such as BOB DYLAN and Joan Baez (1941– ). Guthrie is perhaps best remembered for penning the song “This Land Is Your Land.” Guthrie was born Woodrow Wilson Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma. Aside from being a cowboy and a land speculator, his father was a local politician and named Woody after the newly elected American President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924). The elder Guthrie also taught his son folk songs of Western, Scottish, and Native American heritage. Guthrie’s childhood was a tragic and emotionally turbulent one. When he was just seven, his sister Clara died in a fire at their home. His mother, suffering from then undiagnosed Huntington’s disease and thought to be mentally ill, was eventually committed to the
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Woody Guthrie (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LCUSZ62-113276)
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Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane. The family began to drown in financial ruin. The discovery of oil in Okemah in 1920 transformed it into an oil-boom town filled with gamblers, hustlers, and other unsavory people that no doubt colored some of Guthrie’s song characters. An oil slowdown a few years later once again plunged the town into an economic downturn. Okemah proved to be too claustrophobic for Guthrie, who was born with traveling and rambling in his veins. He left home when he was nineteen, settling in Pampa, Texas, and marrying his first wife, Mary Jennings. With his wife’s brother and a friend, he formed The Corn Cob Trio and later the Pampa Junior Chamber of Commerce Band. In Pampa, he also discovered painting and drawing, activities he would continue throughout his life. The year 1935 brought the Great Dust Storm period, during which droves of unemployed farmers and workers from the Midwest migrated farther west across America toward California in search of work. Guthrie traveled with these “Okies” hoping to find work, leaving his family in Pampa. As his marriage was never a happy one, he and Mary eventually divorced. Along the way, he witnessed countless scenes of poverty among the working classes, provoking a sadness that inspired many songs. Guthrie traveled across the United States many times and spent much of his time on early trips learning traditional folk and blues songs and creating new American folk songs about and for working people. He painted signs, sang in saloons, performed on the streets, performed for parades and carnivals, and accepted almost any other small gig he could manage to earn money, food, and places to sleep. By 1937, Guthrie had reached Los Angeles, where he attained a measure of fame with his
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radio partner Maxine “Lefty Lou” Crissman on the radio station KFVD. He performed commercial hillbilly music as well as traditional folk music both on the radio and elsewhere. While he worked for KFVD, he began to write and perform protest songs, some of which eventually ended up on Dust Bowl Ballads (1940). Californians resented the Okie migration, and as one of them Guthrie was subjected to a certain amount of scorn. But his songs proved very popular with the relocated Okies, and the radio station also gave him a platform for social commentary he enjoyed delivering. In 1940, Guthrie moved to New York City, where he found a home in the folk music community. It was there that he made his first professional recordings, consisting of several hours of conversation and songs recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax (1915–2002) for the Library of Congress. During this time period, Guthrie also recorded for the Dust Bowl Ballads for RCA Victor. The collection of folk songs were straight from the Dust Bowl days Guthrie left behind in Oklahoma. Included among them was “Pretty Boy Floyd,” a popular song later covered by 1960s artists such as Dylan and The Byrds. The title character was typical of Guthrie, describing an outlaw who pursues justice outside of a corrupt system, stealing and slipping money and food to the poor. Of Pretty Boy Floyd, he wrote: Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered I’ve seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen. And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your life you roam, You won’t never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home.
In 1940, Guthrie also wrote “This Land Is Your Land,” which was both inspired by his travels across America and by his distaste for IRVING BERLIN’S popular song “God Bless America.” Guthrie considered Berlin’s song overly idealistic. Based on the melody from a song often performed by the legendary coun-
try music band The Carter Family, “When the World’s On Fire,” it was not recorded until 1944. In 1941, Guthrie moved to the Pacific Northwest, under the impression that a documentary about the Grand Coulee Dam that would utilize him as the songwriter was underway. Although the film was never made, Guthrie was commissioned the same year by the Department of the Interior and its Bonneville Power Administration to write songs about the Columbia River and the building of federal dams. The best known of these are on “Roll On Columbia,” “Grand Coulee Dam,” and “The Biggest Thing That Man Has Done.” After the project, Guthrie and Pete Seeger (1919– ) corresponded about Seeger’s new folk-protest group, the Almanac Singers. Guthrie returned to New York with plans to join Seeger’s group and tour the country. The Almanac Singers quickly grew in numbers, outgrowing their original workspace in a New York City loft and moving into a cooperative house in Greenwich Village. The Almanac Singers held regular concerts, often featuring Guthrie-penned songs. They later regrouped as the Weavers, performing Guthrie’s songs and helping to further popularize them after his death. Around this time, he met his future second wife, Marjorie Mazia, a dancer with MARTHA GRAHAM’S company. In 1944, Guthrie met Moses Asch (1905–1986), who founded Folkways Records, and recorded “This Land Is Your Land” for the first time, along with hundreds of other songs for him throughout the 1940s. In the early part of the decade, Guthrie began writing his autobiography Bound for Glory, which was published in 1943. A film adaptation directed by Hal Ashby (1929–1988) was released in 1976. During World War II, Guthrie served in the Merchant Marine and later the U.S. Army. Fueled by his hatred for Fascism, he served willingly and was known for entertaining fellow troops. Guthrie married Mazia while on furlough from the Army, and after his discharge, the two moved to Coney Island. In a tragedy
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that must have recalled the death of his sister during his childhood, his daughter Cathy died at the age of four in a fire. The couple’s son, Arlo Guthrie (1947– ) also became a famous folk singer. He is bestknown for his lengthy anti-Vietnam War satire “Alice’s Restaurant,” which was released shortly after his father’s death on Thanksgiving Day in 1967. Many U.S. radio stations traditionally replay the song every Thanksgiving. During this period with his family, he wrote Songs to Grow on for Mother and Child (1951), a collection of children’s music that included “Goodnight Little Arlo (Goodnight Little Darlin’).” By this time, however, Guthrie’s health had begun to deteriorate. Like his mother, he suffered from the symptoms of Huntington’s disease, and he began to behave erratically. Just as she was, he was misdiagnosed with alcoholism and schizophrenia before finally receiving the right diagnosis in 1952. After being hospitalized and released, his wife refused to take him back, believing he posed a danger to the family. Guthrie moved to a California compound owned by actor Will Geer (1902–1978). There he met his third wife, Anneke Van Kirk, by whom he had another child, Lorina Lynn. They moved briefly to Florida and then returned to New York. Not too long afterwards, she filed for divorce, unable to handle the stress of caring for him as he became increasingly ill. After the divorce, Marjorie returned to help care for him until he had to be hospitalized. Guthrie became increasingly unable to control muscle movements. He spent 1956 to 1961 at Greystone Psychiatric Hospital, then stayed at Brooklyn State Hospital until 1966. His final home was at Creedmor State Hospital, in Queens, New York, where he died. His cremated remains were scattered in the waters around Coney Island. BOB DYLAN was among the first of many young, aspiring folk singers who admired Guthrie and visited him in the hospital during his final years, as did Joan Baez and Phil Ochs
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(1940–1976). His musical admirers both played Guthrie’s own songs for him as well as their own, and Guthrie reportedly enjoyed their visits. Among Guthrie’s most famous songs are “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” “Talking Dust Bowl Blues,” “Tom Joad,” “Worried Man Blues,” and “Hard Travelin’.” Guthrie’s influence is still seen in rock and folk music today. His songs are still widely covered, and he has been the subject of many musical tributes. Early in his career, Dylan penned “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” and “Song to Woody,” the latter of which appeared on his first album in 1962. Aside from his songs, Guthrie wrote thousands of pages of unpublished poetry and prose, as well as several novels. His published works include Seeds of Man (1952), a book of writings entitled Born to Win (1965), and several songbooks. Guthrie also wrote “Woody Sez” columns in The Daily Worker; which were collected and published posthumously. Throughout his life, Guthrie was closely associated with leftist politics. Although he was never a member of the Communist Party, he expressed sympathies with it. He frequently donated earnings from his performances to various charitable causes and wrote for the People’s World. Along with others deemed to be communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, he was blacklisted. Guthrie left a lasting influence on folk singers who followed him, notably Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (1931– ), who was his prote´ge´ during his waning years, and Dylan. Rock and folk artists still look up to him to this day. Among the many Guthrie-inspired works in rock music is BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad. Most of Guthrie’s awards and recognition came posthumously. He was inducted into the National Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 1971, the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in 1977, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. He received the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999 and in 2000 was
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honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2006. Numerous tributes to Guthrie were recorded after his death. Many of his writings are housed in the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City.
for Glory, 1943; Klein, Joe, Woody Guthrie: A Life, 1980; Jackson, Mark Allan, Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie, 2007; Santelli, Robert, and Davidson, Emily, eds., Hard Travelin’: The Life and Legacy of Woody Guthrie, 1999; Yates, Janelle, Woody Guthrie: American Balladeer, 1995; www.woodyguthrie.org.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cray, Ed, Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie, 2004; Guthrie, Woody, Bound
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Harrison, Rex (March 5, 1908–June 2, 1990) Actor, Director nown for his seemingly effortless performances and comic-aristocratic air, Rex Harrison established himself as an actor on London’s West End before he became an international film star. He is best known for his roles of Professor Henry Higgins in the Broadway and film productions of My Fair Lady. Harrison was born Reginald Carey Harrison in Huyton, Lancashire, England. His father was a practical sort, a businessman and engineer, who nevertheless allowed him to pursue his interest in acting. When Harrison was a child, he decided he did not like the name “Reggie” and asked his mother to call him Rex. He was often ill, and his parents sent him to school at the nearby Liverpool College. Although not a great student, he began acting in the school plays. Upon his graduation and with his father’s help, he obtained an inter-
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Rex Harrison (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Toni Frissell Collection, LC-F9-01-5010004-06)
view with the director of the Liverpool Repertory Theatre and was subsequently accepted. Harrison appeared in many of the company’s productions for the next several years, including J. M. BARRIE’s A Kiss for Cinderella and JOHN GALSWORTHY’s Old English (as a footman). After moving to London in 1927, he secured a role in Brandon Thomas’s Charley’s Aunt, a comedy about two boys at Oxford trying to sneak their girlfriends into their room against the rules. Until 1930 he toured, appearing in Ben Travers’s A Cup of Kindness and other productions. A 1930 production of Shakespeare’s Richard III at the New Theatre marked Harrison’s debut on the London stage. Over the next several years, he continued to tour and to act on West End stages. Among his successful roles of the 1930s were Tubbs Barrow in a New York production of JOYCE CARY’s Sweet Aloes (1936) and Alan Howard in TERENCE RATTIGAN’s comedy French Without Tears (1936). The latter, a comedy marked by the characters’ use of bad French, ran for more than 1,000 performances in London and was Harrison’s most successful role to date. With The Great Game (1931), Harrison embarked on his long career in film. He appeared in a series of productions for London Films during the 1930s—as Thomas Newbiggin Stapleton in Men Are Not Gods (1936); and acting in Storm in a Teacup (1937), based on a James Bridie play, with Vivien Leigh. Harrison also appeared in The Citadel (1938), Ten Days in Paris (1940; American title Missing Ten Days), and a film version of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s Major Barbara in 1941. Although he and other popular entertainers were exempt from military service during World War II, Harrison enlisted in the Royal Air Force. After the war, he returned to both film and the stage. He starred in the film ver-
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sion of NOE¨ L COWARD’s Blithe Spirit, directed by David Lean as well as The Rake’s Progress (1945; American title The Notorious Gentleman). During this period of time, he appeared in several film and stage productions with his second wife, actress Lilli Palmer. Harrison’s role as King Mongkut in Anna and the King of Siam (1946), based on a novel by Margaret Landon, marked his debut in American film. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) was the first of several Harrison films directed by Joseph Manckiewicz, including Escape (1948); Cleopatra (1963), as Julius Caesar, with RICHARD BURTON as Mark Antony and Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra; and The Honey Pot (1967). The most popular of Harrison’s roles came with the 1956 production of the Broadway musical My Fair Lady, an adaptation of Shaw’s Pygmalion. He took voice lessons for his “sing-speak” performance of Professor Henry Higgins, opposite Julie Andrews as Eliza Dolittle, and for his role earned a Tony Award. Similarly, he won an Oscar for his performance in the film version (1964) opposite Audrey Hepburn. Among Harrison’s other films are Anne of the Thousand Days (1948); Unfaithfully
Yours (1948), directed by Preston Sturges; King Richard and the Crusaders (1954); The Reluctant Debutante (1958); Midnight Lace (1960), with Doris Day; two films directed by CAROL REED, Night Train to Munich (1940, as Dickie Randall; American title Night Train) and The Agony and the Ectasy (1965); Doctor Dolittle (1967); and numerous films for British and American television. In spite of the success of his career in film, Harrison never left the stage. Until his death, he appeared in plays such as JEAN ANOUILH’s The Fighting Cock (1959); Platonov (1960); In Praise of Love (1973); Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV (1974); Shaw’s Heartbreak House (1983, as Captain Shotover); and Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton (1988). Peter Ustinov’s play The Love of Four Colonels (1953), staged in Canada and the United States, was Harrison’s first effort as a director. Harrison authored two autobiographies, Rex (1974) and A Damned Serious Business: My Life in Comedy (1991) and was knighted in 1989.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Harrison, Rex, A Damned Serious Business, 1991; Moseley, Roy, Rex Harrison: The First Biography, 1987.
Hart, Lorenz Milton (May 2, 1895–November 22, 1943) Lyricist s one-half of one of America’s leading early Broadway duos, Lorenz Hart’s work pointed the way with his partner, RICHARD RODGERS, toward a new American musical. Lorenz “Larry” Hart was born in New York City, one of two boys born to Max M. and Frieda Hart. His father was a successful business promoter. Hart attended private schools
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and studied for two years at the School of Journalism at Columbia University, also the alma mater of his professional partner Rodgers. Hart was translating German plays for the Shuberts when the two paired up, and they had an early success in 1918 with a song performed in producer Lew Fields’s A Lonely Romeo. By 1925, they came into their own
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Lorenz Hart (right) and Richard Rodgers (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-122089)
with songs performed in The Garrick Gaieties, particularly their hit “Manhattan.” Over the next eighteen years, Hollywood and Broadway saw much of Rodgers and Hart. Urbane, clever and sometimes risque´ wit mark Hart’s lyrics in songs that remain popular today. A sampler: “Isn’t It Romantic?” (from Love Me Tonight), “Have You Met Miss Jones?”, “Lady is a Tramp” (from Babes in Arms), “This Can’t Be Love,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” (from Pal Joey), and “My Funny Valentine” (from Babes in Arms and the film version of Pal Joey). Love Me Tonight, a 1932 film starring MAURICE CHEVALIER, told the tale of a lowly tailor mistaken for a baron who woos a princess. Director Rouben Mamoulian, who later directed Rodgers’ Oklahoma! with his second writing partner, Oscar Hammerstein II, worked closely with the songwriters. Babes in Arms was the story of children of vaudevillians who decided to put on a show to avoid being sent to a work farm. When it opened in 1937, it was a hit and ran 300 shows. Two years later, Rodgers and Hart heard from writer John O’Hara, who wanted to know if they would write a musical based on his New Yorker short stories about a Chicago cad named Joey. A young Gene Kelly played the lead role when the play opened in New
York on Christmas night in 1940. At the time, however, the anti-hero Joey wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms. The show ran less than a year, then went on the road. Twelve years later, it enjoyed a successful revival sparked by the popularity of the tune “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” The play earned the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Musical and went on to become a movie titled Pal Joey starring FRANK SINATRA. In a New York Times article from Dec. 30, 1951, Richard Rodgers wrote: “Larry Hart loved Pal Joey not only because it was successful and people said good things about his work in it, but because of Joey himself. Joey is a disreputable character, and Larry understood and liked disreputable characters. He knew what John O’Hara knew—that Joey was not disreputable because he was mean, but because he had too much imagination to behave himself, and because he was a little weak.” In early 1943, Rodgers left Hart, who was a drinker, to create what was at that time a groundbreaking work in musical form, Oklahoma!. His new partner was Oscar Hammerstein II. But Rodgers and Hart had one more professional hurrah: a revival of A Connecticut Yankee. On opening night, Hart disappeared for two days. When discovered, sick in a hotel room, he had pneumonia. Three days later, he died at a New York City hospital.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Boardman, Gerald, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, 1992; The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 2001; Nolan, Frederick, Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway, 1994. www.lorenzhart.org. www.pbs.org.
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Hauptmann, Gerhart (November 15, 1862–June 6, 1946) Playwright, Novelist, Poet erhart Johann Robert Hauptmann established himself as a leader of naturalist drama in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century with a series of plays that addressed issues affecting the peasant classes. His later plays moved away from the strict realism of the naturalist style, employing symbolism, fantasy, and mythology. Hauptmann also wrote novels and poems; he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912, “primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied, and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art.” Hauptmann was born in Obersalzbrunn, Silesia, Prussia (now Szczawno-Zdro´j, Poland), where his modestly successful father owned a hotel. His early childhood was pleasant, but the year 1874 marked the beginning of four miserable years of school in Breslau. At the end of that period, Hauptmann’s father lost his money and sent him to live with an uncle in the country. In 1880 he enrolled in the Breslau Academy of Art to study sculpture, and two years later he entered the University of Jena to study philosophy and natural science. Hauptmann worked in Rome with the intention of making a living as a sculptor, and in 1884 he studied graphic art in Dresden. He married Marie Thienemann in 1885. The couple settled outside of Berlin, and her money enabled him to begin intense periods of personal study as well as to associate with progressive scientists and intellectuals. The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen particularly influenced Hauptmann’s early dramas, which introduced naturalism into the German theater, previously marked by its stylized productions. Naturalists sought to depict subjects in a realistic and scientific manner without moral judgment. Vor Sonnenaufgang (1889; Before Dawn), Hauptmann’s first play, depicts the demise of a working-class family’s morals after the dis-
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covery of coal on their property makes them rich. The play, produced by the Free Stage Society, was an instant popular success. Hanneles Himmelfahrt (1894; The Assumption of Hannele) relates the dreams of an abused child before she dies and combines naturalism with fantasy. Die Weber (1892; The Weavers), based on the Silesian weavers’ revolt in 1844, is one of Hauptmann’s most enduring and tragic works. The play revolves around a group of weavers who live in squalid conditions, showing them moving toward revolt. When police try to suppress the rebellion, a man who has not
Hauptmann Poster (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WPA Poster Collection, LC-USZC2-1145)
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taken part in it becomes the first casualty. Die Biberpelz (1893; The Beaver Coat) is a humorous satire on corrupt Prussian justice. Its protagonist, the washerwoman Mrs. Wolff, succeeds in pulling off thefts and confounds Prussian justice officials. Environmental circumstances shape individual and social morality in Hauptmann’s earlier dramas. In Rose Bernd (1903), a woman enters into marriage with a man she does not love. She then falls in love with a bailiff, whose own wife is bedridden. The woman’s disintegration ultimately leads her to murder her infant child. The difficulties of love and family relationships form the central theme of many Hauptmann plays. In The Coming of Peace (1890), an initially peaceful family-Christmas gathering disintegrates toward tragedy. The naturalist tragedy Fuhr-mann Henschel (1898; Drayman Henschel) depicts the ruin of a man’s life after his wife dies and he remarries in defiance of his deceased wife’s wishes. Karls Geisel (1908; Charlemagne’s Hostage), written in blank verse, presents Charlemagne as an aging man of 60 who is infatuated with the young hostage Gersuind but suppresses his desire and resists her advances. The theme recurs in Gabriel Schil-lings Flucht (1912; Gabriel Schilling’s Flight; staged in Lauchstedt with scenery painted by MAX LIEBERMANN) but adds the dimension of an artist’s relationship with women. The verse-fantasy play Die versunkene Glocke (1896; The Sunken Bell), a parable in verse, marked a turn toward romanticism in Hauptmann’s work and portrays an artist’s relationship with society and with a wife who does not understand him. This conflict was close to Hauptmann’s heart, as he divorced his own wife in 1904 and married the actress and vio-
linist Margarete Marschalk. Hauptmann, however, continued to write naturalist dramas such as Michael Kramer (1900) and Rose Bernd. He showed a capacity for fantasy in plays such as Und Pippa tanzt (1906); comedy in works such as Die Jung fern vomßis chofsberg (1907); and an interpretation of the classic myths in Der Bogen des Odysseus (1914), a play in blank verse. Hauptmann’s later plays moved away from naturalism and mixed elements of fantasy with symbolic language. Most notable among them is The Tetralogy of the Atrids (1941–1945), drawn from the Greek myth of the House of Atreus. His other plays include The Lonely Lives (1891), The Rats (1911), Dorothea Angermann (1926), and Hamlet in Wittenberg (1935). Aside from plays, Hauptmann wrote several works of fiction, including The Heretic of Soana (1918) and The Fool in Christ, Emanuel Quint (1910). The latter’s protagonist is an impoverished peasant who feels a calling to preach the gospel in his youth. The calling develops into fanaticism, until he finally believes Christ has entered his body. Hauptmann’s other works include the epic poems Till Eulenspiegel (1928) and The Great Dream (1942); the autobiographical works Adventure of My Youth (1937 and 1949); and Book of Passion (1930). Although not known for philosophical depth, Hauptmann’s prolific output and mastery of many dramatic and literary forms made him a major figure in twentieth-century drama.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Behl, C. F. W., Gerhart Hauptmann: His Life and Work, 1956; Marshall, Alan, The German Naturalists and Gerhart Hauptmann: Reception and Influence, 1982.
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Havel, Va ´ clav (October 5, 1936– ) Playwright, Essayist, Statesman a´clav Havel, president of the Czech Republic since 1993, gained international recognition as a dissident playwright in Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. Drawing from the style of the Theater of the Absurd playwrights, he targeted the Communist bureaucracy in his dramas. From a young age he was a vocal political activist, and his dissident activities resulted in numerous arrests and several years in prison. Havel was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. His father was a prosperous restauranteur and businessman before the Communist government confiscated much of the family property in 1948. Because he was the son of “bourgeois” parents, Havel was prohibited from attending school during the day. When he was old enough he drove a taxi to support himself and went to night school. As a teenager Havel developed an interest in poetry, read eagerly, and formed his own intellectual circle, the Thirty-
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sixers. He later studied at the Czechoslovak University of Technology. Among the members of the Thirty-sixers was future film director MILOSˇ FORMAN, who studied film at the Academy of Performing Arts. Forman and Havel co-wrote a film script for one of his classes. In 1959 Havel took a job as a stagehand in Prague and began acting on a regular basis. He also began to write his own plays, which were staged at the Theatre of the Balustrade Company. There he met his future wife Olga A¨plichalova´, whom he married in 1964. In writing his own plays Havel was influenced by the Czech-born FRANZ KAFKA and by Theater of the Absurd playwrights such as EUGE` NE IONESCO and SAMUEL BECKETT. Many of his plays evoke the absurd atmosphere of the Communist bureaucracy under which he lived. An Evening with the Family was the first of his absurdist efforts. Zahradnı´ slavnost (1963; The Garden Party), the satire of which targets de-Stalinization, was inspired by a story Havel heard about a man who lost his identity and went looking for himself at his own apartment. The play marked Havel’s first success as a playwright, and it was translated into many languages. Vyrozumenı´ (1965; The Memorandum) satirized the Communist bureaucracy and proved particularly objectionable to the authorities. The characters in the play embrace a new language, Ptydepe, which transforms communication. The same year Havel joined the editorial board of the Writers’ Union literary monthly Tva´r?. Havel finished Ztı´zena´ moznost soustredenı´ (The Increased Difficulty of Concentration) in 1968, the year of the Prague Spring (the reform movement that attempted to establish in Czechoslovakia a more humane form of Communism) and its brutal suppression by the Soviet Union. In spite of the suppression of his plays in Czech-
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oslovakia, he began to earn enough money from the publication of his works abroad to drive a Mercedes to his job at a brewery. Havel had long since established himself as a vocal opponent of the Communist system and increasingly found himself under the watchful eyes of the police. In 1956 he stood up at a writers’ conference and demanded recognition for the suppressed work of dissident poets. He took an active role in the reforms of the Prague Spring. After the Soviet suppression authorities banned his works, revoked his passport, and kept him under constant surveillance. Havel helped found Charter 77 in 1977, which expressed opposition to human rights violations. Havel continued to write in the 1970s, including The Beggar’s Opera (1972), based on the eighteenth-century ballad opera by the English poet and playwright John Gay; and the one-act plays Audience (1975), Private View (1975), and Protest (1978). The year 1977 brought an arrest and a short term in jail. After his release he was rearrested and spent the years from 1979 to 1983 in prison. During the 1980s Havel established himself as a leading dissident voice in Czechoslova-
kia. Demanding democratic reforms, he participated in the Civic Forum and the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the year the Communist government fell. From 1989 to 1993 he served as president of Czechoslovakia. When the nation split in 1993 he became president of the Czech Republic, a position he held until 2003. His memoir To the Castle and Back (2007) recounts his presidential experiences. In his post-presidential years, Havel has remained active in political causes, particularly anti-terrorism measures. Havel has been nominated repeatedly for the Nobel Peace Prize. His later plays include Largo Desolato (1985), which takes its title from a movement in an ALBAN BERG work; Slum Clearance (1987); and Temptation (1988), a play on the Faust theme. Among his other works are the nonfiction collection Summer Meditations (1992) and Letters to Olga (1988), a volume of his prison correspondence to his wife.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kriseova´, Eda, Va´clav Havel: The Authorized Biography, 1993; Rocamora, Carol, Acts of Courage: Va´clav Havel’s Life in the Theater, 2005.
Head, Bessie (July 6, 1937–April 17, 1986) Novelist, Short-Story Writer he novels and short stories of the South African–born writer Bessie Amelia Emery Head primarily address racism, sexuality, and cultural conflict in southern Africa in straightforward prose. Head spent her early life in South African cities but moved to rural Botswana in 1964, and the latter setting furnished the basis for most of her fiction.
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Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to a white mother and a black father. She grew up without both of them. Authorities placed her mother in a mental hospital, and she died in 1943. Her father inexplicably vanished. After spending her youth in foster care and orphanages, Head trained as a teacher and taught primary school until 1959. She subsequently worked as a journalist for the
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Golden City Post and Drum magazine. In 1962 she married Harold Head, a journalist. In 1964 Head’s marriage broke up, and she moved to Botswana with her son, Howard. She took a teaching job in Serowe, a large village and the center of the Bangwoto ethnic group. Life in Serowe was difficult for Head. She lived as an exile and did not obtain citizenship in Botswana until 1979, just a few years before her death. From 1967 to 1970 she suffered from mental illness, which culminated in a breakdown in 1969. Nevertheless, Head adopted Serowe as her new home, and almost all of her writing is set in rural Botswana. Her first novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, was published in 1969. Its protagonist, Makhaya, is an exile who has escaped the shackles of apartheid and regains his sense of humanity in an adopted village. A different form of racism dominates Head’s second novel, Maru (1971). Its central event is a controversial marriage that crosses the racial boundaries between the dominant Botswana and the weaker Basarwa people. Both novels mirror Head’s own experience under apartheid in South Africa as a light-skinned woman among a predominantly dark-skinned people in Botswana. A Question of Power (1973), her third novel, is also rife with autobiographical elements and recounts a woman’s struggle with insanity and sexuality. Sexuality is the other major theme in Head’s writings, which contain many
sympathetic portraits of women who are physically and psychologically abused by men. The sexual element is particularly evident in The Collector of Treasures (1977), a volume of short stories. Most of the sketches it contains were published earlier in periodicals. Many reflect women’s struggles in Botswana in both historical and modern settings. The title story concerns a woman, Dikeledi, who is imprisoned for murdering her abusive husband. Head also wrote two historical works, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981) and A Bewitched Crossroad (1984). Despite their heavy social content, Head’s writings are not directly political and, with the exception of the historical works, are derived largely from her personal experience. Her criticism of apartheid and European colonialism did not condemn all Europeans, nor did her efforts to reach back into history result in complete respect for African traditions, particularly with regard to customs that belittled women. Before her early death from hepatitis in 1986, her work attained moderate success both in Africa and elsewhere in the world. BIBLIOGRAPHY Eilerson, Gillian Stead, Bessie Head, Thunder Behind Her Ears: Her Life and Writing, 1995; Ibrahim, Huma, Bessie Head: Subversive Identities in Exile, 1996; Mackenzie, Craig, ed., A Woman Alone: Autobiographical Writings, 1990; Ola, Virginia Uzoma, The Life and Works of Bessie Head, 1994.
Heaney, Seamus (April 13, 1939– ) Poet, Teacher, Essayist, Translator, Critic, Short-Story Writer
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eamus Justin Heaney’s work springs from both the stormy cultural-political climate in Northern Ireland and his
background as one brought up on the land. His poetry is reflective in nature, combining elements of Irish culture, history, and politics
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with his own experiences. Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 (the fourth Irish writer to win that honor), “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” In his speech of acceptance, he defined what “the necessary poetry always does, which is to touch the base of our sympathetic nature while taking in at the same time the unsympathetic reality of the world to which that nature is constantly exposed.” His own poetry seems to many necessary poetry. Heaney was born at his family’s farm, Mossbawm, in County Derry, Northern Ireland. He attended the Anahorish School and St. Columb’s College. Childhood memories of the farm life at Mossbawm furnished the material for many of Heaney’s early poems. In 1953, the family moved to another farm, The Wood. Heaney studied English literature and language at Queens College in Belfast, where he received his degree in 1961. The following year, he attended St. Joseph’s College of Education. After teaching at St. Thomas’s Intermediate School, Heaney returned to St. Joseph’s as a lecturer and embarked on his career as a poet. His first published poem, “Tractors,” appeared in the Belfast Telegraph in 1962. An important influence on his work at this time was his association with Philip Hobsbaum’s “Group,” in which he and such poets as James Simons and Michael Longley met to discuss their work. Heaney subsequently lectured at Queens College and married Marie Devlin in 1965. Death of a Naturalist (1966), Heaney’s first collection of poetry, won several awards after its publication, immediately winning praise from both the critics and the reading public. Along with its successor, Door in the Dark (1969), its poetry is deeply rooted in his youth on the farm. The natural landscape, customs, rituals, and memories of specific incidents form the subject matter of many of the poems, such as Death of a Naturalist’s title poem, the story of the day he saw the frogs, “the great slime kings . . . gathered there for
vengeance,” and gave up gathering their spawn, and “Churning Day,” with its vivid recreation of every detail of the ritual of churning day: Arms ached. Hands blistered. Cheeks and clothes were spattered with flabby milk. Where finally gold flecks began to dance,
and finally the butter itself emerges, “heavy and rich, coagulated sunlight.” Sometimes also Heaney takes the reader into his sense of what it means to be a poet, as in “Personal Helicon”: “As a child, they could not keep me from wells,” where buckets drop into darkness, and now that such exploration can no longer be a literal prying “into roots,” “I rhyme / To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.” Heaney’s poetry, both early and later, is crafted and honed, following traditional forms and utilizing a variety of poetic devices. The poems are rhythmic, generally short, and often characterized by abruptness. The publication of The Bog People (1969), by P. V. Glob, steered Heaney into a new thematic direction. Glob’s presentation of archaeological finds in Jutland (Denmark) included accounts of remains of victims of sacrifice and execution preserved in the bogs. Heaney’s discovery of Glob’s book coincided with renewed violence in Northern Ireland, and poems such as “The Tollund Man” in Wintering Out (1972) compare the ancient victims with modern ones, as Heaney brings to life both the ancient suffering and the modern. Bog imagery figures prominently in much of his later work. North (1975) contains many poems that address the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland. Heaney, a Catholic, mourns violence on both sides, refusing to make any direct political statement, but working for peace in a way that is appropriate for poetry. And in fact the Nobel Foundation praised him for his subtle and profound approach to the violence in his country. Field Work (1979) re-
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turned to themes of his early writings, but it also includes a series of elegies for friends that make their own kind of plea for peace. One of them, “Casualty,” memorializes the death of Louis O’Neill, who died when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded in a Protestant bar, and brings O’Neill alive so completely, in such homely detail, that the full horror of using that kind of violence has to be felt. Heaney’s “Glanmore Sonnets,” written at his 1970s home in County Wicklow, Ireland, and celebrating poetry, the countryside, and his marriage, also form part of Field Work. Many poems in Station Island (1984), The Haw Lantern (1987), and Seeing Things (1991) are personal and reflective. “Clearances,” a sequence of elegies in sonnet form about his mother’s death, belongs to The Haw Lantern, and a series of elegies for his father forms part of Seeing Things (1991). The Spirit Level (1996), reflects his search for balance in various aspects of life. The title refers to a carpenter’s level (called a spirit level in Ireland), a symbol of evenness. Electric Light (2001) was Heaney’s eleventh poetry collection. District and Circle (2007) is Heaney’s latest volume of verse and treats poetry, nature, art, and labor, among other themes. Beginning in 1982, Heaney taught at Harvard University for the spring semester every year, a part of the Irish world in Boston, always approachable by ordinary people, active in encouraging young poets, and a conscientious and stimulating teacher. The celebration in Boston when he won the Nobel was almost
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as enthusiastic as the one in Dublin. He also lectured at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 1994. Aside from his poetry, Heaney has contributed essays and articles to numerous publications in the English-speaking world. His other works include Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968–1978 (1980); The Rattle Bog (1982), a collection of poetry for children he edited with TED HUGHES; Sweeney Astray (1983), a translation of the medieval Irish poem Buile Suibhne; Government of Tongue (1988); Selected Poems, 1966–1987 (1991); The Cure at Troy (1991), a version of Sophocles’s Philoctectes; The Midnight Verdict (1993); The Redress of Poetry (1995), a collection of his lectures at Oxford; and Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966–1996 (1998), which gives a more complete picture of his poetic accomplishment than is usual in a Selected Poems, and ends with the text of his Nobel acceptance address, “Crediting Poetry.” Some critics saw the book, which came out in paperback in 1999, as confirming Heaney’s status as the best poet writing in English today. His critically acclaimed translation of Beowulf (2000) contributed further to that reputation. In 2004, Heaney published a version of Sophocles’ Antigone entitled The Burial at Thebes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Corcoran, Neil, Seamus Heaney, 1986; Curtis, Tony, ed., The Art of Seamus Heaney, 3d ed., 1994; Foster, Thomas C., Seamus Heaney, 1987; Murphy, Andrew, Seamus Heaney, 1996.
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He ´ lion, Jean (April 21, 1904–October 27, 1987) Painter irst attracting attention in the world of abstract art in Paris, Jean He´lion painted, during the span of his career, in styles that range from pure abstraction to strikingly realistic detail. Characterized by their use of cool colors, symbols, shapes, and flat planes, his paintings were exhibited widely around the world during his lifetime. He´lion was born in Couterne, Orne, France. Before determining on a career as a painter, he studied engineering and architecture in Lille. After moving to Paris as an architect’s apprentice, he turned to painting. Assisted by the Uruguayan artist Joaquen Torres-Garcea, he met the avant-garde painters of Paris and began to experiment with the various influences flourishing in the city’s artistic climate. Strongest of these influences in the late 1920s was Cubism, which appears in the angular planes of such works as Teˆte de femme (1925), depicting the side profile of a woman’s face. Toward the end of the decade He´lion moved toward pure abstraction, creating series of paintings composed of interplays of flat areas of color and bearing such titles as Abstraction (1929) or Composition (1930). With the Dutch painter Theo van Doesburg, he helped found the Association AbstractionCre´ation. Several works entitled Composition orthogonale (1929–1930) consist of flat areas of color bounded by thick, black lines, reminiscent of PIET MONDRIAN’s paintings of the 1920s. Tensions circulaires (1931–1932) depicts an interplay of circular and straight lines against a white background. He also began to include three-dimensional shapes in his abstract depictions, as in Figure tombe´e (1937; Fallen Figure). He´lion moved to the United States in the late 1930s but returned to France to fight in World War II. He was taken prisoner by German soldiers and interned on the Polish border until he escaped. His war experiences are
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reflected in the autobiographical book, They Shall Not Have Me (1943). In 1945 he married Pegeen Guggenheim, daughter of the influential patron of modern art Peggy Guggenheim. During and after World War II He´lion reintroduced representation into his work. In the late 1930s he painted a number of male heads and full-length bodies, such as Eduoard (1939) or Charles (1939). These figures have angular, flat-featured faces and bodies in simplified form, sometimes in blue-dominated canvases. In the 1940s he painted still lifes and many nude females characterized by their simplified, rounded forms and expressive poses. Embarking on another dramatic change in his style, He´lion in the 1950s painted realistic still lifes. Le gouˆter (1953; The Lunch), for example, depicts a table strewn with coffee cups, garments, food, silverware, papers, and other items, while on the floor sit plants and a bottle of wine. L’atelier (1953) shows the inside of a studio with He´lion’s own paintings sitting about. The artist is seated in his chair as a woman stands pensively on the stairs in the background. Two major developments occurred in He´lion’s work in the 1960s. The first was his switch from oil to acrylic paints due to his allergic reactions to oil solvents, and the second was the beginning of a series of largescale triptychs. His first triptych, a scene from the rue du Dragon, was begun in 1967. The twenty-seven-foot Last Judgment of Things (1979), one of his last major works, depicts a flea market scene. He´lion’s eyesight began to fail in the 1970s and by 1983 he was completely blind. His work gained international attention in the 1930s and has been exhibited widely since then. The popularity of his paintings benefitted from his proficiency in English and his numerous trips to the United States and En-
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gland. Portions of his notebooks were published as Journal d’un peintre (Journal of a Painter) in 1992.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gallery of Modern Art, Paintings by Jean He´lion, 1964.
Hellman, Lillian Florence (June 20, 1905–June 30, 1984) Playwright ne of the early twentieth century’s noteworthy female playwrights, Lillian Hellman is most famous for the plays The Children’s Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1939), and Toys in the Attic (1959). While Hellman was not particularly prolific, she scored several major successes on the Broadway stage. Her work is dominated by two distinct themes—negative portrayals of the American South and her staunchly leftist political views. Hellman was born into a Jewish family in New Orleans, Louisiana. While she was growing up, she divided her time between New York City, where her family moved, and a New Orleans boarding house that her aunts ran. From 1922 to 1924, Hellman studied at New York University. She spent part of 1924 at Columbia University but graduated from neither institution. Instead, she took a job with the publishing firm of Boni and Liveright. It was not long before she was reviewing books for the New York Herald Tribune, writing short stories for The Paris Comet, and reading scripts for producers. The last of these positions yielded a success with her discovery of the script for Grand Hotel, which evolved into a successful Hollywood film starring Greta Garbo (1905–1990). In 1925, she married playwright Arthur Kober (1900–1975). By 1930, Hellman was reading scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood. She and Kober divorced amicably in 1932, after which she returned to New York. While in Holly-
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wood, she fell in love with mystery novelist and screenwriter Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961). Although Hellman had other lovers over her lifetime, she and Hammett maintained an intimate relationship until his death. The Children’s Hour (1934), set in a children’s school, marked Hellman’s first success as a playwright. The Broadway production ran for approximately seven hundred shows. Hellman took the story from an actual legal case in which a young schoolgirl brought charges of lesbianism against her teachers in nineteenth-century Scotland, and the subject matter stirred controversy at the time. William Wyler (1902–1981) directed the film version entitled These Three (1936). Her next major play, Days to Come (1936), about a labor strike in a Midwestern town, did not fare as well as The Children’s Hour. In 1936 and 1937, she traveled to Europe, where she met other American writers who were living in Paris, including ERNEST HEMINGWAY. Hellman’s travels to Europe were crucial in shaping her political outlook. Disgusted with the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), which led to the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1892–1975), and having visited the Soviet Union, her leftist viewpoints hardened. From the mid-1930s, Hellman was irregularly involved in liberal and leftist activities and organizations. The Little Foxes (1939), among Hellman’s greatest successes, is set in the South at the turn of the nineteenth century. Money and greed form the central focus of the play, as
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brothers Ben and Oscar Hubbard try to scrape together $75,000 to build a mill in their town. Their conniving sister Regina, played by the American actress Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), becomes enmeshed in the scheme and eventually swindles her brothers out of a seventy-five percent interest in the mill. Wyler directed the 1941 film version, for which Hellman also wrote the screenplay. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and starred Bette Davis (1908–1989), Herbert Marshall (1890–1966), and Teresa Wright (1918–2005). Watch on the Rhine (1941) was a distinctly anti-fascist play about a German opposed to the Nazi regime who is busy raising money for his political aims in the United States. The play marked another success for Hellman and won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. Hellman herself was involved in political activities aimed at ousting German dictator Adolf Hitler from power. The Searching Wind (1944) also treated the theme of fascism. During the 1940s, Hellman adapted a number of her plays for the Hollywood screen. The North Star (1943) praised the Russian people for their war efforts against Nazi Germany. She returned to writing for the stage with Another Part of the Forest (1946), set in nineteenth-century Alabama. The Hubbard family is again the subject of the play, but the events are set prior to those of The Little Foxes. One of her next projects was an adaptation of the French play Montserrat. It was followed by her own work for the stage, The Autumn Garden (1951), set at a summer retreat on the Gulf of Mexico. Hellman, an avowed leftist who sometimes acknowledged membership in the Communist Party and sometimes denied it, came under fire during the post-war anticommunist sentiment that permeated the American political climate. Amidst this atmosphere arose the House Un-American Activities Committe (HUAC) and later the anticommunist investigations spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957).
Himself under fire from HUAC, Hammett served time in jail in 1951 for refusing to implicate communists in Hollywood before the committee called Hellman in 1952. Hellman, too, remained tight-lipped before HUAC when it came to naming names, but she delivered an oft-quoted speech that read in part: “[T]o hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.” Although she was never jailed, she, like Hammett, was blacklisted in Hollywood until the 1960s and was forced to sell the farm she had purchased in Westchester County, New York. She later settled in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. During the 1950s, Hellman worked on various projects, including adaptations of other writers’ works for the stage. Among these were French dramatist JEAN ANOUILH’S The Lark and a successful musical version of Voltaire’s (1694–1778) Candide. In 1955, she edited the letters of the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov (1860–1904). Actor Jason Robards (1922–2000) starred as Julian in her next major play, Toys in the Attic (1960). Julian is a Southern man who falls victim to the workings of his sisters and his wife, who all want him to remain dependent on them. During the 1960s, Hellman taught writing and began work on her trio of memoirs, An Unfinished Woman (1969), in which she writes about New Orleans, Hollywood, and her relationship with Hammett; Pentimento (1973), about her youth and early days in New York, with literary snapshots of old friends; and In Scoundrel Time (1976), which recounts her experiences testifying before HUAC. An Unfinished Woman won a National Book Award in 1969. In 1980, Hellman wrote a short novel, Maybe. She coauthored her book Eating Together: Recipes and Recol-
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lections (1984) with playwright Peter Feibleman (1930– ). Among the numerous honors and awards she received was the National Institute of Arts and Letters’ Gold Medal for Drama in 1964 and the MacDowell Medal in 1976.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Falk, Doris V., Lillian Hellman, 1978; Feibleman, Peter S., Lilly: Reminiscences of Lillian Hellman, 1988; Griffin, Alice, Understanding Lillian Hellman, 1999; Lederer, Katherine, Lillian Hellman, 1979; Rollyson, Carl E., Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy, 1988; Wright, William, Lillian Hellman: The Image, The Woman, 1986.
Helpmann, Robert (April 9, 1909–September 28, 1986) Choreographer, Dancer, Actor, Director commanding presence as a both a dancer and an actor, Sir Robert Murray Helpmann was a regular in lead roles in British theater and ballets in the mid-twentieth century. As a choreographer he brought highly dramatic and theatrical ballets to both British and Australian stages. Helpmann also directed for the theater and appeared in a number of films. Helpmann was born in Mount Gambier in southern Australia. He made his first stage appearance in a musical comedy in 1923. His first big break as a dancer came when he joined and began touring with ANNA PAVLOVA’s company three years later, and he subsequently toured in Australia with J. C. Williamson’s company. In 1933 Helpmann moved to London and joined what was then the Vic –Wells Ballet (later the Sadler’s Wells), performing in such roles as Satan in Ninette de Valois’s Job (1933). The following year he was promoted to premier danseur, a position he held until 1950. He began to appear in leading roles opposite such ballerinas as ALICIA MARKOVA and MARGOT FONTEYN, and his partnerships with Fonteyn proved especially popular. His other dance roles include the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, the lead role in Miracle in the Gor-
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bals (1944), the lead role in Adam Zero (1946), and Mr. O’Reilly in de Valois’s The Prospect Before Us. He appeared often in works choreographed by both de Valois and Sir FREDERICK ASHTON. As a choreographer Helpmann produced his first major work (in which he also danced the lead role), Hamlet, in 1944. A loose interpretation of Shakespeare’s play, the ballet begins with the hero’s death and focuses on his psychological state in the time leading up to the fateful event. He went on to choreograph a number of successful works for the Australian Ballet, of which he served as artistic director from 1965 to 1973. Helpmann made his final stage appearance in Australia in 1986, when he appeared as the Red King in Checkmate. Running parallel to his ballet career was his career on stage. In 1937 he played his first major role at the Old Vic—Oberon in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He often played Shakespearean roles, including Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and the title role in Hamlet. In 1948 he performed at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford with Sir Barry Jackson’s company. Helpmann directed plays as well, including Murder in the Cathedral (1953), Antony and Cleo-
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patra, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It (1955), and Duel of Angels (1960). Films in which Helpmann appeared include One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942); Henry V (1944); The Red Shoes (1948), which he also choreographed; Tales of Hoffman (1950); Big Money (1956); Don Quixote (1973), which he codirected with dancer RUDOLF NUREYEV; The Mango Tree (1977); and Patrick (1978). Helpmann was knighted in 1968.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Anthony, Gordon, Robert Helpmann, 1946; Brahms, Caryl, Robert Helpmann, Choreographer, 1943; Salter, Elizabeth, Helpmann: The Authorised Biography of Sir Robert Helpmann, 1978.
Hemingway, Ernest Miller (July 21, 1899–July 2, 1961) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Journalist he Pulitzer Prize- and Nobel Prize-winning American author Ernest Hemingway led a turbulent life filled with tragic events but nevertheless produced what many consider some of the greatest fiction of the twentieth century. He was also an accomplished journalist and war correspondent. Hemingway was the second of six children and was born in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His father, Clarence Edmonds “Doctor Ed” Hemingway, was a country doctor with a strong penchant for the outdoors. His mother, Grace Hall Hemingway, was a talented singer who at one time aspired to a career in the opera. She helped out with the family’s finances by giving music lessons, and she ensured that her children were exposed to the arts through trips to concerts, operas, and galleries. Hemingway, however, was more interested in his father’s outdoor activities than his mother’s penchant for music or her domineering, religious demeanor. During the summertime, the family vacationed at Bear Lake, a pastime that developed Hemingway’s lifelong interest in the outdoors. Hemingway attended Oak Park High School and River Forest Township High
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School from 1913 to 1917. By all accounts, he was an excellent student and an accomplished athlete, as he boxed, played football, and excelled in English. His first published writings were for Trapeze, the school’s newspaper, and Tabula, the school’s literary magazine. In spite of his high school successes, college did not interest Hemingway. After his graduation, he took a job writing as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star, for which he covered a police station, the train station, and a hospital. Although he remained in the position for less than a year, his early training there, in which he was taught to use few words to express a lot, influenced his minimalist writing style characterized by marked understatement. His mentor there was Lionel Calhoun Moise, who shared two of Hemingway’s main interests—writing and alcohol. Hemingway attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army during World War I, but due to a defective left eye, he failed the vision test. Determined to serve in one form or another, he instead joined the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. On the Italian front at which he was posted, he witnessed war brutalities he had never dreamed of, an experience that deeply affect-
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ed him. One particularly traumatic episode involved the explosion of a munitions factory in Milan, after which he helped collect the remains of the wounded and killed, many of which were women. In 1918, Hemingway was hit by Austrian artillery while delivering supplies to solders, ending his career as an ambulance driver. He was later awarded the Silver Medal of Military Valor from the Italian government for dragging a wounded soldier to safety while he was injured himself. He suffered knee and foot injuries that required multiple operations, and it was during his time at the hospital that he met and fell in love with the nurse Agnes von Kurowsky (1892–1984). The two were separated after a few months when her job was relocated, and she eventually ended their relationship. The rejection devastated Hemingway and was to resurface in his fiction. After a brief return to Oak Park after the war, during which time he married Elizabeth Hadley Richardson (1891–1979) and worked for the small Co-operative Commonwealth, he moved to Toronto, Ontario, in Canada. There he took a job with the Toronto Star, where he befriended fellow reporter Morley Callaghan (1903–1990). Hemingway did not stay long in Toronto, either, and in 1921, he and his wife moved to Paris. Continuing to work for the Star, Hemingway covered the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). More importantly to his literary career, however, he met the American expatriate GERTRUDE STEIN, who became his mentor and introduced him to modern Parisian movements. Their friendship formed part of the beginning of an American expatriate circle in Paris known as the Lost Generation. During this time, Hemingway was also heavily influenced by EZRA POUND, who founded Imagism. While in Europe, he traveled to Pamplona in Spain to watch the bullfights—an experience that deeply impressed him. In 1923, he published his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, in Paris. Having returned briefly
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to Toronto in 1924, he resigned from the paper and began to devote his energy entirely to his literary work. Much of his work for the Star was later collected as Dateline: Toronto (1985). Hemingway’s American literary debut was the short story cycle In Our Time (1925), which showcased his minimalist writing style and featured the story “Big Two-Hearted River.” In April 1925, Hemingway met and befriended F. Scott Fitzgerald, who had just published his famous novel The Great Gatsby. Hemingway was given to long nights of excessive drinking, which led in part to his first successful novel The Sun Also Rises (1926). A semiautobiographical novel, it derived from his life in Paris and followed a group of expatriate Americans as they traveled around Europe. It was followed by his less-successful novel The Torrents of Spring (1926). He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer, who was a devout Roman Catholic and sometimes fashion reporter from Arkansas. The same year, he published the short story collection Men Without Women, which contained one of his best-known stories, “The Killers.” In 1928, Hemingway’s father, suffering from health and financial problems, committed suicide. The following year saw the publication of A Farewell to Arms (1929), a heavily autobiographical novel based on his relationship with Kurowsky that details a romance between the American soldier Frederic Henry and the British nurse Catherine Barkley. In 1931, Hemingway moved to Key West. The building was (and still is) a very sturdy, solid house that is today a museum devoted to the author. Some Key West locals consider the Hemingway house the best place to shelter themselves on the hurricane-prone island. The museum is crawling with descendants of a six-toed cat Hemingway once owned—some of which have carried on the gene. Around Key West, where he remained until his divorce in 1940, Hemingway immensely enjoyed fishing. On occasion he traveled to Spain, gathering more material for Death in
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the Afternoon (1932), the inspiration of which had its roots in his earlier visit to the bullfights in Pamplona. In 1933, Hemingway took a safari that lead him to Mombasa, Nairobi, and Mahcakos in Kenya, then to Tanzania. In 1935 he published The Green Hills of Africa, which was an account of his safari. The following year, he began a relationship with Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998), and in 1937, Hemingway went to Spain to report on the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. He openly supported the leftist Republicans who opposed the Fascist dictator Francisco Franco (1892–1975), a position that effectively ended his longtime friendship with author John Dos Passos (1896–1970). By this time in his life, Hemingway had suffered a myriad of short- and long-term health problems that included an anthrax infection, hemorrhoids, kidney problems, a torn groin muscle, a finger slashed to the bone, lacerations from a harrowing ride on a runaway horse, and injuries from a car accident. To Have and Have Not (1937) was his most experimental novel and used multiple narrative perspectives to tell the story of ex-police officer Harry Morgan, who operates a charter boat in Cuba and Florida. In the process of operating his boat, he gets mixed up in running drugs during the Great Depression. The following year, Hemingway published his only full-length play The Fifth Column, as well as forty-nine stories. They were all published collectively as The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories. Among the short stories were also the longer works “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” Following his 1940 divorce, he married his companion of four years in Spain, Martha Gellhorn. For Whom the Bell Tolls, written in Cuba and Key West, was published the same year. Set during the Spanish Civil War, based on real-life events, and deriving from Hemingway’s own experiences reporting on the war, the novel tells the story of the American Robert Jordan fighting with Spanish soldiers on
the Republican side against Franco. It was a financial success for Hemingway and enabled him to buy a house in Finca Vigia, Cuba. After the United States entered World War II, Hemingway went to Europe as a war correspondent for Collier’s magazine. He was there to observe the D-Day landings in June of 1944. Following the war, Hemingway worked on The Garden of Eden, which he never finished. It was published posthumously in abridged form in 1986. After divorcing Gellhorn, he married the American journalist and war correspondent Mary Welsh (1908–1986). He returned to Cuba and also spent time in Italy, where his increasing alcoholism was evident in the fact that he was frequently seen walking around with a bottle in his hand. His first novel after For Whom the Bell Tolls was Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), set in post-World War II Venice. The semiautobiographical story relates a romance between a war-weary Colonel Cantwell and a young woman named Renata, whose character was based on a young Italian woman named Adriana Ivancich Hemingway fell in love with. Critics did not treat the novel kindly, but his luck in that department changed with the publication of the novella The Old Man and the Sea. Originally intended as part of a larger trilogy, it was published in 1952 and was both a commercial and critical success. It earned Hemingway a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” In the story, the old man of the title is a fisherman who battles a giant marlin for three days. Although he finally wins, sharks devour its carcass and he returns home with only the fish’s skeleton. John Sturges (1911–1992) directed a film version of the novella in 1958. In 1953, Hemingway was seriously injured in two plane crashes during a safari. Two months later, he was injured in a bushfire ac-
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cident, leaving him with second-degree burns on much of his body. The accidents left him in prolonged agony that prevented him from traveling to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize. Hemingway’s worsening alcoholism kept him from writing much during the last years of his life. In 1960, he left Cuba. The same year saw the publication of one of his final works, a bullfighting narrative entitled The Dangerous Summer. Hemingway’s mental state deteriorated rapidly. He went to Ketchum, Idaho, to receive treatment for high blood pressure and liver problems, as well as electroconvulsive therapy for depression and paranoia. A first attempt at suicide in early 1961 failed, but on July 2 of that year, he shot himself in the head with a double-barreled shotgun. Sadly, suicide took not only Hemingway’s life, but the lives of his father, two siblings, and his granddaughter. He was buried in Ketchum.
His fourth wife edited a rediscovered manuscript of his memoirs while in Paris, which were published posthumously as A Moveable Feast (1964). His novel Islands in the Stream was also published posthumously in 1970.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Buckley, Peter, Ernest, 1978; Donaldson, Scott, By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway, 1977; Fuentes, Norberto, Ernest Hemingway Rediscovered, 1988; Lynn, Kenneth S., Hemingway: His Life and Work, 1987; Mellow, James R., Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, 1992; Meyers, Jeffrey, Hemingway: A Biography, 1985; Nelson, Gerald B., Hemingway: Life and Works, 1984; Pivano, Fernanda, Hemingway, 1985; Rovitt, Earl, and Brenner, Gerry, Ernest Hemingway, 1986; www.lostgeneration.com.
Hendrix, James Marshall (November 27, 1942–September 18, 1970) Guitarist, Singer, Songwriter imi Hendrix, widely considered one of the greatest rock and roll guitarists of all time, attained fame for just a few short years in the 1960s before his tragic death in 1970. Nevertheless, his revolutionary playing style influenced an entire generation of rock guitarists that followed him. His bestknown songs include “Purple Haze,” “Hey Joe,” “Foxy Lady,” and his rendition of BOB DYLAN’S “All Along the Watchtower.” Although he was an American, he found success in England before attaining popularity in the United States following his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Hendrix was flamboyant on stage, sporting flashy outfits and delivering high-energy per-
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formances that sometimes ended with him smashing and/or burning guitars. He was also an unconventional guitarist who played a right-handed guitar upside down to accommodate his lefthandedness, sometimes with his teeth or behind his back. Hendrix was a pioneer in using feedback and distortion, and he could produce or mimic nearly any sound from his guitar. The Fender Stratocaster was his well-known guitar of choice. Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix, the name given to him while his father was away on military service, and later renamed James Marshall Hendrix when he returned, in Seattle, Washington. His parents divorced when he was nine, and his mother died of cir-
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rhosis of the liver in 1958. His household was tumultuous, and after growing up during part of his childhood under various caretakers, he went to live with his Cherokee grandmother. He got his first guitar, an acoustic, when he was twelve and quickly taught himself to play. Hendrix was entirely self-taught and never read music. He attended high school but did not graduate. Early on, he was interested in blues and other artists that preceded him— MUDDY WATERS, B.B. KING, Howlin’ Wolf (1910–1976), Buddy Holly (1936–1959), John Lee Hooker (1917–2001), ROBERT JOHNSON, and others. In 1958, he joined his first band, the Velvetones. He left them after a few months and later joined The Rocking Kings. After enlisting in the army in May 1961 to avoid a jail term for riding in a stolen car, he was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. There he formed The King Casuals with bassist Billy Cox, who would be an off-and-on collaborator throughout Hendrix’s career. He was discharged from the army early due to injuries received during a parachute jump and started working as a session guitarist using the name Jimmy James. By the end of 1965, he had played with many well-known artists. Cox and Hendrix moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, and performed as The King Kasuals. They eventually moved to Nashville, playing during this period in obscure clubs. In 1962, he had his first studio session, which proved unsuccessful due to his raw, wild, and as-yet unhoned style. For the next several years, he squeezed by playing on the Chitlin Circuit, in which he performed in black-oriented venues throughout the South with The King Kasuals and as a backing artist to numerous other bands. Although he earned little money, he refined and improved his style during this time. Frustrated with the South, where prevailing attitudes of racism hampered his career, he headed for New York City, settling in Harlem in early 1964. There he befriended Lithofayne “Fayne” Pridgeon, who became his girlfriend. Pridgeon gave Hendrix much-needed shelter,
support, and encouragement as he tried to launch his career. In New York, Hendrix won first prize in the Apollo Theater’s amateur contest and met famous musicians such as the Isley Brothers, Little Richard (1932– ), and Ike (1931– ) and Tina Turner (1939– ), all of whom he played with at some point or another. Hendrix’s wild performances inevitably caused friction with the bands he played with, though, and he soon struck out on his own. In 1965, he signed what would prove to be a difficult three-year recording contract with Ed Chalpin, with whom he later fell out and became entangled in legal troubles. In 1966, Hendrix formed his own band, Jimmy James and The Blue Flames, which played around clubs in New York. Their spot of choice was the Cafe´ Wha? on MacDougal Street in the West Village. During this time, he met many other musicians, including Frank Zappa (1940–1993). Zappa introduced Hendrix to the wah-wah pedal, which could alter a guitar signal to mimic the human voice. In 1966, Hendrix met Chas Chandler (1938–1996), former bassist for The Animals. Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” impressed him, and he brought Hendrix to London and helped him to form a new band. Named The Jimi Hendrix Experience, it included Hendrix, guitarist/bassist Noel Redding (1945–2003), and drummer Mitch Mitchell (1947– ). Chandler also introduced Hendrix to famous British rock guitarists, including The Who’s Pete Townshend (1945– ) and Eric Clapton (1945– ). Townshend, Clapton, and other British guitarists such as Jeff Beck (1944– ) were all impressed with Hendrix, and he eventually signed with Track Records. His first hit single was “Hey Joe.” Other well-known Hendrix classics such as “Stone Free,” “Purple Haze,” and “The Wind Cries Mary” soon followed and hit the top-ten charts in the U.K. Hendrix was also becoming well-known for his high-energy stage performances. His first full album, Are You Experienced, was released in the U.K. in 1967 and was a
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huge success. Although it omitted the songs that made him popular, it featured what was to become another well-known classic, “Foxy Lady.” The American release of the album would later include Hendrix’s first hits. Hendrix began to tour widely in the U.K. and other parts of Europe, and on March 31, 1967, he made rock and roll history when he set his guitar on fire. During his raucous performances, he damaged many guitars, amplifiers, and other pieces of equipment. In 1967, Hendrix returned to the United States, where he opened his first major American show with THE BEATLES’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Hendrix achieved instant fame in the United States, however, with his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. His rendition of his famous song “Wild Thing” was a huge crowd-pleaser, and he also performed Dylan’s classic “Like a Rolling Stone,” King’s hit “Rock Me Baby,” and other songs. At the end of the show, Hendrix burned and smashed his guitar. Documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker (1925–) filmed the festival as Monterey Pop, and its 1968 release helped popularize Hendrix even further. After the festival, the band played a few shows opening for the Monkees on their first American tour, but the Jimi Hendrix Experience proved a poor combination with the Monkees’ lighter pop-rock. In 1967, they released their second album, Axis: Bold as Love, which featured “Little Wing” and “If 6 was 9.” By this time, Hendrix had acquired more creative control over his music in the studio, and the album was rife with sound effects with which he had been experimenting. After the album’s release, they followed a demanding touring schedule. Hendrix began to use drugs and alcohol more frequently, and he was arrested in Stockholm, Sweden, after trashing his hotel room in a drunken rage. The band’s third full-length effort was the double album Electric Ladyland (1968). Chandler, frustrated with Hendrix’s increasing control, experimentation with new musical effects, and disorganized recording sched-
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ules, quit working with the band. The album, however, was another major success and featured the popular “Voodoo Child” and Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” The Jimi Hendrix Experience broke down in 1969 after Redding left the band. During that year, Hendrix was plagued with legal difficulties involving both drugs and his earlier contract with Chalpin. He soon formed another band, the Gypsy Sun and Rainbows, after moving into an eight-bedroom mansion in Shokan, New York. Later that year, the band played at Woodstock. Although poor weather and technical difficulties had spurred much of the audience to leave by the time he took the stage, Hendrix left his mark on the festival and rock and roll history with his famous version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The loud and fully improvised performance was rife with simulated war sounds from his guitar. Gypsy Sun and Rainbows was short-lived, and his next band, in which he kept Cox on bass and added drummer Buddy Miles (1947– ), was called the Band of Gypsys. The song “Earth Blues” came from this group. It was Band of Gypsys that delivered Hendrix’s famous twelve-minute performance of his war protest song “Machine Gun” during a New Year’s Eve performance at producer BILL GRAHAM’S Fillmore East in 1969–1970. Hendrix’s final band Cry of Love consisted of himself, Cox, and Mitchell playing new songs along with extended versions of old ones. In 1968, Hendrix and his manager Michael Jeffery (a controversial figure widely accused of mismanaging Hendrix’s money and career) invested in the Generation Club in Greenwich Village, but they decided to turn it into a recording studio. Designed especially for Hendrix’s recording style, it became Electric Lady Studios in 1970. However, Hendrix would only spend a few short weeks recording there before his death. The group embarked on a European tour, marking what were to be Hendrix’s last performances. His final stage appearance came on September 6, 1970. Hendrix was found
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dead in the early morning hours of September 18, 1970, in the Samarkand Hotel in London. Although the exact details of his death remain in dispute, it is generally accepted that he died of asphyxiation due to a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills. Hendrix and fellow rock musicians Brian Jones (1942–1969), Janis Joplin (1943–1970), and Jim Morrison (1943–1971), all died from drug-related deaths at the age of twenty-seven within months of each other. Hendrix was buried in Green Memorial Park in Renton, Washington. His unfinished album Cry of Love (1971) was released posthumously, and it was rereleased with additional tracks as First Rays of the New Rising Sun in 1997. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and he was awarded a Grammy Lifetime
Achievement Award the same year. Hendrix topped Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the one hundred greatest guitarists of all time in 2003.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cross, Charles R., Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, 2005; Hopkins, Jerry, Hit and Run: The Jimi Hendrix Story, 1983; Knight, Curtis, Jimi: An Intimate Biography of Jimi Hendrix, 1974; Lawrence, Sharon, Jimi Hendrix: The Man, the Magic, the Truth, 2005; Mitchell, Mitch, The Hendrix Experience, 1998; McDermott, John, Hendrix: Setting the Record Straight, 1992; Perry, John, Electric Ladyland, 2004; Shapiro, Harry, Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy, 1991; Welch, Chris, Hendrix: Biography, 1973; www.jimihendrix.com.
Henze, Hans Werner (July 1, 1926– ) Composer, Essayist est known for his operas, the German composer Hans Werner Henze has also produced a vast output of symphonies, chamber works, song cycles, ballet scores, and other music. After working with ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’s twelve-tone system in his early career, Henze turned to more traditional tonality in his later works but did not entirely abandon his roots. During the 1960s he became an ardent political activist and has since infused his music with a political spirit. Henze was the eldest of six children, born in Gu¨tersloh, Germany. His father was wounded in World War I and afterward became a teacher. It was with his mother’s encouragement that Henze, who at a young age developed an interest in music, began to compose. Henze’s father, who supported the
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Nazis, forced him to join the Hitler Youth against his will. At school he spent less time on his nonmusical studies than on music. Henze was drafted in 1944; during the last years of the war he listened to foreign broadcasts as often as he could. He later studied music under Wolfgang Fortner and Rene´ Leibowitz, the latter of whom had studied with Schoenberg. For the first years of his composing career, Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system and other directions in serialism (see PIERRE BOULEZ and KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN) dominated Henze’s work, such as the Violin Concerto (1947). However, Henze never carried serialism to the extremes that Boulez and Stockhausen did. To date Henze has composed ten symphonies, the first of which he completed in 1947.
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Hans Werner Henze (쑖 ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
The four-movement First Symphony premiered under Fortner in 1948, and he later (1964) reworked the music as a three-movement chamber symphony. Henze completed the Second Symphony in 1949. The Third Symphony (1940–1950), for large orchestra, followed his new interest in ballet music. The New York Philharmonic commissioned his Fifth Symphony, which premiered under LEONARD BERNSTEIN in 1962. It was followed by his Sixth Symphony (1969), composed after a much publicized visit to Communist Cuba, and full of the spirit of revolution. Henze’s Ninth (1996) is a choral symphony inspired by his war experiences. He finished his Tenth symphony in 2000. After watching the Sadler’s Wells ballet company in 1948, Henze began to compose ballet music. In 1949–1950 he completed three ballet works in rapid succession, Ballet Variations, Jack Pudding, and Rosa Silber. From 1950 to 1953 he was ballet adviser at the Wiesbaden State Theatre. Working with the Italian film director L UCHINO VISCONTI, he wrote Mar-
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atona di danza (1956; Dance Marathon), a jazz-infused ballet about a boy who dies in postwar Rome amidst the dance marathon frenzy. More successful was his jazz-infused ballet Undine, which premiered at Covent Garden in 1958 with choreography by Sir FREDERICK ASHTON and MARGOT FONTEYN dancing in the lead role. Orpheus, one of many collaborations with the left-wing British playwright Edward Bond, was completed in 1979. Henze’s best-known works, however, are his operas. With Ko¨nig Hirsch (1956; The Stag King), he moved away from Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system and the serialists, marking one of many turning points in his career. The opera was first performed in an abbreviated version at the Berlin Festival in 1956 under Hermann Scherchen. Henze was unappreciative of Scherchen’s cuts, and the performance sparked strong reactions—both negative and positive—from the audience. The opera was not performed as Henze intended it until 1985. Having settled permanently in Italy in the early 1950s, Henze gained the friendship of the poet W. H. AUDEN and the British composer WILLIAM WALTON. Walton eagerly embraced his work, while Auden became one of his chief collaborators. The opera Elegy for Young Lovers (1959–1961) was a joint effort with Auden, as was The Bassarids (1964–1965). Henze again collaborated with Bond in We Come to the River (1974) and the satiric opera The English Cat (1978). His other operas include Das Wundertheater (1948; The Wonder Theatre), the popular success Der Prinz von Homburg (1958; The Prince of Homburg), the comic opera Die Junge Lord (1965; The Young Lord), Das verratene Meer (1986–1989; The Betrayed Sea), Venus and Adonis (1993–1995), L’Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe (2003), and Phaedra (2007). In the mid-1960s, Henze’s music underwent another radical change. Inspired by the social protests and antiwar demonstrations of that decade, he embraced socialism and added to
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his works a political dimension. Henze subsequently became a strong advocate for the politicization of music. Das Floss der “Medusa” (1968; The Raft of the “Medusa”), a requiem for the executed revolutionary leader Che Guevara, provoked a storm of protest when it premiered. Voices (1973), a politically charged song cycle, employs revolutionary texts. Among Henze’s other works are Kammermusik (1958; Chamber Music), a song cycle for tenor, guitar, and eight performers dedicated to BENJAMIN BRITTEN; many settings of poetry, by Arthur Rimbaud, Walt Whitman, the Italian Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso,
Auden, and others; Fu¨nf neapolitanische Lieder (1958; Five Neopolitan Songs); the choral works Novae de infinito laudes (1962; New Praises of the Infinite) and Cantata della fiaba estrema (1963; Song of the Final Fairytale); Tristan (1972), a piano concerto; Requiem (1989–1993); and the instrumental work Olly on the Shore (2001). His books include Essays (1964) and Music and Politics: Collected Writings 1953–81 (1982).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Richards, Guy, Hindemith, Hartmann and Henze, 1995.
Hepburn, Katharine Houghton (May 12, 1907–June 29, 2003) Actress he American actress Katharine Hepburn made her film debut as Sydney Fairfield in A Bill of Divorcement in 1932 and to date holds the record for winning more Academy Awards for Best Actress than any other actress in history. Known for her tall, lanky appearance, her sharp wit, and her fierce independence, she acted on stage, starred on screen, and appeared on television. Hepburn was the second child of six, born in Hartford, Connecticut. Her father, Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn, was a successful surgeon who came from humble beginnings. Her mother, Katherine Houghton, was from a well-known family and was an early proponent of birth control, and advocate of equal rights for women, and cofounder of the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood with Margaret Sanger (1879–1966). As a child, Hepburn was openly exposed to social and political discussions and even participated in demonstrations with her parents. Dr. Hepburn also encouraged his children to
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pursue athletics, and Hepburn participated in such activities as golf, swimming, tennis, and skating. She also dabbled in painting and sculpting. Hepburn attended the West Middle School in Hartford, followed by Oxford School and then Bryn Mawr College, where she was active in drama. Tragedy struck in April of 1921, when Hepburn found her older brother Tom’s lifeless body hanging in an attic from an apparent suicide. The incident devastated Hepburn, and for a time she withdrew from school and studied at home with tutors. Her interest in drama was sparked as early as age ten, when she started performing skits at the family’s country home. During her senior year at Bryn Mawr, she met Eddie Knopf, a producer who was impressed with her performance in The Woman in the Moon and secured supporting roles for her in The Czarina and other stock company productions. Hepburn double majored in philosophy and history, earning her degree from Bryn Mawr in
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1928. The same year, she debuted on Broadway in a production of These Days, followed by an understudy role in playwright Philip Barry’s (1896–1949) Holiday. Also in 1928, she married Ludlow Ogden Smith, whom she had met in school. Before their fragile marriage ended in divorce in 1934, the pair appeared in several plays together, including The Warrior’s Husband (1932). The same year, she signed a lucrative contract with producer DAVID O. SELZNICK to play the role of Sydney in the film A Bill of Divorcement, directed by her lifelong friend George Cukor (1899–1983). Cukor would go on to direct many of her films. Another film for Selznick, Christopher Strong, followed in 1933. The same year, Hepburn won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Morning Glory, starred as Jo in the popular film version of Little Women, and began work on Spitfire (1934). In 1935, she portrayed the aspiring social climbing title character of Alice Adams and appeared in Sylvia Scarlett with Cary Grant (1904–1986). In 1936, she appeared in Mary Queen of Scotland. She scored a critical hit with a stellar performance as Susan Vance in one of her comedic masterpieces, Bringing Up Baby (1938), in which she again starred with Grant. The following year, she originated the stage role of Tracy Lord in a production of The Philadelphia Story, and she subsequently starred in the 1940 film version. Hepburn’s legendary on- and off-screen romance with actor Spencer Tracy (1900–1967) began in 1942, when they appeared in the first of their nine films together in director George Stevens’s (1904–1975) Woman of the Year. Tracy was married to Louise Treadwell (1896–1983), whom he never divorced. The pair also starred in Keeper of the Flame (1942), FRANK CAPRA’s (1897–1991) State of the Union (1948), Adam’s Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), for which Hepburn won her second Academy Award for Best Actress. Hepburn and Tracy hid their affair from the
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public for many years and never married. After Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962), Hepburn took time off while Tracy was ill. The year 1951 brought what was perhaps Hepburn’s most famous role in John Huston’s (1906–1987) The African Queen, in which she played a missionary in Africa who partners with a drunk boat captain, portrayed by Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957). While filming in Africa, Hepburn and much of the cast and crew fell ill with dysentery and malaria. Hepburn’s case was serious enough that she remained ill for months afterward. In 1987, she published a book about her experiences there, The Making of The African Queen: Or, How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. Hepburn subsequently played a number of spinster roles in films such as Summertime (1955) and The Rainmaker (1956). She also starred in film versions of TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S Suddenly Last Summer (1959, as Mrs. Venable) and EUGENE O’NEILL’S Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962, as Mary Tyrone). The following year, she won a Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter. Hepburn continued to star in filmed stage dramas, including The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), The Trojan Women (1971) by Euripides, and EDWARD ALBEE’S A Delicate Balance (1973). The year 1973 also saw her first original television performance, in TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’s The Glass Menagerie. Two years later, Hepburn starred with LAURENCE OLIVIER in Cukor’s television film Love Among the Ruins (1978), a performance for which she received an Emmy Award. Cukor also directed her 1979 television film The Corn is Green. Laura Lansing Slept Here (1988), one of her later television performances, was written for her. At the age of ninety-six, Hepburn died of natural causes at Fenwick, the Hepburn family home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was honored, along with her mother, in 2006 with the opening of the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center at Bryn Mawr College. True
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to her roots, she remained active in feminist and other liberal political causes throughout her life. Actress Katharine Houghton (1945– ) is Hepburn’s niece, and actress Schuyler Grant (1971– ) is Houghton’s niece.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Berg, A. Scott, Kate Remembered, 1993; Bergan, Ronald, Katharine Hepburn: An Independent Woman, 1996; Dickens, Homer, The Films of Katharine Hepburn, 1971; Edwards, Anne, Katharine Hepburn: A Biography, 1986; Freed-
land, Michael, Katharine Hepburn, 1984; Hepburn, Katharine, Me: Stories of My Life, 1991; Higham, Charles, Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn, 1975; Holland, Barbara, Katharine Hepburn, 1998; Leaming, Barbara, Katharine Hepburn, 1995; Mann, William J., Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, 2006; Marill, Alvin H., Katharine Hepburn, 1973; Morley, Sheridan, Katharine Hepburn, 1984; Ryan, Joal, Katharine Hepburn: A Stylish Life, 1999. http://www.brynmawr.edu/hepburn/. www.katharinehepburn.net.
Hepworth, Barbara (January 10, 1903–May 20, 1975) Sculptor ith her mature style, which developed in the 1930s, Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was a pioneer in English abstract sculpture. Her work is marked by rounded surfaces, pierced forms with color or string in the interiors, and the use of a wide variety of woods, stones, and metals. In her later life, she created a number of abstract sculptures on a large scale. Hepworth was the eldest child in her family, born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England. Her parents supported her artistic ambitions, which emerged at a young age. As a child, Hepworth enjoyed drawing and painting. She developed an interest in sculpting and on occasion cast her sisters’ heads. At the Wakefield Girls’ High School, Hepworth earned high marks and numerous awards. The headmistress of the school took a particular interest in her and encouraged her to develop her artistic abilities. From her numerous talents, among which was playing the piano, Hepworth chose to pursue sculpting. In 1920 she studied drawing at the Leeds School of Art, where she met the abstract sculptor HENRY MOORE, her lifelong friend and
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Barbara Hepworth (쑖 2006 John Hedgecoe / Topham / The Image Works)
one of the major influences on her work. She (together with Moore) next entered the Royal
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College of Art in London, where she studied until 1924. The first public exhibition of her work, a bronze head, accompanied the works of other Royal College students at the Red Fern Gallery. Upon her graduation Hepworth received a scholarship that enabled her to travel to Florence. In 1925, she married the sculptor John Skeaping. Skeaping and Hepworth exhibited jointly and received some critical acclaim during their short marriage. At this time, Hepworth’s figures, such as Mother and Child (1927) and Musician (1929), were still somewhat representational and show African, Chinese, and Egyptian influence. The birth of her son Paul in 1929 inspired her Infant, a primitive, black figure rendered in Burmese wood. During this period, Hepworth sculpted masks, faces, and figures, including her woman’s Head (1930). In the early 1930s, Hepworth increasingly concerned herself with the interplay of mass, volume, and space within her sculptures. With the abstract painter BEN NICHOLSON, whom she married in 1936, she traveled to Paris and became acquainted with the work of PABLO PICASSO, JEAN ARP, CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI, and others. She and Nicholson also joined the Association Abstraction-Cre´ation. Her own work, such as the Mother and Child of 1934 (the year she gave birth to triplets) and Two Forms in ironstones from the same year, grew more abstract. Hepworth worked with a variety of woods, metals, and stones. Her mature sculptures are often characterized by their finished, rounded surfaces and organic forms. Two Forms (1935) and other works that used angular forms and straight edges were exceptions. Her Pierced Form (1931) inaugurated her lifelong interest in rendering pierced forms. In later works, such as the Pierced Form (1957) in mahogany and string and Merryn (1962), she covered concaves and cavities with string or color. In the 1940s, Hepworth often painted the interiors of her sculptures and in general began to use more color, as in Sculpture with Colour Deep Blue and Red (1940). Two Fig-
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ures (1943) depicts a male and a female figure. Other noteworthy examples of her work with interiors are Wave (1943–1944) and Oval Sculpture (1943) in wood. She created her Cosdon Head (1949) in blue marble. By this time, Hepworth exhibited widely and had earned respect, but not widespread renown. During World War II, the Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased some of her sculptures. In 1959, she was awarded the Grand Prix for plastic art at the Bienial of Modern Art in Brazil. From a gift of several tons of scented guarea, a Nigerian wood, Hepworth rendered a number of sculptures in the 1950s. During that decade she also completed her series Groups, consisting of vaguely human forms sculpted in thin marble. Hepworth first completed a large sculpture with her Monumental Stela of 1936, and her later years were marked by many more works on a larger scale. Her Contrapuntal Forms in blue limestone (1950), commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts for the Festival of Britain, measured ten feet in height and later rested at Harlow New Town. Her Single Form (Memorial) (1961–1962) was placed in Battersea Park. Following the death of the United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjo¨ld in a plane crash in 1961, Hepworth was commissioned by the U.N. to create a memorial. Other large sculptures include Two Forms (Divided Circle) 1969, consisting of two pierced semicircles, and the series The Family of Man (1970), massive sculptures in piled stone. Hepworth’s later life was marked by tragedy and illness. Her son Paul died in an accident in 1953. Hepworth herself developed cancer and was plagued by alcoholism. She died in a fire that broke out at her home in 1975. In 1958, she was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and in 1965 she was made a Dame.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Curtis, Penelope, Barbara Hepworth: A Retrospec-
tive, 1994; Festing, Sally, Barbara Hepworth: A Life of Forms, 1995; Hammacher, Abraham Marie, Barbara Hepworth, 1987.
Hesse, Hermann (July 2, 1877–August 9, 1962) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Poet, Essayist, Critic, Editor he work of the German novelist Hermann Hesse, author of such novels as Steppenwolf and Magister Ludi, was shaped significantly by his interest in Eastern mysticism and the psychoanalytic theories of Carl Jung. Hesse’s novels primarily address the psychological and spiritual dilemmas of intellectuals and artists. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, “for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight.” Hesse was born in Calw, Wu¨rttemberg, Germany, to former missionaries, and a devout Protestant family, who had lived in India. Both parents pursued extensive intellectual interests. Although Hesse was an intelligent student and earned good grades, his lifelong dislike of formal education and institutions showed itself in the form of rebellion at an early age. After attending a series of schools in Germany and Switzerland as a boy, he enrolled in the Maulbronn seminary. Again, the environment proved disagreeable, and he began to develop nervous ailments and suicidal tendencies. Hesse subsequently worked as an apprentice in a tower clock factory and a bookstore. His first published work was the poem “Madonna” (1896). Outside of work Hesse read voraciously and particularly admired the work of the German Romantic authors, who influenced the melancholy poetry collected in Romantische Lieder (1899; Romantic Songs). His first
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prose works were collected in Eine Stunde hinter Mitternacht (1899; An Hour Behind Midnight). The prose sketches Hinterlassene Schritten und Gedichte von Hermann Lauscher followed in 1901. In 1904 Hesse married Maria Bernoulli, who came from a prosperous family; she eventually succumbed to insanity. They had three sons, Bruno, Heiner, and Martin. His first novel, Peter Camenzind, was published the same year and became successful enough to enable him to quit his job in the bookstore. Hesse moved to Switzerland just before World War I and remained there for the rest of his life. During the war he worked for the Prisoners of War Welfare Organization, which provided books and relief to German prisoners of war. He underwent a series of personal trials—including the war and the failure of his marriage—that led to a partial mental breakdown. During these years Hesse underwent psychoanalysis with J. B. Lang (a student of Carl Jung), developed a deep interest in Eastern mysticism, and explored Jung’s theories. The profound influence of these factors on Hesse’s outlook appears in novels such as Demian (1919), about the development of the young boy Emil Sinclair under the guidance of his mentor Demian, the first of his books to make him famous. It was published under the pseudonym Emil Sinclair. Siddhartha (1922) is another obvious example; it is set in India and recounts the spiritual quest of the title character. Hesse married his second wife, Ruth Wenger, in 1924; they divorced in 1927. The same
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year saw the publication of Der Steppenwulf (Steppenwolf), set in post–World War I Germany. The protagonist, Harry Haller, a depressed middle-class and middle-aged intellectual struggling to reconcile divergent elements of his life, has determined to kill himself when he turns 50. Instead of this grim end, Haller begins a journey toward self-realization that includes immersion in sensual experience and a series of symbolic hallucinations that reach into the depths of his psyche. Another notable aspect of the novel is its section of psychoanalysis, originally numbered separately. Narcissus und Goldmund (1930; Narcissus and Goldmund), set in a medieval monastery, involves the differences between and ultimate integration of two world views, a dominant motif in Hesse’s writing. Narcisssus is a young and brilliant intellectual ascetic, while Goldmund is a sensualist fascinated with Narcissus. Hesse married his third wife, Ninon Dolbin-Ausla¨nder, in 1931. Magister Ludi (1943), also published as Der Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game), is Hesse’s last major work and has proved to be one of his most popular. Set around 2400 A.D., the novel represents Hesse’s vision of highly developed human knowledge, embodied in the central character, Joseph Knecht. In the utopian Castalia, an elite group of intellectuals play the glass bead game, presided over by the Magister Ludi, the Master of the Game. The purpose of the bead game, though its intricacies are never precisely explained, is to demonstrate connections among different areas of human knowledge—science, the arts, and so forth—and thus construct a universal language. In contrast to their situation in the twentieth century, these intellectuals have achieved long-sought free-
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dom and respect in society, but their tendency toward isolation threatens to undermine their influence. Knecht becomes the Magister Ludi and moves away from the elitist intellectuals who play the game simply because they worship knowledge; he wants the game to be played for the sake of knowledge to put into action. Knecht’s symbolic death at the end makes way for the improvements in the game he has envisioned. In addition to his novels and short stories, Hesse was a prolific contributor to literary journals such as Simplicissimus during his lifetime. From 1907 to 1912 he coedited Ma¨rz, and from 1919 to 1922 he coedited Vivos voco. His other novels include Unterm Rad (1906; Beneath the Wheel), which criticized the educational system Hesse went through; Gertrud (1909); Rosshalde (1914); and Die Morgenlandfahrt (1932; Journey to the East). Aus Indien, a collection of notes and poems from his travels in India, was published in 1914. He published poetry as well, and his collected poems were published in 1942. In 1947 the University of Bern awarded him an honorary doctorate in philosophy. Hesse’s novels acquired enormous popularity among the beat and counterculture movements in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, and novels such as Steppenwolf and Magister Ludi are still widely read today He won the Gottfried Keller Prize in 1936 and Frankfurt’s Goethe Prize in 1946. He died at the age of 85.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Casebeer, Edwin F., Hermann Hesse, 1972; Freedman, Ralph, Hermann Hesse, Pilgrim of Crisis: A Biography, 1978; Mileck, Joseph, Hermann Hesse: Life and Art, 1978.
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Heston, Charlton (October 4, 1924– ) Actor, Director, Producer, Author he prolific American actor Charlton Heston gained fame for such heroic portrayals as Moses in the epic film The Ten Commandments and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur, and his legacy includes more than seventy films and numerous television appearances, narratives, documentaries, and books. An outspoken conservative political activist, Heston has served both as president and as a member of the board of directors of the National Rifle Association. Heston was born John Charles Carter in Evanston, Illinois. After his parents divorced when he was ten, his mother remarried Chester Heston, and the young boy took on the Heston surname. After moving to a prosperous Illinois suburb, he attended New Trier High School. During this time he was active in both the school’s drama department and the Winnetka Community Theatre, which awarded him a drama scholarship to Northwestern University. The young Heston appeared in David Bradley’s (1920–1997) amateur silent film version of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s (1828–1906) Peer Gynt as a teenager in 1941. Nine years later, Heston portrayed Marc Antony in the first sound version of Julius Caesar. In 1944, Heston enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, serving during World War II as a B25 radio operator and gunner. He was stationed in the Aleutian Islands and attained the rank of Staff Sergeant. The year 1944 also saw his marriage to Lydia Marie Clarke, whom he met as a student at Northwestern University. The couple moved to New York, where Heston accepted a supporting role in a Broadway production of Antony and Cleopatra. Heston also appeared in television roles, notably in CBS’s Studio One. Heston first appeared professionally in film in Dark City (1950). Two years later, he portrayed circus manager Brad Baden in CECIL B.
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DEMILLE’s The Greatest Show on Earth, a role that launched his career and firmly established him as a popular actor. In 1954, Heston appeared in the thriller The Naked Jungle and also played a treasure hunter in Secret of the Incas. Heston, a tall, imposing figure on the screen, made his biggest mark portraying the biblical patriarch Moses in the epic film The Ten Commandments (1956) directed by DeMille. DeMille reportedly chose Heston for the role because he saw a resemblance between the actor and Michelangelo’s statue of Moses, and Heston attributes the likeness to a broken nose he sustained as a football player in college. “Michelangelo’s marble figure of Moses is one of the greatest statues in the world, certainly the finest representation of the prophet,” Heston writes. “It also looks a lot like me, particularly the nose. The overall likeness is striking.” In 1958, Heston starred in another thriller, Touch of Evil, followed by The Big Country, a western in which he appeared with actor GREGORY PECK. Ben-Hur (1959), along with The Ten Commandments, is Heston’s hallmark film. In the three-and-a-half-hour epic directed by William Wyler, Heston portrays a wronged Jewish prince. The 1960s was a prolific decade for Heston on screen. He portrayed Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar in El Cid (1961), an American soldier in 55 Days at Peking (1963), and a British general in Khartoum (1966). He continued to appear in heroic roles such as John the Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ectasy (1965). Heston cites Will Penny (1968) as one of his favorite films. With Planet of the Apes (1968), in which he starred as the time traveler George Taylor, Heston turned to a series of science fiction films. The apocalyptic The Omega Man (1971)
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found Heston portraying a lone, uninfected survivor of a world infected with a dangerous plague. He played Detective Robert Thorn in the futuristic science fiction film Soylent Green (1973), which won a Golden Scroll Award for Best Science Fiction Film. Heston appeared in Airport 1975 and the disaster film Earthquake, both in 1974. Heston joined an all-star cast in the Technicolor film version of Julius Caesar (1970), in which he played Marc Antony. His costars included JOHN GIELGUD (Julius Caesar), Jason Robards (Brutus), Richard Chamberlain (Octavius), Diana Rigg (Portia), Robert Vaughn (Casca), and Richard Johnson (Cassius). The following year marked his first directorial effort with Antony and Cleopatra, and Heston again played the role of Marc Antony. However, neither critics nor the public received the film well. During the 1970s, Heston made a number of films, including The Four Musketeers (1974), Midway (1976), Two-Minute Warning (1976), and Gray Lady Down (1978). He also continued to make cameo and television appearances, play supporting and narrative roles, and dabble in production. Heston had cameos in Wayne’s World 2 (1993), True Lies (1994, with Arnold Schwarzenegger), and Tim Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes (2001). He appeared in the primetime television dramas Dynasty and The Colbys in the 1980s, won accolades for the A&E program Charlton Heston Presents the Bible (1992), and hosted two episodes of Saturday Night Live. Heston’s deep, authoritative voice has made him an excellent narrator, and his narratives played a part in numerous television specials as well as films like Maugli (1967), The Dark Mist (1996), Hercules (1997), Armageddon (1998), and Cats and Dogs (2003). He is also noted for a number of documentaries. Heston has authored several books, including The Actor’s Life: Journals 1956–1976 (1978), In the Arena: An Autobiography (1995), and To Be a Man: Letters to My Grandson (1997).
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Aside from his work on screen, Heston is well-known and often criticized for his conservative politics. A Democrat in his younger years, Heston was an early proponent of racial equality. His political persuasions leaned increasingly to the right as he aged, and he considers his stances on the right to bear arms and racial equality both as rights for freedom. He has served as president of the National Rifle Association and actively campaigned for Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Heston’s other films include The Savage (1952), Ruby Gentry (1952), The President’s Lady (1953), Pony Express (1953), Arrowhead (1953), Bad for Each Other (1953), The Far Horizons (1955), The Private War of Major Benson (1955), Lucy Gallant (1955), Three Violent People (1956), The Buccaneer (1958), The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959), The Pigeon That Took Rome (1962), Diamond Head (1963), Major Dundee (1965), The War Lord (1965), Counterpoint (1968), Number One (1969), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Skyjacked (1972), Call of the Wild (1972), The Last Hard Men (1976), Crossed Swords (1977), The Mountain Men (1980), The Awakening (1980), Mother Lode (1982), Solar Crisis (1990), Almost an Angel (1990), In the Mouth of Madness (1995), Alaska (1996), Hamlet (1996), Gideon (1999), Any Given Sunday (1999), Town & Country (2001), The Order (2001), and My Father, Rua Alguem 5555 (2003). Heston has received numerous honors and recognitions, including the Academy Award for Best Actor in Ben-Hur. Heston served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1966 to 1971. President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2003. Deteriorating health has left Heston bedridden in recent years. He underwent a hip replacement in 1998 and was diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year. Heston recovered after undergoing treatment but in 2002
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announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Crowther, Bruce, Charlton Heston: The Epic Presence, 1986; Heston, Charlton, In the Arena: An Autobiography, 1995; Munn, Michael, Charlton Heston, 1986.
Hindemith, Paul (November 16, 1895–December 28, 1963) Composer, Violist, Teacher, Theorist ermany’s most renowned composer in the first half of the twentieth century, Paul Hindemith ultimately rejected the modern work in atonality begun by ARNOLD SCHOENBERG. As an influential theorist, teacher, and composer, he promoted traditional tonality and believed a composer’s music should serve a purpose rather than exist simply as artistic expression. Hindemith was born into a working-class family in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main. There were both Catholic and Protestant influences in his family, but Hindemith himself remained distant from organized religion. He started violin lessons at the age of eight, and when he was 13 he entered the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Soon thereafter, he was performing at Conservatory concerts and saw his own works performed at the school. When he was young he accepted a variety of musical jobs to earn money, from playing the violin in cafe´s to performing with dance bands. At the age of 20, Hindemith became Konzertmeister (concertmaster) at the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, where he remained for a number of years. He later married music director Ludwig Rottenberg’s daughter Gertrud (1924). He was composing regularly by this time, and his String Quartet in C Major won the Mendelssohn Prize in 1915. Hindemith served in World War I, during which time he composed the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1918), Op. 11, No. 1, and a number of other
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works. The first public performance of his music came in 1919, and international festivals were soon featuring his compositions regularly. The pianist Emma Lu¨bbucke-Job frequently performed his early piano works. Hindemith would eventually reject atonality, but to a certain extent he worked with the direction taken by Schoenberg and others in his early, more experimental works. The opera Mo¨rder, Hoffnung der Frauen (1919; Murder, Hope of Women) is an expressionistic work with a text by the painter OSKAR KOKOSCHKA. Sancta Susanna (1921), another opera, also dates from this period. In 1921 he helped organize the successful Amar-Hindemith Quartet, with himself playing the viola and his brother Rudolf on the cello. Hindemith composed a number of chamber works for the quartet. Other notable early works include the song cycles Die junge Magd (1922; The Young Maid), settings of poems by the Austrian poet Georg Trakl; and Das Marienleben (1924, rev. 1948; The Life of Mary), settings of fifteen poems by RAINER MARIA RILKE. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Hindemith’s music was influenced in part by the baroque composers. He composed a number of solo concertos that were influenced by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenberg Concertos. The larger Concerto for Orchestra was finished in 1925. The following year, he created the opera Cardillac (1926), based on
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Paul Hindemith (쑖 ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Das Fra¨ulein von Scuderi (The Girl from Scuderi).
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Unique among his works is the brief opera Hin und zuru¨ck (Roundtrip, 1927), in which
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the music and the story of a marital dispute that ends in murder proceed forward and then unwind like a film running backwards. By the late 1920s Hindemith had established himself as Germany’s leading composer. Hindemith believed in composing music that served a purpose. To this end he wrote for children’s games, radio plays, bands, and other groups and occasions. His numerous film scores include music for Felix the Cat at the Circus (1927). In the late 1920s he collaborated with KURT WEILL and the radical playwright BERTOLT BRECHT in the latter’s radio play Der Lindberghflug (1928; The Lindbergh Flight). He again worked with Brecht on Lehrstu¨ck (1929). The late 1920s also saw the beginnings of his teaching career. He accepted a position as professor of composition at the Berlin Hochschule fu¨r Musik. The opera Mathis der Maler (Mathis the Painter, 1933), along with the symphony Hindemith derived from it, is often considered his masterpiece. The story treats the life of the Renaissance painter Mathias Gru¨newald and was particularly inspired by a series of paintings for an altar at the monastery at Isenheim. WILHELM FURTWA¨ NGLER conducted the orchestral version at the Berlin Harmonic in 1934, after which the newly established Nazi regime began its attacks on Hindemith. Labeled by Joseph Goebbels a “cultural Bolshevist” and “spiritual non-Aryan,” he eventually left Germany and accepted a teaching post at the conservatory in Ankara, Turkey. After he left Germany, Hindemith’s music was purely tonal, and he developed extensive theories on counterpoint and tonality. The ballet Ludus Tonalis (1943), a set of twelve
fugues for all keys, specifically reflects Hindemith’s ideas. Having visited the United States in 1937, he settled there and taught at a number of American universities, including Yale University (1940–1953). Hindemith continued to compose regularly while in the United States, producing such varied works as the Violin Concerto (1939); the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1940); the Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943); the opera Die Harmonie der Welt (The Harmony of the World, 1956–1957), inspired by the work of the astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630); and the Sinfonia Serena (1946). During the last years of his life, Hindemith lived in Zurich, where he taught at the university and wrote comparatively little. His final work was a Mass, finished in 1963. Among his other compositions are his Kammermusik (Chamber Music) pieces, composed for a variety of unconventional instruments. Hindemith also wrote a number of books as teaching tools and to relate his theories. These include Unterweisung im Tonsatz (1937–1939), translated as The Craft of Musical Composition (1941–1942); A Concentrated Course in Traditional Harmony (1943); Elementary Training for Musicians (1946); Exercises for Advanced Students (1948); and A Composer’s World (1952).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kemp, Ian, Hindemith, 1970; Noss, Luther, Paul Hindemith in the United States, 1998; Rickhards, Guy, Hindemith, Hartmann and Henze, 1995; Skelton, Geoffrey, Paul Hindemith, The Man Behind the Music: A Biography, 1975.
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Hitchcock, Alfred (August 13, 1899–April 28, 1980) Director ovie director Alfred Hitchcock is known as the founding father of the thriller genre. Though his career spanned over forty years, Hitchcock’s style remained unique and personal to him. His work includes many recurring elements and themes: good and evil; feminine identity; the linking of sex and violence. Other Hitchcock trademarks were the use of blond leading ladies, including prominent actresses Anny Ondra, Madeleine Carroll, Joan Fontaine, INGRID BERGMAN, Eva Marie Saint, Kim Novak, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh and Tippi Hedren. Hitchcock was also famous for his cameo appearances in all his movies, a trend that started with his 1940 film Rebecca. But most of all, Hitchcock was a master of building suspense in his films and drawing the viewer in through artful shots and music. Hitchcock was born August 13, 1899, in Leytonstone, England. He was originally educated as an engineer, at the School of Engineering and Navigation at St. Ignatius College in London. Hitchcock later attended the University of London to study art. His break into the film industry came early in life, when the 20-year-old Hitchcock got a job illustrating title cards for silent films at the Famous Players-Lasky studio in London. At the studio,
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which belonged to Paramount, Hitchcock was exposed to the principles of moviemaking: scripting, editing and art direction. He rose through the ranks to assistant director of the studio and in 1925 made his first film, The Pleasure Garden, which was shot in Munich. The influence of contemporary German filmmaking’s Expressionism shows in Hitchcock’s early work. The real breakthrough in Hitchcock’s directorial career came with 1926’s The Lodger, the story of Jack the Ripper. Hitchcock has called The Lodger the beginning of his career. With his first foray into sound films, Blackmail (1929), Hitchcock created a new technique called “subjective sound.” The movie’s main character is a woman who stabs a man to death when he tries to seduce her. In a conversation between the woman and her neighbor the next day, only the word “knife” can be heard clearly, showing the woman’s guilt and anxiety. Blackmail is also the first example of Hitchcock linking sex and violence, a theme that would resonate through the rest of his work. Hitchcock made several more British films, honing his craft with each one. In 1940 American producer David Selznick, of Gone with the Wind fame, convinced Hitchcock to make the move to Hollywood so the two could collaborate on a film version of the novel Rebecca. Hitchcock and Selznick had a tense relationship from the very beginning of their work together. Both wanted creative control of the movie, and each man had a vastly different idea for the movie’s closing shot. Hitchcock won. They worked together again, on the 1945 hit Spellbound, which earned both men Oscar nominations. Hitchcock’s eventual triumph in the struggle with Selznick marked the rise to prominence of the director’s role in moviemaking, over the producer’s. Bound by contract, they worked together once more, on
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1948’s uninspired The Paradine Case, before professional relations between the two ended for good. In the meantime, Hitchcock was perfecting his skills. He hit the peak of his style with Shadow of a Doubt (1943). The story of a woman who learns that her favorite uncle is a murderer, the movie also touches upon the dark horrors of middle-class life and the systemized oppression of women, ideas that reappear throughout Hitchcock’s work. Other 1940s Hitchcock movies include Notorious (1946), which also examines the woman’s loss of identity; Under Capricorn (1949); Lifeboat (1944), which is shot entirely in a small boat; and Rope, which Hitchcock intended to seem like a single, unedited shot. The 1950s were Hitchcock’s most prolific years. Early in the decade, films like Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955) showcased Hitchcock’s skillful directing, and also increased his popularity. The real masterpieces started with Rear Window (1954), the story of a man who witnesses a murder. The movie’s treatment of the role of the witness questions the viewer’s role as well, and one of the last scenes demonstrates Hitchcock’s absolute mastery of suspense. Vertigo (1958), considered one of Hitchcock’s best, is a further exploration of feminine loss of identity. Hitchcock reached the height of his powers in North by Northwest (1959), perhaps the most quintessentially Hitchcockian of his works. The film stars big-name actor Cary Grant as a man mistaken for someone else. The simple case of mistaken identity escalates in a series of dramatic chase scenes. Sexual tension between Grant and his co-star, the actress Eva Marie Saint, is manifested in the witty, rapid-beat dialogue and symbolism so typical to Hitchcock. The film’s loud score and bright colors add to the overall suspense. Though North by Northwest may best represent all the elements of Hitchcock’s work, he is probably best known for Psycho (1960). The shower scene near Psycho’s beginning is one of the most iconic in cinematic history.
Once again, Hitchcock’s goal was suspense, which he achieved through unique shots, editing and the musical score. The shower scene shocked 1960 viewers, both for its nudity (the actress was actually wearing a flesh-colored suit) and its graphic violence. Like Rear Window, Psycho implicates the viewer’s role in the film by starting the scene with the shot through the killer’s eye and ending it with a shot of the dead victim’s still-open eye. The viewer’s eye is implied. Hitchcock made a few more important movies in the 1960s. His famous The Birds (1963) is an abstracted examination of evil. He then returned to his ideas about sex and violence for Marnie (1964), but struck into newer territory with a Cold War movie, Torn Curtain, in 1966. In addition to his movies, Hitchcock produced and hosted a television show called “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” that ran from 1955 to 1965. Unlike his suspenseful, dramatic movies, Hitchcock’s TV show reflected the director’s humorous and ironic take on life. The show also popularized Hitchcock immensely, as the man famous for his behind-the-camera work now appeared in front of it. Hitchcock’s famous cartoon silhouette (he drew it of himself) became a famous image with television audiences nationwide. One constant trademark in all Hitchcock movies is the director’s cameo appearances. The trend started with Rebecca and continued throughout his career. Hitchcock appeared in every one of his post-1940 movies excluding Lifeboat (1944), in which he appeared in a newspaper advertisement, and Dial M for Murder (1954), in which he appeared in a class reunion photo. Hitchcock’s cameos became such a point of interest with fans in the later part of his career that he had to appear early in his films, so viewers could concentrate on the rest of the movie instead of looking out for Hitchcock. Hitchcock never won an Academy Award for one of his movies, though he was nominated six times in the Best Director category. He was given the Irving Thalberg Memorial
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Award at the 1967 Oscars. With his characteristic turn of wit he gave the shortest acceptance speech in Oscar history: “Thank you.” Hitchcock was knighted in 1980, and died of renal failure shortly thereafter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Chandler, Charlotte, Its Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock, a personal biography, 2005; McGilligan, Patrick, Alfred Hitchcock: A life in
Darkness and Light, 2003; Spoto, Donald, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of his Motion Pictures, 1991; and The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, 1999; Truffaut, Francois and Helen G. Scott, Hitchcock, 1985. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ hitchcock_a.html. www.imdb.com/name/nm0000033/. shttp://hitchcock.tv/.
Hockney, David (July 9, 1937– ) Painter, Graphic Artist, Photographer nfluenced by American Pop art, David Hockney developed a painting style characterized by the use of radiant light and broad, flat areas of bright color. His bestknown works include his paintings of Los Angeles pool scenes and his series of double portraits in the 1960s and 1970s. Hockney has also illustrated books, created photocollages, and designed scenery for the ballet and opera. Hockney was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. From 1953 to 1957 he studied at the Bradford College of Art. His paintings from that time, such as Portrait of My Father (1955), reflect the school’s traditional and academic course of instruction, which emphasized drawing from life. When the time came for his military service, Hockney declared himself a conscientious objector and spent two years working in hospitals. Following the completion of his service, he entered the Royal College of Art in London, where he studied from 1959 to 1962. Hockney’s years at the Royal College were a period of experimentation in his artistic style. To hone his skills he executed drawings of a skeleton. After having been exposed to modern art—particularly Pop art and the works of American abstract artists such as
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JACKSON POLLOCK—Hockney changed his style radically, producing a number of abstract paintings, such as Growing Discontent (1959–1960). His period of painting in pure abstraction was brief, and he finally settled on a style that employs bright color and flat forms that are neither representational nor abstract. With Tyger (1960), a work alluding to William Blake’s poem of the same title, he began to introduce graffiti-like titles and phrases in his paintings. Upon the completion of his studies at the Royal College, Hockney won a gold medal in a graduate competition. Before his graduation, he had already begun to make a name for himself. Exhibitions at the Young Contemporaries Exhibition (1961–1962) and the Paris Biennale (1963) earned him international acclaim almost overnight. Aside from refining his style during his student years, Hockney also grew more open with his subject matter. Paintings such as Queer (1960) openly address his homosexual orientation, a subject that he treats repeatedly in both sexual and nonsexual contexts. In the early 1960s he executed several series of paintings, including a Love series, a Marriage series, and a Domestic Scene series. In the latter, he depicts men in domestic situations at
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home, sometimes in ways that remind the viewer of the erotic aspects of the relationship. The American poet Walt Whitman, himself a homosexual, was another early influence on Hockney, and he borrowed from Whitman in works such as We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961) and Myself and My Heroes (1961), a series of etchings with quotes from the poet’s work. At the same time, Hockney also worked on another major series of graphic prints, A Rake’s Progress (1961–1963), inspired by the series by the same name done by the eighteenth-century English artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) and by Hockney’s visit to New York in 1961. From 1964 to 1967 Hockney taught at American universities in Iowa, Colorado, and California and began to spend time in Los Angeles. The bright California sunlight illuminates his paintings from this period. Using bright blues, pinks, and greens, Hockney painted pool scenes, palm trees, and human figures who often look like cardboard cutouts, as in Beverly Hills Housewife (1966). Sunbather (1966) is one of many paintings to portray male figures sunbathing or swimming. A Bigger Splash (1967), one of his most famous paintings, depicts a large splash presumably made by an unseen figure jumping from a diving board. Instead of traditional flower vases or bowls of fruit, modern objects such as a television and a dictionary appear in Hockney’s still lifes, such as A Table (1967) and Still-Life with TV (1969). Hockney often works from photographs when he paints, and in 1967 he bought his first quality camera. The following year he began to paint double portraits, one of the first of which was Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968). His subjects are ind-
oors, seated in chairs, or, as in American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman) (1968), outdoors in radiant sunlight. In the 1970s Hockney painted other series, such as The Weather series and a number of portraits of his friend Celia Birtwell. The Weather: Sun (1973) depicts bright sunlight filtering in through a window to a plant. Hockney lived for a short period of time in Paris, and some of his paintings have Paris settings. In the 1980s Hockney began to devote more time to photography, creating photocollages such as Pearblossom Hwy., 11–18th April (1986). Among the other works he has illustrated are CONSTANTINE CAVAFY’s Fourteen Poems (1966), Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1970), and The Blue Guitar (1976–1977). Hockney has also contributed scenery to a number of productions, including Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1966), ROLAND PETIT’s ballet Septentrion (1975) Mozart’s Magic Flute (1977–1978; for the Glyndebourne Opera in England); AND ERIK SATIE’s Parade, for the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1980. His books include Hockney by Hockney (1976), Travels With Pen, Pencil, and Ink (1978), Paper Pools (1980), David Hockney Photographs (1982), China Diary (1983), and Hockney Paints the Stage (1983). Hockney was made a Companion of Honour in 1997. The National Portrait Gallery in London held a large and highly successful exhibition of his portraits in 2006 and 2007.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Adam, Peter, David Hockney and His Friends, 1997; Clothier, Peter, David Hockney, 1995; Livingstone, Marco, David Hockney, rev. ed., 1987; Livingstone, Marco, and Heymer, Kay, Hockney’s People, 2003. Webb, Peter, Portrait of David Hockney, 1988.
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Hoffmann, Josef (December 15, 1870–May 7, 1956) Architect he functionality, simplicity, and geometric abstraction characteristic of Josef Franz Maria Hoffmann’s early architectural design anticipated the International Style of the mid-twentieth century (see WALTER GROPIUS). Hoffmann’s later works combine the functionality of the modernists with the decorative influence of the late-nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts Movement in England. Hoffmann was born into a wealthy family in Pirnitz, Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. His father was a landowner, cotton manufacturer, and mayor of Pirnitz. As a child Hoffmann learned to play the violin and participated in his family’s frequent musical activities. His parents sent him to a private German school. At the age of 9, he was sent to the gymnasium at Iglau. Among his fellow students was the future architect ADOLF LOOS. Loos, however, rejected the decorative element found in Hoffmann’s designs, and the two never saw eye-to-eye professionally. By all accounts, Hoffmann’s years at the gymnasium were disastrous. He boarded with an excessively strict landlady and failed two years in a row. His scholastic fortunes improved, however, when he entered the State Technical School at Bru¨nn. In 1891 Hoffmann went to Wu¨rzburg, Germany, where he helped build brick barracks. The following year he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he studied under Carl von Hasenaur and the Viennese architect Otto Wagner. Wagner’s functional, rationalistic approach to architectural design was the primary influence on Hoffmann’s early work. Having won the Rome prize upon his graduation from the Academy, he traveled to Italy in 1895, absorbed the country’s architecture, and made numerous sketches. He returned to Vienna the following year, went to work for Wagner, and began to enter his designs in competi-
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tions. Among these was his design for a facade for Vienna’s exhibition pavilion for the Jubilee Exhibition of 1898. Somewhat uncomfortable with his close association with Wagner, Hoffmann joined the Vienna Secession in 1899. The Secessionists, and Hoffmann too at this point in his career, embraced the ideals of the Art Nouveau movement. But Hoffmann’s work soon moved closer to modern strains in architectural design, developing into a style that has been called “geometric formalism,” marked by its use of simplified decoration. Hoffmann quickly threw himself into the Secession’s activities, designing rooms for its periodical Ver Sacrum and contributing to the publication as well. The same year, he took a position at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he taught until 1936. Among his earliest commissions was the interior of the Apollo soap and candle factory (1899), marked by its red-stained walnut arches. Window seats and arches appeared frequently in his early interiors, which included many private homes. Among his other early designs are the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 and a residence for personnel of the Wittgenstein Forestry Department. In 1901 Hoffmann designed four villas on the Hohe Warte notable for their black and white contrasts and interplay of cubic spaces. From 1901 to 1905 Hoffmann’s designs stress functionality and the interplay of rectangles and squares. Two buildings in particular exemplify his style of this period. The flatroofed Westend Sanatorium at Purkersdorf (near Vienna), Austria (1903), was a functional design intended for patients with nervous disorders and solidified his reputation as an architect. The opulent Palais Stoclet (1905–1911) in Brussels, perhaps Hoffmann’s most famous
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work, was commissioned by the Beligan coal magnate Adolphe Stoclet. In the design, he combined rectangular and square patterns to form an elegant, white exterior complemented by a copper roof. Lavish marble walls lined the interior, and its vertical staircase window was imitated by many other architects. Mosaics by GUSTAV KLIMT hung on the Paonazzo marble walls. Pillars of Paonazzo and Belgian marble stood in the great hall. Hoffmann also designed a music room, with walls of Protovenere marble and red carpets, furniture, and curtains. Hoffmann’s lifelong interest in crafts began to manifest itself in more decorative designs after 1905. He helped found the Vienna Workshop, a center for arts and crafts, in 1903, and served as its director for three decades. Furniture, dresses, and jewelry are among the numerous arts and crafts he created during his lifetime. His work for the Austrian pavilion at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris (1925) featured a gallery room
with black, gridlike woodwork with decorative painting. Hoffmann also designed numerous villas, halls, and pavilions, including the Ast House (1909–1911) and the Skywa–Primavesi House (1924–1925). The Kaasgraben Colony (1913) consisted of four one-family villas. In 1920 he was appointed city architect of Vienna, after which he designed numerous housing projects for the city, with notable series of lower-class housing taking shape in 1924–1925 and after World War II. He designed the Austrian pavilions for the 1914 Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne and for the 1934 Venice Biennale. Many younger artists—among them OSKAR KOKOSCHKA and EGON SCHIELE—owed something to Hoffmann, who was known for going out of his way to assist those he saw as budding talents.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Sekler, Eduard F., Josef Hoffmann: The Architectural Work, 1985.
Hofmann, Hans (March 21, 1880–February 17, 1966) Painter, Teacher orn in Germany, Hans Hofmann contributed to the development of Abstract Expressionism in American painting. His abstract paintings of the late 1930s onward employ bright colors and improvisational techniques, such as paint splattering. Hofmann was also a noted art teacher in both Munich and the United States. Hofmann was born in Weissenberg, Bavaria, Germany. His father was a government official in Munich. As a child he attended public schools and the gymnasium, where he showed early talent in science and math. The young Hofmann also learned to play the vio-
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lin, organ, and piano. After finishing his schooling, he took a position as an assistant to the director of Public Works in Bavaria. Hofmann showed early promise as a scientist and invented an electromagnetic comptometer. To further his son’s success, his father gave him a sum of money to encourage his scientific endeavors. Hofmann, however, used the money to go to art school, which he entered in Munich in 1898. Two years later he met his future wife, Maria (Miz) Wolfegg, whom he married in 1923. Through one of his instructors, Willi Schwarz, Hofmann met the nephew of the art
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collector Phillip Freudenberg. Freudenberg became his earliest patron and supported him until 1914. In 1904 Hofmann settled in Paris, taking art classes and absorbing the influences of the Cubists and the Fauves. From the latter he got his preference for the use of brilliant color. His work slowly gained recognition, and he held his first one-man show in 1910 at Paul Cassirer’s in Berlin. During this time he painted many expressionistic still lifes and landscapes, but he is better known for his later abstract creations. When Freudenberg’s support ended, Hofmann decided to teach and opened a painting school in Munich in 1915. He was exempted from military service in World War I for medical reasons. In 1930 Hofmann moved to the United States, teaching in both New York City and Berkeley before he founded the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art. From the late 1930s onward, Hofmann’s paintings were entirely abstract. He used bold colors and experimental techniques in applying paint. Spring (1940), an oil on wood, was one of the first of his works to employ the
paint dripping technique (later used by American artists such as Jackson Pollock). Works such as Image of Fear (1960), Tormented Bull (1961), and The Phantom (1961) also use splattered paint. Several of Hofmann’s works combine large rectangular areas of color, as in Cathedral (1959); Pre-Dawn (1960), composed of rectangles of blue, red, and yellow; Lumen Naturale (1962; Natural Light); and Ignotum Per Ignotius (1963). In 1958 Hofmann dissolved his school and devoted his efforts entirely to art. His work as both a teacher and a painter significantly influenced the development of Abstract Expressionism in the United States. His other paintings include Fantasia in Blue (1954), The Garden (1956), Lava (1960), and Summer Night’s Bliss (1961). Hofmann also published Form and Color: A Textbook for Instruction in Art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Goodman, Cynthia, Hans Hofmann, 1990; Seitz, William C., Hans Hofmann, 1963.
Holiday, Billie (April 7, 1915–July 17, 1959) Singer ffectionately known as “Lady Day,” the American jazz singer Billie Holiday lent a melodic and deeply emotional quality to her music that captivated audiences around the world. Although her early death cut her career short, she was nevertheless one of the most influential and uniquely original singers in American jazz. Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore, Maryland. Details of her childhood remain somewhat shrouded in mystery, except that it proved to be a difficult one. Her grandfather belonged to a large family of seventeen
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children of a Virginia slave and a white Irish plantation owner. Holiday’s mother, Sadie Fagan, was a young teenager when the singer was born. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a guitarist who at one time played banjo and guitar for Fletcher Henderson (1897–1952). Holiday crafted her stage name from the American actress Billie Dove (1903–1997) and her own father. Holiday grew up in an impoverished neighborhood in Baltimore, and was raised primarily by her mother and other relatives. She claimed to have suffered a rape at the age of
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ten, and in 1929 her mother caught a neighbor raping her. Holiday was sent to a Catholic reform school in 1925, where she remained for two years. After her mother moved them to New York in 1928, she spent several months in a New York Welfare Island state institution. As a young woman, Holiday worked as a prostitute to support her mother, a crime for which she served time in prison. In the early 1930s, however, her fortunes began to change. She began singing for tips in night clubs around New York and eventually secured a position at the Harlem night club Pod and Jerry’s. She also sang at the Harlem club Monette’s. Producer John Hammond (1910–1987) discovered her vocal talents somewhere around this time and found gigs for her in New York clubs. In 1933, with Hammond having arranged for her first recording, she sang with BENNY GOODMAN. Two years later, she began to rec-
ord with pianist Teddy Wilson’s (1912–1986) group. Among her early songs are “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law,” “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “Riffin’ the Scotch,” and “Miss Brown to You.” These and other recordings established Holiday as a major singer. Now a well-known solo artist, she secured as accompanists some of the major names associated with the Swing Era. Important among these was tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Lester Young (1909–1959), with whom she was particularly close and musically wellmatched. It was Young who lent her the famous nickname “Lady Day.” Holiday also sang with bandleader COUNT BASIE and Artie Shaw (1910–2004). Her work with Shaw’s orchestra marked one of the first collaborations between a black singer and a white bandleader. In the late 1930s, Holiday signed a recording contract with Columbia. During that period, she heard a song entitled “Strange Fruit,” which was based on the Jewish-American writer Lewis Allan’s (pseudonym for Abel Meeropol, 1903–1986) anti-lynching poem. Set to a haunting blues melody, the lyrics read in part: Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black boy swingin’ in the Southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Holiday first performed the song in 1939. Though Columbia Records found the lyrics to be too controversial to record, it became one of her staples and eventually one of her most popular hits. Commodore Records, however, expressed an interest in the song, and Holiday first recorded it in 1939. By that year, Holiday was also performing regularly at the interracial Cafe´ Society in Greenwich Village and had introduced another of her famous songs, “God Bless the Child.” Record producer Milt Gabler (1911–2001), who had signed Holiday to Commodore, again signed her to Decca in 1944. That same year, she recorded “Lover Man,” which was also to become one of her greatest song successes. Many of Holiday’s recordings for Decca be-
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came hits, such as “Good Morning Heartache” and “Don’t Explain.” She would record with the label until 1950. In 1946, she appeared in the film New Orleans with LOUIS ARMSTRONG and Kid Ory (1886–1973). Holiday’s tumultuous upbringing followed her into adulthood, and she led a rocky personal life. In the 1940s, she delved into drug use and engaged in a series of destructive relationships with abusive men. She was arrested on more than one occasion on narcotics charges and served ten months at the Federal Women’s Reformatory in Alderson, West Virginia, in the late 1940s. As part of her punishment, authorities revoked her New York City cabaret card, essentially keeping her from performing in the city’s clubs for the rest of her life. Continuing drug and alcohol abuse took a toll on her health and altered her voice, but Holiday managed to record throughout the 1950s, largely for Verve. In 1954, she embarked on a European tour, and two years later she delivered a memorable performance at Carnegie Hall in New York. In 1958, she recorded Lady in Satin. Following another European tour in 1958 and 1959, she recorded her final album, Billie Holiday (1959), for MGM. She delivered her last public appearance in Greenwich Village in New York on May 25, 1959. A few days after her final performance, Holiday was admitted to the hospital suffering
from a kidney ailment and other complications resulting from substance abuse. Just before her death, authorities placed her under house arrest for drug possession—a charge that some believe was unjustified. She died soon thereafter at the age of forty-four. Holiday’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, was published in 1956 and is generally regarded as inaccurate. The American singer Diana Ross (1944– ) portrayed her in the 1972 film version. She was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1987. In 1988, the Irish rock band U2 recorded “Angel of Harlem” as a tribute to Holiday. The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative Billie Holiday stamp in 1994, and she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Burnett, James, Billie Holiday, 1984; Clarke, Donald, Billie Holiday: Wishing on the Moon, 2002; Greene, Meg, Billie Holiday: A Biography, 2007; Holiday, Billie, Lady Sings the Blues, 1956; Nicholson, Stuart, Billie Holiday, 1995; O’Meally, Robert, Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday, 1991.. www.cmgworldwide.com/music/holiday/. www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_holiday_ billie.htm.
Holst, Gustav (September 21, 1874–May 25, 1934) Composer, Teacher he rise of Gustav Theodore Holst’s career as a composer coincided with the emergence of Neoromanticism in English music in the early twentieth century. While his music has affinities with the Neoro-
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mantics, Holst was more accepting of modern developments of music than were his contemporaries such as RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS. Holst was born Gustavus Theodore von Holst in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, En-
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gland to an English mother and a Swedish father. His father, who came from a family of musicians, was a professional pianist who devoted much of his time and energy to his work. Holst’s mother died when he was eight, after which he was raised in part by an aunt. He attended the Cheltenham Grammar School and played the organ, piano, and trombone. Holst began to compose in his youth, finishing his first composition, a setting of the poem Horatius, in 1887. Although proficient as a piano player, Holst suffered from neuritis in his right hand and could not play professionally. Beginning in 1893, Holst studied composition under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music in London, where he met Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams became a lifelong friend and kindled his interest in English folk music. Holst also developed a love for English madrigals, a significant influence on his early work. Holst’s socialist sympathies led him to join the Hammersmith Socialist Club. He attended GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s lectures and also conducted the Hammersmith Socialist Choir (1896–1898). After finishing his studies in 1898, he earned his living playing the trombone for the Carl Rosa Opera Company and for the Scottish Orchestra. In 1901 he married the soprano Isobel Harrison. In 1905 Holst took a teaching post at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, and two years later he became music director at Morley College. He remained in both positions until he died and composed a significant amount of music for his students. He composed St. Paul’s Suite for strings (1913) in gratitude to the school after it built him a studio. Another influence on Holst’s work was early English music, and in particular its vocal aspects. He particularly admired Henry Purcell (1659–1695) and contributed to a revival of his music in the early 1900s. While he was at Morley (1911), the school staged a production of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (1692). Among Holst’s early compositions is Lansdown Castle (1893), an operetta produced at the Cheltenham Corn Exchange in 1893. The
overture Walt Whitman (1899) and The Mystic Trumpeter (1904) for soprano solo and orchestra, a setting of Whitman’s verse, are among several Holst compositions to use the work of the American poet he admired. The Cotswolds Symphony (1900) expresses his love of the Cotswold hills. Holst’s deep interest in Hindu literature led him to learn Sanskrit and translate texts himself. By 1903 he had already composed a symphonic poem called Indra, depicting the god Indra’s battle against drought. Holst also set Sanskrit hymns from the Rig Veda, oldest and most sacred of the Hindu scriptures. Two operas also derive from Holst’s Sanskrit studies, the three-act Sita (1899–1906) and the one-act Savitri (1908), based on a story from the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata. As his career progressed, Holst opened himself to modern influences in his music, particularly the music of IGOR STRAVINSKY. Stravinsky’s influence is particularly evident in Holst’s most popular work, The Planets (1913). The work, an orchestral suite, consists of seven movements, each based on a planet (missing are Earth and the not-yet-discovered Pluto). Each movement reflects the spirit of the planet—Mars, bringer of war, is dominated by low bass sounds, while Saturn, associated with contemplation and old age, is characterized by a peaceful tone. Among Holst’s other works are The Hymn of Jesus, for chorus and orchestra (1917), an apocryphal hymn he undertook to translate himself; many songs for female voice; settings of Greek tragedies; the Ode to Death, for chorus and orchestra (1919), based on a Whitman text and written in the World War I climate; Fugal Concerto (1923) for flute, oboe, and string orchestra; Choral Symphony (1923–24); Egdon Heath for orchestra (1927), inspired in part by Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native; Double Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra (1929); Hammersmith, for orchestra (1930); and Choral Fantasia (1930). Holst composed several operas, including The Perfect Fool, a chamber opera (1923) produced by the British National Opera; At the
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Boar’s Head (1925); and the chamber opera The Tale of The Wandering Scholar from the book by medievalist Helen Waddell. Holst also lectured often in the United States. He never, however, attained the popularity enjoyed by Vaughan Williams and his other contemporaries. His work combines traditional English strains with modern developments in music and has influenced later composers. His weak physical constitution, unkind critics, and a public that was sometimes
unreceptive to his work contributed to bouts of depression. His work has gained more acceptance since his death, an end to which his daughter, Imogen Holst, has contributed significantly.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Holst, Imogen, Gustav Holst: A Biography, 2d ed., 1988; Holst, Imogen, The Music of Gustav Holst, 1985; Short, Michael, Gustav Holst: The Man and His Music, 1990.
Horta, Victor (January 6, 1861–September 8, 1947) Architect hrough his designs of dozens of private homes and buildings in the early 1900s, Victor Horta popularized the Art Nouveau style in Belgium in the early twentieth century. First trained in neoclassical architecture, Horta returned to a more simplified neoclassical style in his later works. He is particularly known for his work in iron. Horta was the son of a shoemaker, born in Ghent. He initially wanted to become a musician and in 1873 enrolled in the Ghent Conservatory. After being expelled, he went to the Acade´mie des Beaux-Arts in Ghent, followed by the Acade´mie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1876 to 1881. After the end of his time there, he studied under the neoclassical architect Alphonse Balat, who was then architect to King Leopold II. Horta’s early buildings reflect his neoclassical training. In 1884 he won the Prix Godecharle for a project design for the parliament building, enabling him to travel. In 1892 he took a position as a lecturer in design at the Universite´ Libre de Brussels. His first major building, the four-story Hoˆtel Tassel in Brus-
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sels (1892–1893), was among the earliest examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Belgium. The curvilinear facade, the mosaic floor, elaborate stained-glass window designs, and ornate wall murals marked a distinct change from the neoclassicism of his earlier work. For the next decade, Horta worked almost nonstop, producing more than forty buildings that consisted for the most part of private dwellings in the Art Nouveau style. He sought a wholeness in his buildings that integrated all elements of the interior and was tailored to the people for whom he designed them. Known for his resourcefulness as a designer, he sometimes fashioned his designs to fit particular materials. Most prominent of these materials during his Art Nouveau period was iron. His thin, sinuous ironwork was dubbed the “noodle style.” Among his major buildings from this period are the Hoˆtel Winssingers (1895–1896), Hoˆtel Solvay (1895–1900), his own house on the rue Ame´ricaine (1898), and the House for the secretary for the Belgian Congo, Edmond van Eetvelde (1895–1897). Perhaps Horta’s best known work is the Maison du Peuple in Brussels (1896–1899),
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which for many years served as the headquarters of the Belgian Socialist Party (with which Horta had connections). His major public building in the Art Nouveau manner, it featured a large fac¸ade of glass and iron. Following a heated public debate, the building was destroyed in 1965. After 1900, beginning especially with the Hoˆtel Max Hallet (1902–1905), Horta abandoned the ornate elegance of his previous buildings for a simplified style. His efforts, too, turned to the public arena, although he
continued to design private homes. His major late projects include the Museum of Fine Arts in Tournai (1905–1928), the Palais des BeauxArts (1922–1928), and the railway station in Brussels begun in the late 1930s. The Brugmann Hospital (1906–1923), for which he designed several buildings and planned the site, was one of his most complex projects.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bernie, David, and Carew-Cox, Alastair, Victor Horta, 1995; Borsi, Franco, Victor Horta, 1991.
Housman, A. E. (March 26, 1859–April 30, 1936) Poet, Scholar, Teacher, Critic
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lfred Edward Housman is chiefly remembered for the two volumes of romantic, subtly pessimistic verse he
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published during his lifetime, A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems. One of the most highly regarded classical scholars of his day, he worked with the texts of Latin writers such as Manilius and Juvenal. In 1930 he completed his comprehensive edition of Manilius’s works. Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England, and grew up in nearby Bromsgrove. Both parents came from clerical families and maintained an atmosphere of strict religious observance in the house. In 1870 Housman won a scholarship to study at King Edward’s School. The death of his mother when he was 12 was a devastating experience for him. His father was given to heavy drinking and financial trouble, and to make family matters worse he married a stern and overbearing cousin. As a youth Housman began to write verse. In 1877 he won a scholarship to St. John’s College, Oxford, where he studied classics. Against his mother’s dying wish that he keep his faith, Housman was an avowed atheist at the age of 21. Although he excelled in his
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studies he failed the final exams, much to the surprise of his family, his classmates, and his instructors. Many reasons have been suggested for his failure, among which are his personal despair over his homosexual desires for a fellow student and his family difficulties. For the decade of 1882–1892 Housman worked as a civil servant, taking in 1882 a clerkship at the Patent Office in London. In his off hours Housman studied Latin texts and contributed scholarly articles to journals. His proficiency in the Latin texts led to his appointment as Professor of Latin at University College, London, in 1892. Housman financed the publication of his first volume of verse, A Shropshire Lad (1896), a collection of sixty-three poems published by Kegan Paul. In form his poems derive from traditional ballads, sonnets, and classical odes. When he wrote the poems Housman had little experience with or knowledge of his Shropshire setting, and there are few autobiographical elements in his verse. He had originally intended to title the collection The Poems of Terence Hearsay. The fictional Terence appears in poems such as “Terence, This is Stupid Stuff” and may be seen as a voice in many of them. What emerges most forcefully in Housman’s subtle, ironic lyrics is his preoccupation with death. Whether reached prematurely through war or inevitably with the passing of time, death remains in his poetry the senseless end of a meaningless existence. His antiwar sentiment is evident in poems such as “The Day of Battle” and “1887.” In the latter he attacks blind patriotism, ridiculing those who chant “God save the Queen” while their loved ones die on the battlefield. The 1901 death of Housman’s brother in the Boer War
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reinforced his antiwar outlook. Housman often interweaves his subjects with natural imagery, particularly the seasonal cycles of nature. The widely reprinted “When I Was One and Twenty” addresses the passing of youthful innocence, another recurring theme in Housman’s poetry. The initial sales of A Shropshire Lad were disappointing, but over the years they began to gain popularity, particularly during the First World War. The verse in Last Poems (1922) continues in the manner and theme of the previous volume and proved popular when it first appeared. In spite of the success of his poetry Housman cared little for literary circles and paid little attention to criticism. He was reclusive by nature and did not openly express his views. Although popularly remembered for his poetry, he devoted most of his efforts to classical scholarship. In 1911 he became Professor of Latin at Cambridge, where he taught for the remainder of his life. The culmination of his long scholarly career was an annotated edition of Manilius (1903–1930) that took nearly thirty years to complete. Housman’s other works include the lectures The Confines of Criticism, originally delivered in 1911; The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933); the posthumous volumes of poetry More Poems (1936) and Collected Poems (1940); and his letters, published in 1971.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bayley, John, Housman’s Poems, 1992; Graves, Richard Perceval, A. E. Housman: The ScholarPoet, 1979; Hoagwood, Terence Allan, A. E. Housman Revisited, 1995; Jebb, Keith, A. E. Housman, 1992.
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Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald (March 13, 1911–January 24, 1986) Writer afayette Ronald Hubbard was a prolific and controversial American writer who published fiction in a wide variety of genres, wrote essays and books to promote his theory of Dianetics, and founded and popularized the Church of Scientology. As a fiction writer, he is best known for his lengthy science fiction novels Battlefield Earth and the ten-volume Mission Earth series completed during the last years of his life. Hubbard was born in 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska. His father was a military man who served in the U.S. Navy until 1946, attaining the rank of Lieutenant-Commander in 1934. His mother actively promoted feminist causes. Due to his father’s involvement with the military, Hubbard’s family moved often in his youth. Settling in Durant, Oklahoma, shortly after his birth, the family eventually moved to Kalispell, Montana, and then to Helena. As a young boy in Kalispell, Hubbard became acquainted with the Blackfoot Indian tribe, befriending a medicine man who took him under his wing and passed along tribal folklore. Hubbard’s interest in the Blackfeet was the start of a lifelong desire to learn about the native cultures of the places he visited. His experiences with the tribe are reflected in his novel Buckskin Brigades (1937). In Helena, the family lived in a three-story red brick house during the winter months and spent their summers at a ranch they called Old Homestead. The family eventually lived in San Diego and Oakland in California, around the Puget Sound in Washington State, and then in Washington, D.C. While in Washington State, Hubbard joined the Boy Scouts and became one of the youngest boys in history to attain the rank of Eagle Scout. In 1923, Hubbard’s father was summoned to Washington, D.C., and the young Hubbard
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sailed with him from San Francisco to New York via the Panama Canal, which had just opened a few years earlier. During the voyage, he befriended Commander Joseph “Snake” Thompson (1876–1943), who had recently returned from studying with the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and significantly influenced Hubbard’s thinking. In 1927, Hubbard traveled to Guam, passing through several nations in the Far East on his way, including Japan, China, and Hong Kong. There, he befriended the local Chamorros (the island’s indigenous people) and taught in native schools. Later that year, he returned to Montana, where he attended Helena High School and wrote editorials for the school paper. Over the next two years, he had a second opportunity to tour the Far East. After returning to the United States, Hubbard studied at Swavely Preparatory School in Manassas, Virginia. He graduated from the Woodward School for Boys in 1930, after which he enrolled at the George Washington University. There, he studied engineering and atomic and molecular physics and was secretary of the university’s chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He also served as associate editor of and writer at The University Hatchet, and it was at the university that his first published fiction story, “Tah,” appeared. He won the university’s literary award for his play The God Smiles. In the early 1930s, he wrote for aviation magazines (he had been a member of the university’s flying club and later learned how to fly himself) and joined the Washington Herald’s photography staff. In 1932, Hubbard headed up the Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition, one of the numerous seafaring adventures upon which he would embark. During the five thousand mile journey aboard the two hundred-foot Doris
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Hamlin with fifty college students, he collected plant and animal specimens for the University of Michigan. Hubbard was able to sell photographs from the expedition to The New York Times. After returning to the United States, he embarked on another adventure— the West Indies Mineralogical Expedition— during which he completed a mineralogical survey of Puerto Rico and studied the native culture and religion. In the early 1930s, Hubbard devoted enough time out of every day to produce a short story, and his literary output began to grow astronomically. Before long, he had sold his first short story, “The Green God.” He wrote stories in virtually every literary genre, from westerns to adventures to science fiction. In 1935, he was elected president of the New York Chapter of the American Fiction Guild. For the Hollywood screen, he wrote the Secret of Treasure Island (1938), directed by Elmer Clifton (1890–1949). Hubbard returned to New York, upon which he joined the staff of Street & Smith’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine. His works appeared in print both in that magazine and the company’s new publication Unknown, which published his experimental novel Typewriter in the Sky in two installments in 1940. The year 1940 also saw the publication of Final Blackout, which along with Fear (1951) is considered one of his best pulp fiction works. Hubbard joined the Explorer’s Club in 1940 and the same year embarked on his Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition. During the voyage, he and his crew charted coastlines for the U.S. Navy and studied native cultures they encountered along the way. In December of that year, the United States Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation gave Hubbard his Master of Steam and Motor Vessels license, and in 1941 he received his Master of Sail and Vessel license. From 1941 to 1945, Hubbard served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. During that time, he attended Princeton University’s Military Government School. He was wounded
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during the war and discharged from the Navy in 1946, upon which he returned to writing. The same year, he married his second wife, Sara Northrup. Over the next several years, Hubbard continued to write fiction, and his best-known work from this period was Ole Doc Methuselah (serialized in 1947 and published as a whole in 1953). His career took a new direction around that time, when he commenced his earliest theories on a system of ideas and practices he would call Dianetics. Dianetics addressed Hubbard’s ideas that mental and some physical problems resulted from traumatic events, or engrams, recorded in one’s mind. With his philosophy and its practical applications, he aimed to clear these traumatic events from people’s minds and treat disorders such as drug and alcohol addictions. In 1947, he opened an office in Los Angeles from which he began to test early theories of Dianetics on Hollywood figures. The following year, he took a position with the Los Angeles Police Department, which he used to study criminal behavior, and later that year he moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he volunteered in hospitals and mental institutions. He traveled to Washington, D.C., where he presented the results of a sixteenyear study first published as Dianetics: The Original Thesis (1951) and later as The Dynamics of Life (1983). Beginning in 1949, Hubbard actively sought to publicize Dianetics. Because mainstream publishers lacked interest, he successfully approached science fiction writer John W. Campbell (1910–1971), who had published his science fiction for years in Astounding Science Fiction, to put his theories into print. His first published work on Dianetics was entitled “Terra Incognita: The Mind” (1950) and appeared in the Winter/Spring Issue of the Explorer’s Club Journal. In 1950, Hubbard and others founded the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Hermitage published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Men-
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tal Health the same year. He introduced the concept of auditing, which was a form of therapy involving two people in a question-andanswer session that elicited painful memories. A modest popular success, the book sold 150,000 copies in its first year and quickly led to the establishment of numerous branch offices of the Foundation in the United States. Hubbard continued to promote Dianetics enthusiastically over the next several years, maintaining a hectic traveling, lecturing, and writing schedule. In 1951, he opened the first Hubbard college in Wichita, Kansas, where he taught both classes and seminars. By the middle of the following year, he had expanded Dianetics into an applied religious philosophy that established the roots of the Church of Scientology. In 1953, he married his third and final wife, Mary Sue Whipp (1931–2002), with whom he remained until his death. The same year, he officially declared Scientology a religion, and with the same zeal he lent to his writing, lecturing, expeditions, and other activities, he set about establishing international offices for the organization. The first Church of Scientology was founded in Camden, New Jersey, and Hubbard devoted a significant amount of time building up the organization in London. In 1959, he bought the fifty-five-acre estate Saint Hill Manor around Sussex in England and established it as the world headquarters of Scientology. Hubbard began to develop a set of principles around what he called the thetan (a concept to the soul or spirit in other religions) designed to improve an individual’s mental state. In the course of his auditing sessions, he employed the use of a biofeedback device dubbed the Hubbard Electrometer (Emeter) to identify and evaluate mental blocks that hampered the thetan. In 1963, Hubbard filmed a documentary entitled An Afternoon at Saint Hill, which was released in 1978. In 1965, Hubbard developed the Classification and Gradation Awareness Chart, which details for Scientology members steps to follow in order to attain higher states of awareness.
Hubbard traveled briefly to Rhodesia in the mid-1960s, ostensibly to help the fledgling country. Not long afterward, he resigned directorships from all of Scientology in order to embark on a series of sea expeditions. During the voyages, he sailed aboard the Apollo, formulating strict instructions for crew members and also devoting time to organizing musical troupes that performed at ports of call. Music, along with filmmaking, was to occupy much of his time during the 1970s. He made many of the films for the Church of Scientology. During the 1980s, Hubbard returned to science fiction writing with full force. He published the lengthy Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (1982), for which he also composed accompanying music and lyrics. It was followed by his ten-volume Mission Earth (1985–1987). While these works enjoyed popularity among the public, they garnered mixed reviews from critics. Hubbard died from a stroke on his ranch in 1986. Although he published innumerable works during his lifetime, his unpublished writings amounted to a significant body of work that continues to be released posthumously. Many of these writings are related to Scientology and have been published by companies with connections to the Church. Hubbard enjoyed what looks on paper to be a spectacular career, but claims to his numerous achievements have by no means gone unchallenged. In the course of acquiring followers, he attracted heated criticism as well. Some have questioned the legitimacy of the Scientology organization and other claims related to his accomplishments. Among the most notable of his detractors was his son L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., better known as Ronald DeWolf (1934–1991), who was estranged from his father and believed him to be a fraud and the leader of a dangerous cult. DeWolf later recanted some of his criticism. Nevertheless, Hubbard’s influence over many people on an international scope is indisputable.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Atack, Jon, A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics, and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed, 1990; Corydon, Bent, L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or
Madman?, 1987; Miller, Russell, Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, 1987; www.lronhubbard.org.
Hughes, Howard (December 24, 1905–April 5, 1976) Film Producer, Aviator complex and controversial personality, the eccentric Texas multimillionaire Howard Hughes made several highly successful Hollywood films from the late 1920s to the late 1950s. His legendary involvement in the aviation industry included construction of several major aircraft and personally breaking a number of world flying records as a pilot. Hughes deteriorated both professionally and personally in his later life, succumbing to severe drug addiction and the behavioral impediments of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hughes was born Howard Robard Hughes in Humble, Texas, to Allene Stone and Gano Hughes. His paternal grandfather, Howard R. Hughes, Sr., patented a moneymaking oil drilling bit that paved the way for drilling in previously inaccessible places. He founded the prosperous Hughes Tool Company in 1909 in part to sell his invention. It was Hughes’s mother who dominated his childhood with such compulsions as trying to protect him from microorganisms and diseases—Can obsession that she passed on to her son and that took a debilitating hold of him in his later life. Hughes also latched onto his father’s interest in mechanical invention. Both parents died before he turned twenty, leaving Hughes the tool company and a making him multimillionaire in his late teens. Hughes studied briefly at Rice University and at the California Institute of Technology. In 1925 he married Ella Rice, and he soon
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moved to Hollywood to produce films. In 1926, he made the silent film Swell Hogan, which he disliked and decided not to release. Moving forward, he released two films in quick succession, the silent comedy Everybody’s Acting (1926) and Two Arabian Knights (1927), about the adventures of two American prisoners of war who escape the German POW camp in which the enemy holds them hostage. Both were lucrative adventures for Hughes, and for the latter, director Lewis Milestone (1895–1980) won an Academy Award for Best Director of a Comedy Picture. The crime film The Racket (1928) and The Mating Call (1928) followed, and the former was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Hughes spent almost four million dollars of his own fortune to make the smash hit aviation film Hell’s Angels (1930), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. His press room comedy The Front Page (1931) was nominated for three Academy Awards. Scarface (1932) was yet another hit for Hughes, as was The Outlaw (1943)—but neither of them hit the public without battling censors over the violence in Scarface and actress Jane Russell’s (1921– ) accentuated voluptuous appearance, then considered risque´, in The Outlaw. The latter film was responsible for launching Russell into stardom. Hughes’s personal life, always tumultuous, suffered a wrinkle when Rice returned to
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Houston and filed for divorce in 1929. Hughes was notorious for carrying on affairs with numerous famous women, notably actress KATHARINE HEPBURN. Hughes produced a number of other films during this era, including the drama The Age for Love (1931) and the comedies Cock of the Air (1932) and Sky Devils (1932). In 1948, he acquired RKO pictures, establishing a disastrous relationship with the company that ended in 1953. His later films include the crime dramas Vendetta (1950) and The Las Vegas Story (1952). In 1956, he released The Conqueror, which drew a measure of criticism for its casting of actor John Wayne (1907–1979) as the twelfth- and thirteenth-century conqueror and founder of the Mongol Empire Genghis Khan (1162–1227). Jet Pilot (1957) was Hughes’s final effort for the screen. Aside from his film making interests, Hughes was an aviation enthusiast and pilot. In 1932, he founded Hughes Aircraft as a division of Hughes Tool Company. His most famous aviation project was the H-4 Hercules, better known as the “Spruce Goose.” A giant piece of machinery that the U.S. Government intended to use in wartime to transport troops and equipment, the plane remained unfinished until after World War II ended and only took one brief flight. His involvement with Transworld Airlines (TWA) after he acquired a majority share in 1937 was turbulent, and in 1966 he was required by law to sell all of his shares in the company. Hughes formed numerous divisions of the Hughes Tool Company before donating all of his stock to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, founded in 1953, in order to afford a portion of his fortunes tax-exempt status. Hughes was by then a clever master at inventing ways to avoid paying taxes, a habit that he would continue until his death. A pilot himself, Hughes broke airspeed records in his H-1 Racer. In 1937, he set a record for transcontinental flight time, and in 1938 he circumnavigated the globe in the recordbreaking time of just over ninety-one hours.
In 1946, Hughes nearly perished and was severely and permanently injured in an air accident during which complications from an oil leak forced him to crash land into a Beverly Hills neighborhood. Among the many awards Hughes received as an aviator were the Harmon Trophy in 1936 and 1938, the Collier Trophy in 1938, the Octave Chanute Award in 1940, and a Congressional Gold Medal in 1939. Hughes’s behavior and health began to seriously decline in the late 1950s. His 1957 marriage to actress Jean Peters (1926–2000) was bizarre, as the two rarely spent any time together. Peters filed for divorce in 1971. His obsessive-compulsive behavior intensified, and he removed himself from public life altogether. At the end of his life, he moved from hotel to hotel in tax-evading maneuvers to avoid declaring a permanent residence. He succumbed to drug addiction and lived essentially secluded, allowing his hair and fingernails to grow unchecked. In 1971, author Clifford Irving (1930– ) claimed to have cowritten an authorized autobiography of Hughes with Hughes himself. Hughes, who by this time almost never spoke out in public, broke his silence to deny any involvement with Irving. Having been exposed as a fraud, Irving served time in jail for the hoax. Irving’s stunt is the subject of Swedish director Lasse Hallstro¨m’s (1946– ) film The Hoax (2006) starring Richard Gere (1949– ). Hughes died en route to a Houston hospital in 1976. He had become so unrecognizable that his fingerprints had to be sent to the FBI for positive identification. The official cause of death was kidney failure, but an autopsy revealed severe malnutrition and broken hypodermic needles lodged in his arms. Some have speculated that Hughes suffered from the advanced stages of syphilis, thus leading to his eccentric behavior. After his death, many parties hotly contested his will. The courts eventually determined that he had left no will, leaving his fortune to be divided among relatives.
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Leonardo DiCaprio (1974– ) played Hughes in MARTIN SCORSESE’S 2004 biographical film The Aviator.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barlett, Donald L., and Steele, James B., Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness, 2004; Drosnin,
Michael, Citizen Hughes, 1985; Higham, Charles, Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, 2004; Marrett, George J., Howard Hughes: Aviator, 2004. www.hhmi.org. www.howardhughes.com.
Hughes, Ted (August 16, 1930–October 28, 1998) Poet, Short-Story Writer, Teacher, Writer of Children’s Books, Critic, Essayist, Translator ed Hughes’s raw verses draw from his West Riding upbringing and frequently employ animals as symbols and metaphors, reflecting his vision of nature as embodying above all the basic animal need for survival, which he is apt to see also in human beings. Hughes was married to the major American poet SYLVIA PLATH from 1956 until her suicide in 1963, and he has been blamed for contributing to the state of mind that led to that suicide. The 1998 (posthumous) publication of his poems addressed to her, Birthday Letters, has renewed the controversy, yet also helped to establish Hughes as a poet of the first rank. Hughes was born Edward James Hughes in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, England and was the youngest of three children. His father, a carpenter and World War I veteran, moved the family to Mexborough, a somewhat larger town in Yorkshire, when he was seven. There, Hughes attended the Mexborough Grammar School. The west Yorkshire dialect that he grew up with shaped the musical rhythms of his verse. Hughes’s lifelong fascination with animals began in his childhood with collections of real and toy specimens. After serving with the Royal Air Force for two years, Hughes entered Pembroke College, Cambridge. After graduating in 1954, Hughes
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continued to write poetry while he worked as a gardener and a zoo attendant, and later as a script reader in Arthur Rank’s film studios. Hughes’s first published poem, “The Little Boys and the Seasons,” appeared in Cambridge’s Granta in 1954, and other poems soon followed in Cambridge publications. At Cambridge Hughes also developed a strong interest in ROBERT GRAVES’s The White Goddess, which would shape his future poetry. After graduating, Hughes worked in a series of odd jobs until 1956. That year, he helped found the St. Botolph’s Review, which only lasted for one issue, but that issue contained a number of his poems. In connection with the review he met the American poet Sylvia Plath, whom he married the same year. Aside from her own successes as a poet, Plath was responsible for launching Hughes’s career. In 1957 she entered the poems that eventually became The Hawk in the Rain in a contest in New York. The judges, among whom was STEPHEN SPENDER, chose Hughes’s poems for the prize: publication. The themes that continue in most of Hughes’s poetry emerged in this first volume—death, man, beast, freedom, and earth. “Griefs for Dead Soldiers” treats the theme of war. Hughes’s poetry is contemplative but harsh, sometimes violent, and has been seen as gaining some of
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its power from the mannerisms and speech patterns of his native West Riding. In 1957, Hughes moved to Boston with Plath. There he taught creative writing at the University of Massachusetts and wrote many of the poems that appeared in his next major volume, Lupercal (1960), which won the Hawthornden Prize. The couple returned to England in 1959, and Plath began her descent into the depression that led her to suicide in 1963. Selected Poems, with Thom Gunn, appeared in 1962. Hughes took a position as editor of Modern Poetry in Translation in London in 1965. In 1969 Hughes suffered another loss when his companion killed herself and their daughter. Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (1973), consists of a series of poems built around the image of the crow and was partially inspired by the American sculptor Leonard Baskin. The myth of Prometheus figured prominently in Hughes’s play Orghast (1971) as well as his twenty-one-poem collection Prometheus and His Crag. Later volumes include Wodwo (1967), Season Songs (1976), Moortown (1979), Moon Whales: And Other Moon Poems (1988), and Wolfwatching (1992). The publication of Birthday Letters (1998), a collection of poetry that addresses his relationship with Plath, generated a storm of critical controversy. Some critics praised Hughes for
honesty and forthrightness, while others charged him with insensitivity to his former wife and faulted him for remaining silent about her suicide for so many years. Hughes has also written short stories and children’s books. Tales of the Early World (1991) consists of ten short stories illustrated by David Frampton. In the work Hughes presents God as a benevolent force who nevertheless lacks full control over his creation. The short-story collection Difficulties of a Bridegroom was published in 1996. Hughes’s children’s works include Remains of Elmet (1979) and What is the Truth? (1984). Hughes’s literary criticism appears in Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose (1995). His translations include Seneca’s play Oedipus and Tales from Ovid (1997), a highly praised translation of tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and a translation/adaptation of FEDERICO GARCı´A LORCA’S Blood Wedding (1997). He also gave poetry readings for children and was appointed Britain’s poet laureate in 1984.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bishop, Nick, Re-making Poetry: Ted Hughes and a New Critical Psychology, 1993; Sagar, Keith, The Art of Ted Hughes, 1975; Scigaj, Leonard M., Ted Hughes, 1991.
Huxley, Aldous (July 26, 1894–November 22, 1963) Novelist, Poet, Critic, Essayist, Journalist he English novelist Aldous Leonard Huxley is best known for his nightmarish satire of the contemporary world in the form of a novel about a scientific and technological “utopia,” Brave New World. His body of work includes hundreds of novels, poems, and essays.
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Huxley was born into a family of intellectuals. His grandfather, Thomas Huxley, was a well-known evolutionist and zoologist; his father, Leonard Huxley, a biographer; his brother, Julian Huxley, a biologist who helped found the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO);
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Aldous Huxley (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
and his mother, Judith Arnold, a relative of the important English poet and critic Matthew Arnold. Aldous attended Hillside School as a boy and excelled in his studies. In 1908 he enrolled at Eton, where he endured two difficult trials: the death of his mother and the erosion of his eyesight due to keratitis. While he stud-
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ied English literature at Balliol College in Oxford, he met Lady Ottoline Morrell, at whose house an informal literary circle sometimes gathered. Through her Huxley met such literary figures as D. H. LAWRENCE, who later became his close friend. The Burning Wheel, a
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collection of poetry and his first book, was published in 1916, the year he graduated. In 1919, Huxley married Maria Nys and began to work as a journalist and reviewer for the London Athenaeum, often writing under the pseudonym “Autolycus.” Crome Yellow, his first novel, was published two years later. Along with its successor, Antic Hay (1923), Crome Yellow satirized the prevailing intellectual climate in England. In Antic Hay, a teacher, Theodore Gumbril, grows disgusted with his school’s hollow curriculum. He abandons teaching and moves to London, where he encounters a cast of scientists, artists, scholars, and others devoting their time to pursuits he considers futile and even sinister. Yet Gumbril is himself no hero—he is fond of seducing women and teams up with a manipulative marketing strategist to sell the pants he has invented. Huxley and his wife left England in 1923 and lived in Italy and France. His next novel, Those Barren Leaves, appeared in 1925. Jesting Pilate (1926), inspired by his world travels, offers a critical look at Western civilization as a whole. In Point Counter Point (1928), Huxley contrasts several forms of artists, intellectuals, and lovers who seem to be living in false worlds, deluding themselves, and lying to others. More honest and perceptive souls in the narrative respond to humanity’s flaws in their own ways. Rampion, an artist modeled on D. H. Lawrence, is an optimistic visionary who never gives up hope for the improvement of mankind. The nihilistic Spandrell, filled with hate toward his fellow human beings, lashes out at others in destructive ways and thus destroys his own life. The pensive writer Phillip Quarles becomes depressed and deadened by everything he sees. Brave New World (1932), a dark satire of authoritarian political and technological structures and utopian ideas, proved to be Huxley’s most popular novel. Unlike the communist nightmare of GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984, however, there is no “Big Brother” inflicting its agenda on a terror-stricken population. Instead, the comforts of technology have
coaxed a blissful people into relinquishing their individuality and leading lives of conformity. People are scientifically conceived in test tubes and mentally conditioned after they are “hatched.” A widely used drug, soma, helps them remain at ease with the system as it is structured. Humans with lower intelligence are created to perform menial tasks, and a few people of higher intelligence are formulated to run the world. The disgruntled Bernard Marx and the “savage” John threaten the new utopian society. Marx is troubled with love for a single woman (Lenina Crowne) in a society that encourages free sex and discourages emotional attachment, while the rebellious John enjoys reading portrayals of genuine human beings in such antiquated authors as Shakespeare. After Brave New World, Huxley began to seriously explore solutions to the problems he had satirized in his earlier novels. Eyeless in Gaza (1936) is a fictional compilation of journal entries concerning, directly or indirectly, Anthony Beavis. The jumble of experiences that have influenced Anthony make up who he is in the present. A distressing conflict between who he is and who he wants to be leads him to Miller, an anthropologist working in Mexico. Miller helps Anthony to piece together an understanding of who he is and to take steps to improve himself. In 1937 Huxley moved to California and pursued his growing interest in mysticism. He became involved with the Vedanta Society of Southern California and with Swami Prabhavananda and Krishnamurti. Such works as the essays of Ends and Means (1937) and the annotated texts of The Perennial Philosophy (1945), in which he suggested that heightened spiritual experience could help humanity transcend its problems, outlined his developing philosophy. Huxley sought to expand his consciousness with hypnotism, religion, and hallucinogenic drugs, and he recounted his experiments with mescaline in The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956).
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Huxley’s other works include After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939); Grey Eminence (1941); Ape and Essence (1949); The Devils of Loudun (1952), an account of a true story about French nuns who were accused of demon possession in the 1600s; The Genius and the Goddess (1955); Island (1962); and screenplays, including Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1941). After the death of his first wife in 1955, he married Laura Archera. A
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fire completely destroyed his home and papers in 1961. Nevertheless, he continued to write, and to enjoy the respect his writings had won him, until his death from cancer in 1963. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bedford, Sybille, Aldous Huxley: A Biography, 1973–1974; May, Keith M., Aldous Huxley, 1972; Watts, Harold, Aldous Huxley, 1969.
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Ionesco, Euge ` ne (November 26, 1912–March 28, 1994) Playwright, Novelist uge`ne Ionesco, with other playwrights such as SAMUEL BECKETT and Arthur Adamov, is considered a founder of the Theater of the Absurd, a post–World War II movement in English and French theater that used dramatic content and staging techniques to create a lively sense of the absurd and of the absence of meaningful patterns in life. Ionesco was born in Slatina, Romania, to a French mother and a Romanian father. He had anemia as a young child and lived with a farming family outside of Paris. He moved back to Romania at age 13. After marrying, and graduating from the University of Bucharest, he taught French until 1938, when he moved to Paris to work on his doctoral thesis. Ionesco criticized all forms of authoritarianism and became an ardent anticommunist when his native Romania fell under Soviet control after World War II.
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Euge ` ne Ionesco (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
In Ionesco’s dramatic farces, which he called “anti-plays,” typical bourgeois life is portrayed as absurd. His characters are boring, mediocre, and virtually unable to communicate with one another. In La Cantatrice chauve (1948; The Bald Soprano), his first major play, the characters converse using utterly and obviously meaningless cliche´s inspired by Ionesco’s own perusal of an English theater primer. The play takes place in a drawing room, where a Mr. and Mrs. Smith are chattering about a family of friends, all of whom are named Bobby Watson. A husband and wife enter the scene and know so little about each other that it takes a while for them to deduce they are married. Ionesco drew the inspiration for the dialog in this play from the phrasebook he used to teach himself English, and it is considered to be one of the earliest plays in the Theatre of the Absurd movement. French audiences initially scorned Ionesco’s work, but it soon began to attract interest. Short sketches and one-act plays comprise most of Ionesco’s early work. They are purposely constructed in an illogical manner, and many use confused babble as dialog and other seemingly absurd elements to emphasize the senselessness of typical human life. In many of Ionesco’s plays, an absurd situation disintegrates and finally ends in physical and symbolic death. Among his most famous are La Lecon (1951; The Lesson), Les Chaises (1952; The Chairs), How to Get Rid of It (1953), and The New Tenant (1955). In The Lesson, an egotistical teacher kills a student after overpowering her with words. The elderly man of The Chairs wants to deliver a speech conveying his wisdom to a crowd of acquaintances before they die. The guests are invisible, and the number of empty chairs begins to multiply. The couple kill themselves, leaving it to a hired orator to convey their message to the
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non-crowd. As it turns out, the orator cannot speak coherently and writes gibberish on the blackboard. Ionesco’s first full-length play was Ame´de´e ou comment s’en de´barrasser (Ame´de´e, or How to Get Rid of It), in which a corpse, symbolic of a couple’s dead marriage, grows inside their living room until Ame´de´e floats up toward the sky on it. The character of Be´renger, introduced as an average, typical man, appears in several of Ionesco’s plays, including Rhinoce´ros (1959; Rhinoceros). The work, an attack on conformity and totalitarianism, is Ionesco’s most famous full-length play. Be´renger resists conforming to the ways of his fellow citizens, who all turn into beastly rhinoceroses.
Ionesco’s other plays include Tueur sans gages (1957; The Killer), Le Soif et la faim (1964; Hunger and Thirst), Le Pie´ton de l’air (1967; A Stroll in the Air), Killing Game (1970), A Hell of a Mess (1973), and The Man With Bags (1977). His other works include his 1972 adaptation of Macbeth, the novel The Hermit (1974), and his memoirs Pre´sent passe´ passe´ present (1968; Present Past, Past Present). He was elected to the French Academy in 1970. Ionesco also acted, and in 1951 he played in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Possessed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Coe, Richard N., Euge`ne Ionesco, 1970; Lewis, Allan, Ionesco, 1972.
Ivens, Joris (November 18, 1898–June 28, 1989) Director uring his long career as a filmmaker, the Dutch director Joris Ivens made dozens of documentaries bearing strong social and left-wing political messages. A collaborative effort with the American novelist ERNEST HEMINGWAY in the mid-1930s established his international reputation, and Ivens subsequently made films in the United States, Indonesia, and Europe. Ivens was born Georg Henri Anton Ivens in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His father was a photographic supplier. He made his first short film in 1911 and the same year entered the municipal Dutch High School. Ivens studied at the Rotterdam School of Economics from 1916 to 1917 and again in 1920 and 1921. Between his two periods of study he served in World War I as a field artillery lieutenant. After further study in photography in Germany, he moved to Amsterdam to work for his fa-
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ther’s business. He later made films for the University of Leyden. In 1927 he helped found FILM LIGA, and he finished his first major film, De Brug (The Bridge, 1928), the following year. Along with Regen (Rain, 1929), a detailed cinematic study of raindrops, De Brug attracted international attention. His early films show the influence of the montage sequences of the Soviet director SERGEI EISENSTEIN. After these two films Ivens turned to overt, left-wing political themes. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1930 and filmed Komsomol (Song of Heroes, 1932), a documentary about young Communists building the steel center Magnitogorsk. The German composer Hans Eisler, a student of ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, contributed the music score to Komsomol and several other Ivens films.
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The following year Ivens made Mise`re au Borinage (Borinage, 1933), a documentary on a miner’s strike in Belgium. Hemingway narrated The Spanish Earth (1937), an anti-Fascist documentary on the Spanish Civil War that brought Ivens international fame and is still worth watching. The Four Hundred Million, made in China in 1938, documented the Sino-Japanese War. Ivens next worked in the United States, where in 1940 the U.S. government hired him to make The Power of the Land, a film about a New Deal electrification program. During World War II he lectured at UCLA and worked for the U.S. and Canadian governments. He made Our Russian Front the following year. From 1944 to 1946, when he resigned in opposition to Dutch colonialism (specifically Holland’s refusal to recognize Indonesia’s independence), Ivens was film commissioner in the Dutch East Indies. The immediate result of his resignation was Indonesia Calling
(1946), a film that championed the cause of Indonesian independence and resulted in the revocation of his passport. Ivens spent much of the 1950s in Eastern Europe. Stromenlied (Song of the Rivers, 1952) won an international peace prize, and he won a World Peace Prize in 1955 and a Lenin Prize in 1967. In 1956 he worked with Cavalcanti on Die Vind Rose. He codirected, with Ge´rard Philipe, Les Aventures de Till l’Espie`gle. During the Vietnam War he was an outspoken foe of the American military effort and made a number of films on that subject. Ivens received an honorary doctorate from London’s Royal College of Art in 1978 and Cuba’s Che Guevara Prize in 1987.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bo¨ker, Carlos, Joris Ivens, Film-Maker: Facing Reality, 1981; Delmar, Rosalind, Joris Ivens: Fifty Years of Film-Making, 1979.
Ives, Charles Edward (October 20, 1874–May 19, 1954) Composer hoosing musical experiments over conventions and a business career over a formal music career, American Charles Edward Ives emerged as one of the early twentieth century’s most original American composers. Ives was born to George and Mary Parmalee Ives in Danbury, Connecticut, and grew up with a younger brother named J. Moss who went on to become a lawyer and a judge. The boys’ father, George, had been the Union’s youngest bandmaster during the Civil War. Upon his return home, the elder Ives became the leader of various musical institutions in the area such as a band and a choir. He made an enormous impact on Charles’s musical life.
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By the time the younger Ives was a teenager, he was experimenting with elements such as polytonal rhythms. He also learned to love familiar American songs—the vernacular— those we might consider folk songs today, such as those by Stephen Foster. They echo in his mature work. Young Ives quickly took to the family business and learned drums, cornet and piano from his father and others. By fourteen, he was the state’s youngest church organist, playing at the West Street Congregational Church in his hometown. In addition, young Charles was a good athlete who played baseball and football. Following his graduation from Danbury High School, he moved in 1893
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to New Haven, where he attended Hopkins Grammar School. After that, he entered Yale University, where he studied music with Horatio Parker. Parker, considered one of the nation’s best composition teachers, provided a conservative musical counterpoint to Ives’s experiment-prone father. As a result, the basics of composition were instilled in the naturally talented young man. Unfortunately, during his Yale years a huge wound opened for Ives: his father died unexpectedly in 1894. Accounts indicate the younger man never really got over the loss. However, he continued to develop as a composer and to work as a church organist through college and after graduation when he moved to New York to enter the insurance business. In addition, he served as church choirmaster. His compositions during these early New York years include his four Violin Sonatas and the Second Symphony, pieces that reflect his growing maturity as a composer who understands the classical elements, but also as a young American individualist trying to include his young country’s culture of song. Ives ended up quitting his organist job in 1902, his last professional music job. His life in the insurance business, however, prospered. In 1907, he and a partner, Julian Myrick, entered the business together, and by 1909 had opened a new agency called Ives & Myrick. The composer turned out to have a shrewd head for business, and is responsible for then-innovative ideas now taken for granted such as estate planning. In 1905, Ives met a beautiful nurse from Hartford named Harmony Twichell, the sister of a good friend, whom he married in 1908. The coupler later adopted a daughter named Edith Osborne Ives. During all of these major developments in his life, Ives continued to compose. His work became more experimental, and over the next several years included pieces such as his Third Symphony: The Camp Meeting and other pieces celebrating elements of Americana: The Fourth of July, the Robert Browning Overture, and First Orchestral Set: Three
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Places in New England. In addition was his notable Fourth Symphony. In 1912, he purchased a farm in West Redding, Connecticut, where he and his wife began to spend more time, returning to New York in the winter. By 1918, he was deeply involved in the war effort, and also suffered what appeared to be his second heart attack. By 1927, Ives stopped composing. His music, meanwhile, began to gather acclaim. Pianist E. Robert Schmitz arranged for two performances of Ives’s work during the 1920s, including, in 1927, the first two movements of Ives’s Fourth Symphony. The wide-ranging symphony included all of Ives’s techniques and won applause from critics of the time. His work went on to be championed in performances by musicians such as Gustav Mahler, Nicholas Slonimsky, and Lou Harrison. The last, with his chamber orchestra, first performed Ives’s Third Symphony in 1946 in New York. The piece went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1947. Ives himself joined the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1945. He died in 1954, but became known as one of the nation’s first truly American composers. His widow, Harmony, left the royalties from Ives’s music to the American Academy of Arts and Letters to endow prizes for music composition. More than two hundred Ives scholarships have been distributed since 1970, and thirty-two Ives fellowships have been distributed since 1983.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bredson, Carmen and Tibodeau, Ralph, Ten Great American Composers, 2002; Burkholder, J. Peter, Charles Ives: The Ideas Behind the Music, 1985; New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 2001; The New Grove 20th-Century American Masters W W Norton & Co., 1988; Perlis, Vivian, Charles Ives Remembered: An Oral History, 1974; Swafford, Jan, Charles Ives: A Life with Music, 1996. www.charlesives.org. www.danbury.org www.pulitzer.org.
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Jacobsen, Arne (February 11, 1902–March 24, 1971) Architect, Designer rne Jacobsen was one of Denmark’s leading proponents of modern architecture in the mid-twentieth century and forged his own version of the International Style. Jacobsen’s designs include many public and private buildings in Denmark notable for both their functionalist style and integration with the surrounding landscape. Jacobsen was the son of a wholesaler, born in Copenhagen, Denmark. As a child he developed an interest in drawing and painting, but his father sought a more practical career for him and steered him toward architecture. Jacobsen left school at 15 and later attended the Copenhagen Technical College. There he met the brothers Flemming and Mogens Lassen, who were to become two of Denmark’s most prominent modern architects. Jacobsen studied under Kay Fisker, Kay Gottlob, and Ivar Bentsen and with the school’s assistance traveled to Italy and France. Upon the completion of his studies, he entered the Copenhagen Academy of Arts, from which he graduated in 1927. While at the Academy, Jacobsen had already done some architectural work and had begun to exhibit furnishings, some of which won a Silver Medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1925. After receiving his diploma, he went to work for city architect Poul Holsøe at the Copenhagen Town Hall. There he took charge of the design for a new music pavilion and other structures. Jacobsen also began to enter his designs in competitions and to receive commissions, mostly for private homes and residential districts. Among these was the yellow brick villa for Professor Sigurd Wandel, a residential district at Ordrup Mose, and a home for the lawyer Max Rothenborg. Jacobsen designed the first section of a seaside district, the Bellavista Housing Estate, at Klampenborg in 1933. The terraced buildings of the three-wing complex allow each oc-
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cupant a good view of the sea. Over the next two years, Jacobsen added the Bellevue Theatre and a restaurant to the district. The theater is notable for its sliding roof, which opens to the sky when the weather permits. In the early 1930s, the functionalist International Style advanced by WALTER GROPIUS’s Bauhaus School in Germany began to influence Danish architects, including Jacobsen. In his early works, Jacobsen used the traditional building materials of Denmark, notably brick. The new style employed modern materials such as concrete, glass, and steel, and Jacobsen, though he never abandoned brick, increasingly used them in his designs. In 1934–1935 he designed the Novo Therapeutical Laboratory, his first factory, which used as its primary material reinforced concrete. Another notable design from this period is his gas station at Skovshoved Harbor, which has a prominent white circular roof. Before World War II he designed town halls at A˚rhus (1937) and Søllerød (1940)—two of the numerous town halls he designed during his lifetime—as well as his own summer home (1937) and the yellow brick Ibstrupparken Housing Estate (1940). In 1941–1942 Jacobsen designed a stadium for the City of Gentofte. Another major warera work was his herring smoking plant at Odden Havn (1943), to which he added a round house for the manager’s residence in 1957. The war forced him to live in Sweden from 1943 until its end. While there he continued to do architectural work but also began to design textile and wallpaper patterns with his wife. Their designs achieved some success in Sweden, and the National Museum of Stockholm purchased a number of them. After the war, Jacobsen returned to Denmark and immersed himself in the postwar rebuilding. In 1947 he designed, using three-story, yellow brick structures, a housing estate in
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Gentofte for young married couples. He finished the Søholm Housing Estate near Bellevue three years later. Also among his works from this period is the Munkega˚rds School (1952–1956), a school for young children. The design consists of twenty-four paired classrooms in which each pair opens to a patio. As in all of his works, Jacobsen carefully planned the landscape. In one patio he placed a pool with aquatic plants, and another featured shrubs trimmed in animal shapes. The Rødovre Town Hall (1955), to which he also contributed the furniture for the Council Chamber, is a long, rectangular building with horizontal ribbons of windows. With the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) Building (1959), Jacobsen designed both the interior and exterior and gave Copenhagen its first skyscraper. The Novo Industri A/S Factory (1961), built in reinforced concrete, is noteworthy for an emergency exit that consists of an external spiral staircase enclosed in a cylindrical glass structure.
Jacobsen worked for the most part in Denmark, but he received several notable international commissions. Among these is the Parliament Building at Islamabad, Pakistan (1962), which consists of a low-level, rectangular block with a taller, cylindrical building for the Parliament Chamber. He also designed the buildings of and some furniture for St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University (1964). Jacobsen’s other architectural designs include the Jesperson Building (1955) in Copenhagen, the National Bank building at Copenhagen (1961), the Headquarters Building for the Hamburg Electricity Supply Company (1962), and numerous sports halls. He also received recognition for his silverware, dishes, and furniture, particularly his swan and egg armchairs.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Faber, Tobias, Arne Jacobsen, 1964.
Jacobson, Dan (March 7, 1929– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer n his novels and short stories, the South African–born writer Dan Jacobson has created a series of characters motivated by greed or prejudice that often stems from the divided cultures in which they live. In his early works, such characters spring from the climate of racial segregation perpetuated by apartheid policies in South Africa. Jacobson’s later novels consider religious divisions and other factors that contribute to conflicts among humanity. Jacobson was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The family moved to Kimberley in 1933, and Jacobson attended the Kimberley
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Boys’ High School. He studied at the University of Witwatersrand and graduated in 1948. The same year, he moved to the newly established country of Israel and worked on a kibbutz. In 1950, Jacobson moved to London and taught at a private Jewish school. After returning to South Africa and working briefly for a press digest and for his family’s feed milling business, Jacobson moved permanently to England in 1954. He had begun writing short stories in 1953, and his first novel, The Trap, was published in 1955. In The Trap and other early novels, he frames his narratives in a realistic and even naturalistic writing style.
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His next novel, A Dance in the Sun (1956), is an indictment of the apartheid system and the whites whose mentality support it. The mysterious Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher, inhabitants of the village of Mirredal, are two such whites, who host two students that have gotten off track from their intended vacation. The students find the atmosphere of the home stifling, and everything about the Fletchers suggests an isolated and backward existence. The students learn that the Fletchers have sent away her brother, Nasie, after he fathered an illegitimate child by a black woman, Mary. Mr. Fletcher also paid Mary to leave with the child, and Mary’s brother, Joseph, wants to know where they are. Nasie’s return disrupts the family and he is eventually persuaded to leave again, but his appearance stimulates a change in the students’ thinking, and even in the outlook of Mrs. Fletcher. Greed is the driving factor in The Price of Diamonds (1957). An illegal diamond dealer accidentally gives a box of uncut diamonds to Manfried Gottlieb, when they were intended for his associate, Fink. Gottlieb gets caught up in the excitement brought on by the mistake and unsuccessfully attempts to sell them, eluding Fink’s inquiries. When Fink is severely beaten, he determines to turn himself in, but complications with the police prevent his arrest. The Evidence of Love (1960) returns to the subject of racial prejudice, examining its effect both on a light-skinned black man and a white woman. The wealthy and white Lucille Bentwisch sends Kenneth Makeer to study law in England. There he meets the South African white woman Isabel Last, who does not known he is “colored.” Makeer is too ashamed to tell her, and when she finds out by other means, she leaves him and returns to South Africa. Her departure leaves Makeer devastated and confused, and Isabel’s mentality begins to change following a visit from Makeer’s brother. She returns to England and marries Makeer, and the pair return to South Africa, where their arrest follows.
Jacobson’s short-story collections include A Long Way From London (1958), Zulu and the Zeide (1959), and Beggar My Neighbour (1964). The title story of Zulu and the Zeide concerns the relationship between an elderly Jewish Lithuanian immigrant and his son as well as the old man’s friendship with a Zulu, Paulus. The son, Harry Grossman, does not get along with his senile father, who prefers the companionship of Paulus and eventually loses his life when a bicycle hits him. The novel The Beginners (1966), a family chronicle about Benjamin Glickman, his wife Sarah, and their three children, marked a turning point in Jacobson’s style and focus. His narratives became more complex and his writing style more experimental. The Rape of Tamar (1970), narrated by Yonadab, is based on the biblical story of the rape of David’s daughter by her brother, Amnon. In this and other later works, Jacobson did not confine himself to South Africa for subject matter. The Confessions of Josef Baisz (1977), told in the form of a diary narrated by the ruthless Josef Baisz, takes placed in totalitarian Sarmeda, a country “like” South Africa. Baisz is the son of a civil servant who was arrested on charges of embezzlement and committed suicide. Baisz pursues a brutal course of life, abusing, manipulating, and falsely accusing others to get ahead. His crimes even extend to murder. In the end, he, like his father, will kill himself. In The God-Fearer (1992), Jacobson attempts to reverse the roles of Christians and Jews in European history. The main character, Kobus, is a bookbinder who lives in Ashkenaz, ruled by the God-Fearers, descendants of the Yehudim. The majority Yehudim blame the minority Christer for the world’s ills, and the latter are treated unfairly by the legal system and the populace. Kobus sees a series of visions of two Christer children who force him to confront the mistakes of his past. All For Love (2005), Jacobson’s tenth novel, is set in pre-World War I England and relates the story of a scandalous affair between a princess and a Croatian lieutenant.
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Among Jacobson’s other works are the novel The Wonder-Worker (1973); The Story of the Stories: The Chosen People and Its God (1982); and Time and Time Again: Autobiographies (1985). He has traveled and lectured widely in the United States, England, and Israel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jacobson, Dan, Time and Time Again: Autobiographies, 1985; Roberts, Sheila, Dan Jacobson, 1984.
Jennings, Elizabeth (July 18, 1926–October 26, 2001) Poet lizabeth Joan Jennings achieved her first poetic successes in the 1950s, when she was considered part of a group of poets from that era who included JOHN WAIN, KINGSLEY AMIS, and PHILIP LARKIN. Her poetry is intimate and direct, rendered in traditional style. Jennings was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, England. Her father was a doctor. The family moved to Oxford when Jennings was young, and she has never left other than to travel. She attended school in Oxford and then studied at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1949. Her first published poems appeared in Oxford Poetry in 1948. During her time at Oxford, Jennings met fellow poets Wain, Amis, and Larkin. Critics dubbed the work of these poets, including Jennings’s, “The Movement.” They shared certain characteristics, such as the avoidance of politics as subject matter, the use of traditional forms, the use of simple language, and study at Oxford. However, the members of The Movement had no common agenda and worked independently. Jennings makes no secret of her dislike of the label. Jennings’s first volume of poetry, Poems, was published in 1953 and won an Arts Council prize. Poets who influenced her included T. S. ELIOT and Gerard Manley Hopkins. In Poems, she introduced themes that recur
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throughout her work, themes such as the varied aspects of love and childhood memories. Her next volume of poetry, A Way of Looking (1955), won a Somerset Maugham Award that allowed her to visit Italy. Jennings’s love for the country and its literary tradition had a strong influence on her poetry. A Sense of the World followed in 1958.With Song for a Birth or Death (1961), Jennings achieved a new intimacy in her writing. The poems collected in The Mind Has Mountains (1966) were written during a period of mental illness that culminated in a breakdown, and many movingly reflect her experiences with other patients and with the staff at a hospital where she received treatment. Most of Jennings’s poetry follows traditional meter and rhyme, but in volumes such as Growing Points (1975), she experimented with other styles. Many of the poems in Consequently I Rejoice (1977), Moments of Grace (1979), Celebrations and Elegies (1982), and other later volumes incorporate religious themes shaped by Jennings’s Roman Catholic faith. Inspirational figures and art, the passage of time, and death all form prominent themes and images in Jennings’s poetry, and she addresses them in straightforward terms without the extensive use of metaphor.
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Her other volumes include Recoveries (1964), The Animals’ Arrival (1969), Lucidities (1970), Relationships (1972), Winter Wind (1979), Extending the Territory (1985), Tributes (1989), and Times and Seasons (1992). Her later works were Familiar Spirits (1994), In the Meantime (1997), and Timely Issues (2001). She also published children’s poetry, including The Batsford Book of Children’s Verse (1958) and The Secret Brother (1966). Her translation of The Sonnets of Michelangelo was published in 1969. The prose
work Let’s Have Some Poetry (1960) chronicles her emergence as a poet. She has published several volumes of her collected poetry: Collected Poems 1967 (1967), Selected Poems (1980), and Collected Poems 1953–1985 (1986).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gramang, Gerlinde, Elizabeth Jennings: An Appraisal of Her Life as a Poet, Her Approach to Her Work and a Selection of the Major Themes of Her Poetry, 1994.
Jime ´ nez, Juan Ramo ´n (December 23, 1881–May 29, 1958) Poet, Translator he Spanish poet Juan Ramo´n Jime´nez began his career under the influence of the Modernists and evolved his own poetic style suffused with melancholy and nostalgia. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956. Jime´nez was the youngest of four children, born in Moguer, a small town in the Andalusian region of southern Spain. His father operated a successful and prosperous vineyard, and both parents treated their temperamental child well. After completing several years of schooling, he entered a Jesuit school at age 11. He subsequently studied painting and law in Seville, the latter in accordance with his father’s wishes. Jime´nez disliked law and quit his studies, eventually deciding to devote himself to poetry. The year 1900 was eventful for Jime´nez. During a two-month visit to Madrid, he met several noteworthy literary figures, including the Nicaraguan modernismo poet Ruben Darı´o and RAMO´ N DEL VALLE INCLA´ N. His father’s death from a heart attack the same year caused a severe nervous illness from which
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he spent the next year recovering. His first poetry collection, Violet Souls (1900), consisted of eighteen poems originally printed in purple ink. Like much of his poetry, the verse in Violet Souls is nostalgic, brooding, and melancholy. Water Lilies (1900) was printed in green ink. Early in his career as a poet, Jime´nez was influenced by the nineteenth-century Spanish poets Gustavo Adolfo Be´cquer and Rosalia de Castro as well as Darı´o and the French Symbolists. In his work Jime´nez also drew from the Catholic faith he maintained throughout his life, although his views grew less orthodox with age. Much of Jime´nez’s early poetry is marked by careful attention to form and technique. The poems of Sad Airs (1903), Distant Gardens (1904), and Pastorals (1905) are generally written in four-verse stanzas with unrhymed odd lines. Spiritual Sonnets (1917), a book of sonnets written in traditional rhyme and eleven-syllable verse, is particularly noteworthy for its technical refinement. In 1912 Jime´nez returned to Madrid after having lived in Moguer for seven years. He
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worked as an editor in the Residencia de Estudiantes, where he met other writers such as ANTONIO MACHADO and MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO. The prose sketches of Platero and I (1914) are among Jime´nez’s most popular works. Jime´nez set his series of sketches about a poet and his donkey, Platero, in his native town of Moguer. Many of the stories concern humankind’s relationship with animals, from the poet’s warm relationship with Platero to the callous cruelty people inflict on a dog, a canary, and other animals. Diary of Newly Married Poet (1917) followed his marriage to Zenobia Camprubı´ Aymar, translator of the Indian poet RABINDRANATH TAGORE. The Diary marked a turning point in Jime´nez’s poetic style. Jime´nez embraced what he called “naked poetry,” or a pure poetry stripped of formality. Most of the volume’s poems are written in free verse, and some are prose poems. They fall into six sections containing his reflections on love, his first visit to the United States, and the ocean voyages that took him across the Atlantic and back.
Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Jime´nez and his wife moved to the United States. Representing the Spanish Republic, he served as an official cultural emissary. Until his death in 1958, he lived in the United States and Puerto Rico, lecturing at major universities and continuing to write poetry. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956, the same year his wife died from cancer. Among his later collections of poetry is Coral Gables Ballads (1948), written during his residence in southern Florida. Jime´nez’s other volumes of poetry include Pure Elegies (1908), Ballads of Spring (1910), Rock and Sky (1919), Poetry, in Verse (1923), Poetry in Prose and Verse (1932), Voices of My Song (1945), and Animal at Bottom (1947).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fogelquist, Donald F., Juan Ramo´n Jime´nez, 1976.
John, Augustus (January 4, 1878–October 31, 1961) Painter ike his sister, GWEN JOHN, Augustus Edwin John established his reputation as an artist with his portraiture. John used large, bold areas of color to depict gypsies, peasants, and later many prominent European artists and intellectuals. John was born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and attended school there. His mother died in 1884. A decade later he entered the Slade School of Fine Art, where he studied until 1898. Although he was younger than Gwen, she began studying at the same school only a year later. John soon distinguished
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himself as one of the school’s most talented draughtsman. Influenced in style by the Postimpressionists and Impressionists as well as the older European masters, John chose for his early subjects the Welsh peasantry and gypsies he lived and worked among. Lily in North Wales, Rustic Idyll (1903), and Encampment on Dartmoor (1906) as well as many drawings, spring from his experiences among the peasantry. John became friends with the painter James Dickson Innes, whose preference was
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for painting landscapes in mountainous regions. Although primarily known as a portraitist, John too created a number of landscapes. Some, such as Chateau Neuf, Provence, treat only the landscape, while others like Wood-
Augustus John (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-35693)
landers show his ability to integrate his human figures with surrounding landscape. In contrast with the earthy colors and subdued tones of Gwen’s paintings, John used bolder colors and less subtle emotion. Shaped by his talent in draughtsmanship, his forms are clearly defined. In his later portraits, he continued to paint lesser known figures, such as his 1918 Canadian Soldier (1918) (among other portraits of soldiers), Cornish Sailor Boy (1937), and Spanish Gypsy. His most famous works, however, are the portraits of prominent literary, artistic, and political figures. Among John’s portraits are Dorelia; W. B. Yeats; Smiling Woman (1908); two George Bernard Shaw (1914) portraits, one in which the playwright has closed his eyes; Arthur Symons (1917); the cellist Madame Suggia (1923); Thomas Hardy (1923); Lady Ottoline Morrell (1926); James Joyce (1930); Tallulah Bankhead (1933); Mrs. Augustus John (1937); and Dylan Thomas (1938). John also painted and drew multiple-figure works, such as Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me and the cartoon Galway. John attained the status as the finest portraitist in England at the height of his career and exhibited widely until 1910. Although his sister rarely exhibited, he was a prime force in the promotion of her work. BIBLIOGRAPHY Easton, Malcolm, Augustus John, 1975; Holroyd, Michael, Augustus John, 1996; Rothenstein, John, Augustus John, 1946.
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John, Gwen (June 22, 1876–September 18, 1939) Painter wendolyn Mary John’s intimate, impressionistic portraits of women convey subtle emotion and evince a marked melancholy. A very private person, she did little to promote her work and exhibited few paintings during her lifetime. Her work is often overshadowed by that of her more famous brother, AUGUSTUS JOHN. John was born in Haverfordwest, Wales, where her father was a solicitor. Her mother died in 1884, after which the family moved to Tenby. John attended school there before entering the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she studied from 1895 to 1898. The professors Philip Wilson Steer and Fred Brown were among her numerous teachers; her brother Augustus attended the Slade School during roughly the same period. Upon her departure, she earned a first prize for figure composition. In 1898 John went to Paris to study under James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), the wellknown American painter, at the Acade´mie Carmen. The following year she moved to London, where she lived until 1903. In 1904 John settled permanently in France. She earned her living modeling for the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) and other artists and became Rodin’s mistress the same year. Rodin used her as the model for his Muse, created as a memorial for Whistler. Not many of John’s early paintings survive. After she graduated from school, she depicted women in muted, earthy colors. Her female subjects—which include nudes and plainly dressed women—have long sad faces. Some of her models remain unknown, but many of them were close friends. Among her portraits are self portraits, Dorelia in a Black Dress (1903), The Student (1903–1904), Chloe¨ Boughton-Leigh (1908; 1910), Fenella Lovell (1909), Girl Praying (1930), and several
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works with unknown dates—Girl in Profile, Girl with Cat, and The Convalescent. John absorbed few of the modern artistic influences that dominated Paris in the early twentieth century, fashioning her style instead from the works of the old masters. In 1906 she met the poet RAINER MARIA RILKE, who served as Rodin’s secretary for several years. Until 1910 John found little success as a painter. A limited number of her works appeared in scattered exhibitions, particularly those sponsored by the New English Art Club in London. The American collector John Quinn began purchasing her work in 1910 and continued to support her until his death in 1924. In 1911 John moved to Meudon. Shortly thereafter she converted to Catholicism, after which she painted many portraits of Catholic figures. Noteworthy among these are her depictions of the seventeenth-century abbess Me`re Poussepin and her small paintings of Saint Teresa of Lisieux (in the 1930s). Aside from her portraits of women, John also painted interiors—such as A Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris (1907–1909) and The Teapot (1915–1916)—and cats. John lived a private and somewhat reclusive life, associating mainly with a handful of close friends. Augustus was among her most enthusiastic supporters and promoters. The New Cheril Galleries in London held a retrospective of her work in 1926 that included forty-four paintings and numerous drawings.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Chitty, Lady Susan, Gwen John, 1876–1939, 1981; Langdale, Cecily, Gwen John: An Interior Life, 1985; Taubman, Mary, Gwen John: The Artist and Her Work, 1985; Thomas, Alison, Portraits of Women: Gwen John and Her Forgotten Contemporaries, 1994.
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Johns, Jasper (May 15, 1930- ) Painter, Sculptor, Printmaker merican artist, Jasper Johns is best known for his influence in the development of Pop art and Minimalism in the United States and Europe. His remarkable career spans more than half a century, and has revolutionized ideas of perspective, focus, and the relationship between art and life. Unlike the emotionally charged Abstract Expressionism popular at the time, void of image and figure, Johns’s paintings invite the viewer to consider ordinary objects taken out of their conventional context. Johns embraced experimentation and technique, and used a variety of different media and methods. He was best known for his depiction of symbolic objects, such as a flags, targets, and numbers portrayed simply as geometric, non-symbolic visual objects. Johns was born in Augusta, Georgia, and was raised in Allendale, South Carolina. His parents divorced when Johns was a toddler, and despite an inconsistent childhood living with various relatives, he graduated as valedictorian from high school in Sumter, South Carolina. Johns attended the University of South Carolina in 1947-1948 but dropped out after three semesters to relocate to New York City to begin his career as a professional artist. Shortly after moving to New York he was drafted into the U.S. Army and was stationed in Japan. By 1952 he was back in New York and became friends with several members of the artistic community including the painter and sculptor Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg and Johns met while designing window displays for upscale Fifth Avenue shops and shared an interest in depicting everyday objects in bright colors and unique textures. In this style, sometimes referred to as NeoDadaism, Johns and Rauschenberg used icons of popular culture, taken outside of their conventional symbolism and context within society, to stand alone as works of art. His early
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works were controversial, receiving either praise for their simplicity and irony, or criticism for their apparent lack of emotion. In 1954 Johns began a series of paintings depicting the American flag and was granted his first solo gallery show in New York at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1958. The show was a great success, and the Museum of Modern Art purchased three pieces from this first show. Many of Johns’s early works included a simple, singular, two-dimensional focus filling the entire canvas. Johns became quite influential in the art world and was very productive in the late 1950s through the early 1960s. In this time, he experimented with painting images of flags, maps, numbers, targets, alphabets, and stenciled words. He utilized the encaustic technique by folding pigments into hot liquid wax, and also used plaster to create unique textures in his paintings. In 1958 he created his first sculptures entitled Flashlight and Lightbulb I. In 1959 False Start (oil on canvas) was one of the pieces that marked a transition to more vibrant, abstract brush strokes, soon to be followed by the gray and neutral tones that would infiltrate his art in the next decade. In this period, Johns was deeply inspired by MARCEL DUCHAMP, an artist and writer who used found materials and revolutionized the ideas of what is considered art. Johns saw a collection of Duchamp’s work in 1959, and this experience greatly influenced his work in the following decades. In the 1960s he began to include real objects or “found materials” in his paintings. The year 1960 was significant for a simple sculpture of two Ballantine Ale cans entitled Painted Bronze, which has become one of Johns’s best-known works. In 1962 Johns created Study for Skin, imprinting his oiled hands, face, and other body parts against paper, and putting charcoal over the oil markings.
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Throughout his career, Johns was fascinated with the process of creating art and valued experimentation. He was interested in the technical aspects of screen-printing, etching, and lithography and incorporated these techniques into his work. In exploring repetitive, shifting themes, contradictions, and opposites, Johns often recreated a piece using several different media and techniques. In a rare 1965 interview Johns explained, “most art which begins to make a statement fails to make a statement because the methods used are too schematic or too artificial. . . . To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.” From the mid-1960s through the early 1970s Johns’s work became more eclectic, using various media and styles within a piece. In an untitled piece in 1972 Johns used crosshatched lines that would be a focus of his art for nearly a decade. He developed this style of arranging parallel lines after catching a glimpse of a car covered with marks speeding past, and was inspired to convey that glimpse in his work. Johns shifted focus again in the 1980s, painting figures and alluding to aspects of his past and present personal life. Seasons (19851986) represented the life stages and the cycle of his career on four canvases. In the early in 1990s Johns borrowed images from other artists’ work, using them in tracings and collages with other materials. In1996 the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a retrospective show that included 225 of Johns’s works ar-
ranged in chronological order. Following this show, he created a series of 61 pieces centralized around a catenary design (using elegant, curved lines). These paintings were shown in the fall of 1999 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2006 a Chicago-base hedge fund manager purchased False Start (1959) for $80 million, setting the record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965 (Hardcover) by Jeffrey Weiss (Author) published 2007 Jasper Johns: A Retrospective (Hardcover) by Roberta Bernstein (Author), Lilian Tone (Author), Jasper Johns (Author), Kirk Varnedoe (Contributor) published 2006 Jasper Johns: Catenary (Hardcover) by Jasper Johns (Author), Scott Rothkopf (Author) published 2005 The United States of Jasper Johns By Yau, John. Cambridge, Mass.: Zoland Books, 1996. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ database/johns_j.html Johns, Jasper. (2007). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved July 4, 2007, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/ eb/article-9043846 http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/1996/johns/ chronology.html http://www.knowitall.org/sandlapper/Spring-2006/ PDFs/Jasper_Johns.pdf. http://calendar.walkerart.org/canopy.wac?id=1027 http://www.ecsc.org/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=108&Itemid=161
Johnson, Philip (July 8, 1906-January 25, 2005) Architect
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n Philip Johnson’s New York Times obituary (January 27, 2005), his role in modern architecture is described as “a
combination godfather, gadfly, scholar, patron, critic, curator and cheerleader.” A key figure in modern American architecture,
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Philip Johnson (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-103665)
Johnson’s career was indeed filled with contradictions. He was first a critic, then an innovator; he championed the new Modernist movement, then wholly rejected it for his own brand of Postmodernism; he insisted on treating architecture as an art form, but was accused of pandering to commercial interests. Despite these conflicting ideas, Johnson has left his mark on today’s cityscape. Johnson was born in Cleveland in 1906. He attended Harvard as an undergraduate to study classics, but it was his 1930 tour of Europe, after graduating Harvard, that determined his future. Traveling with architecture historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Johnson was exposed to the work of European Modernist architects J.J. Oud, WALTER GROPIUS, MIES VAN DER ROHE and LE CORBUSIER.
In 1932 Johnson became the director of the new architecture department at the Museum of Modern Art. He curated a show called Modern Architecture International Exhibition, and wrote the book The International Style, which introduced the Europeans’ new Bauhaus style to the American public. It was, in fact, Johnson’s book and exhibit that coined the term “international style.” In his capacities as both writer and curator Johnson supported the architects Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. He wrote the first monograph on van der Rohe, an artist who would play a pivotal role in Johnson’s life. After a brief fling with extreme right-wing politics (later in life Johnson admitted to, and apologized for, his attraction to Nazism, though he had dropped all ties with the party by the start of the Second World War), Johnson returned to Harvard. He studied under architect Marcel Breur at the Graduate School of Design and had the unique experience of actually building his thesis project, a house that still stands in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of Johnson’s earliest and most iconic works is the Glass House, completed in the mid-1940s in New Canaan, Connecticut. The Glass House is, as its name suggests, a house made entirely of glass sides, with a metalbeam structure. The Glass House has been called the world’s most beautiful and least functional home. Other buildings on the expansive property hold the practical necessities of home life. Johnson designed the building to be his own personal residence, and he lived there until his death. In the earlier years of his career Johnson collaborated with van der Rohe on many important projects, most notably the Seagram building in Manhattan. Located on Park Avenue, the Seagram building is a thirty-eight-story steel-frame structure with glass panel walls. van der Rohe’s vision for the building was that the structure be visible; when fire codes made it impossible for the building’s actual structure to be exposed, the architects created a fake one of tinted bronze. The com-
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plicated construction techniques and bronze, travertine and marble used for the interior made it the most expensive building of its time. Johnson once again put his own work to the test; his office was located in the Seagram building for many years. The Seagram building also houses the famous Four Seasons restaurant. Van der Rohe’s work, and the style that originally attracted Johnson, is stark and Minimalist. However, in the mid-1960s Johnson’s work veered away from the foundations established by his mentor. In a direct challenge to the Minimalist canon he had once so ardently supported, Johnson’s new buildings included historical elements, like domes or colonnades. The best example of this is the highly controversial 1978 AT&T building in New York City. The building has a Chippendale top, an architectural detail making the whole tower somewhat resemble an antique wardrobe. The AT&T building is now seen as a Postmodern statement. Most of Johnson’s truly massive commercial projects came during his 20-year partnership with John Burgee, which started in 1967. The pair’s collaborated work includes high rises in various locales such as Boston, Dallas, New York and San Francisco; as well as such disparate projects as the National Center for Performing Arts in Bombay, India, and the Water Garden in Fort Worth, Texas. Some scholars have likened Johnson’s work to a balancing act between two Ameri-
can art movements: Minimalism and Pop art. This dichotomy is exemplified by Johnson’s curatorial work as well, for he introduced both MARK ROTHKO and ANDY WARHOL to the MOMA. Johnson’s work has been criticized for being too shallow, insubstantial or fashionable, though Johnson spoke of treating architecture as a form of art rather than a social endeavor as some of his early Modernist predecessors had done. Johnson was a prominent New York social figure. He hosted lunches at the Four Seasons restaurant that drew promising young architects as well as established, prominent New Yorkers. Johnson was also a prolific art collector, with many important works by Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and JASPER JOHNS, and one of the largest private collections of Frank Stella paintings. He donated much of his art collection to the MOMA. At his death in 2005 Johnson left his home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Over the years the Glass House was expanded into a large compound, all of which is now a museum. Besides the Glass House itself, Johnson built a small lakeside pavilion, an underground art gallery, set into a hill, a sculpture gallery, a concrete-block tower, a “ghost house” made of chain-link fence in homage to FRANK GEHRY, and a red building with curved walls that he intended to become a visitors’ center once the property opened to the public after his death.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Schulze, Franz. Philip Johnson: Life and Work, 1996; Lewis, Hilary and John O’ Connor. Philip Johnson: The Architect in His Own Words, 1994; Johnson, Philip, The Architecture of Philip Johnson, 2002.
Philip Johnson designed home (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, LC-G613-T-62939)
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www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ johnson_p.html. www.britannica.com/eb/article-9043864/ Philip-C-Johnson. www.pritzkerprize.com/pjohn.htm. http://moma.org/research/archives/EAD/ PJohnsonPapersf.html.
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Johnson, Robert Leroy (May 8, 1911–August 16, 1938) Blues Singer, Guitarist nly forty-two known recordings of the American singer and guitarist Robert Johnson exist, but he is widely considered one of the most influential blues guitarists to emerge from the American Mississippi Delta in the early twentieth century. Johnson’s talent was largely recognized posthumously, and his music heavily influenced both blues artists who followed him and 1960s rock and roll bands in the U.K. and the United States. Johnson was his mother’s eleventh child, born out of wedlock in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. For many years, he did not know who his natural father, a field worker named Noah Johnson, was. Johnson’s mother sent most of her other children to live with their father, Charles Dodds, in Memphis, and Johnson eventually joined them for a while in 1914. When his mother remarried several years later, Johnson moved back to Mississippi. His love of music displeased his stepfather, and he had to sneak out in order to play with his friends. At a young age, Johnson had not only learned the guitar, but he could play the Jew’s harp and the harmonica as well. Many facts about Johnson’s life are either unknown or disputed, including the question of whether or not he attended school. According to some, he attended the Indian Creek School in Commerce, Mississippi. When he finally learned his father’s identity, he began using his surname of Johnson. In 1929, he married Virginia Travis in Penton, Mississippi. She died, however, in childbirth the following year. He became serious about playing the guitar and improved his skills with the benefit of informal instruction he absorbed from Delta blues musicians Willie Brown (1900–1952) and Charlie Patton (1891–1934). In 1931, he married Calleta “Callie” Craft, an older woman who had three chil-
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dren, while living near Hazlehurst, Mississippi. Johnson traveled up and down the Delta, playing street corners or in front of the local shops. Music was his only source of income, and he lived solely on what his listeners gave him. Johnson usually had no trouble establishing a rapport with his audiences, and as he traveled through different towns he made many acquaintances in many places. After moving his family to Clarksdale, Mississippi, Johnson abandoned them. He was notorious for picking up women in every town he traveled through—a habit that would eventually lead to his tragic early death. Johnson’s recording career began in 1936, when he met H. C. Speir (1895–1972) in Jackson, Mississippi. Speir was both a talent scout and the owner of a general store, and introduced Johnson to Ernie Oertle. Oertle offered to record Johnson in San Antonio, Texas, and on November 23, 1936, they recorded some of his songs at a temporary studio at the Gunter Hotel. Over a three-day period, Johnson recorded sixteen songs plus alternate versions. Among these were “Come On In My Kitchen,” “Kind Hearted Woman,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom” and “Cross Roads Blues.” The last of these remains among his most famous songs, and the lyrics reflect the soulfulness of his music: I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees. I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees. Asked the Lord above, “Have mercy, save poor Bob if you please.” standin’ at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride. Standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride. Didn’t nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by.
The first of his records to appear in public were “Terraplane Blues” and “Last Fair Deal Gone Down.” The former of these was a mod-
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est hit, selling five thousand copies. In 1937, he went to Dallas for another recording session at the Brunswick Record Building, and eleven records from this session were released over the course of the following year. Among them were “Stones In My Passway,” “Me And The Devil,” “Hell Hound On My Trail,” and “Love In Vain” (which THE ROLLING STONES recorded for their 1969 album Let It Bleed). Johnson traveled and played extensively, venturing to major U.S. cities with blues singer and guitarist Johnny Shines (1915–1992), in the months preceding his death. There are a number of accounts of how he died, but the most widely accepted is that he was poisoned by the jealous lover of a woman toward whom he showed affection. According to the story, Johnson was playing at a jook house near Greenwood, Mississippi. Blues harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson (1914–1948) was there that evening. When someone handed Johnson an open bottle of whiskey, Williamson knocked it out of his hand, admonishing him never to accept an open bottle. Johnson, irritated, replied that Williamson should never do that to a bottle of whiskey. Someone brought Johnson another bottle, which was apparently laced with lethal
strychnine. He drank it and died later that night. Johnson’s influence grew slowly after his death. Many rock musicians from the 1960s, notably Eric Clapton (1945– ) and THE ROLLING STONES’ Keith Richards (1943– ), have cited him as an influence on their work. Record producer John Hammond (1910–1987) convinced Columbia to compile his first LP, King of the Delta Blues Singers, in 1961, and in 1990, Sony released a two-CD set consisting of all of Johnson’s known recordings as The Complete Recordings. Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the “Early Influence” category in 1986. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number five in their top 100 guitarists of all time.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Charters, Samuel Barclay, Robert Johnson, 1973; Greenberg, Alan, Love in Vain: The Life and Legend of Robert Johnson, 1983; Guralnick, Peter, Searching for Robert Johnson, 1992; Pearson, Barry Lee, Robert Johnson: Lost and Found, 2003; Wald, Elijah, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, 2004; http://deltahaze.com/johnson/bio.html.
Jooss, Kurt (January 12, 1901–May 22, 1979) Choreographer, Dancer n influential figure in the development of modern dance, Kurt Jooss fashioned a choreographic style that combined classic ballet steps with expressionistic movement. For more than twenty-five years he toured with his own ballet company, introducing his work to world audiences. Through
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his efforts as a teacher, he influenced many young dancers. Jooss’s best-known work is his antiwar ballet The Green Table. Jooss was born in Wasseralfingen, Germany. He studied music in his youth and later turned to ballet. The most important influence on his development was his association with the Hungarian theorist and choreogra-
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pher Rudolf Laban, who devised a widely used system of dance notation. (MARY WIGMAN and Sigurd Leeder were also pupils of Laban.) Jooss studied under Laban between 1920 and 1924, also working as his assistant. After further study in Berlin and Paris, he worked as a choreographer for Neue Tanzbu¨hne (New Dance Stage). In 1927 he founded the Folkwang School, and the following year he established a ballet company, the Folkwang Tanzbu¨hne (which later became the Ballets Jooss). In 1930 he took the position of ballet master at the Essen Opera House. Two years later Jooss danced in the Paris premiere of his most famous work, The Green Table, a satirical, antiwar ballet that featured music composed by Fritz Cohen and won first prize from a competition sponsored by the International Archives of Dance. On tour with his company when Hitler rose to power, Jooss refused to remain in Germany and settled instead in England, eventually gaining his British citizenship. With Sigurd
Leeder, he established his company at Dartington Hall, Devon, where he remained until his 1949 return to Essen. Jooss’s company continued to perform until 1953, and he ran the dance school until 1968. The subject matter of Jooss’s ballets was generally modern, and he sought to express psychological and emotional themes with movement. He contributed to the development of Laban’s eukinetics, a method of dance that allows for expressiveness in multiple contexts and takes into account the effect of gravity on dancers. Although he rejected what he considered excessive pirouetting and other elements of classical dance, Jooss retained its basic steps and disciplined approach. Jooss’s other ballets include The Big City (1932), The Seven Heroes (1933), Juventud (1948), and Colombinade (1951).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Coton, A. V., The New Ballet: Kurt Jooss and His Work, 1946.
Joyce, James (February 2, 1882–January 13, 1941) Novelist, Poet, Playwright he Irish writer James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (as he was christened) is considered one of the most complex novelists of the twentieth century. He is best known for his controversial novel Ulysses and his extensive use of stream of consciousness, or interior monologue, in which the thoughts and impressions of a characters are fully expressed in a way that reflects the natural disorder of the mind. Joyce was born to a large family in Dublin in 1882. His father, a civil servant, squandered the family’s money on alcohol, leaving them virtually impoverished. His mother was a ta-
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lented pianist. Joyce attended Jesuit boarding and grammar schools in his youth and later enrolled at the Jesuit-run University College in Dublin. He studied languages, read extensively, and worked to improve his writing. During his college years he made a final break with the Roman Catholic tradition he had earlier begun to question. In 1904 Joyce left Dublin with the woman he eventually married, Nora Barnacle. They moved around Europe—to Austria-Hungary, Trieste, Zu¨rich, and Paris—and never returned permanently to Ireland. The year 1904 also brought an attack of iritis, the first sign
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James Joyce (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
of lifelong eye troubles that required a long series of operations and left him nearly blind. Their two children, George and Lucia, were both born in Trieste. To support himself and his growing family, Joyce at various times gave language lessons and worked at a bank. Joyce’s first book, Chamber Music (1907), was a collection of thirty-six poems. These were followed by Dubliners (1914), a collection of short stories he had begun to write for an Irish magazine. The stories included “The Dead,” “Eveline,” “Clay,” and “After the Race,” and explored with a new delicacy and exactness various ways of rebelling against and being trapped in the sterile conformity of working- and lower–middle–class life in Dublin, portraying characters at every stage of life up to maturity. Many of the stories culminate in what Joyce was the first to call epiphanies, moments of profound revelation, when, as Joyce put it in Stephen Hero, the “soul” of some thing or some situation “leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance.” One of the main purposes of art, for Joyce, was to capture such epiphanies, and the stories of Dubliners are still read as magnificent exam-
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ples of successfully captured epiphanies. Joyce originally wrote some of them for the magazine under the pseudonym “Stephen Dedalus,” the name of the protagonist in his autobiographical first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published in 1916. He employed the stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue technique for which he is famous in A Portrait of the Artist, detailing in sequence Stephen Dedalus’s emotions, thoughts, and perceptions during his youth as he questions the Catholic church, interacts with his family, decides to become a writer, and resolves to leave Dublin. Again, many crucial moments in Stephen’s growth are captured in epiphanies. With the outbreak of World War I Joyce moved his family to Zu¨rich and began work on his most famous novel, Ulysses. His one play, Exiles, was published in 1918. Gifts from sympathetic patrons such as Harriet Shaw Weaver and Edith Rockefeller McCormick helped ease his family’s poverty while he wrote the novel. Weaver, the editor of The Egoist, published A Portrait of the Artist as a
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Young Man as a serial in the pages of her magazine. In 1920 Joyce joined the American poet EZRA POUND (1885–1972) in Paris, where Ulysses was first published. The novel was loosely (very loosely) based on Homer’s Odyssey (the story of the wanderings and homecoming of Odys-seus, called Ulysses by the Romans); it featured three main characters: Stephen Dedalus, a mature version of the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist; Leopold Bloom, an Irish Jew; and Molly Bloom, his unfaithful wife. Ulysses broke new literary ground in many ways. Using a carefully calculated mixture of literary techniques, Joyce recreated with unparalleled vividness and completeness the characters’ psychological lives as they pass through a series of events that take place on one day—June 16, 1904—and eventually cross paths. The final chapter utilizes stream of consciousness to portray Molly Bloom’s inner state as she drifts off to sleep at the end of the day; the long sentences lack any punctuation, and they capture Molly perfectly. The passage, with its final words, “yes I said yes I will Yes,” has become a classic. With the publication of Ulysses in 1922, Joyce became an internationally recognized writer. The book was banned in the United States on account of its sexually explicit passages. A New York District Court lifted the ban in 1933, in a historic decision that helped to establish the principle that works of artistic integrity could not be censored in the United States, no matter what their content. In Joyce’s final novel, Finnegan’s Wake, he sought to portray history as a series of events that repeat themselves, and he used one fami-
ly to represent all families. The initials of the main character, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, also stand for “Here Comes Everybody” and other phrases in the book. To emphasize the circular nature of history, the novel begins with the second part of a sentence: “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.” It ends with the beginning of the sentence: “A way a lone a last a loved along the.” Joyce combined words from different languages with English and incorporated figures, traditions, and other elements from different historical and modern cultures. Ulysses is challenging, but Finnegan’s Wake is so much more challenging that it has never drawn a wide audience—although Joseph Campbell, American popularizer of myth, has fascinated audiences with his reading and discussion of the many layers of meaning of the work. An excellent film version of the novel (1965) has also reached a somewhat wider audience. (The film version of Ulysses done in 1967 was much less successful.) Joyce died in Zu¨rich in 1941. Stephen Hero, his early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was published posthumously in 1944. And if you go to Dublin on June 16, you can join in the celebration of Bloomsday, and retrace Leopold Bloom’s wanderings. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Chester G., James Joyce and His World, 1963; Ellmann, Richard, James Joyce, 1982; Grose, Kenneth H., James Joyce, 1975; Gross, John J., James Joyce, 1970.
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Kafka, Franz (July 3, 1883–June 3, 1924) Novelist, Short-Story Writer he German-language writer Franz Kafka never gained fame in his lifetime, but his dark depictions of individuals alienated from twentieth-century culture became classics soon after his death. The strange, ominous, dreamlike quality of Kafka’s stories gave rise to the term “Kafkaesque” used to describe such conditions in general. Kafka was born to Jewish parents in what is now the Czech Republic. His father, Hermann Kafka, a merchant, was an overbearing and demanding figure whose shadow obscured the sun and whose expectations tormented Kafka all his life. In school Kafka was an exceptional student. He graduated from the University of Prague, studied law, and worked in insurance by day and as a writer by
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Franz Kafka (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
night—a pattern that distressed him, yet continued almost until his death. Although Kafka excelled in school and at work, he found himself philosophically at odds with both and constantly questioned the relevance of what he did. In 1902 Kafka met his friend, editor, and biographer Max Brod, who encouraged him to write. Although his stories unfold in bizarre, fantastic ways, his writing style is clear and straightforward. Kafka’s work circulated among a small number of literary enthusiasts, but with the exception of a few short stories, his writings were not published until after his death. Two of Kafka’s semiautobiographical novels, The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), are similar in their portrayals of an individual caught in a nightmarish world in which he cannot find the justice he craves, in which nothing turns out as he expects it to. In The Trial, a harmless bureaucrat, Joseph K., “without having done anything wrong,” finds himself “arrested one fine morning.” He is never told what his offense is. After a long series of appeals, appearances in court, and strange episodes at the bank where he works, he submits to his fate, execution. The K. of The Castle is a stronger, more rebellious figure but nevertheless finds himself caught in a similar web of accusations and senseless occurrences. He is sent to a village as a land surveyor, is dismayed to find that nobody believes he is supposed to be there, and is repeatedly denied admission to the castle in the village. Kafka never finished the final chapter of The Castle, but he allegedly told Brod that K. was to die of exhaustion. In both of these works, the character at odds with the horrors of his surroundings lacks the strength to overcome them, paralleling Kafka’s own dilemma. A second prominent theme in Kafka’s work is a son’s conflict with a dominant father, an
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obvious reflection of his own experience. This theme appears in short stories such as “The Judgment” (1912), in which a son obeys his father’s order to commit suicide. Kafka’s other short stories include “The Metamorphosis” (1915), “In the Penal Colony” (1919), and “A Hunger Artist” (1924). In “The Metamorphosis,” the main character, Gregor Samsa, who has sacrificed everything to take care of his family, wakes up one morning and finds he has turned into a giant insect. At first he feels a certain joy in being freed from the meaningless drudgery of a job he hates, but his family finds him disgusting and he cannot get the nourishment he craves. They continue to feed him, but he stops eating and eventually starves to death, much to his family’s relief. The parallels with Kafka’s own situation are obvious, but Kafka tells the story with humor, and with such clarity that it seems to shed light on a universal dilemma.
Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1917 and was ill for much of the rest of his life. He was involved in several failed love affairs but never married. His early death in 1924, at age 41, perhaps spared him the ultimate fate of his three sisters, who died in Nazi concentration camps. Brod defied Kafka’s request to burn his manuscripts and had them published instead. In addition to The Trial and The Castle, he published a third novel, Amerika (1927) as well as a number of unpublished short stories. Kafka’s novels were first translated into English by Willa and Edwin Muir in the 1930s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brod, Max, Franz Kafka: A Biography, 1947; David, Claude, Franz Kafka, 1989; Fickert, Kurt J., Franz Kafka, Life, Work, and Criticism, 1984; Osborne, Charles, Kafka, 1968.
Kahlo, Frida (July 6, 1907–July 13, 1954) Painter he wife of the Mexican painter and muralist DIEGO RIVERA, Frida Kahlo de Rivera is best known for her psychologically revealing self-portraits. Influenced in her early career by Rivera and later, to some extent, by the Surrealists, she combined folk art, fantasy, and realism in her work. Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Caldero´n in Coyoaca´n, Mexico. Her father, Wilhelm Kahlo, was of Hungarian-Jewish ancestry and changed his name to Guillermo when he immigrated from Germany. His second wife, Matilde Caldero´n, was Frida’s mother and a devout Catholic. As a child, Kahlo witnessed the Mexican Revolution (1914–1916), which reduced the fortunes of her relatively prosperous family. She was
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stricken with polio at the age of 6, leaving her with a permanently deformed leg. Kahlo’s father, a successful photographer and amateur painter with an interest in Mexico’s archaeology, encouraged her creativity. Her mother was less influential in her life— Kahlo absorbed none of her piety and religiosity. In 1922, she entered the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. At school, Kahlo was something of a tomboy, read voraciously, and earned a reputation for her rebellious attitude toward her instructors. Rivera was then working on his mural at the school, and it was there that Kahlo first met him. In 1925, Kahlo suffered a major physical setback when a trolley collided with the bus on which she was riding. She was pierced
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Frida Kahlo (center) (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62103971)
through her abdomen with a handrail, suffered a broken spinal column, and sustained several other injuries. After more than thirty operations throughout her life, she never fully recovered from her wounds. As she convalesced, she taught herself to paint. Most of Kahlo’s paintings are self-portraits that reflect her emotional and physical pain. Of her own features, she usually exaggerated her eyebrows. She painted in a simple, primitive style, using expanses of color and interjecting objects to emphasize her emotional state. Elements of Mexican folk art and tradition recur in the paintings, and Kahlo herself preferred to wear traditional Indian dress. Many paintings, such as her portrait of the horticulturalist and hybridist Luther Burbank (1931), employ fantastic elements. In this work, Kahlo depicted Burbank as part man and part plant. While Rivera traveled in the United States working on his mural commissions, Kahlo accompanied him and continued to paint herself. Her inability to bear children was a constant source of distress for her and the subject of several works. Henry Ford Hospital (1932), a portrayal of a miscarriage, is one of her many graphic and bloody depictions of her struggles. A Few Small Nips (1933), a depiction of the murder of a young girl, is one of her most violent paintings. In My Grandparents, My Parents and I (1936), she depicts
her family tree. As a small child, she stands in front of the imposing portraits of her parents, with the faces of her grandparents in the background. A baby is shown in her mother’s womb, painted on top of a form that otherwise reveals only external features—a common element in Kahlo’s work. The stormy relationship between Rivera and Kahlo inspired many self-portraits and portraits of her with her husband. A series of affairs on both sides—which in Kahlo’s case also included homosexual affairs—complicated their relationship. One of her most noteworthy extramarital relationships—with the exiled Bolshevik Leon Trotsky—came when Trotsky and his wife took refuge in Mexico in the 1930s. She and Rivera divorced in 1939 and remarried in 1941. In 1938, Kahlo met the Surrealist ANDRE´ BRETON when he came with his wife to Mexico. With Breton’s assistance, she exhibited New York City in 1938 and in Paris the following year. Critics began to label her work “Surrealistic,” and paintings such as The Broken Column (1944) and Moses (1945) employ many fantastic elements. The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Diego, Me and Sen˜or Xolotl (1949) depicts Kahlo in a red dress in the arms of an earth goddess, and a nude, infant-sized Diego in her arms. Like her husband, Kahlo was a dedicated Communist throughout her adult life and created a number of political paintings, including Marxism Will Give Health to the Sick (1954). After the couple’s break with Trotsky, both were briefly implicated as conspirators in his 1940 assassination. Her work grew increasingly popular during the 1940s, as her physical and emotional pain grew stronger. In 1943, she became a professor of painting at La Esmerelda, the Education Ministry’s School of Fine Arts. The Wounded Deer (1946), a reflection of her suffering, depicts her own head on the body of a deer wounded by arrows. Kahlo painted Tree of Hope (1946), showing her partially nude body with surgical gashes and another figure
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of herself in a red dress, after one of her spinal operations. Kahlo’s first and only solo exhibition in Mexico City came in 1953, just before she died. The ailing artist, with a long-established reputation for outrageous behavior, surprised her guests when she had herself carried in on a stretcher and spent the evening on a bed in the midst of the exhibition. After the amputation of part of a gangrenous leg, Kahlo never
recovered her emotional health. Her death in 1954 was attributed to an illness, but some speculate she committed suicide. Kahlo’s diaries and letters were published in 1995.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Herrera, Hayden, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, 1983; Herrera, Hayden, Frida Kahlo: The Paintings, 1991.
Kahn, Louis I. (February 20, 1901–March 17, 1974) Architect merican architect Louis Kahn is best known for championing the design of very personal public spaces, with creative use of light and well-defined distinctions between what he called “servant and served” spaces. This meant that areas such as stairwells and back entrances were defined by visual cues such as lowered ceilings and use of different materials, which separated them from the grander, main areas. His work combined the social responsibility and an emphasis on the form of the modern school with the classicism of his Beaux-Arts training.
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Designed by Louis Kahn (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, LCG612-T-47888)
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Kahn was born on February 20, 1901 in Russia. His father, a talented glass painter, immigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1904 to work as a laborer. Kahn and his mother joined his father in 1906. The family settled in a poor immigrant district, the type of neighborhood for which Kahn would later gain national prominence for redesigning. Because of his early promise in drawing, Kahn was able to take courses at the Public Industrial Art School during grammar school. He then gained entry to the selective Central High School, where he continued to study art. In his senior year of high school, 1919-1920, Kahn took a course on architectural history and dropped his plans to be an artist. Instead, he enrolled in the architectural program at the University of Pennsylvania the following fall. There, he studied under prominent French architect Paul Philippe Cret and other leaders of the Beaux-Arts school. Kahn acknowledged the principles he learned at this time as key to his later work, which transcended Beaux-Arts and the International Style, to create something new. Kahn graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1924 and joined the office of the City Architect of Philadelphia, where he
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worked on the major buildings for the Sesquicentennial International Exposition, Philadelphia’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1926. After the Exposition, Kahn worked another year designing buildings for Temple University in the office of William H. Lee, before leaving for an extended tour of Europe in early 1928. Returning to Philadelphia in 1929, he joined the office of his former teacher, Cret, where he remained until the Depression intervened the following year. Out of work and living with his wife’s parents—he had married Esther Isreali in 1930— Kahn turned the Depression into an opportunity for study and artistic growth. In 1931, he and other unemployed architects formed the Architectural Research Group to study social responsibility and the problems of mass housing for the poor. It was through this group that Kahn became a modernist, as he pored through the works of architects such as LE CORBUSIER. With the New Deal’s work projects came new opportunities for architects, and the ARG was disbanded as its members found other work. Kahn took a position as the head of a research group in Philadelphia’s City Planning Commission in 1934. In 1935, he found a new job in Washington, D.C., as an architect for the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, where his chief program was reworking a failed housing project intended to relocate the families of 200 garment workers from New York to New Jersey. Kahn and his partner, Rexford Tugwell, came up with an ambitious experiment adapting new technology and the modernist aesthetic of Europe to the lifestyle of the American working class. Reviews were mixed, however. Traditionalists who did not want the government to be so involved in housing were offended by the project, which the Philadelphia Inquirer called, a “commune.” Kahn returned to Philadelphia in 1937, where as a now-recognized expert on public housing, he found employment with the United States Housing Authority and the Philadel-
phia Housing Authority. He soon left, however, to form a partnership with George Howe in 1940. He also worked with prominent architect and social critic Oscar Stonorov from 1942 to 1947. Politicized by his earlier experiences, Kahn campaigned enthusiastically throughout this time to reverse Philadelphia’s official opposition to federally funded housing and create projects of lasting social value. He and Howe, and he and Stonorov, designed a number of public housing commissions as partners, gaining national attention. Through this work, Kahn expanded on his theories of a city as a system in itself, and the architect’s responsibility to consider both movement through the system and each building’s place and function. In 1947, Kahn was a visiting critic at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He later turned down an invitation, in 1956, to chair the school’s architecture program because he wanted to continue his private practice and so leave a larger body of work by which he could be remembered. His ties to the school nevertheless brought him lasting fame. In 1950, he accepted the commission for the Yale Art Gallery extension, which was completed in 1953. His well-proportioned design, incorporating a wall of windows and new technology, brought national recognition and cemented his reputation. He became a prominent lecturer and author of essays. In 1955 he accepted a position as professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1966 he was named Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture in honor or both Kahn and his former teacher. During this time, he continued to design projects as varied as the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and a remodel of a kitchen for a Philadelphia resident. By his death in March of 1974, of a heart attack in a New York City public restroom, he had left a legacy both of buildings exemplifying his artistic vision, and of younger architects who were deeply inspired by Kahn’s many writings and public speeches.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Brownlee, David B., De Long, David G., Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture, 1991; Turner, Jane, The Dictionary of Art, ed. 17, 1996);
Kahn, Louis I., Writings, Lectures, Interviews, ed. Alessandra Latour, 1991; Placzek, Adolf K., ed., Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, 1982.
Kandinsky, Wassily (December 16, 1866–December 13, 1944) Painter, Teacher, Theorist he Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky founded the Munich group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911. His theories and paintings, which evolved toward pure abstraction beginning in 1909, contributed heavily to the later development of Abstract Expressionism. Kandinsky was born Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky into a wealthy family in Moscow. His mother was descended from a Mongolian princess. As a child he traveled widely in Europe with his family. The family moved to Odessa in 1871, and Kandinsky attended school and studied music. In his youth he was a keen observer of colors, and he also began painting. In 1886 he enrolled in the University of Moscow, where he earned a doctorate in economics and law. Kandinsky also studied in the areas of ethnology and anthropology, and the Russian folk art he discovered impressed him, as did the architecture and colors of Moscow. Among painters, he was first impressed by Rembrandt. Kandinsky taught at the university and later took a position at a Moscow printing company. In 1896, he gave up his career to become a painter and moved to Munich. For several years he attended art school, first under Anton Azbe´ and then at the Munich Academy under Franz von Stuck. Kandinsky associated himself and exhibited with avant-garde groups. In 1901 he helped found the Phalanx, a Munich group that sought to exhibit the work of young, unknown artists. The group
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exhibited until 1904, and Kandinsky’s work gained a measure of critical acclaim as a result of the exhibitions. Although his later work became highly abstract, Kandinsky used recognizable forms in his early paintings. Color was his main preoccupation in creating art during all phases of his career. He explored the relationships between color and sound and used rich color in his paintings. His early art draws from many styles, including Fauvism, Impressionism, Pointillism, and Jugendstil (or Art Nouveau). Among his early paintings are Ancient Town (1902) and the impressionistic The Sluice (1902). In 1902 he met the painter Gabriele Mu¨nter, who was a student at Kandinsky’s newly founded Phalanx School. The two traveled extensively in Europe and in Tunisia over the next few years, and in 1909 they settled in a house in Murnau. The same year, he founded the New Artists’ Association with the painter Alexey Von Jawlensky. At this time, Kandinsky’s ever-evolving painting style began to move toward pure abstraction. Works such as Improvisation No. 3 (1909) and Trojka (1911) show his drift toward nonobjective art. Paintings such as The Black Arc (1912) and Composition 1914 announced his arrival at pure Abstract Expressionism. The latter, in addition, shows the beginning of his interest in geometric forms, a direction he would take in his art over the next several years in Russia and again in Germany. With abstraction, Kan-
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disnky sought to portray inner spiritual perception rather than exterior objective reality. In 1914 he returned to Russia, where he married Nina Andreevskaya in 1917. During his seven-year stay, he served in several posts in the new Soviet Union. He held professorships at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Moscow, became a member of the People’s Commissariat for Public Instruction, and helped found the Institute of Artistic Culture, the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences, and several museums. By 1921, the Soviet government’s increasing insistence on art created in the style of Socialist Realism spurred Kandinsky to return to Germany. He took a teaching post at the Bauhaus School of Architecture and Applied Art, where the Swiss painter PAUL KLEE also taught. He continued his study of geometric
shapes and abstraction, as evident in paintings such as Small Worlds II (1922) and Yellow-Red-Blue (1925). When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus in 1933 and denounced his art as “degenerate,” Kandinsky moved to Neuillysur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, where he spent the remainder of his life. Kandinsky’s later paintings include Dominant Curve (1936), Various Actions (1941), and White Balancing Act (1944). Other works include woodcuts and his theoretical treatises on abstraction, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912) and Point and Line to Plane (1926).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Grohmann, Will, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, 1958; Selz, Peter, German Expressionist Painting, 1957.
Karajan, Herbert von (April 5, 1908–July 16, 1989) Conductor erbert von Karajan built his career conducting both opera and orchestra in Nazi Germany. After World War II, he emerged as one of the world’s leading conductors of the standard repertoire and conducted prominent international orchestras and at the major opera houses. Unlike his contemporaries, Karajan worked primarily in Europe and relatively little in the United States. Karajan was born in Salzburg, Austria. The original family surname—Karajanis—is of Greek origin. After moving from Greece, Karajan family members received two baronetcies. Karajan’s father, however, was a doctor and played the clarinet. At a young age, Karajan showed considerable talent on the piano, and he was performing in public by the time
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he was 10. His parents sent him to study at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. The Mozarteum’s director, Bernhard Paumgartner, took a special interest in Karajan and introduced him to Italian art. He next studied at the University of Vienna, followed by the Academy of Music. At the latter, he took his first conducting class under Alexander Wunderer. Although he was well established as a pianist in Salzburg, he did not chance upon an opportunity to conduct an orchestra until he was 20. For his debut he conducted Gioacchino Rossini’s William Tell overture. The following year he made his professional debut conducting RICHARD STRAUSS’s tone poem Don Juan, Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, and other works.
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The latter performance generated an offer to conduct opera in Ulm, Germany, in spite of the fact that he had no experience conducting opera. Karajan remained at Ulm until 1934, working with the limited resources of a small orchestra and a small theater. He staged six operas a year, including many works by Strauss and Richard Wagner (1813–1883). During this time he also attended many performances conducted by ARTURO TOSCANINI. After being fired from Ulm (by a superior who thought he should move on to a better position), he took a job at the Aachen Theatre. The following year he became Germany’s youngest Kapellmeister (musical director) at Aachen. There he had a larger orchestra and theater to work with. His appointment coincided with the rise of the National Socialists in Germany. While many of his Jewish and dissenting non-Jewish musical colleagues were fired and forced from the country, Karajan’s career began to take off. In a decision that would later cost his reputation dearly, he joined the Nazi party in 1935 in order to keep his position. With the absence of competition (except for his rival
WILHELM FU¨ RTWANGLER), Karajan’s career blossomed in World War II Germany. In 1937 Karajan debuted at the Vienna State Opera conducting Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The following year he married Elmy Holgerloef, from whom he separated three years later. In 1938 he made his conducting debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducting selections from Mozart, Brahms, and MAURICE RAVEL. Karajan stayed at Aachen until 1941, when he moved full time to the Berlin State Opera. In 1944 Karajan fled Germany. After the war ended, he was prohibited from conducting until Allied authorities cleared his name, which they quickly did. In 1947 he made a series of recordings for EMI with the Vienna Philharmonic, including works by Brahms and Beethoven. With ELISABETH SCHWARZKOPF and Hans Hotter, he recorded Brahms’s German Requiem. Karajan made many other recordings throughout his career, including Il Trovatore and Madame Butterfly with the American soprano Maria Callas. In the postwar years, his recordings contributed to his rising international reputation.
Herbert von Karajan (쑖 ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
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Karajan was instrumental in founding the London Philharmonia in 1948. He was chief conductor at Milan’s La Scala from 1949 to 1956. In 1953 he conducted the world premiere of CARL ORFF’s Trionfo d’Afrodite, which starred Schwarzkopf. The following year at La Scala, he conducted a highly successful production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor with Callas in the lead role. In 1955 he became music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, was appointed conductor for life, and made his debut in the United States. His past membership in the Nazi party provoked a storm of protest in the United States, and Karajan made few trips across the Atlantic during his career. From 1956 to 1964 Karajan served as principal conductor at the Vienna State Opera. Over much protest, he abolished the long established stagione system, in which a core group of singers perform all of the lead roles in a given season. Karajan instead believed the world’s opera houses should trade productions. Among his successes in Vienna were CLAUDE DEBUSSY’s Pe´lleas and Me´lisande,
Wagner’s Parsifal; and Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello. In his later career, Karajan was also heavily involved in the annual Salzburg Festival and in 1967 founded the Salzburg Easter Festival. He conducted many other orchestras around the world—the New York Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris (1969–1970), and others. Although his later years with the Berlin Philharmonic were troubled, he stayed there until just a few months before his death in 1989. As a conductor, Karajan was known for his objective and precise approach to music. He conducted from memory and required long, rigorous rehearsals before he gave performances. Karajan was at home with both German and Italian opera as well as orchestras. He preferred the standard repertoire to modern music and conducted relatively little of the latter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lang, Klaus, The Karajan Dossier, 1992; Robinson, Paul, Karajan, 1975; Vaughan, Roger, Herbert von Karajan: A Biographical Portrait, 1985.
Karsavina, Tamara (March 9/10, 1885–May 26, 1978) Dancer, Teacher amara Platonovna Karsavina was a lead ballerina in SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes from 1909 to 1922. Originally trained in the classical Russian techniques, she later helped popularize MICHEL FOKINE’s modern choreographic style. During her early years with the Ballets Russes she frequently danced lead roles with VASLAV NIJINSKY, and in the later part of her career she worked with many other prominent dancers and choreographers.
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Karsavina was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her father, the dancer Platon Karsavin, charmed her with his stories of the theater when she was young. It was not he, however, who initially steered her into dancing. Her mother secretly took her to the retired dancer Vera Zhukova for lessons and to see ballets. When her ambition to dance and her talent became obvious, her father agreed to give her lessons. As a child, Karsavina entered the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg. At that time,
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the French-born choreographer Marius Petipa (1818–1910) was the major influence on the style of the Imperial Ballet. Petipa, a classical stylist, stressed choreography above the other elements of a production. Karsavina studied under Pavel Gerdt and the aged Swedish dancer Christian Johannson, eventually becoming one of the star pupils at the Imperial Ballet School. She danced in productions of Paquita, La fille mal garde´e, and others and was chosen to dance at the coronation of Nicholas II in 1896. Among her fellow students was ANNA PAVLOVA. At the Chinese Theatre of Tsarskoe Selo, Karsavina danced with Fokine and Julie Sedova in Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake). She appeared again with Fokine in Le peˆcheur et la
Tamara Karsavina (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-31568)
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perle (The Fisher and the Pearl). Upon her graduation from the Imperial Ballet School, Karsavina joined the company at the Mariinsky Theatre (renamed the Kirov Theatre in 1935), dancing her debut in Javotte in 1902. Karsavina danced her first leading role in The Awakening of Flora, a one-act ballet with Fokine as Apollo. Other productions in which she appeared include Fairy Doll (1904), for which LEON BAKST designed the scenery; Giselle; A Life for the Tsar, The Trial of Damis; the one-act ballet Graziella; Humpbacked Horse (1906), in which she danced the Tsar Maiden; and Corsair, in which she danced Medora. In 1904 she studied briefly in Italy, practicing the Italian methods, which, in contrast with her previous training, stressed precision in movement over grace and fluidity. In a part of Roxana, Karsavina first appeared with Nijinsky in 1907. Both Nijinsky and Karsavina were to join Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Karsavina in 1909. Both danced in the 1910 Paris premiere of Carnaval, a FokineBakst collaboration. Nijinsky and Karsavina danced the lead roles in Daphnis et Chloe´, choreographed by Fokine with music by MAURICE RAVEL, in Paris in 1912. Dancing in many other lead roles in Fokine’s works, Karsavina helped popularize his modern style of choreography. Fokine rejected the division of movement from the music, scenery, and costumes Petipa and other classical choreographers sought, seeking instead to integrate all of these elements with expressive movement. With Diaghilev’s help, he collaborated with many famous artists and composers for the scenery and music of the ballets. Karsavina danced lead parts in such Fokine ballets as Les Sylphides, Le Spectre de la Rose (with Nijinsky), Firebird, Petrushka, Pavillon d’Armide, and Sche´he´rezade. Karsavina also worked with other prominent figures, including LE´ ONIDE MASSINE (in his The Three-Cornered Hat and Pulcinella) and FEODOR CHALIAPIN. She married the British diplomat Henry James Bruce and in 1918 settled with him in England. After leaving the Ballets Russes in 1922, Karsavina danced with
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the Ballet Rambert and for FREDERICK ASHTON. She helped found the Royal Academy of Dancing in 1920, and among the students she taught was MARGOT FONTEYN. Karsavina’s writings include articles on dance; her autobi-
ography, Theatre Street (1930); and Classical Ballet: The Flow of Movement (1962).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Karsavina, Tamara, Theatre Street: The Reminiscences of Tamara Karsavina, 1931.
Kazan, Elia (September 7, 1909–September 28, 2003) Director, Actor, Novelist lia Kazan was a noted director and author, acclaimed for his successes on the stage as well as on film. Elia Kazanjoglous was born in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey) on September 7, 1909. When he was four years old, his Greek immigrant family came to the New York City, where his father sold rugs. He attended Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and his lonely, unhappy time there caused his intense dislike of privilege. He studied at the Yale School of Drama and then went to New York City, where he was an actor with the Group Theatre, led by Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, from 1932 to 1939. Kazan received national attention as a Broadway director with plays like T HORNTON WILDER’s The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), ARTHUR MILLER’s All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949), for which he received Tony Awards for Best Director, and TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1949), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). Kazan cofounded the Actors Studio with Robert Lewis and Cheryl Crawford in 1947. From 1960 to 1964, he was codirector of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center in New York City. Kazan began to direct films in 1944. Many of his films included liberal or socially critical
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themes, like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), which deals with anti-Semitism, and Pinky (1949), which addresses racism. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), and On the Waterfront (1954) all starred MARLON BRANDO. Other important films include East of Eden (1955), Baby Doll (1956); and Splendor in the Grass (1960). Kazan’s autobiographical novel, America, America, was published in 1962 and adapted for the screen in 1964. He wrote about the experiences of a Greek immigrant to the United States in The Arrangement, which was published in 1967 and made into a movie in 1969. Other publications include The Assassins (1972), The Understudy (1974), Acts of love (1978), The Anatolian (1982), Elia Kazan: A Life (1988), and Beyond the Aegean (1994). Kazan became a controversial figure in 1952 when he decided to comply with the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ request that he give the names of other Group Theatre members who had been secret members of the Communist Party. His cooperation outraged many and public opinion was divided when he was awarded an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1999.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Baer, William, Elia Kazan: Interviews, 2000; Kazan, Elia, Elia Kazan: A Life, 1988; Scickel, Richard, Elia Kazan: A Biography, 2005; Young, Jeff, Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films: Interviews with Elia Kazan, 1999.
http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9044932 www.imdb.com/name/nm0001415/. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ kazan_e.html. www.eliakazan.com/.
Kern, Jerome David (January 27, 1885–November 11, 1945) Composer he American composer Jerome Kern revolutionized the Broadway stage by popularizing distinctly American musicals in an era dominated by adaptations of British operettas. A prolific composer, he wrote hundreds of songs and scores for both Broadway musicals and Hollywood films over the course of his career. His most famous Broadway work, Show Boat, remains a classic and is still often performed today. Kern was born to the German-Jewish immigrants Fanny and Henry Kern in New York City. His father was a salesman. In 1895, the Kerns moved to Newark, New Jersey, where he attended high school. Kern had shown musical interest at a young age and through his mother’s influence began taking piano lessons early on. After finishing high school, Kern studied at the New York College of Music and then briefly in Heidelberg, Germany. Kern’s first work, a piano composition, was published in 1902. He worked both as a song promoter for Harms music publishers and other companies and as a rehearsal pianist on Broadway. Kern worked his way up to junior partner at Harms, where he wrote songs for British musicals to be produced on the American stage. In that capacity, Kern inserted or “interpolated” his own songs into the music scores. “How’d You Like to Spoon With Me” (1905), a collaboration with the American
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songwriter Edward Laska (1894–1959) is an early example of his music from this period. From 1905 onward, Kern spent a lot of time in London, where he traveled in the course of his work for Harms. There he met and signed a contract with the American theater producer Charles Frohman (1856–1915), who produced British shows on Broadway. Kern married an Englishwoman in 1910 in Walton-onThames. At the onset of World War I, Kern was wellestablished as a songwriter for British import musicals, and his songs were frequently used in the American versions of the Broadway shows. The American adaptation of The Girl from Utah (1914) featured his popular song “They Didn’t Believe Me” with lyrics by Laska. In 1915, Kern narrowly escaped death when he overslept and missed his boat, the luxury British ocean liner RMS Lusitania. A German submarine torpedoed and sank the ship just off the coast of Ireland on May 7 of that year, killing almost 1,200 people. Many prominent figures were passengers on the ill-fated voyage, including Frohman, who died in the attack and with whom Kern was slated to travel. The success of his music for The Girl from Utah led to four musicals for the Princess Theatre. He collaborated with British writers Guy Bolton (1884–1979) and P. G. Wodehouse
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(1881–1975) on productions such as Very Good, Eddie and Leave It to Jane. Having gained greater creative freedom, Kern began to craft early versions of uniquely American musicals such as Oh Lady! Lady! (1918). Between 1915 and 1918, Kern penned songs for some nineteen Broadway shows, and his music attracted the attention of both GEORGE GERSHWIN and RICHARD RODGERS. In 1920, he wrote the score for the musical Sally, in which he collaborated with the American lyricist and librettist Otto Harbach (1873–1963). The well-received show featured the popular song “Look for the Silver Lining,” which was performed by the young Broadway star Marilyn Miller (1898–1936). In 1925, Kern met lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), with whom his first collaboration was Sunny (1925), featuring the song “Who?” The hit tune was widely popular and appeared in many musicals. But it was in 1927 that Kern scored his greatest success with the musical comedy Show Boat (1927), in which Miller starred in the leading role. Show Boat included the popular songs “Ol’ Man River,” “Make Believe,” “Why Do I Love You?,” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” on which Kern and Hammerstein again collaborated. Based on the book by the American novelist Edna Ferber (1885–1968), it was the first major musical to thoroughly integrate storyline and song. Show Boat, still widely performed and generally ranked as one of the most significant Broadway musicals in history, noted for its treatment of the taboo subjects of racism, alcoholism, and interracial relationships, was later (1951) made into a film directed by George Sidney (1916–2002). It made history once again as the first musical comedy the New York City Opera included in its repertory. In 1930, Kern signed a contract with Warner Bros. to produce a series of film musicals. Men of the Sky, another collaboration with Harbach, resulted and was directed by Alfred E. Green (1889–1960). Its lack of success brought Kern back to writing for the stage. His next Broadway success was the musical
Roberta (1933) by Kern and Harbach. The show featured the song “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and it, too, was adapted for the Hollywood screen in a 1935 film directed by William A. Seiter (1890–1964). He continued to write Broadway musicals for the next several years, the last of which was the largely unsuccessful Very Warm for May (1939). The show did, however, produce the popular Kern-Hammerstein song “All the Things You Are.” In 1939, after suffering a heart attack and on the advice of his doctor, Kern settled permanently in Hollywood. Thereafter he concentrated his efforts on writing Hollywood film scores, which brought less stress than Broadway scores. He was no stranger to the medium by then, having written successful scores for such films as Swing Time (1936), starring FRED ASTAIRE and Ginger Rogers (1911–1995) and featuring the songs “The Way You Look Tonight.” Cowritten with the American lyricist Dorothy Fields (1905–1974), the song won an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song in 1937. In 1941, Kern and Hammerstein wrote “The Last Time I Saw Paris” just after the Germans occupied the French city during World War II. The song was used in director Norman Z. McCleod’s (1898–1964) film Lady Be Good (1941). The following year, “Dearly Beloved” appeared in Seiter’s film You Were Never Lovelier (1942). In 1944, Kern collaborated with Ira Gershwin, older brother of GEORGE GERSHWIN, on the music for the Hungarian director Charles Vidor’s (1900–1959) film Cover Girl, which starred Rita Hayworth (1918–1987) and Gene Kelly (1912–1996). “Long Ago and Far Away” was the most popular hit to emerge from that film. Kern, who had already suffered from cardiovascular problems, died of a heart attack at the age of sixty in New York. At the time of his death, MGM was filming a fictionalized biography of him entitled Till the Clouds Roll By, directed by Richard Whorf (1906–1956). Released posthumously in 1946, the film
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starred the American actor Robert Walker (1918–1951) as Kern.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Banfield, Stephen, Jerome Kern, 2006; Bordman, Gerald Martin, Jerome Kern: His Life and Music, 1980; Ewen, David, The World of Jerome Kern: A Biography, 1960; Freedland, Michael, Jerome Kern, 1978.
Kerouac, Jack (March 12, 1922–October 21, 1969) Novelist, Poet long with William S. Burroughs and ALLEN GINSBERG, Jack Kerouac was a central figure in the 1950s Beat Movement in the United States. It was Kerouac, in fact, who coined the term “Beat Generation.” While many of his fellow beatniks later joined in with the left-leaning sixties hippie-counterculture movement, Kerouac leaned the opposite way and took on more conservative beliefs toward the end of his life. Kerouac published largely autobiographical fiction, and among his most famous works are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Cody. Kerouac was of French Canadian ancestry, born Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac in the working-class town of Lowell, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of three children. His father, a linotypist, ran a print shop and published The Lowell Spotlight. When the town of Lowell began to sink into economic depression, Kerouac’s father faced a struggle with his business and turned to gambling in vain hopes of improving his family’s fortunes. He eventually lost the business altogether and succumbed to alcoholism, a disease that would take Kerouac’s own life years later. Kerouac learned to speak French (a dialect called joual generally spoken by the working classes of Que´bec) before starting to speak English at the age of six, and as an adult he continued to write some of his poetry in
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French. When he was young, he was traumatized by the death of his older brother Ge´rard, who succumbed to rheumatic fever when he was nine. He later described his death in his novel Visions of Gerard (1963). When he was young, he loved the “The Shadow,” a popular radio series originally played by ORSON WELLES and based on the pulp fiction hero created by Walter B. Gibson (1897–1985) in 1931. Kerouac knew he wanted to become a writer as early as the age of ten. He wrote constantly, carried a notebook around with him, and sent lengthy letters to friends and family members. As a teenager, Kerouac excelled in sports. He was a star member of the high school football team, and a number of schools offered him football scholarships. He accepted Columbia University’s offer, which required him to attend the Horace Mann School for a year. For Kerouac, though, a career in sports was not to be. He broke his leg playing football his freshman year and constantly found himself at odds with his coach, who kept him benched and allowed him little playing time. His football scholarship eventually fell through. While at Columbia, however, Kerouac began to write sports articles for the student paper the Columbia Daily Spectator. He dropped out before graduating, living for a time afterward in New York with his girl-
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friend and future first wife, Edie Parker (1922–1993). During his time in New York, he met the circle of friends who would come be called the Beat Generation. “Beat” was a term Kerouac endowed with various connotations, including being spiritually beaten down by a conformist society, being upbeat, and writing to a musical type of beat. Among the circle were ALLEN GINSBERG, Neal Cassady (1926–1968), Gregory Corso (1930–2001), John Clellon Holmes (1926–1988), Lucien Carr (1925–2005), William S. Burroughs (1914–1997), and the troublesome criminal and heroin addict Herbert Huncke (1915–1996). In 1942, Kerouac joined the United States Merchant Marine and enlisted in the U.S. Navy the following year. He was honorably discharged, however, for what the military deemed psychiatric reasons. In 1944, Kerouac was arrested as an accessory to the murder of David Kammerer, who had been stalking Carr for years. Carr stabbed Kammerer to death during a drunken fight and dumped his body into the Hudson River. He confessed his crime to Burroughs and Kerouac, who were eventually arrested for failing to report the crime to the police. Burroughs’s family bailed him out, but Kerouac’s father would not, and he was forced to seek financial help from Parker. He promised to marry her if she put up his bail and did so, but their marriage was annulled a year later. Burroughs and Kerouac authored a novel about the incident entitled And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks that was never published in its entirety. Excerpts later appeared in a Burroughs compilation. Kerouac also wrote about the murder in his autobiographical novel Vanity of Duluoz (1968), which follows his life from high school to the beginnings of the Beat Movement. Kerouac traveled some, staying with friends in the Bronx in between. He later moved back in with his parents, who had by that time moved to the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens, New York. While he lived
with them, he wrote his first novel, The Town and the City (1950), which, with Ginsberg’s help, was published under the name John Kerouac. Heavily influenced by his reading of THOMAS WOLFE, it earned positive reviews but did not sell. The novel showed contrasts between life in a small town and life in the big city. Robert Giroux (1914– ) heavily edited the book, removing hundreds of pages of Kerouac’s writing. Kerouac wrote continuously for the next six years, but lacking a publisher, none of his works were printed until On the Road (completed in 1951; published in 1957). The autobiographical novel drew upon previous writings and detailed his experiences traveling crosscountry and to Mexico with Cassady. Narrated by the character Sal Paradise, it is often considered the defining work of the Beat Generation. He wrote it on a single long scroll of paper, and it showcased his preferred writing technique of confessional prose, which was inspired in part by the improvisational elements of jazz and bebop music. On the Road’s experimental nature turned publishers away for years, but Viking Press eventually bought the novel in 1957 with the stipulation that it would undergo major revisions. A fiftieth-anniversary edition of the work entitled On the Road: The Original Scroll, featuring all of Kerouac’s original writing (including using the real names of characters who were fictionalized in the original printing), was released on August 16, 2007. In 1951 and 1952, Kerouac wrote Visions of Cody, set in post-World War II New York City and not published in its entirety until 1973. Kerouac became interested in Buddhism in 1954 after discovering Dwight Goddard’s A Buddhist Bible in a San Jose library. He also developed friendships with the comparative religion scholar Alan Watts (1915–1973) and the Japanese Zen Buddhist authority D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966). In 1955, Kerouac wrote Wake Up, a biography of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. It remained unpublished during his lifetime but was serialized posthumously
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in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review between 1993 and 1995. His fascination with Buddhism, along with accounts of his adventures with the Buddhist poet Gary Snyder (1930– ) and other San Francisco area poets, formed the substance of his famous novel The Dharma Bums (1958). In 1957, Kerouac moved to the College Park section of Orlando, Florida, where he waited for the release of On the Road. The enthusiastic reviews following its publication brought him more fame than he had bargained for. The New York Times hailed him as the voice of a new generation, while other reviewers pinpointed him as a major American writer and the voice of the Beat Generation. Kerouac, who had grown used to repeated rejection of his writings, was miserable with his sudden catapult to fame, and the trauma of it would ultimately contribute to his downfall. Kerouac’s writing style was heavily influenced by jazz music, notably the bebop style pioneered by Charlie Parker (1920–1955), DIZZY GILLESPIE, THELONIOUS MONK, and others. He called his confessional literary style Spontaneous Prose, which was somewhat akin to stream-of-consciousness. He borrowed ideas of breath from both jazz and Buddhist meditation that also influenced his prose. Although he believed in refraining from all editing, publishing companies subjected much of his work to alteration before it was printed. Kerouac all but disposed of the use of the period in his writing, preferring instead to connect thoughts with dashes. He intended the phrases between the dashes to mimic improvisational jazz licks. Around the time Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans (1958), Ginsberg and others asked him to formally document how he wrote Spontaneous Prose. In Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, he outlined thirty “essentials” for the method. Among them were “ Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy,” “Submissive to everything, open, listening,” “The unspeakable visions of the individual,” “Remove liter-
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ary, grammatical, and syntactical inhibition,” and “Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven.” In 1959, he wrote and narrated the Beat movie Pull My Daisy (1959), directed by Robert Frank (1924– ) and Alfred Leslie (1927– ) and featuring Ginsberg, Corso, and others. Meanwhile, Kerouac began to sink further and further into the depths of alcoholism. Big Sur (1961) was written while he attempted to retreat from his addiction into nature, but after he finished he resumed his drinking binges. He left California to live with his mother in Long Island, and he remained with her for the rest of his life. In his later life, Kerouac became a political conservative, if somewhat of an unorthodox one. He supported the Vietnam War and befriended famous conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925– ). Under his mother’s influence, he grew closer to Catholicism but never fully embraced it, nor did he fully abandon Buddhism. On October 20, 1969, Kerouac was rushed to a Florida hospital in severe abdominal pain. He died the next day due to complications from alcoholism. Kerouac received only modest critical acclaim during his lifetime, but his influence was more widely recognized posthumously. The anticonformist ideals of the Beat Movement and his spontaneous writing style influenced a generation of free-spirited writers, musicians, and artists during the 1960s. In 2007, he was awarded a posthumous honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Clark, Tom, Jack Kerouac, 1984; French, Warren, Jack Kerouac, 1986; Gold, Herbert, Desolate Angel, Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America, 1979; Hornick, Lita R., The Poems of Jack Kerouac, 1970; Parker, Brad, Jack Kerouac: An Introduction, 1989; Plummer, William, Jack Kerouac: The Beat Goes On (1979); Sandison, David, Jack Kerouac, 1999; www.beatmuseum.org/kerouac/jackkerouac.html.
KESEY, KENNETH ELTON
Kesey, Kenneth Elton (September 17, 1935–November 10, 2001) Novelist, Short-Story Writer he American author and 1960s counterculture figurehead Ken Kesey is perhaps equally known for his classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and, with his cult following dubbed the Merry Pranksters, for his experiments with hallucinogenic drugs that began in the 1950s. Kesey’s work bridged the ideals of the 1950s Beat Generation with those of the hippie-counterculture movement in the 1960s. Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and later moved with his family to Eugene, Oregon. His father worked in the creamery business and eventually helped form the Eugene Farmers Cooperative. In his youth, Kesey spent a great deal of time in the outdoors. He was an accomplished wrestler, boxer, and football player in high school and went on to wrestle in college. In 1956, he married his high school sweetheart, Faye Haxby. They had three children, and Kesey fathered a fourth by Merry Prankster Carolyn Adams (1946– ) in 1966. Adams, also known as Mountain Girl, later married GRATEFUL DEAD frontman Jerry Garcia (1942–1995). He attended the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and earned his degree in speech and communication in 1957. The following year, he was awarded a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship to study at Stanford University’s creative writing program. At Stanford, he studied under Wallace Stegner (1909–1993), and during that time he wrote his first novel ZOO, about beatniks in San Francisco, which went unpublished. In 1959, Kesey volunteered to take part in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-financed experiment called the Project MKULTRA study at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital— where he also became a part-time aide—on the effects of psychoactive drugs. (See also TIMOTHY LEARY). These included LSD, psilocy-
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bin, mescaline, and DMT, and his participation in the study would shape the course of the remainder of his life. After the study, Kesey began to experiment with psychedelic substances on his own, and he wrote extensively about his experiences both during and after the study. His time at the hospital as an aide and a government guinea pig inspired One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). The story is narrated by the massive figure Chief Bromden, a part-Native American who has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. The rebellious and anarchic Randle Patrick McMurphy is sentenced to spend time in a mental institution where he resides, and the hospital is plagued with stringent rules enforced by the rigid and heartless Nurse Ratched. McMurphy enlivens the place with his rule-breaking antics, even inspiring the Chief, who has intentionally remained mute, to speak. However, he soon finds himself at odds with Nurse Ratched and others on the hospital staff, who eventually overpower his will. The underlying question the novel asks is who is really insane—the inmates of the mental ward who fail to conform to society’s unfair behavioral expectations, or the staff like Nurse Ratched who impose overly stringent rules for behavior? To this day, the name “Nurse Ratched” has become synonymous with uncompassionate medical staff. MILOSˇ FORMAN directed a highly successful screen adaptation of the book, starring Jack Nicholson (1937– ), in 1975. Although Kesey was not pleased with the outcome—notably the fact that Chief Bromden did not narrate the film and his dislike for Nicholson as the choice for McMurphy—it won five Academy Awards. In 1964, Kesey published his second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion. Although it was not nearly as successful as One Flew Over the
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Cuckoo’s Nest, PAUL NEWMAN directed and starred in a 1971 big screen version of the story, and the film was nominated for two Academy Awards. The story concerns a family rivalry in a logging community. Kesey moved to La Honda, California, in the mountains outside of San Francisco. There he hosted parties he called “acid tests” for friends. His gatherings involved music, sometimes provided by the GRATEFUL DEAD, as well as acid-laced Kool-Aid, psychedelic light, and painting effects. Beat Generation poet ALLEN GINSBERG mentioned Kesey’s acid tests in some of his verse, and gonzo journalist HUNTER S. THOMPSON wrote about them in Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966). Kesey next embarked on a cross-country trip to New York in a DayGlo-painted school bus named Furthur, driven by former beatnik Neal Cassady (1926–1968; see ALLEN GINSBERG and JACK KEROUAC) and others who dubbed themselves the “Merry Pranksters.” While in New York, Cassady introduced them to Kerouac and other former beatniks. The Merry Pranksters also visited the mansion from which Timothy Leary conducted tests of his own with hallucinogens. Leary was not impressed with Kesey’s antics, and, at least ostensibly, his tests were for much more scientific purposes. New Journalism author TOM WOLFE described the trip Kesey and the Merry Pranksters took in detail in The Electric KoolAid Acid Test (1968). In 1965, Kesey was arrested for marijuana possession. He fled to Mexico and faked his own suicide in an attempt to evade authorities. He later returned to the U.S. and was incarcerated for five months at the San Mateo County Jail. Upon his release, he moved back to his family’s farm in Pleasant Hill, Oregon and spent the rest of his life there. He wrote many articles, books, and short stories during that time. In 1992, he published the novel
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Sailor Song, about the lives of the residents of a small Alaskan town that change dramatically when a Hollywood film crew invades to shoot a scene. In 1994, he held a reunion tour with the Merry Pranksters, performing a musical play entitled Twister: A Musical Catastrophe he wrote about the then-upcoming millennium. They toured the West Coast and parts of the West, even getting Ginsberg to perform with them. The band Jambay, one of the original bands of the jam band genre, served as his pit orchestra. In his last years, Kesey kept a low profile at home but held ritualistic revivals of the acid tests over the Internet. He sometimes appeared at rock concerts riding in the bus Furthur2 with the Merry Pranksters. Kesey’s other works include Kesey’s Garage Sale (1972), a collection of miscellaneous writings and photos; Northwest Review Book: Kesey (1977); the story collection Demon Box (1986); Caverns (1990), a novel he coauthored with thirteen students in his writing class at the University of Oregon, credited to O.U. Levon (O.U. stands for “Oregon University,” and “Levon” is “novel” spelled backwards); the historical novel Last Go Round: A Real Western (1994), with Merry Prankster Ken Babbs; and Ken Kesey’s Jail Journal (2003), a colorful account of the time he was jailed for marijuana possession in the 1960s published from journals he kept during that time. Kesey died on November 10, 2001, following an operation for liver cancer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Leeds, Barry H., Ken Kesey, 1981; McClanahan, Ed, ed., Spit in the Ocean 7: All About Ken Kesey, 2003; Porter, M. Gilbert, The Art of Grit: Ken Kesey’s Fiction, 1982; Carnes, Bruce, Ken Kesey, 1974; Tanner, Stephen L., Ken Kesey, 1983; Wolfe, Tom, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1968.
KIEFER, ANSELM
Kiefer, Anselm (March 8, 1945– ) Painter, Sculptor, Photographer leading Neo-Expressionist artist of the late twentieth century, Anselm Kiefer explores in his paintings symbolic mythological and religious themes. His early paintings derive from both the Germanic and Christian traditions and investigate issues of contemporary German history, notably the Nazi era. Many of Kiefer’s later paintings are inspired by Hebrew themes. Kiefer’s paintings are marked by their chaotic and pessimistic tones and unusual textures. With heavy brush strokes, he applies bold color in a manner that evokes a chaotic, disturbing atmosphere. Although Kiefer uses traditional themes, his way of painting them suggests a profound unease with what the modern world has made of those traditions. Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany. Before determining to devote his life to art, he studied law and French literature at the University of Freiburg, beginning in 1966. Without completing his curriculum, he left to study art, enrolling in the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe in 1969. Kiefer next studied in Du¨sseldorf under the avant-garde artist and political activist Joseph Beuys. Kiefer’s early works include many wood interiors that incorporate Christian and Germanic mythological themes. In Father, Son, Holy Ghost (1973), the three figures of the Trinity are represented as flames burning in three chairs untouched by the fire, which sit in a wood interior. Kiefer again depicts the Trinity as three flaming spirits in Quaternity (1973), and this time he adds the figure of the serpent. He created a series entitled The Parsifal Room (1973), inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner (1813–1883), for an exhibition in Amsterdam. Germany’s Spiritual Heroes (1973) portrays flaming spirits in a wood interior. Among his other wood interiors are Notung (1973), the title of which is taken from the
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mythological Wotan’s sword; and Resurrexit (1973). Kiefer has also painted many bleak, pessimistic landscapes such as March Heath (1974) and Painting of the Scorched Earth (1974). Earlier paintings allude to contemporary German history, particularly the National Socialist era, and in works such as Operation Sea Lion (1975) he began to address the past more directly. One of several “Operation” paintings, it takes its title from Adolf Hitler’s planned but never realized invasion of England. These grim portrayals, dominated by blacks and dark blues, evoke the desolation and destruction of war. The 1980s marked a major turning point in Kiefer’s work, both in its popularity and its style. The Venice Biennale of 1980 popularized his work and established him as an international artist. Previously not well known, he now began to exhibit in major cities around the world. During that decade he also turned toward Old Testament themes in works such as Shulamite (1983), Cherubim and Seraphim (1983), and Exodus of Egypt (1982–1983), a bent further strengthened by his visit to Israel in 1984. Other later paintings include Osiris and Isis (1985–1987) and Zimzum (1990). Among Kiefer’s other works are Interiors (1981), two works entitled Tomb of the Unknown Painter (1974 and 1983), Ways of the Worldly Wisdom: Arminius’s Battle (1978–1980), Waterloo, Waterloo, the Earth Still Shakes (1982), a series of large paintings of the cosmos (1995–2001), sculptures, photographs, and handmade books.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Anselm Kiefer, 1984; Arasse, Daniel, Anselm Kiefer, 2001; Gilmour, John, Fire on the Earth: Anselm Kiefer and the Postmodern World, 1990;
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Rosenthal, Mark, Anselm Kiefer, 1987; Saltzman, Lisa, Anselm Kiefer and Art After Auschwitz, 1999.
King, B. B. (September 16, 1925– ) Blues Singer, Guitarist nown as the “King of Blues,” the American blues artist B. B. King is one of the most prolific and accomplished blues musicians of all time. Between 1951 and 1985, King appeared on Billboard’s R&B charts seventy-four times. More than one hundred of his concerts have been broadcast internationally on the radio and television, he has played more than fifteen thousand performances during his lifetime, and he has released more than fifty albums. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him the third greatest guitarist on its list of the one hundred greatest guitarists of all time in 2003, placing him just below JIMI HENDRIX at number one and The Allman Brothers’ Duane Allman (1946–1971) at number two. Perhaps more than any other blues artist to emerge from the Mississippi Delta region, King has crossed musical genres to successfully perform with mainstream rock and roll artists. King was born Riley B. King to an impoverished family of sharecroppers on a plantation in Itta Bena, Mississippi, near Indianola. His parents separated when he was five, upon which his mother moved them to the nearby town of Kilmichael. He was at work in the field by the age of seven, and his mother died when he was nine. King gained early musical inspiration from attending church and harbored ambitions of becoming a gospel singer. His preacher taught him the bare essentials of guitar playing, and he further taught himself from instruction books. As a teenager, he dropped out of school and returned to the Delta, where he drove a
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tractor on a large plantation. At night, he played and sang for spare change on street corners in local towns. Ambitious from a young age, he sometimes played four towns in a night. In 1947, he hitchhiked to Memphis, where he hoped to make a career out of music. He stayed with his cousin Bukka White (1906–1977), an accomplished blues guitarist who further schooled him in his music. In 1948, King got his first big break when he performed on Sonny Boy Williamson’s (1899–1965) radio show on KWEM. He soon had steady gigs at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in Memphis and began appearing on his own ten-minute radio spot. It was as a radio host that he picked up his stage name, which evolved from “Beale Street Blues Boy” to “Blues Boy King,” and then finally to “B. B. King.” After securing a contract with RPM Records out of Los Angeles, he made his first recording in 1949 and had released six singles by the end of the year. Many of his early recordings were produced by Sam Phillips (1923–2003), who later founded Sun Records. He began playing live wherever he could—in jook houses, cafe´s, dance halls, and other venues. Since the 1950s, King has called his guitars “Lucille” after escaping a jook house fire on a night he was playing in Twist, Arkansas. Realizing that he had accidentally left his beloved guitar inside, he risked his life to run back in and retrieve it. Afterward, it was discovered
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that two men fighting over a woman named Lucille had knocked over a kerosene lamp and ignited the fire. King named his guitar Lucille in order to remind himself never to fight over a woman. He scored a number one R&B hit, “Three O’Clock Blues,” in 1951, after which he embarked on his first national tour. In the1950s, he became one of the most popular names in R&B and began to record a long list of hits including “You Know I Love You,” “You Don’t Know Me” (his second song to reach number one on the R&B charts), “Woke Up This Morning,” “Please Love Me,” “When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer,” “Whole Lotta Love,” “You Upset Me Baby,” “Every Day I Have the Blues,” “Sneakin’ Around,” “Ten Long Years,” “Bad Luck,” “Sweet Little Angel,” “On My Word of Honor,” and “Please Accept My Love.” In the mid-1950s, he embarked on a demanding touring schedule, traveling with his band on a bus he called “Big Red.” In 1958, his tour bus collided with a gas truck on a bridge in Texas. The truck driver was killed, although King was not on board and none of his band members were seriously hurt. Due to the fact that his insurance was terminated just days before the accident, the destruction of the bus left him in debt for years. His popularity dwindled somewhat in the early 1960s. By the middle of the decade, however, like many other blues musicians, he had attracted the attention of a burgeoning generation of young rock and roll artists and became popular with their fans, too. In 1962, King signed with ABC-Paramount Records. King confesses that he was an avid fan of FRANK SINATRA, who was instrumental in obtaining entrance for black performers in previously white-dominated venues. Sinatra secured gigs for King at the main showrooms in Las Vegas during the 1960s. In November 1964, King recorded Live at the Regal at the Regal Theater in Chicago. Four years later, he played at the Newport Folk Festival and at BILL GRAHAM’S Fillmore West with some of the
biggest names in rock and roll, and he began to play in larger venues. Outside the blues market, King’s first success was the 1969 remake of Roy Hawkins’ “The Thrill Is Gone,” which became a hit both on pop and R&B charts. He began to gain visibility in rock and roll as an opening act on THE ROLLING STONES’ 1969 American tour, and he also appeared on The Johnny Carson Show (see JOHNNY CARSON) and The Ed Sullivan Show (see ED SULLIVAN). King continued to find mainstream success during the 1970s with songs like “To Know You Is to Love You” and “I Like to Live the Love.” Beginning in the 1980s, King began to record less. In spite of his recording slowdown, however, he maintained a visible presence both on the television and film screen and the performing stage. His ambitious touring schedule took him outside American borders to Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and South America. He made guest appearances on numerous American television shows, including the popular sitcoms Sanford and Son, The Cosby Show, Married With Children, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; and the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless. King also appeared in director John Landis’s (1950– ) The Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) as Malvern Gasperon, the lead singer of the Louisiana Gator Boys, with British rock guitarist Eric Clapton (1945– ), the pianist-singer Dr. John (1940– ), the famed E-Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons (1942– ; see BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN), country singer-songwriter Travis Tritt (1963– ), the American blues singer Koko Taylor (1928– ), BO DIDDLEY, and several other noted musicians. His songs— one of his most popular later hits “The Thrill Is Gone” being a frequent choice among them—have appeared on more than two dozen film and television soundtracks. In 1988, King recorded the popular single “When Love Comes to Town” with the famed Irish rock band U2. The song appeared on the band’s 1988 album Rattle and Hum. In 1996, the CD-ROM On the Road With B. B. King: An Interactive Autobiography, was released
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and much acclaimed. That year also saw the publication of his autobiography, coauthored with David Ritz, Blues All Around Me. In 2000, King and Clapton recorded Riding With the King. In 2003, he played with the American rock band Phish, just a year before they disbanded. King jammed with Phish, noted for their extended improvisational performances (see the GRATEFUL DEAD), for the better part of half an hour. In June 2006, King was in attendance at a memorialization of his first radio broadcast at the Three Deuces Building in Greenwood, Mississippi. King also played the Clapton-organized Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2004, and on the DVD released the same year, he performed “Rock Me Baby” with Clapton, rock and blues guitarist Buddy Guy (1936– ), and blues singer-guitarist Jimmie Vaughan (1951– ). In 2007, King played once again at the festival. King embarked on a European farewell tour in 2006, at the age of eighty, playing with the Irish guitarist Gary Moore (1952– ). The two had previously recorded together, including “Since I Met You Baby.” In 2007, he has so far delivered roughly thirty performances in the U.S. Among his many other famous songs are “Payin’ the Cost to Be the Boss,” “Everyday I Have the Blues,” “How Blue Can You Get,” and “Why I Sing the Blues.” Outside of music, King is known as a spokesman for diabetes, from which he has suffered in the later years of his life. He has also supported children’s musical education programs and is an honorary member of the
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board of directors of Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit group that distributes musical instruments and funds lessons to children in public schools. Among his many awards are fourteen Grammys and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, received the National Medal of Arts in 1990, received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1995, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. King has received honorary doctorates from numerous universities In 1991, King opened B. B. King’s Blues Club in Memphis and has subsequently opened clubs in numerous other American cities. The first week of June every year, a B. B. King homecoming festival is held in Indianola, Mississippi, near his birthplace. In June 2006, a groundbreaking was held for a new B. B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in that town, and it is scheduled to open in 2008.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Danchin, Sebastian, Blues Boy: The Life of B. B. King, 1998; King, B. B., and Ritz, David, Blues All Around Me, 1996; Kostelanetz. Richard, The B. B. King Reader: Six Decades of Commentary, 2005; McGee, David, B. B. King: There Is Always One More Time, 2005; Sawyer, Charles, The Arrival of B. B. King: The Authorized Biography, 1980; Shirley, David, Every Day I Sing the Blues: The Story of B. B. King, 1995. www.bbking.com; www.bbkingmuseum.org.
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King, Stephen (September 21, 1947– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Director uring his long and prolific career, the American author Stephen King has kept millions of readers on the edges of their seats with macabre, hair-raising horror novels and short stories, many of which have been adapted into popular films. King was born Stephen Edwin King to Nellie Ruth Pillsbury and Donald Edwin King in Portland, Maine. After his father deserted the family when he was three, his mother eventually settled King and his adopted brother David in Durham, Maine, where she was from. The family also stayed for short periods of time in Fort Wayne, Indiana (where his father’s family lived) and Stratford, Connecticut. King’s mother struggled to support herself and the children, working on the kitchen staff at a facility for the mentally ill and accepting whatever assistance her relatives provided. King attended Durham Elementary School and Lisbon Falls High School. He began writing as a youth, crafting stories based on popular films and selling them to his friends. When King was young, he witnessed in horror as a train struck a childhood friend caught on a railroad track. Although many critics have suggested the accident as a formative incident in the development of the macabre vein for his stories, King denies the allegation. He was also an avid reader and was particularly fond of EC’s horror comics, which were more likely the first inspiration for his own stories. He was particularly fond of EC’s 1950s comic Tales from the Crypt. King studied English at the University of Maine at Orono from 1966 to 1970. He graduated with an English degree and a certification to teach high school. While at the university, he wrote a regular column entitled “King’s Garbage Truck” in The Maine Campus, a school newspaper. He also served in the student senate. After he graduated, he
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was rejected for service in Vietnam due to health reasons. While in school he met Tabitha Spruce— both worked in the Fogler Library on campus— and the two married in 1971. He supported himself with odd jobs, including in a laundry that formed the backdrop of his short story “The Mangler” and Roadwork (1981), one of several novels he wrote under the pen name Richard Bachman. Hearts in Atlantis (1999), a series of five related stories, has its roots in the 1960s, King’s years in school, and the Vietnam War. “The Mangler” was adapted into a film and appeared in the 1977 collection Night Shift. The collection also contained the story “Children of the Corn,” which was later the basis for a popular horror movie bearing the same title. Upon his graduation, King took a job teaching English at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. Finances were tight, and he and his family lived in a trailer. He supplemented his income from teaching by writing short stories published in men’s magazines. He sold his first story, “The Glass Floor,” to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. In 1973, the family moved to southern Maine, where King could be closer to his ailing mother. His next novel, Salem’s Lot, was published the same year. Doubleday’s publication of King’s novel Carrie in 1974 marks one of his early successes. Carrie White, the novel’s protagonist, is a high-schooler who slowly discovers her innate psychic powers as both her classmates and her strict, religious mother traumatize her. Although the publisher offered him only a small advance, the story gained enough popularity after its release to significantly raise the value of the paperback rights, enabling King to give up teaching and devote more time to writing.
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King wrote The Shining in Boulder, Colorado, while his family lived there briefly in 1974. The Stand followed in 1975. The Shining was published in 1977 and later became the basis for STANLEY KUBRICK’S successful film starring Jack Nicholson. Nicholson plays a deeply disturbed man who, with his family, takes care of the mysterious Overlook Hotel, a mountain resort. Nicholson’s demonic character reflects some of King’s own battle with alcoholism, and the character’s obsessive typing of “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is an oft-quoted saying in American culture. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, King published a number of novels—Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Road Work (1981), The Running Man (1982), and Thinner (1984)— under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. He has also used the pseudonym John Swithen. Cujo, a novel Viking published in 1981, showcases a St. Bernard who turns into a monstrous, terrifying dog after being bitten by a rabid bat. Pet Sematary (1983), another of King’s novels adapted into a popular film, was inspired by an actual pet cemetery in which local children buried the bodies of animals who lost their lives along a busy truck route in Maine. Several days after his daughter’s cat joined many other animal victims, the idea for Pet Sematary was born. In the novel, the protagonist lives near a busy highway that claims many animal victims. Local children have created a cemetery for them, and the protagonist discovers the dark secrets of an old Indian burial ground in the woods after his family’s cat dies. In The Talisman (1984), coauthored with Peter Straub, the protagonist, twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer, sets out on a journey from New Hampshire to California in search of a talisman that will save his mother’s life. His travels lead him through a fantastic parallel universe called “The Territories,” where he faces numerous battles and encounters “twinners” who lead similar existences to those of people he knows from Earth. Black House (2001), the sequel to The Talisman, also coauthored with Straub, finds Sawyer in his late thirties.
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Dolores Claiborne (1995) also spawned a successful movie starring Kathy Bates. Police suspect the protagonist in the story, which is set in rural Maine, of murdering her wealthy employer, Vera Donovan. Mysterious family secrets come to light during the course of the investigation. In 1996, King published The Green Mile, a resoundingly successful six-novel series that chronicles the life of John Coffey, a sympathetic inmate at Cold Mountain Penitentiary who has been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of nine-year-old twin girls. Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan starred in the 1999 movie adaptation of the series. Baseball marks another passion in King’s life, and the author is often seen at Boston Red Sox games. In 1999, King authored The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, in which former Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon plays an imaginary companion to the main character. Following the Red Sox’s World Series victory in 2004, King coauthored (with Stewart O’Nan) Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season. King throws the opening-day first pitch in Fever Pitch, a 2005 film about a Red Sox fan. King’s coaching efforts helped propel his son Owen’s Little League team to the Maine state championship in 1989, and the journey is chronicled in his essay “Head Down.” The essay was published in The New Yorker and later in the 1993 collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Tragedy struck in 1999, when a reckless driver hit King as he walked down the road in Center Lovell, Maine. Serious injuries left him hospitalized for almost three weeks, and the ordeal not only inspired a series of fictional works but left him plagued with chronic pain. In a twist of irony, King had nearly completed From a Buick 8 (2002), in which a character perishes in an automobile accident, just before his own misfortune. The accident also inspired works or incidents in stories in its aftermath, including Dreamcatcher (2001), in which one of the characters sustains injuries similar to the ones King suffered. In the series
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premiere of Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital (2004) a pickup truck strikes a painter out for a run. King’s accident also figures prominently in the final novel of his monumental The Dark Tower series, which consists of seven volumes published between 1982 and 2004. Although his literary style has never charmed academic critics, King enjoys enormous popularity as a writer. In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), he elaborates on his distinct method and style. In King’s mind, a story starts from a small idea and writes itself from that point. “The situation comes first,” he writes. “The characters—always flat and unfeatured, to begin with—come next. Once these things are fixed in my mind, I begin to narrate. I often have an idea of what the outcome may be, but I have never demanded of a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way.” His writing is a unique blend of interwoven plots and American cultural references, familiar narrative style in which readers are addressed as “friends and neighbors,” worlds of fantasy and horror, and suspenseful cliffhanger events. King’s other works include the novels The Dead Zone (1979), Firestarter (1980), The Dark Half (1989), Desperation (1996) and its companion novel The Regulators (1996), and Blaze (2007; originally written in 1973), some of which were published under the Bachman pseudonym; the nonfiction book Danse Macabre (1980); the films Creepshow I and Creepshow II; and Maximum Overdrive (1985), a film that marked King’s directorial debut and was adapted from his short story “Trucks.”
King and his wife have long been involved in philanthropic activities. In the early 1990s, they helped finance the building of a Little League ballpark in Maine. Their donations have also funded numerous scholarships, provided assistance to the University of Maine swim team and to the YMCA and YWCA, and helped fund an aquatic park. Citing pain from his injuries after the accident and a desire to spend more time at family life, King has slowed his writing pace in recent years. He has written a regular column entitled “The Pop of King” for Entertainment Weekly since 2003. His two sons, Owen and Joseph, are also writers, and his daughter Naomi is a minister in the Unitarian Universalist Church. King has received many awards, including the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and numerous Bram Stoker awards.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Beahm, George, ed., The Stephen King Companion, rev. ed., 1995; Collings, Michael R., The Many Facets of Stephen King, 1985; King, Stephen, On Writing, 2000; Schweitzer, Darrell, Discovering Stephen King, 1985; Spignesi, Stephen J., The Essential Stephen King : A Ranking of the Greatest Novels, Short Stories, Movies and Other Creations of the World’s Most Popular Writer, 2001; Underwood, Tim, and Miller, Chuck, eds., The Horror Fiction of Stephen King, 1982; Winter, Douglas E., Stephen King, 1982. www.stephenking.com.
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Kipling, Rudyard (December 30, 1865–January 18, 1936) Short-Story Writer, Novelist, Poet he author of the well-known children’s tales The Jungle Books and Just So Stories, Joseph Rudyard Kipling also wrote novels, short stories, and poetry, all immensely popular around the turn of the century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas, and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author.” On account of his controversial support for British colonialism, however, his literary reputation has suffered among critics since World War I.
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Kipling was born in Bombay, India, to upper-middle-class British parents and learned to speak Hindi before he spoke English. His father was professor of Architectural Sculpture at the Bombay School of Art and curator of the Lahore museum. The family was well connected through his mother, Alice Macdonald. One of her sisters was the mother of the future prime minister Stanley Baldwin, and two were married to the painters Sir Edward Poynter and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. When Kipling was 6, his parents took him with his sister to England, as was usual at that time because the climate of India was felt to be unhealthy for children, and left them with the Holloway family in Southsea. Life with Mrs. Holloway, a cruel and vindictive woman, proved a traumatic experience for Kip-ling, one that is reflected in his fiction. He left the family after five years and attended a boarding school, the United Services College at Westward Ho, Devon. There he edited the United Services College Chronicle and particularly liked to read the English classics. With the assistance of his mother, he published his first book, School Boy Lyrics, in 1881. Echoes, another volume, which also contained his sister’s poetry, followed in 1884. Meanwhile, Kipling had returned to India (1882) and taken a job with the Civil and Military Gazette. Using a number of pseudonyms, he reported for the Gazette and contributed short stories and verse to the paper. Kipling’s Departmental Ditties (1886), a volume of satirical verse, was published while he wrote for the Gazette and targeted the prejudices of Englishmen unfamiliar with India and corruption in the British service. During his time in India he also published several volumes of short stories in a similar vein, including Soldiers Three, The Phantom Rickshaw, Wee Willie Winkie, and Plain Tales
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from the Hills, all of which were published in 1888. In 1889, Kipling returned to England. He met W. E. Henly, editor of the Scots Observer, which published many of the verses that later became his Barrack-Room Ballads (1892). The volume’s poems include “Mandalay” and “Gunga Din,” the latter narrated by a British private praising an Indian water boy shot during battle, and ending with the famous lines, Though I’ve belted you an’ flayed you, By the livin’ Gawd that made you, You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
Another volume of verse, The Five Nations, was published in 1903 and contains “Recessional,” a poetic prayer urging Britain not to grow “drunk with sight of power.” Much of Kipling’s poetry skillfully incorporates common colloquialisms in rhymed and strongly rhythmical verse. T. S. ELIOT admired his work, praising the best of it as great verse, if not real poetry. Kipling published his novel The Light That Failed, a story about the war correspondent and artist Dick Heldar, in 1890. Heldar’s suffering as a child reflects Kipling’s, and like Kipling, Heldar suffers from poor eyesight. He returns to England after his eyes are injured in the war and works to finish painting his masterpiece while his sight allows. The novel appeared serially before its publication in book form, and Kipling provided two different endings, the first happy and the second tragic. In 1892 Kipling married Caroline Balestier, sister of the American publisher and writer Wolcott Balestier, with whom he coauthored the romance The Naulahka, a Story of West and East (1892), set in both India and Colorado. Kipling lived briefly with his wife in her hometown of Brattleboro, Vermont. They returned to England after a bitter land dispute with her brother. The novel Captains Courageous, A Story of the Grand Banks (1897) is a moral tale. When the spoiled and wealthy Harvey Cheyne is swept into the water from his ocean liner, the crew of the fishing schooner We’re Here
picks him up. The captain of the schooner forces him to work with the crew and treats him with the same mixture of toughness and love he shows his own son, transforming him into a decent and hardworking individual. Stalky & Co. (1899), about three boys at a British school and the many ingenious ways they give their teachers a hard time, reflects Kipling’s own experiences at the United Services College. Of all Kipling’s books, Kim (1901) reflects most strongly Kipling’s intimate knowledge and love of India, and many critics see it as his best long book, and still an excellent introduction to India. Kim is the son of an Irish soldier, long dead, and an Indian mother, who has grown up utterly at home in the bazaars and on the roads of India. He is found and educated by his father’s regiment, and much of the book is an engrossing account of his adventures on the roads in the company of a Tibetan lama, first during vacations from school and then as an agent for the British secret service. In 1902, Kipling purchased a home in Sussex, where he lived for the rest of his life. From 1900 to 1908, he spent some of his time in South Africa in a house given to him by the diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes solidified Kipling’s imperialistic outlook, born of a belief that Britain was destined to civilize other lands. Kipling is also remembered for his classic children’s tales. The Jungle Books (1894–1895) is a series of adventure stories connected by verses. The protagonist of the stories, Mowgli, wanders into the jungle when he is so young he can barely walk, is raised by a family of wolves, and becomes a leader among the wolves. The Jungle Books also include other stories that focus on animals, one a protest against the slaughter of the seals, another the famous “Rikki Tikki Tavi,” about an Indian mongoose who battle the menacing cobras Nag and Nagina to protect his adoptive human family. Just So Stories for Little Children (1902) includes “The Elephant’s Child,” which tells why elephants have trunks,
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“How the Camel Got His Hump,” and other funny and fantastic “How” tales, first told to his own children, as were the vivid stories of old England, especially the Sussex countryside he loved, in Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910). Kipling’s other works include the short-story collections Life’s Handicap (1891), Many Inventions (1893), Actions and Reactions (1909), and Limits and Renewals (1932); the travel sketches in From Sea to Sea (1899); Something of Myself (1941), an unfinished autobiographical piece; and The Irish Guards in the Great War, a military history of the Irish Guards, with which his only son was fighting when he was killed in World War I.
Kipling lost favor with many in the reading public after World War I, and many now dismiss his writing for adults as imperialist propaganda. Nevertheless, many of his works have an energy and a sense of life that still wins him enthusiastic readers, and his later stories, more complex and challenging, have won praise from modern critics, who see them as his best work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fido, Martin, Rudyard Kipling, 1974; SeymourSmith, Martin, Rudyard Kipling, 1989; Shahane, Vasant A., Rudyard Kipling: Activist and Artist, 1973; Tompkins, J. M. S., The Art of Rudyard Kipling (1965).
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig (May 6, 1880–June 15, 1938) Painter, Graphic Artist, Illustrator he painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner helped found and was widely considered the leader of Die Bru¨cke (The Bridge), the first group of German Expressionist painters. Die Bru¨cke flourished in the first decade of the twentieth century, leading to other Expressionist movements in Germany and elsewhere in the world. After the group’s dissolution in 1913, Kirchner continued to paint in expressionistic styles and produced a large body of highly acclaimed expressionistic woodcuts. Kirchner was born in Aschaffenberg, Bavaria. His family moved to Saxony when he was 9, and he attended the Chemnitz Realgymnasium. Kirchner’s interest in painting developed when he was a child. Although his father, a teacher, was also interested in painting, he discouraged Kirchner from pursuing a profession that promised little reward. Accordingly, from 1901 to 1905 Kirchner studied architecture at the Technical College in Dresden, with
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a year in 1903–1904 to study painting in Munich. The earliest influences on Kirchner were the German Gothic artists, especially Albrecht Du¨rer (1471–1528). He was also heavily influenced by the Norwegian Expressionist painter EDVARD MUNCH, the French Postimpressionist Vincent van Gogh, and African and Oceanic art. His first paintings, such as Self Portrait (1904), Deciduous Forest (1904), and many landscapes, were influenced by Neo-Impressionism. With fellow architecture students KARL SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF, Fritz Bleyl, and Erich Heckel (some of whom are depicted in Kirchner’s 1925 painting The Painters of the Bru¨cke), Kirchner founded Die Bru¨cke in 1905. EMIL NOLDE joined the group later. Die Bru¨cke members opposed the stiff old order embodied in Kaiser Wilhelm II and in academic art. As stated in their 1906 manifesto, they wanted to serve as a “bridge” between the old
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order and a new more open German society that would encourage free expression and emotion. The members of Die Bru¨cke worked together in Dresden, exhibited together, and frequently traveled to local lakes. Although they did not call themselves “Expressionists,” the term was later applied to them, and seems to describe them accurately. The Expressionists sought to portray the subjective and emotional aspects of their subjects with the use of loose, distorted forms and intense colors. In general, they held a pessimistic and critical view of society. Die Bru¨cke exhibited with another Expressionist group, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), whose members included painters PAUL KLEE, WASSILY KANDINSKY, and Gabriele Mu¨nter. The beginnings of German Expressionism, influenced by Neo-Impressionism, coincided roughly with a similar movement, Fauvism, in France. In 1911, Die Bru¨cke relocated to Berlin. Kirchner’s painting style evolved continuously throughout his life. The smooth, rounded lines characteristic of paintings such as Girl under Japanese Parasol (1909) and Nude with Hat (1911) gave way to more violent, elongated, and jagged forms around 1912 and 1913. Aggressive, almost threatening women appear as frequent subjects in his work, as do nudes and city scenes. As with all of the Expressionists, his use of color was generally bold and intended to generate a strong emotional impact. Characteristic paintings from these years are Street Scene (1912), Five Women on the Street (1913), and Lady with Green Hat (1913). The year 1913 also saw the breakup of Die Bru¨cke, largely spurred by its members’ disapproval of Kirchner’s history of the group, Chronik der Bru¨cke (1913).
Aside from painting, Kirchner produced more than 2,000 woodcuts, prints, and lithographs. After Die Bru¨cke’s move to Berlin in 1911, he contributed a number of woodcuts to the avant-garde periodical Der Sturm. He also completed illustrations for the novel Peter Schlemihl’s Wonderful Story (1915), by Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838). Kirchner joined the German army in 1915, an experience that proved too traumatic for his fragile psyche. Several paintings on war themes, including Soldiers in the Shower Room (1915) and Self-Portrait as Soldier (1915), reveal his inner turmoil. The former shows a group of elongated, nude men crammed into a shower room, while the latter shows the artist in bold color with his hands cut off. Symbolically, the war had almost cut off the hands Kirchner used to paint. In 1917 he suffered a severe mental and physical breakdown. During his recovery, he painted frescoes on the sanitarium walls. Following his recuperation, Kirchner moved permanently to Switzerland, leaving behind the tormented paintings of his life in Berlin. Into the 1920s he painted natural, serene Swiss landscapes and scenery, including Frankfurt Cathedral (1925). The boldness of his colors diminished somewhat in his later work, which also grew more abstract. The rise of the Nazis in Germany troubled Kirchner emotionally, and Nazi officials, who disliked the avant-garde and denounced his work, confiscated some of it. In 1938, depressed and in poor health, Kirchner committed suicide.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gordon, Donald E., Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1968; Selz, Peter, German Expressionist Painting, 1957.
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Klee, Paul (December 18, 1879–June 29, 1940) Painter, Graphic Artist, Teacher, Theorist
Paul Klee Departure of the Ships, 1927, 140.2 (D 10), oil on canvas on frame, 51 x 65.5 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 쑖 2007 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn (쑖 Art Media / HIP / The Image Works)
lthough he associated himself with German Expressionist artists in the early twentieth century, the Swiss painter Paul Klee developed an abstract artistic style that did not belong to any particular school. His drawings, paintings, watercolors, and other compositions influenced the Surrealists, who rose to prominence in the mid-1920s, and the later development of Abstract Expressionism. Klee was born in Mu¨nchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switzerland. His father was a music teacher who came from a line of distinguished organists, and his mother was also a musician. He attended the local gymnasium and later a literary school in Bern, but his real education took place outside these institu-
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tions. As a child he wrote poetry and plays and played the violin. His grandmother introduced him to painting, and he began to paint around the age of 10. In 1899 Klee moved to Munich, where he studied art first under Heinrich Knirr and then under Franz von Stuck at the Munich Academy. Under the latter he learned drawing, which he mastered before he began to paint seriously. Prior to his return to Bern, Klee traveled to Italy, where the rich artistic heritage of Rome impressed him. His early work was also influenced by his extensive reading of literature. In 1905 Klee traveled to Paris, where he discovered the Impressionists, Post-impressionists, and the Belgian painter James Ensor
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(1860–1949), famous for his violently-colored canvases and grotesque forms. He moved to Munich permanently in 1906 and married the pianist Lily Stumpf the same year. They had one son, Felix. He earned a living as an illustrator, art teacher, and reviewer for the Swiss review Die Alpen, while his wife taught piano lessons. Klee’s first major works were drawings and etchings, including the series Inventions (1903–1905). Many of the drawings and etchings, such as Two Men Meet, Each Believing the Other to Be of Higher Rank (1903) and Crown Mania (1904), are characterized by satire and caricatures of conventional life. He also completed a series of illustrations for an edition of Voltaire’s classic satire, Candide in 1911–1912. Klee discovered the avant-garde in Munich. In 1911 he joined Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group of artists founded by the painters WASSILY KANDINSKY and FRANZ MARC, both of whom became his personal friends. He had already developed an interest in Cubism when he visited Paris the following year and particularly admired the work of the French artist ROBERT DELAUNAY, who at the time was just beginning to paint his Orphic Cubist works. Much of Klee’s early work was done in black and white, but a 1914 trip to Tunisia with the painter August Macke led to his discovery of color. He painted a series of watercolors in Tunisia, such as the abstract landscapes Red and White Domes (1914) and The Heart of St. Germain (Tunis) (1914). After being drafted for and dismissed from the Ger-
many army, Klee continued to paint landscapes during World War I. Klee’s paintings are generally abstract, use flat forms, and blend elements of fantasy and reality. In 1920 he accepted a teaching position at the Bauhaus, where Kandinsky also later taught. As Kandinsky had done several years earlier, Klee began to study geometric forms and to incorporate them into his work. Horizontal line patterns dominate watercolors such as Parting at Evening Time (1922) and Architecture of Planes (1923). In 1930 Klee left the Bauhaus and took a position at the Du¨sseldorf Academy. In paintings rendered in the early 1930s, such as Semicircle against Angle (1932) and Ad Parnassum (1932), Klee used color technique derived from the Pointillists. With the rise of Hitler in Germany, Klee and his wife removed to Switzerland in 1933. He was among many artists whose work the Nazis labeled “degenerate,” and some of his paintings were confiscated. In 1935 he fell ill with scleroderma, a disease affecting the connective tissues. Klee completed many paintings in the years leading up to his death in 1940. These include Angel, Still Feminine (1939), The Lovely (Female) Gardener (1939), and the gloomy Death and Fire (1940). His theoretical work Pedagogical Sketchbook was published in 1925.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Geelhaar, Christian, Paul Klee: Life and Work, 1982; Selz, Peter, German Expressionist Painting, 1957.
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Klimt, Gustav (July 14, 1862–February 6, 1918) Painter, Designer s the founder of the Vienna Secession in 1897, Gustav Klimt rejected the naturalistic, academic style that characterized Viennese painting around the turn of the century. He combined symbolic and allegorical elements with decorative design in his many murals and portraits. Klimt’s work had a strong influence on a generation of younger German painters that included EGON SCHIELE and OSKAR KOKOSCHKA. Klimt was born in Baumgarten, Austria, a suburb of Vienna. His mother was musically inclined but was never really able to pursue her talent outside the home. Klimt’s father, a gold engraver, earned little money, and the family lived in relative poverty. Two of his siblings, especially his brother Ernst, would also demonstrate talent in the arts. Klimt’s parents could not afford to send him to the gymnasium, so he attended the local bu¨rgerschule. Having demonstrated talent in drawing at the bu¨rgerschule, he entered the School of Arts and Crafts at the age of 14. Klimt was trained in the prevailing academic style, the dominant influence on his work until the mid-1890s. In his early years he painted many large-scale, naturalistic murals under public commission. The Austrian emperor financed his murals for the Vienna Burgtheater, completed in 1888, and he also executed a mural for the staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. During this time Klimt frequently worked in collaboration with his brother and with Franz Matsch. The works Idyll (1884), a composition of male, female, and child seminudes, and Love (1895), depicting two lovers about to kiss, still demonstrate the naturalistic influence in his work. In 1897, however, Klimt pursued a new direction in his art when he founded the Vienna Secession. The Secessionists were influenced by both the British Arts and Crafts and the Art Nouveau movements. They sought to
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elevate craftsmanship to the status of art, rejecting the academic style of painting and incorporating decorative elements into their work. Klimt’s Nuda Veritas (1899), Water Snakes (1904–1907), and many subsequent works treat allegorical, often mythological themes. The former depicts a nude woman holding the mirror of truth with a snake—symbolic of deception—at her feet. His allegorical murals for the University of Vienna auditorium ceiling, Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence (1900–1902), are controversial, erotic works. Medicine combines sensuous female nudes, a skeleton symbolic of death, and an elaborately dressed Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health. The depiction generated complaints of pornography and was also controversial because it emphasizes the failures of medicine rather than its accomplishments. Decorative elements are prominent in Klimt’s well-known Beethoven Frieze (1902), but he attained the height of his decorative phase with his work for the Stoclet House (1909–1911). The house, designed by the Secessionist architect JOSEF HOFFMANN, was commissioned by the Belgian coal magnate Adolphe Stoclet. Stoclet gave his home’s designers virtually unlimited finances to work with, and Klimt formed his resulting mosaics of precious stones, gold leaf, glass, enamel, coral, and other expensive materials. Klimt’s mosaic designs are flat, two-dimensional designs marked by their emphasis on decorative elements. Among his best-known works is The Kiss (1908), an erotic, mosaicstyle picture of a man and woman in embrace. He contributed a number of designs to Hoffmann’s interiors and also collaborated with Emilie Flo¨ge in the creation of clothing and fabric. (Flo¨ge, whose portrait he painted in 1902, was one of the numerous mistresses for whom he earned a reputation.)
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Also among Klimt’s works are numerous portraits of Viennese women, including Frau Fritza Riedler (1906), Frau Adele BlochBauer (1907), and Friederike-Maria Beer (1916). Again, the figures are two-dimensional, with emphasis on the skin and the clothing. He painted numerous landscapes, such as Unterach on the Attersee (1915), inspired by
the mountainous region of western Austria. Also among his works are many drawings, particularly of female nudes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hofmann, Werner, Gustav Klimt, 1972; Whitford, Frank, Gustav Klimt, 1995.
Kline, Franz (May 23, 1910-May 13, 1962) Painter merican artist Franz Kline is best known for his large black and white abstract compositions. He was interested in conveying emotion and created from energetic, spontaneous expression. From his early years as an illustrator and figurative painter, Kline developed a unique, non-representational style that would define him as a leading figure of the second Abstract Expressionist movement that emerged in the mid1940s in New York City. Kline was born in the coal-mining region of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1910. He was the second of four children born to immigrant parents. For six years after his father’s suicide when Kline was seven years old, he attended Girard College, a school for orphans and children of single-parent families who demonstrate financial need. As a teenager, while unable to maintain his position as captain of the football team due to an injury, Kline became interested in illustration and drew cartoons for his high school newspaper. He attended Boston University from 1931-1935 and continued his education at the Heatherley School of Art in London from 1937-1938. While in London, Franz met Elizabeth Parsons, a dancer, model, and fellow art student. Kline and Parsons were married upon moving to New York in December of 1938. After returning to the
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United States Kline struggled to gain attention as an artist, working mostly in landscapes and portraits. In 1940 he was commissioned, at five dollars apiece, to paint ten murals to adorn the walls of the Bleeker Street Tavern in Greenwich Village in New York. His paintings included vibrant, burlesque images of tavern characters, including seductive singers and dancers. In the early 1940s Kline’s work began to gain recognition and was included in several gallery shows in New York. In 1943, and again in 1944 Kline was awarded the S.J. Wallace Truman Prize by the National Academy of Design’s yearly exhibition. Suffering from depression and schizophrenia, his wife entered the Central Islip State Hospital for six months in 1946, and again in 1948, where she remained for twelve years. Following his wife’s initial hospitalization, Kline painted The Dancer for the American Legion Post 314, which is considered to be his first abstract work. Around the same time he began exploring different styles and created many small, calligraphic black and white brush sketches. Using a borrowed Bell Opticon projector, Kline experimented with enlarging these sketches onto the wall of his studio. His decision in 1949 to paint these images on large canvases rewarded him with widespread rec-
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ognition as a key member of the Abstract Expressionist movement that was gaining popularity at the time. To create this unique, bold, dramatic style, for which he was best known, Kline used black paint and an ordinary house painting brush. He worked with quick, thick brush strokes to create elegant lines and draw attention to the relationship between the black and white contrast on the canvas. In 1950 Kline’s Clockface was included in a selective exhibition at the Kootz Gallery, where one piece each by twenty-three different artists was exhibited. That same year he was granted his first solo exhibition at the Charles Egan Gallery in New York where he showed Wotan, Hoboken, Giselle, Clockface, Leda, Chief, High Street, Wyoming, The Drum, Nijinsky, and Cardinal. The show was an immediate success and further established Kline’s reputation as a leader of the emerging Abstract Expressionist art scene. He taught at the Black Mountain College in 1952, at the Pratt Institute in 1953, and participated in the “Abstract Art Around the World Today” forum hosted by the American Abstract Artists at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1954. Kline was granted solo shows at the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1954, and at the Janis Gallery in 1956. The latter exhibition included paintings with color, including Mycenae, and Yellow Orange and Purple. This transition to the include colors marks a trend that would continue in Kline’s work until his
death. Harley Red (1959-1960) and Blueberry Eyes (1959-1960) are good examples of this exploration of color. Kline’s work was shown as part of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1958. The show also traveled to eight cities in Europe, gaining Kline international acclaim. In 1959 his work was included in a Life article entitled “The Varied Art of Four Pioneers.” The following year he was awarded the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction Prize. At the age of 51, Kline died of a heart condition. Scudera, (1961) his final painting, was shown at the Janis Gallery as part of the “Ten American Painters” exhibition in 1962.
BIBLIOGRAPHY http://www.artchive.com/artchive/K/kline.html http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9045753/ Franz-Kline http://www.artnet.com/library/04/0468/T046894. asp http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/ bios/kline-bio.htm http://arthistory.about.com/cs/nameskk/p/franz_ kline.htm hackettfreedman.com/upload/Bios/FKline_bio.pdf http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache: HLpfGYx9YHwJ:hackettfreedman.com/upload/ Bios/FKline_bio.pdf+franz+klineæfe&hl=en& ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=safari) http://dsc.gc.cuny.edu/part/part9/modernism/ articles/josel.html
Kokoschka, Oskar (March 1, 1886–February 22, 1980) Painter, Playwright, Poet, Short-Story Writer he psychological portraits and landscapes of the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka are part of the German Expressionist movement in the early twentieth
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century. Aside from painting, for which he is most famous, Kokoschka wrote several plays that helped inaugurate Expressionism in the theater.
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Kokoschka was born in Po¨chlarn, Austria. His father, a talented goldsmith, could not support the family in an economy in which commercial production increasingly replaced the small craftsman. When Kokoschka was 3, his father moved the family to Vienna and made his living as a salesman. The family’s unhappy financial circumstances were further aggravated by the death of Kokoschka’s brother when Kokoschka was 5. Despite their poverty, Kokoschka acquired both his father’s love of literature and his mother’s love of nature. During his childhood and adolescence, he attended school in Vienna. Kokoschka’s first exposure to visual art came from his visits to museums and from the art that adorned the church his family attended. At the museums he developed an interest in masks, Japanese woodcuts, and Austrian baroque painters. At age 18, Kokoschka won a scholarship to study at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna, where he also taught. In 1908, Kokoschka met the Viennese architect ADOLF LOOS. Loos was very interested in his work and introduced Kokoschka to other artists and intellectuals, some of whom he subsequently painted. Throughout his painting career, Kokoschka was primarily concerned with the human form. Before World War I, he painted many works he called “black portraits,” in which he depicted people showing fear, discomfort, sadness, and insecurity. In his early work in general, he tailored color and form to express the psychological aspects of his subjects. Among the subjects of these portraits are the art historians Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat (1909), the actor depicted in The Trance Player (1907–1908), and the poet Peter Altenberg (1909). In 1909, Kokoschka traveled to Switzerland, where he continued painting portraits and began painting landscapes. Among the former is his portrait of the scholar Auguste Forel (1910), and among the latter is Winter Landscape, Dent du Midi (1909). In 1910, Kokoschka went to Berlin with Herwath Walden, to whose periodical Der Sturm (The
Storm) he contributed a number of sketches. The following year he began a three-year affair with Alma Mahler, the widow of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). She appears in several of his works, which began to show heavier outline and more fluid forms than his earlier portraits. They include Double Portrait (Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler) (1912) and The Tempest (1914). Kokoschka enlisted in the Austrian army in 1914, fought in World War I, and was severely wounded on the Russian front in 1916. He had written Expressionist plays prior to the war, including Murderer the Women’s Hope (1907) and Sphinx and Strohmann. Both were performed in Vienna and generated a scandal that cost him his teaching position at the School of Arts and Crafts. During his recovery from his wounds in Dresden, he wrote three plays, including Orpheus and Eurydice (1918). From 1919 to 1924, Kokoschka taught at the Dresden Academy. His most noteworthy paintings between the two world wars are his numerous landscapes reflecting his extensive travels in Europe and the Middle East, including Harbor of Marseilles (1925), Tower Bridge (1925–1936), London: Large Thames View (1926), and Jerusalem (1929–1930). Like his portraits, Kokoschka’s landscapes capture the human emotions associated with the subject, and they are characterized by his combination of light colors with heavy, broken brush strokes. In 1931 he again returned to Vienna, and in 1934 he moved to Prague, where he met his future wife Olda Palkovska. Kokoschka’s political paintings, many of which he completed during World War II, reflect his objection to the forms of totalitarianism that threatened Europe after World War I. The Nazis denounced Kokoschka’s art as “degenerate,” and he and his wife fled to London in 1938. There he painted a series of political works, including The Red Egg (1940–1941), Anschluss-Alice in Wonderland (1942), and What We Are Fighting For (1943). Kokoschka’s work was widely exhibited in Europe and the United States after World War
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II. In 1953 he settled in Switzerland. Among his later paintings are two three-part series on mythological themes, Prometheus Saga (1950) and Thermopylae (1954); View of Hamburg Harbor (1951); Delphi (1956); and Herodotus (1960–1963). Kokoschka’s other works include the short stories collected in A Sea Ringed with Visions (1956) and his autobiography, My Life (1964).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hodin, J. P., Oskar Kokoschka, the Artist and His Time: A Biographical Study, 1966; Kokoschka, Oskar, My Life, 1964; Whitford, Frank, Oskar Kokoschka, A Life, 1986.
Kollwitz, Ka ¨ the (July 8, 1867–April 22, 1945) Graphic Artist, Sculptor a¨the Schmidt Kollwitz began her career in the atmosphere of the Expressionist movement in Germany in the early twentieth century. After 1893, she abandoned the painting of her formative years and devoted herself to lithographs, woodcuts, drawings, and sculpting. The personal devastation of war and the plight of the urban poor form the major themes in her work. Kollwitz was born Ka¨the Schmidt into a middle-class family in Ko¨nigsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). Both of her parents were associated with the Latitudinarian Community, a movement that formed as a reaction against Calvinism. After studying briefly with the painter Gustav Naujok, Kollwitz studied drawing and painting at the Women’s Art College in Berlin, where she later taught, in 1885–1886. She began painting professionally in 1887, and in 1888–1889 she studied at the Women’s Art College in Munich. Her marriage to Dr. Karl Kollwitz in 1891 proved to be a significant influence on her life’s work. Dr. Kollwitz, a physician, practiced and lived with his family in a workingclass district in Berlin. The poor conditions around her and the sufferings of the people of the district moved his wife, and they began to
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figure prominently in her drawings. In 1893, Kollwitz attracted the attention of critics when she exhibited at the Free Berlin Art Exhibition. Shortly thereafter, she stopped painting and concentrated on graphic art, characterized by the use of bold, dark, and expressive lines. She completed her first major series, a collection of etchings entitled Weavers’ Revolt (1894–1898), for the playwright GERHART HAUPTMANN. The drawings of Weavers’ Revolt were shown successfully at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1898. The same year, she joined the Berlin Secession. Another of Kollwitz’s series, Peasants’ War (1902–1908), earned the Villa Romana Prize, enabling her to travel to Florence. She traveled elsewhere in Europe and visited the sculptor Auguste Rodin in France. In her lithographs and drawings, Kollwitz depicted the plight and conditions of the poor in expressive forms that carry intense emotion in series such as Pictures of Misery (1909). In addition to drawing, she began sculpting around 1910. The death of her son, Peter, in World War I was the strongest influence on her work for the remainder of her life. Series such as Seven Woodcuts on War (1924) and Parting and
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Death (1924) depict distraught mothers with dead children, as in “Mother and Dead Son,” and mothers trying to protect their children. Social themes also continued to appear in her work, including the series The Proletariat (1925), consisting of three woodcuts. Kollwitz, who had long had socialist leanings, visited the Soviet Union in 1927 but grew disillusioned with Soviet-style communism. She was the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts, where she served as head of the Master Studio for Graphic Arts from 1928 until her resignation from the Academy in 1933. That year saw the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, and, along with the work of many other artists, her work was declared “decadent” by the Nazis. She subsequently lost much of it when her home was bombed during the war. Her last major series of prints, Death, a collection of lithographs, was completed between 1934 and 1936.
Peter Kollwitz’s death inspired her bestknown sculptures, The Parents, rendered in granite and placed as a memorial in the Soldiers’ Cemetery Roggevelde in Flanders in 1932. Compounding the grief caused by the loss of her son during World War I was the loss of her grandson during World War II. Among her other works are many self-portraits and posters, which she began to publish in 1906. Her extensive diaries were published as The Diary and Letters of Kæthe Kollwitz in 1988.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Henz, Renate, ed., Ka¨the Kollwitz: Graphics, Posters, Drawings, 1981; Klein, Mina C., Ka¨the Kollwitz: Life in Art, 1972; Meckel, Christoph, et al., Ka¨the Kollwitz, 1967; Noun, Louise R., Three Berlin Artists of the Weimar Era: Hannah Ho¨ch, Ka¨the Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen, 1994.
Korda, Alexander (September 16, 1893–January 23, 1956) Director, Producer major founding figure in Hungarian cinema, Alexander Korda later worked in the film industries of Vienna, Berlin, and Hollywood before founding London Film Studios in England. His work was a major force in British cinema in the mid twentieth century. Known for his insistence on technical expertise and taste for lavish costume and set designs, he produced and/or directed nearly 150 films during his lifetime. Korda’s films helped launch the careers of many actors and actresses, including Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, and his second wife, Merle Oberon. Korda was born Sa´ndor Laszlo Kellner in Pusztatu´rpa´szto´, Hungary. His father was a former soldier and oversaw the family estate.
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Korda was a good student, entering a local Jewish school at the age of 5. (His two brothers, Zoltan and Vincent, later directed and contributed sets to his films.) Four years later he won a scholarship to secondary school. Several years after his father died in 1906, Korda moved to Budapest and got a job as a journalist, writing mostly reviews and crime stories. He adopted part of his pseudonym from the Catholic sursum corda, or “lift up your hearts.” After traveling to Paris in 1911, he got his first film job writing captions in 1912. Two years later he founded the film periodical Pesti Mozi (Budapest Cinema), which published in-depth film reviews. He codirected his first film, A becsapott u´jsa´gı´ro´ (The Duped Jour-
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nalist), in 1914. Korda was soon directing a succession of films for the large studio Corvin, eventually rising to the position of coowner. He remained there until 1919, when he went to Vienna and made four films between 1920 and 1922. He spent the next three years making films in Berlin. The Berlin films generated attention in Hollywood, and from 1927 to 1930 Korda lived in California and made several films, including The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927). He was to find his true calling, however, in England, where he founded London Film Productions in 1931. Dissatisfied with the state of British filmmaking, he brought in technical experts and modern equipment and enlisted writers such as GRAHAM GREENE and H. G. WELLS for his film scripts. The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) marked the beginning of a series of lavish films Korda produced and/or directed, followed by Catherine the Great (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935), Rembrandt (1936), The Ghost Goes West (1936), The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937), Elephant Boy (1937), and The Four Feathers (1938). Korda’s taste for extravagance in his films led him into financial trouble more than once, and in 1939 he lost his Denham Studios, where many of these films were produced. In 1940 he
made The Thief of Baghdad (1940), a fantasy film in Technicolor based on The Arabian Nights that also featured set designs by his brother Vincent. In 1941 Korda made That Hamilton Woman in Hollywood, a story about a woman who rises from poverty to become the mistress of Horatio Nelson, revered admiral of the British fleet in the early nineteenth century. Jungle Book (1942; based on the children’s classic by R UDYARD KIPLING) was again directed by Zoltan Korda and featured designs by Vincent Korda. He returned to England in 1942 and was awarded the first knighthood given to anyone in film. In London Korda resurrected London Film Productions, which produced such works as Anna Karenina (1948), CAROL REED’s The Third Man (1949) and Outcast of the Islands (1952), Seven Days to Noon (1950), The Sound Barrier (1952), and LAURENCE OLIVIER’s Richard III (1955).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kulik, Karol, Alexander Korda: The Man Who Could Work Miracles, 1975; Stockham, Martin, Korda Collection: Alexander Korda’s Film Classics, 1992; Tabori, Paul, Alexander Korda, 1966.
Koussevitzky, Serge (July 26, 1874–June 4, 1951) Conductor rained as a double-bass player, the Russian-born conductor Serge Alexandrovich Koussevitzky was known for the beauty of his orchestral tone and his ebullient and unconventional interpretations of modern as well as classical works. His long tenure at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, during which he conducted more than one
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hundred world premieres, was his most important conducting post. His efforts to promote the works of young French, Russian, and American composers helped launch many careers. Koussevitzky was born Sergei Aleksandrovich Kusevitsky into a poor family in Vyshny, Volochyok, Russia. His family was a musical
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one, and in his youth he learned to play the piano, the trumpet, and other instruments. As a teenager he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where, because there was a scholarship associated with the instrument, he mastered the double bass under Josef Rambusek. In 1894 Koussevitzky joined the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra as a double-bass player, and from 1901 to 1905 he was solo doublebass player in the orchestra. The year 1905 also marked the beginning of a series of solo performances that took him to a number of European cities. His own double-bass concerto (1905) was one of many pieces he composed and played himself. That year, too, he married Natalie Us hkkov, daughter of a wealthy tea merchant who financed his ambition to conduct. In the realm of conducting Koussevitzky was largely self-taught—he learned the technical aspects by observing Artur Nikisch and other conductors. With his father-in-law’s financial assistance, he hired the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1907 and with it made his conducting debut. After the well-received performance, he returned to Moscow (1909) and founded the Koussevitzsky Orchestra. Over the next several years he toured Russia with the orchestra. In an effort to take orchestral music to provincial towns, he, on several occasions, hired a steamboat to take his orchestra up the Volga River. Promoting the works of young contemporary composers was the primary focus of Koussevitzky’s efforts as a conductor—then and for the remainder of his career. To that end he founded the Russian Music Publishing house (1915), which published the works of SERGEI RACHMANINOFF, SERGEI PROKOFIEV, IGOR STRAVINSKY, Aleksandr Scriabin (1872–1915), and others.
After the 1917 revolution Koussevitzky briefly directed the State Symphony Orchestra in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). Unhappy with the new Soviet regime, he moved to Paris in 1920. There he conducted a series of concerts featuring new compositions by French composers and continued to promote the work of young Russian composers. In 1924 Koussevitzky began his long incumbency as conductor at the Boston Symphony orchestra. There he began to perform the works of American composers such as AARON COPLAND, Roy Harris, William Schuman, David Diamond, LEONARD BERNSTEIN, and Walter Piston, many of whose careers he launched. In that post Koussevitzky also commissioned what later became major works from other composers. For the orchestra’s fiftieth anniversary in 1930, he commissioned Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Arthur Honegger’s Symphony No. 1, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4, and PAUL HINDEMITH’s Konzertmusik op. 50. Koussevitzky was instrumental in founding the Berkshire Music Festival in 1936 as well as its outgrowth, the Berkshire Music Center (1940), which he directed for the remainder of his life. With the intent of assisting promising young composers and musicians, he engaged top musical talents as instructors—including his own former student Bernstein, who taught there between 1948 and 1955. In memory of his wife, who died in 1942, he founded the Koussevitzky Foundation (1943) to commission and promote new works, one of which was British composer BENJAMIN BRITTEN’s opera Peter Grimes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Smith, Moses, Koussevitzky, 1947.
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Kraus, Karl (April 28, 1874–June 12, 1936) Playwright, Poet, Journalist, Critic, Essayist, Editor nown for his boldly expressed opinions, gift of satire, and exact use of language, the Viennese writer Karl Kraus attacked major figures and institutions of his day through essays, plays, and his periodical Die Fackel in an effort to restore what he saw as lost precision in language in both journalism and literature. His other works include poetry and books of aphorisms. Kraus, of Jewish ancestry, was born in Gitschin, Bohemia, now Jic’in, Czech Republic. His father, a wealthy paper manufacturer, moved the family to Vienna, where Kraus was to spend the remainder of his life, in 1877. From 1884 to 1892 Kraus attended the FranzJosephs-Gymnasium. There and at the University of Vienna, where he studied law, philosophy, and literature, he was an average student and never took much interest in formal education. By 1892, Kraus was contributing satire and criticism to a number of periodicals in Vienna and elsewhere. He tried acting in 1893 but met with little success. Kraus directed his first major piece of characteristic satire, Die demolirte Literatur (1896; A Literature Demolished), toward the literary and intellectual elite of his day. Written as an obituary for the recently burned Cafe´ Griensteidl, it attacks the intellectual circles that met at the cafe´. His real success as a writer, however, came with Die Fackel (The Torch), a periodical he founded with his father’s assistance in 1899. Die Fackel was Kraus’s vehicle for attacking journalists, politicians, intellectuals, the middle class, and other figures of his day. He sought to expose corruption, dispose of sloppy and cliche´-ridden writing in the press, return precise language to literature, and preserve European cultural tradition. After 1910, Kraus was the journal’s only writer, and he continued to publish Die Fackel almost until
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his death in 1936. Weltgericht (1919; Last Judgment) collected some of his articles. In politics, Kraus was an ardent pacifist and a proponent of women’s rights. His essay Eine Kron fu¨r Zion (1898; A Crown for Zion) attacked the aims of Zionism and one of its main proponents, Theodor Herzl. The Austrian justice system was the target of his Sittlichkeit und Kriminalita¨t (1908; Morality and Criminality). World War I inspired a torrent of antiwar pieces from Kraus’s pen, including an address given in Berlin, In dieser grossen Zeiten (1914; In These Great Times). In 1932 he attended an international pacifist meeting in Amsterdam. Kraus did not maintain consistent religious loyalties—he renounced Judaism in 1899, was received into the Catholic Church in 1911, and angrily left the Church in 1923. Kraus waged literary war against specific enemies, past and present, including the poet Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), the press baron Imre Be´kessy, Alfred Kerr, Felix Salten (author of the story Bambi, which formed the basis of Disney’s classic children’s film), the police chief Johannes Schober, and the periodical Neue Freie Press. The pamphlet Heine und die Folgen (1910; Heine and the Consequences) identified Kraus’s central objection to Heine, whom he accused of fathering feuilletonistic writing. The feuilleton, which Kraus despised, was a portion of the paper that vendors could sell separately. It was devoted to gossip and informal discussion of political, artistic, and other events. When it came to language, Kraus was an extreme perfectionist, devoting hours to informing himself of details and fine-tuning his writing. The 1922 Untergang der Welt durch schwarze Magie (End of the World By Black Magic) also targeted the press.
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In the realm of literature, Kraus published aphorisms, poetry, and plays. His books of aphorisms include Spru¨che und Widerspru¨che (1909; Dicta and Contradictions) and Nachts (1919; At Night). His poetry, collected in the nine-volume Worte in Versen, 1916–30, is more introspective and contemplative than his other writings. Like his essays, his plays are often satirical and critical. Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (published 1922; The Last Days of Mankind) is an antiwar play often considered his masterpiece. He directed his operetta Literatur oder Man wird doch da sehn (Literature Or We Shall See About That) against literary Expressionism. His other plays include the oneact verse drama Traumstu¨ck (Dream Play); Wolkenkuckucksheim (1923; Cloudcuckooland), a verse play inspired by Aristophanes’s The Birds; and Die Unu¨berwindlichen (1928; The Unconquerable), a drama about Schober. Kraus also staged plays by the Austrian dra-
matist Johann Nestroy, whose work he helped revive with his Nestroy und die Nachwelt (1912; Nestroy and Posterity), and translated the works of William Shakespeare. If Kraus made enemies through his writing, he had many friends. He never married, but the main love of his life was the Baroness Sidonie Na´dherny, whom he met in 1913 and remained close to for the rest of his life. Also among his friends was the architect ADOLF LOOS, whose funeral oration he gave in 1933. He admired and helped promote the work of the ailing poet Peter Altenberg. His other works include Literatur und Lu¨ge (1929; Literature and Lies) and Die Sprache (1937; Language).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Timms, Edward, Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna, 1986; Zohn, Harry, Karl Kraus, 1971; Zohn, Harry, Karl Kraus and the Critics, 1997.
Kubrick, Stanley (July 26, 1928–March 7, 1999) Director, Producer, Screenplay Writer he American director Stanley Kubrick was known for his highly original and sometimes controversial films. Although not a prolific director, he was meticulous with his creations, which spanned genres from black comedy to the futuristic. Kubrick often directed, produced, and wrote the screenplays for his films. Among his most famous works are 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, and Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Kubrick was the first of two children and was born at the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, New York. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants. His father was a
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doctor, and his family was well-off. He was raised in the Bronx. As a youth, Kubrick developed several interests, which included chess, photography, and jazz. He attended William Howard Taft High School between 1941 and 1945, and, lacking interest in formal education, was poor student. While in high school, however, he spent a year as the school’s official photographer. Before he graduated, he sent a photograph of a newsstand after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death to Look magazine. He later worked for Look as a freelance photographer, then in 1946 became an apprentice photographer before securing a full-time position on the magazine’s staff. Kubrick worked for Look
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until 1950. Many of his early photos have been published in the 2005 book Stanley Kubrick: Drama and Shadows. On May 29, 1948, Kubrick married Toba Metz, his high school sweetheart. Their marriage was brief, and they divorced in 1951. Kubrick began to attend film screenings at the Museum of Modern Art and frequented movie theaters around New York City. He particularly admired the films of German director Max Ophu¨ls (1902–1957). Kubrick financed his own first film, a short documentary entitled Day of the Fight (1951) that was distributed by RKO. He soon quit his job at Look and began work on his second documentary—this time financed by RKO—Flying Padre (1951). It was followed by The Seafarers (1953), his first color film and a short promotional piece for the Seafarers’ International Union. The year 1953 also saw the release of his first feature film, Fear and Desire (1953). Financed by Kubrick’s family and friends, it tells a strange tale of a group of soldiers fighting behind enemy lines in a fictional war. Kubrick’s friend Howard Sackler (1929–1982), who later became a successful playwright, wrote the screenplay. Kubrick secured showings of the film shown in New York art houses, and it attracted notice from critics. In 1952, Kubrick met his second wife, the Austrian-born theatrical designer Ruth Sobotka. They lived together in East Village until 1955, when they married and moved to Hollywood. His next film, Killer’s Kiss (1954), was a short film about a young heavyweight boxer who tries to protect a nightclub dancer from her mobster boss. It was followed by The Killing (1956), a film in which protagonist Johnny Clay formulates a plan to make two million dollars off of a scheme to rob a racetrack. However, the machinations of Sherry Peatty, the wife of a teller involved in the scheme, complicate his plan. Kirk Douglas (1916– ) starred as Colonel Dax in the antiwar film Paths of Glory (1957). Dax received orders from his inept superiors in the French military to undertake what is es-
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sentially a suicide mission for his troops. After the failed attack, Dax takes on the difficult task of defending three innocent soldiers the generals have ordered arrested to cover up their own blunder. Spartacus, a story about gladiator and slave who instigated an slave uprising in ancient Rome, followed in 1960. Kubrick stirred up controversy with Lolita (1962), based on a novel by Vladimir Nabokov MASON (1899–1977). Starring JAMES (1909–1984), Peter Sellers (1925–1980), and Shelley Winters (1920–2006), it tells the story of Humbert Humbert’s (played by Mason) obsession with the young daughter of his fiance´e, played by the then fourteen-year-old Sue Lyon (1946– ). Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a Cold War era black comedy about a group of war-hungry military men who plan a nuclear apocalypse. Sellers played three different roles in the film, including the enigmatic, insane, and wheelchair-bound nuclear scientist Dr. Strangelove. The film is peppered with black humor, from characters’ names such as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper to ironyfilled lines like “You can’t fight in here! This is the war room.” Although it was nominated for four Academy Awards, the film lost out on all of them. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was futuristic film in which a domineering computer, the HAL-9000, takes dictatorial control of a spaceship as it travels toward its Jupiter-bound mission to find a monolith. The name HAL was coined from the terms “heuristic” and “algorithmic.” HAL does not betray his insanity in his calm, cool male voice, but rather in his words. The story spans from the dawn of mankind to a futuristic world of space colonies, and the film was shot with a single camera with a special lens to widen the image. 2001: A Space Odyssey won Kubrick his only Academy Award (though throughout the course of his career he was nominated for thirteen), for Special Visual Effects in 1968. The sexually explicit and violent A Clockwork Orange (1971), for which Kubrick had
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to make concessions to get the rating changed from X to R, again stirred controversy. Based on the novel by ANTHONY BURGESS, it graphically recounts the brutal exploits of Alex de Large and his thuggish gang of friends (droogs), who spend their nights brutalizing people and raping women. The boys converse in a fictional language derived from Russian slang called nasdat that Burgess invented. Eventually incarcerated, Alex becomes part of a government-sponsored experimental program to render him physically sick when he entertains thoughts of violence. Kubrick based the film on the American version of the book that omits Burgess’s final chapter, in which a mature Alex simply grows out of his violent obsessions. Kubrick’s Alex, however, emerges from treatment unreformed and with the same violent instincts that landed him in prison. Kubrick filmed A Clockwork Orange on a fairly limited budget, employing tight tracking shots using a wheelchair and natural lighting. The film sparked a scandal and incidents of violence in England, where it was banned from being shown between 1974 and 2000. Despite the controversy it spurred, the New York Film Critics named the film Best Film of 1971 and Kubrick Best Director. Like Dr. Strangelove, it earned four Academy Award nominations but won none of them. Barry Lyndon (1975), based on a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863), was shot entirely on location in various places around Europe. Kubrick again aimed for natural lighting in the form of sunlight and candlelight, which required special lenses and cameras developed by NASA and Cinema
Products Corporation. The story recounts the struggle of an Irishman with no prospects who rises to nobility in eighteenth-century England. A bizarre story of murder and insanity, The Shining (1980) was based on STEPHEN KING’S novel of the same title and starred Jack Nicholson (1937– ) as the crazed Jack Torrance. Torrance comes to the Overlook Hotel in its off-season to look after it with his wife and son, but the family presence there is soon thrown into chaos by his son’s strange visions and the hotel haunted by ghosts. Full Metal Jacket (1987), a title that refers to a bullet encased in a copper jacket, was a Vietnam War saga. Kubrick’s final film was the psychosexual, image-rich Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring Tom Cruise (1962– ) as Dr. William Hartford. Hartford engages in an erotic foray that threatens his marriage to his wife, played by Nicole Kidman (1967– ). Kidman’s character is forced to admit to her own sexual desires, and the couple moves on to new discoveries about themselves. Kubrick died in his sleep just after completing Eyes Wide Shut. In 1997, the Directors Guild of America awarded him the D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ciment, Michael, Kubrick, 1982; Herr, Michael, Kubrick, 2000; LoBrutto, Vincent, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, 1997; Nelson, Thomas Allen, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze, 1982; Raphael, Frederic, Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut, 1999; Walker, Alexander, Stanley Kubrick: Director, 1999; kubrickfilms.warnerbros.com.
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Kundera, Milan (April 1, 1929– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Poet, Playwright, Teacher, Essayist he Czech-born writer Milan Kundera, author of the novels The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, began his writing career in Communist-run Czechoslovakia. After his expulsion from the Communist Party and the banning of his works in his native country, he emigrated to France and continued to write novels, gaining increasing international acclaim. Kundera was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. From his father, the concert pianist Ludvik Kundera, he acquired an interest in music. Kundera studied musicology at Charles University in Prague and took classes from the Film Faculty of the Prague Academy of Art. Having studied the twelve-tone system of composition developed by the Austrian composer ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, he composed a number of works before he decided on writing. At this time, Kundera’s other main interest was the Communist Party, which he joined in 1947 and from which he was expelled in 1950. He was reinstated in 1956 and expelled again in 1970, in part for his participation in the Fourth Czech Writers’ Congress in 1967. Clovek Zahrada Sira (Man: A Broad Garden), published in 1953, was the first of his volumes of poetry published during the 1950s, followed by Posledni Maj (1955; The Last May) and Monology (1957; Monologues). From 1958 to 1969 he taught film at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. His The Art of the Novel, a study of the Czech novelist Vladislav Vancura not to be confused with a later volume bearing the same title, was published in 1960. From the outset of his writing career, Kundera embraced modernist and avantgarde trends in literature. Flashbacks, interior monologues, and the use of multiple narrators are common devices in his work. Particularly in his early novels, several of his characters embark on personal quests against a back-
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drop of chaotic political events. Kundera’s musical training, which included not only his studies of the twelve-tone system but an interest in jazz, is often cited as an influence on the structure of his writing. He wrote his early novels in the Czech language, later began to write in French, and has often been involved in the translations of his works. In 1963, Kundera became a member of the editorial board for the literary journal Literarni noviny. During that decade he began to write fiction in earnest. Sme`s?ne´ la´sky (1963–1968; Laughable Loves), a collection of short stories, appeared in 1963. Its “The Hitchhiking Game” is one of many of his erotic stories. The two main characters, a couple, engage in a game that triggers a sexual awakening in the woman, who has previously been shy. The game leaves both unsure of the division between fiction and reality. Two additional volumes of Laughable Loves followed in 1965 and 1968. Kundera’s first novel, Zert (1967; The Joke), won the Czechoslovak Writers Union Prize and established him as an international writer. The reader learns the story of the protagonist, Ludvik Jahn, through the eyes of several narrators. Jahn is expelled from the Communist Party after sending a postcard to his girlfriend containing parodies of Marxist slogans and a statement of support for the exiled and murdered Leon Trotsky. Thorough humiliation follows—Jahn is expelled from the university, labeled a “Trotskyite,” and called to the military for back-breaking work. He seeks redemption from the absurdity of these events through his relationships with women. The Joke was followed by Zivot je jinde (1974; Life Is Elsewhere). Kundera himself was ejected from the Communist Party in 1970, fired from his teaching position, and forbidden to publish his work. After living off of his wife’s earnings
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teaching English for several years, they emigrated to France. There, Kundera taught comparative literature at the University of Rennes from 1975 to 1978 and later taught at the E´cole des Hautes E´tudes in Paris. The Czech authorities deprived him of his citizenship in 1978, and he became a French citizen in 1981. His novels of the 1970s include Valcı´k na rozloucenou (1976; translated in English as The Farewell Party) and Kniha smı´chu a zapomnenı´ (1979; The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). Nes nesitelna´ lehkost byti (1984; The Unbearable Lightness of Being) was the basis for a successful film in 1988. The story unfolds in the climate of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and its protagonist is a young physician drawn into a series of erotic escapades. With Nesmrtelnost (1990; Immortality), Kundera creates a series of characters preoccupied with immortality and interweaves his fictional characters with historical figures, including Beethoven and Goethe. In La Lenteur (1995; Slowness), he contrasts the slow, contemplative spirit of the eighteenth century with the modern spirit of “forgetfulness” and “speed.” The principal characters in Identity (1998), the middle-aged Chantal and her younger lover Jean-Marc, both suffer from uncertainty
about who the other really is. In L’Ignorance (2000; Ignorance), a Czech woman who has lived abroad in France for two decades returns home to her native land to face both an old romantic partner and a homeland that no longer offers a sense of familiarity. Among Kundera’s other works are the second The Art of the Novel (1986), winner of the Acade´mie franc¸aise prize; Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts (1995), also relating his ideas on artists and the creation of art; the seven-part essay Le Rideau (2005; The Curtain; and the plays Majitele´ Klı´cu (1962; The Keepers of the Keys), Ptakovina (A Farce) (1969), and Jacques and His Master: An Homage to Diderot in Three Acts (1971). He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1983, became a member of the American Academy of Art in 1986, and has won numerous awards, including the Nelly Sachs Prize in 1987 and the Herder Prize in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Banerjee, Maria Nemcova´, Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera, 1990; Bloom, Harold, ed., Milan Kundera, 2003; Le Grand, Eva, Kundera, Or, The Memory of Desire, 1999; Misurella, Fred, Understanding Milan Kundera, 1993.
Kurosawa, Akira (March 23, 1910–September 6, 1998) Director he Japanese motion picture director Akira Kurosawa, noted for strong character portrayals, epic samurai films, and his blend of Japanese and western cinema styles, was the most internationally
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renowned Japanese director and was responsible for introducing Japanese productions to world cinema. Kurosawa was born in Tokyo, the youngest of seven children. His father was a stern teacher and former military man, and he was well known for shaping young athletes. Kuro-
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Akira Kurosawa (쑖 Fujifotos / The Image Works)
sawa was never inclined to athletics as a youth, however. He enrolled in the Doshusha School of Western Painting and planned to pursue a career in painting, but his poor economic circumstances hampered his ambition. His elder brother Heigo was a film commentator and, before his suicide, a significant influence on Kurosawa. In 1936 Kurosawa began his career in cinema. He became an assistant director at the P.C.L. Cinema studio and worked under the Japanese director Yamamoto Kajiro, noted for his films about World War II. Kurosawa’s natural talent for writing scenarios quickly became evident to Yamamoto and others. In 1943 he attained the position of director and completed his first film, Sanshiro Sugata, about the growth and development of a Japanese judo student. A sequel followed in 1945. The following year saw the release of his second film, The Most Beautiful, a documentary-like story of Japanese girls who work in an optics factory during wartime. Kurosawa
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married the lead actress in the movie, Yaguchi Yoko, by whom he had a son and a daughter. His third film, They Who Step on the Tiger’s Tail, was shot in 1945; it borrowed its story and style from Kabuki and No theater, traditional forms of Japanese drama. In No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), an accused spy is arrested and eventually executed for espionage during the war. After the execution, his lover abandons her life in Tokyo, takes his remains to his family in the country, and stays on to work in the rice fields. Drunken Angel (1948) was the first film to bring Kurosawa international fame. Set in the ruins and corruption of a postwar Japanese city, the story portrays the stormy relationship between a gangster who goes to an alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura) to have a bullet removed from his hand. The doctor diagnoses him with tuberculosis, and their quarrels eventually end in the gangster’s death. Drunken Angel was the first film to star Toshiro Mifune (as the gangster), the powerful actor who appeared in almost all of Kurosawa’s subsequent productions. Rashomon (1950) won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, the first time a Japanese director had received the prize. The film is adapted from two stories by Ryu Nosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and In a Grove, and relates completely different versions of the rape of a woman and the murder of her husband through the eyes of four different people—a man, his wife, a bandit, and a woodcutter. Ikiru (1952) portrays a terminally ill bureaucrat who searches for meaning in a life that he knows will soon end. At first he is unsuccessful in his resolve; he experiences alienation from his son and drowns himself in unfulfilling sensual pleasures. Finally, he finds fulfillment after immersing himself in building a playground in a slum. Seven Samurai (1954), an entertaining period film, proved to be Kurosawa’s most popular production; it effectively combines elements of the classic American western with the Japanese tradition of tales of the samurai, the professional warriors of Japan’s feudal
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age. The fast paced action takes place in a small village bracing itself for an annual invasion of bandits. The villagers engage seven samurai to help them defend their people and farms. After losing four of their own, the samurai bring about the final defeat of the bandits. In Record of a Living Being (1955), a dentist and volunteer in family court, Harada, is called in to help preside over a dispute between a man who wants to move to South America and his family members who refuse to go. The man’s desire to leave stems from his intense fear that Japan will soon experience an atomic holocaust, and he initially fails to convince either his family or the court to decide in his favor. After the official decision against him, his family begins to warm to the idea in response to his pleading, and the court officials who handed down the judgment harbor some feelings of guilt. However, the man eventually ends up in a mental institution, yet is portrayed as perhaps more sane than those who refused to listen to him. Kurosawa also adapted European literature into films, including The Idiot (1951), based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book of the same title; The Throne of Blood (1957), based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and The Lower Depths (1957) based on MAXIM GORKY’S play of the same title. The Hidden Fortress (1958), set during the civil wars of the sixteenth century, depicts a Japanese princess trying to cross enemy territory into safety. In 1960 Kurosawa began to produce films for his own company, Kurosa-
wa Productions. Its first film was The Bad Sleep Well (1960), a cinematic portrayal of rampant corruption in the ranks of a government housing corporation. Kurosawa’s other films of the 1960s include Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), High and Low (1963), and Red Beard (1965). In the 1960s and early 1970s, Kurosawa experienced difficulties financing his films and worked on several failed projects with Hollywood producers. Dodes’-ka-den (1970), a humorous look at urban poverty, was his first color film. Following its commercial failure, Kurosawa attempted suicide. He subsequently filmed Dersu Uzala (1975) in Siberia at the invitation of the Soviet Union. The story depicts the relationship between a Siberian hermit and a Russian surveyor. The samurai epic Ran (1985), based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, became a commercial success. Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990) is a visually striking compilation of eight distinct episodes. The same year Kurosawa received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. His films after 1990 include Rhapsody in August (1991) and No, Not Yet (1993); and his other productions include The Quiet Duel (1949), Stray Dog (1949), Scandal (1950), One Wonderful Sunday (1947), and Kagemusha (1980).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kurosawa, Akira, Something Like an Autobiography, 1982; Richie, Donald, The Films of Akira Kurosawa, 1965.
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Kushner, Tony (July 16, 1956– ) Playwright alented contemporary American playwright Tony Kushner burst into world consciousness in 1992 with his dramatic epic Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. The award-winning piece, in two parts, focuses on the early years of the AIDS epidemic as they unfolded during the 1980s. This type of significant historical backdrop is not uncommon in Kushner’s work, as he allows his characters to confront their personal situations against the challenges of their times. Kushner was born the second of three children in New York City to classically trained musicians William and Sylvia Deutscher Kushner, who named him after singer Tony Bennett. His mother was one of America’s first women to hold a principal chair in a major orchestra, which was, at age 18, as a bassoonist in the New York City Opera. He grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where his family moved so his father could run a family lumber business. He returned to New York for college at Columbia University where he earned a B.A. in English literature in 1978, and continued his education by earning a master’s of fine arts in directing at New York University. He earned a directing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1985, and also helped to found a theater company called 3P Productions, for poetry, politics and popcorn. The troupe went on to be called the Heat and Light Company, and produced his first play, A Bright Room Called Day in 1987, which has since been revised as it shows how a group of friends in Germany falls apart under the pressure of Hitler’s rise. A politically minded Jewish gay man who came of age as an adult amid the unfolding AIDS epidemic, Kushner’s keen, empathetic understanding of that era is apparent in Angels in America. Part One, called Millennium Approaches and Part Two, called Perestroika,
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together create a performance of six to seven hours. Set in 1985 and 1986 in New York City, the play exposes the hypocrisy and the ugly pain that the era’s denial of the new epidemic wrought. The scope is sweeping: actors are cast in more than one role, and characters are caught in the undertow of their own capacity to deal with seismic change. Prior Walter, who has AIDS, watches as his lover, Louis, leaves him, unable to deal with the new menace. Rising attorney Joe Pitt, a Mormon, struggles to repress his homosexuality even as his professional star rises—and his wife finds escape in addiction. Also appearing is a fictional Roy M. Cohn, the real-life attorney who not only worked for communist hunter Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, but is deeply closeted, and died from AIDS in 1986. Part One ends with an angel crashing through the ceiling, part of the play’s fantastical elements. Millennium Approaches won the Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. Perestroika was staged a year later and won a Tony. It has since been made into an HBO film directed by Mike Nichols. Kushner’s plays are often called political. He has been quoted as saying that instead of political theater, it is more useful to consider the theater as presenting the world in its reality, an interwoven web of personal and private. His Homebody/Kabul, set in 1998 in London and Kabul, takes place around the time the United States bombed Afghan terror camps in response to the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa. Caroline, or Change, is a musical spotlighting the civil rights era in Kushner’s Louisiana in the person of a maid named Caroline. Said John Lahr in The New Yorker on December 8, 2003: “There are moments in the history of theatre when stagecraft takes a new turn. I like to think that this happened for the American musical last
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week, when Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change (at the Public), a collaboration with the composer Jeanine Tesori and the director George C. Wolfe, bushwhacked a path beyond the narrative dead end of the deconstructed, overfreighted musicals of the past thirty years.” Kushner’s homosexuality also gives rise to comparisons to TENNESSEE WILLIAMS—a playwright Kushner clearly admires greatly. Perhaps the strongest comparisons between the two come from the critic who describes how the both bring lyricism to their work, how their sexual orientation informs their work, and how both write about characters caught between an old and a new world. Kushner has produced numerous other plays and works, including the screenplay to STEVEN SPIELBERG’s Munich and a collaboration with illustrator MAURICE SENDAK for a children’s book called Brundibar. He is the subject of a documentary called Wrestling
with Angels and has won numerous awards in addition to his Pulitzer, including two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Emmy Award, and an Oscar nomination. He lives in New York City with his husband, Mark Harris. BIBLIOGRAPHY Berney, K.A. and Templeton, N.G., Contemporary American Dramatists, 1994; Bloom, Harold, Modern American Drama, 2005; Bryer, Jackson R. and Hartig, Mary C., Facts on File Companion to American Drama, 2003; Fisher, James, The Theater of Tony Kushner, 2002; Vorlicky, Robert, Tony Kushner in Conversation, 1998; The New Yorker: “America, Lost and Found,” by Nancy Franklin, Dec. 8, 2003, and “Underwater Blues,” by John Lahr, Dec. 8, 2003. www.barclayagency.com. www.bedfordstmartins.com. www.pulitzer.org. www.tonyawards.com. www.wrestlingwithangelsthemovie.com.
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Larkin, Philip (August 9, 1922–December 2, 1985) Novelist, Poet, Critic, Essayist espite Philip Arthur Larkin’s relatively meager literary output, which began in 1940 with the publication of his first poem, he established himself during the 1950s as the leading poet of what was later called “the Movement” with his volume The Less Deceived. Larkin also wrote two novels, jazz criticism, and essays. Larkin was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England. He was an average student at the King Henry VIII School in Coventry, where he studied from 1930 to 1940. From his father, the city treasurer, he acquired a love of reading, and he began to write at a young age. Larkin entered St. John’s College, Oxford, in 1940 and, having failed the physical examination for military service, graduated with a B.A. in English in 1943. His first published poem, “Ultimatium,” appeared in the Listener in 1940. At Oxford Larkin met KINGSLEY AMIS and JOHN WAIN, the former of whom became a good friend. Several Larkin poems appeared in the 1944 volume Poetry in Wartime from Oxford, and the following year he published his first volume, The North Ship. The romantic poems in this volume are not representative of his later verse. It was followed by XX Poems (1950), dedicated to Amis and published at Larkin’s own expense. Upon his graduation from Oxford, Larkin decided to pursue a career as a librarian. In 1950, he took a position at Queen’s University in Belfast, and in 1955 he accepted a librarian’s post at the University of Hull, Yorkshire. That same year saw the publication of his most critically acclaimed volume of verse, The Less Deceived (1955), which helped establish him as the leader of the loosely associated group of poets critics dubbed “the Movement.” The label first appeared the following year, when Larkin’s poetry was printed with that of others in the anthology New Lines.
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Among the other poets seen as belonging to this group were Amis, Wain, and ELIZABETH JENNINGS. The Movement poets wrote in plainspoken, unromantic language. Larkin’s poetry is rendered in traditional forms with distinctly British imagery. He preferred people in action, at events, or at work over natural imagery. Personal poems rife with self-analysis in love and work also recur in Larkin’s work, as does verse that expresses his religious doubt. “Church Going,” one of his often anthologized poems, combines personal agnosticism with respect for the way traditional religion has given meaning to human life with its rituals. His two later volumes of poetry, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, were published in 1964 and 1974. Two novels also belong to Larkin’s body of work. Unlike Amis and Wain, he did not create the rebellious antiheroes that earned them the “Angry Young Men” label. His two main characters are isolated from their surroundings in one way or another, but they are not really rebels. John Kemp, the timid protagonist of his first novel, Jill (1946), is a firstyear student at Oxford sharing living quarters with the rich and obnoxious Christopher Warner. Warner takes advantage of the weaker Kemp at every step, and after Kemp becomes aware of Warner’s opinion of him as a weakling, he determines to change his opinion. Kemp invents a sister named Jill and writes letters from her, an occupation that becomes an obsession. One day he spots a girl he believes resembles his fictional Jill, and he expends a great deal of effort trying to find out who she is. As fate would have it, the girl, Gillian, turns out to be the cousin of Warner’s friend. The bombing of his hometown during the war interrupts Kemp’s fantasy, and by the end of the novel he has succeeded in ridding
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himself of the need for Warner’s attention, but not of his Jill illusion. Katherine Lind, protagonist of A Girl in Winter (1947), is also isolated, but more willingly so until she sorts out her confusion. On a winter’s day, Katherine, a foreigner and a war refugee, is awaiting with some anxiety a meeting with her old pen pal, Robin Fennel. An insensitive boss dominates her unpleasant job, and after a series of confusing complications in the day, Robin appears at her home. The novel concerns her successful attempt to sort out her confusion. Larkin shared with his acquaintance Wain an enthusiasm for jazz, and he was a jazz crit-
ic for The Daily Telegraph from 1961 to 1971. Many of his writings from this period later appeared in All What Jazz: A Record Diary, 1961–68 (1970). Larkin also edited the Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973) and published the essay collection Required Writing (1982).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Booth, James, Philip Larkin, Writer, 1992; Day, Roger, Larkin, 1987; Lerner, Laurence, Philip Larkin, 1997; Martin, Bruce, Philip Larkin, 1978; Rossen, Janice, Philip Larkin: His Life’s Work, 1989; Swarbrick, Andrew, Out of Reach: The Poetry of Philip Larkin, 1995.
Lawrence, D. H. (September 11, 1885–March 2, 1930) Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Short-Story Writer n novels such as Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, David Herbert Lawrence explored matters of human sexuality more openly than was generally permitted during his time. Although his novels are his most widely read works, his body of writing also includes a number of poetry collections, plays, and nonfiction works. His discontent with modern civilization and his search for a more natural, spontaneous way of life were expressed with such power in all his works that he has had great influence on the literature, thought, and life of the rest of the twentieth century. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father an uneducated coal miner. The difference in their social classes is a theme that recurs frequently in his later writing. After receiving a scholarship, Lawrence enrolled in Nottingham High School. When he was 16 he began working as a factory clerk until pneumonia forced him to quit.
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At nearby Haggs Farm, Lawrence established what was to be a difficult relationship with Jessie Chambers. He attended University College in Nottingham from 1906 to 1908 and earned a teaching certificate. Lawrence’s first story appeared in a newspaper in 1907, and the following year he moved to a London suburb. FORD MADOX FORD, editor of the English Review, liked and published his poetry, giving Lawrence his first significant literary success. By then Lawrence had already begun work on his first novel, The White Peacock, published in 1911. Along with its successor, The Trespasser (1912), the novel introduced the theme of frustrated sexual relationships between men and women that dominates much of Lawrence’s work. Helena, the main character of The Trespasser, is portrayed as cold because she shows more interest in matters of the spirit than in passionate sexual relations. Such a woman, Lawrence thought, denies the fulfillment of an essential need in men. In 1912 Lawrence fell in love with Frieda Weekley, the wife of his former professor, and eloped with her. After their marriage in 1914, their relationship, though enduring, was stormy and quarrelsome. She inspired many of the passionate poems collected in Look! We Have Come Through! (1917). Lawrence wrote the heavily autobiographical Sons and Lovers (1913) in Italy. He explored the dynamics of love and sexual relations between men and women using characters that bear strong resemblances to those he grew up with. The father of the family is an alcoholic miner, while the mother is strongwilled and of a higher social class. The story centers on Paul Morel, modeled on Lawrence, who has an affair with Miriam Levers (based on Jessie Chambers). Paul’s mother is a dominant figure who holds her sons in bondage by demanding too much love from them. Sexual relations between Paul and Miriam fail because the latter bears too much resemblance to his mother, who still possesses a strong hold on him. Paul ends the relationship with Miriam and has a passionate affair with Clara
Dawes, who is married to Baxter Dawes. Clara, too, resembles Paul’s mother, as Baxter resembles his father. The relationship with Clara fails, but after much emotional torment Paul finally succeeds in throwing off the bonds his mother has placed on him. The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1921) are two separate novels initially begun as one study of a family of farmers, the Brangwens. The story in The Rainbow begins with the marriage of Tom and Lydia Brangwen, a couple closely tied to the land they farm. The tempestuous relationship between their daughter, Anna, and a cousin, Will Brangwen, settles down into a comfortable, routine marriage. Their daughter, Ursula, becomes involved in an ultimately unsuccessful relationship with a soldier, Anton Skrebensky. Ursula miscarries their child, and her life is left in shambles as World War I looms. Women in Love picks up with Ursula and her sister, Gudrun, after the war. Both are teachers, but Ursula, though a strong figure, is more restrained than her free-spirited sister. Ursula marries Rupert Birkin, an inspector and an intellectual, while Gudrun falls in love with a cold-hearted and insecure industrialist, Gerald Crich. (Gudrun and Gerald are loosely based on Katherine and John Murry, friends of the Lawrences.) Gudrun’s relationship turns violent and ends in Gerald’s death. The story ends with the more stable Ursula and her husband moving to Italy. Aside from the dynamic sexual conflicts always present in Lawrence’s novels, these two works examine the changes a family endures through the Industrial Revolution and a world war. Lawrence and his wife suffered hardship during World War I on account of his pacifism and her German ancestry. Authorities forced them from their home and accused them of communicating to German submarines. They moved to Italy in 1919 and to the United States in 1921. His novels from this period include The Lost Girl (1920) and Aaron’s Rod (1922). Lawrence also completed a number of nonfiction works in the early 1920s, including Studies in Classic American Literature
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(1923), Movements in European History (1921), Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921), and Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922). Postwar politics became the theme of two of his next major novels, Kangaroo (1923) and The Plumed Serpent (1926). In Kangaroo Richard Lovat Somers, an English writer, is visiting Australia with his wife. A neighbor who belongs to a Fascist military organization tries to recruit him into its ranks. Somers eventually finds himself in a vacuum between the Fascist organization and a competing socialist group, which also tries to recruit him. The story ends with his rejection of both. The Plumed Serpent (1926) was written shortly after the murder of the Mexican leader Pancho Villa. In the story, a Mexican general establishes a theocratic dictatorship based on ancient Aztec religion. For Lawrence such a scenario was at first a viable alternative to the unstable political climate in Mexico during that time, but the leaders of the state in his story turn out to be no less ruthless than the socialist leaders he despised. Lawrence returned to Italy in 1925 and began writing Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1926. The story is a sympathetic portrayal of Lady Chatterley’s sexual relationship with her husband’s gamekeeper, who is below her social status. Her husband, paralyzed by a war
wound, seems to embody the sterility of civilized life, especially among the upper and middle classes and the intellectual elite, whereas the gamekeeper still has the vigor of a more natural life. Because of its explicit sexual passages, the book was banned in the United States and England until nearly thirty years after Lawrence’s death. After moving to France, Lawrence wrote Apocalypse (published posthumously in 1931), in which he used the apocalyptic symbolism of the Book of Revelation to frame his own view of religion. Lawrence died in a sanatorium in the south of France of the tuberculosis that had threatened him since his youth. Lawrence’s other works include the short stories collected in The Prussian Officer, England My England, and Other Stories (1922), The Woman Who Rode Away, and Other Stories (1928), and Love Among the Haystacks and Other Pieces (1930); the poetry collections Pansies (1929), Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), and Last Poems (1932); the plays The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (1914), and The Daughter-in-Law (1936); and the travel book Sea and Sardinia (1921).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Meyers, Jeffrey, D. H. Lawrence: A Biography, 1990; Sagar, Keith M., The Life of D. H. Lawrence: An Illustrated Biography, 1980.
Laxness, Halldo ´r (April 23, 1902–February 8, 1998) Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Translator is country’s leading twentieth-century novelist, Halldo´r Laxness probed both the contemporary social problems of Iceland and the island’s history. Citing “his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland,” the
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Nobel Prize committee awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955. His work gained international attention and attained popularity particularly in Iceland and the former Soviet-bloc countries.
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Laxness was the son of a road construction foreman, born Halldo´r Gudjo´nsson in Reykjavı´k, Iceland. When he was a child his family moved to Laxnes, a farm outside of Reykjavı´k from which he adopted his name. Laxness cared little for farm life and as a young child began to write poetry. He studied at the high school in Reykjavı´k until 1919, when his father died. That year he began his extensive travels in Europe and wrote his first novel, Barn na´ttu´runnar (Child of Nature). The 1920s were a period of travel and searching for Laxness. After a brief stay at a Benedictine monastery in Luxembourg in 1922–1923, he converted to Catholicism. While there he published the short stories collected in Nokkrar so¨gur (1923; Some Stories). Laxness’s stay at the monastery also produced the apologetic work Kabo´lsk viahorf (1924; From a Catholic Point of View). The novel Undir Helgahnu´k (Under the Holy Mountain), published in 1924, relates the story of the childhood of the sensitive and philosophical boy Atli Kjartansson and alludes to traditional Icelandic stories. As a novelist, Laxness scored his first major success with Vefarinn mikli fra´ Kasmı´r (1927; The Great Weaver from Kashmir), which depicts the inner struggles of the young, artistically inclined, and emotionally imbalanced Steinn Ellai. The work marked Laxness’s break with Christianity, which was followed by an increasing concern with social and political issues. After absorbing the ideas of the Surrealists in France, Laxness went to the United States in 1927 and remained there until 1930. His philosophy became increasingly socialistic, and he befriended the American writer Upton Sinclair. The volume Althy’dubo´kin (1929; The Book of People) dates from his stay in the United States and is a collection of satiric essays on a myriad of social and cultural issues viewed from a Marxist standpoint. Having worn out his welcome with the American authorities, Laxness returned to Iceland in 1930. The same year he published a volume of experimental poetry, Kvæaakver
(Poems), and married Inga Einarsdo´ttir. Laxness devoted the next decade to literary analysis of social conditions in Iceland. The first of these efforts was Salka Valka (1931–1932), a two-part novel about the tragic life of a young girl who grows up in an atmosphere of familial violence in a fishing village she has arrived at by chance. Sexually abused by her mother’s lover and eventually orphaned, she rebels both against him and against the control of the area’s fishing by a powerful merchant. Sja´lfstætt fo´lk (1934–1935; Independent People) tells the story of the sheep farmer Bjartur, who buys Winterhouses, a small plot of land, from his employer of eighteen years. Hoping for a better future with his new independence, he renames his home Summerhouses, but tragedy hits almost immediately and marks the beginning of a new sequence of difficult struggles. Heimsljo´s (1937–1940; World Light) is a four-volume treatment of the poor poet O´lafur Ka´rason, based on the life of poet Magnu´s Hjaltason. The trilogy I´slandsklukkan (1943–1946; Iceland’s Bell) turned from contemporary Iceland to the island’s history, unfolding in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and borrowing from Icelandic sagas for its form. With its publication, Laxness became Iceland’s leading writer. In 1945, having five years earlier divorced his first wife, he married Auaur Sveinsdo´ttir. The novel Ato´msto¨ain (The Atom Station) was published three years later and centers around the issue of a proposed United States nuclear base near Reykjavı´k. Gerpla (The Happy Warriors) followed in 1952. The same year Laxness received the Stalin Prize for literature. His earlier journeys to the Soviet Union produced the essay collections I´ Austurvegi (1933; Going East) and Gerska æfinty’ri (1938; The Russian Adventure). His novels from this period—such as Brekkukotsanna´ll (1957; The Fish Can Sing), Paradı´sarheimt (1960; Paradise Reclaimed), and Kristnihald undir Jo¨kli (1968; Christianity at Glacier)—became less socially oriented
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and more introspective as the decade progressed. Although best known for his novels, Laxness published numerous plays and volumes of short stories. His first play, Straumrof (Short Circuit), was published in 1934. It was followed by Sjo¨ to¨framenn (1942; Seven Enchanters), Snæfrı´aur I´slandsso´l (1950; Snæfrı´aur, Iceland’s Sun), Silfurtu´nglia (1954; The Silver Moon), Strompleikurinn (1961; The Chimney Play), Prjo´nastofan So´lin (1962; The Knitting Workshop Called “The Sun”), and Du´fnaveislan (1966; The Pigeon Banquet). His short-story collections include Fo´tatak manna (1933; Steps of Men) and Sjo¨stafakveria (1964; The Book of Seven Signs). Laxness was a prolific essayist and translator. His essay collections include Dagleia a´ fjo¨llum (1937; A Day’s Journey Into the Wilderness), Vettvangur dagsins (1942; The Contemporary Scene), Sja´lfsagair hlutir (1946;
Obvious Things), Reisubo´karkorn (1950; A Little Diary of Travels), Dagur ı´ senn (1955; A Day at a Time), Gjo¨rnı´ngabo´k (1959; Documents), Upphaf mannu´aarstefnu (1965; The Beginning of Humanism), I´slendı´ngaspjall (1967; An Essay on Icelanders), Svavar Guanason (1968), and Vı´nlandspu´nktar (1969; Some Remarks on Vinland). He translated ERNEST HEMINGWAY’s A Farewell to Arms (1941) and A Moveable Feast (1964) as well as Voltaire’s Candide (1945). The autobiographical works Heiman eg fo´r (From Home I Went) and Ska´ldatı´mi (A Writer’s Schooling) appeared in 1952 and 1963. In the 1980s Laxness published the memoirs Sagan af brauddinu dy´ra (1987; The Bread of Life) and Dagar hja´ mu´nkum (1987; Days with Monks).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hallberg, Peter, Halldo´r Laxness, 1971.
Laye, Camara (January 1, 1928–February 4, 1980) Novelist, Short-Story Writer he best-known works of the West African novelist Camara Laye are four novels that blend Western literary structure, the French language, and African themes and traditions. Laye was one of a number of Francophone African intellectuals who traveled to Paris and gained notoriety for their writings in the early twentieth century. Laye was born in Kouroussa, French Guinea (now Upper Guinea), the eldest son of a blacksmith and goldsmith. His mother also came from a family of smiths. Laye’s family was of the Malinke´ people, a major ethnic group in West Africa with a long history in the region. His own family also had old roots in the area. Although France controlled Guinea
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until 1958, Laye spent his early childhood relatively isolated from direct European influence. As a boy he attended a Moslem school and French schools. In 1942 he moved to Guinea’s capital, Conakry, where he studied at the Colle`ge Poiret. There he met his future wife, Marie Lorofi, whom he would marry in Paris in 1953. Upon the successful completion of his studies in Conakry, Laye received a scholarship to study in Paris. He studied for certification as an auto mechanic in Argenteuil and, having used his scholarship, worked in order to continue his studies in industrial engineering. While in Paris, the homesick Laye also began to write. His first novel, The Dark Child,
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was published in 1953. The story is autobiographical, set in the Guinea of his childhood. Laye’s scenario is an optimistic, idyllic, and highly personal first-person portrayal of the Malinke´ culture he grew up in. Among the formative events of his childhood as depicted in the book, the courage-building Konde´n Diara ritual figures prominently. In the ritual, young boys are taken to the woods and frightened with noises of lions roaring. Laye never developed an intense dislike for French culture, and in contrast to the literary output of many of his African contemporaries, sharp criticism of the era of European colonialism is missing from The Dark Child and his other writings. This element that many African writers felt was wrongly absent from Laye’s work provoked several attacks when The Dark Child was published. In spite of some criticism, however, the book garnered critical praise and a measure of popular success in both Africa and France. It received the Charles Veillon Prize, an award for French novels, in 1954. The Radiance of the King, Laye’s second novel, was published the same year. Many critics consider it his best work, and interpretations of the metaphorical story range from political to religious. The main character is a white European, Clarence, who loses all of his money in Africa and embarks on a symbolic spiritual journey. He is trying to find a king who can help him and meanders through the corridors of a mysterious culture he does not understand on his quest. After suffering a series of seemingly absurd trials, he finally finds the king, who helps him and proves to be his salvation. Although Laye supported Guinea’s bid for independence in the 1950s, he quickly grew disillusioned with the regime the new republic set up. He returned to Africa in 1956 and after 1958 held several government posts, both in and out of Guinea. During this time he contributed short stories to African literary periodicals such as Pre´sence Africaine and Black Orpheus. His thorough disappointment
with Guinea’s government led to his exile in 1964, after which he lived in Senegal. A Dream of Africa (1966), sequel to The Dark Child, reflects Laye’s discontent with Guinea’s political climate under the regime of Se´kou Toure´ (president of Guinea from 1958 to 1984). The protagonist is older and, in keeping with Laye’s own experience, is a student who returns home from Paris after a period of several years. The environment he finds upon his return is not the tranquil setting of his youth but an area teeming with political struggle and corruption. The disillusioned protagonist, like Laye, comes to the conclusion that the regime must be overturned. In 1971 Laye wrote another novel, Exile, that was not published because of its controversial political content. Some critics place Laye’s fiction in the line of the ne´gritude authors, a diverse group of Francophone writers who sought to elevate African values and culture beginning in the 1930s (see LE´ OPOLD SE´ DAR SENGHOR). Laye’s somewhat sympathetic attitude toward Europeans, however, differs from the spirit of most ne´gritude literature. From 1970 to 1977, Laye’s wife was imprisoned in Guinea after she returned home with the intention of visiting her ailing father. Laye married another woman during her incarceration, and upon her release she divorced him. In 1975 he suffered from hypertensive nephritis, a life-threatening kidney disorder, and with the financial help of several admirers he went to Paris for treatment. Laye’s last major work was the novel The Guardian of the Word (1978), which reflects his long interest in preserving African oral literature and is based on a traditional Mali epic. A recurrence of his kidney ailment took his life in 1980.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lee, Sonia, Camara Laye, 1984; Palmer, Eustace, An Introduction to the African Novel: A Critical Study of Twelve books by Chinua Achebe, James Ngugi, Camara Laye, Elechi Amadi,
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Ayi Kwei Armah, Mongo Beti, and Gabriel Okara, 1972.
Le Carre ´ , John (October 19, 1931– ) Novelist ohn Le Carre´’s first success as the author of action-packed, Cold War–era spy thrillers came with the publication of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in 1963. Since then, his popular spy novels have sold millions of copies around the world. In recent years, Le Carre´’s Cold War intrigues have given way to settings in the post–Cold War era. Le Carre´ was born David John Moore Cornwell in Poole, Dorset, England. His mother left the family when he was 6, and his father,
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a convicted felon and con artist, used his son as a pawn in his shady dealing. Le Carre´ studied at several preparatory schools and the Sherborne School before enrolling in the University of Berne in 1948. The following year he entered the Intelligence Corps in Austria, and in 1952 he returned to school at Oxford. Le Carre´ married Ann Sharp in 1956 and taught German at Eton College before joining the British Foreign Service in 1959. Using a pseudonym because of the security risks associated with his job, he began to write. Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, his first two books, were published in 1961 and 1962. They introduce George Smiley, who was to become Le Carre´’s most famous character. The success of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), Le Carre´’s third novel, enabled him to quit the Foreign Service and devote himself to writing. The story’s protagonist is Alex Leamas, charged with bringing down an East German double agent. Leamas fakes defection to his enemy’s side and succeeds in getting the agent. However, as many Le Carre´ protagonists do, Leamas discovers that his own organization has deceived him about his mission. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was also adapted into a successful film starring RICHARD BURTON in 1965. The “good guys versus the bad guys” element is present in Le Carre´’s Cold War–era novels, which often pit British agents against spies from the Soviet bloc. However, his portraits of British intelligence agencies offer a negative picture filled with internal dissension, intrigue, and callousness. The British
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agent and hero in The Looking Glass War (1965) is another spy mistreated by the organization he works for. When the East Germans capture him, his superiors leave him to die. George Smiley returns in the trilogy of novels begun with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974), also made into a series for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Smiley battles the Soviet archspy Karla and in the first volume is charged with rooting out a British double agent working for his nemesis. The Honourable Schoolboy followed in 1977, and Smiley’s People in 1980. All three novels were collected in The Quest for Karla (1982). The Little Drummer Girl (1983) changes settings, this time unfolding in the Middle East around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The main character of A Perfect Spy (1986), also the basis for a PBS miniseries, is the veteran agent Magnus Pym, whose work leads him to Washington and Berlin. The Russia House (1989) was made into a successful film starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Sean Connery. With The Secret Pilgrim (1991), Le Carre´ began his transition to the post–Cold War years. Ned, a veteran Cold War spy whose mentor was George Smiley, trains a new generation of spies. The Night Manager (1993) takes place in a new era of spying. Jonathan Pine, manager of a Cairo hotel, goes after the British arms king Richard Roper in retaliation for the death of Madame Sophie. Pine finds himself in danger as a result of his own orga-
nization’s internal squabbles. In Our Game: A Novel (1995), the retired spy Tim Cranmer is living in Somerset with Emma. When a former agent returns and recruits Emma in a scheme to arm rebels in Eastern Europe, Tim is drawn back into his former life. The Tailor of Panama (1996), concerns a phony scheme to prevent the Panamanians from obtaining control of the Panama Canal in 1999, as stipulated by the Panama Treaty. In The Constant Gardener (2001), the protagonist, Justin Quayle, is a British diplomat serving in Nairobi. In the course of investigating the origins of the rape and murder of his wife who was traveling in a desolate region of Africa, he discovers there may have been more to the story than meets the eye. Focus Films released a film version of the story in 2005. Absolute Friends (2003) was followed by The Mission Song (2006). Le Carre´’s fast-paced stories are informed by the traveling he does to prepare for them. His other novels include A Small Town in Germany (1968) and The Naı¨ve and Sentimental Lover (1971), not a spy novel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barley, Tony, Taking Sides: The Fiction of John Le Carre´, 1986; Cobbs, John L., Understanding John Le Carre´, 1998; Lewis, Peter Elfed, John Le Carre´, 1985; Hoffman, Tod, Le Carre´’s Landscape, 2001; Wolfe, Peter, Corridors of Deceit: The World of John Le Carre´, 1987.
Le Corbusier (October 6, 1887–August 27, 1965) Architect, Painter, City Planner, Theorist, Essayist s a prolific theorist, writer, and architect in the International Style, Le Corbusier exerted a major influence on twentieth-century architecture. Although he
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concrete, he evolved a style that combined functionalism with expressiveness. Le Corbusier also painted, in a semiabstract style that evolved out of Cubism, and designed furniture.
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Le Corbusier was born Charles-E´douard Jeanneret in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. The small, mountainous town in which he grew up was traditionally a center of watchmaking, his father’s profession. When he was
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13 he entered the E´cole des Arts De´coratifs at La Chaux-de-Fonds, where he learned enameling and engraving of watch faces. In 1902 he won an award for an engraved watchcase. One of the most important influences in his early life was his teacher Charles L’Eplattenier, who introduced Le Corbusier to the Art Nouveau style. In 1905 Le Corbusier, having turned to architecture with L’Eplattenier’s encouragement, designed his first home, the Fallet House at La Chaux-de-Fonds. For the next several years Le Corbusier absorbed the architecture of the Mediterranean and Central Europe and worked in the offices of some of the leading architects of his day—JOSEF HOFFMANN in 1907, the French architect Auguste Perret in 1908–1909, and PETER BEHRENS in 1910–1911. Le Corbusier eventually settled in Paris in 1917 and began to paint. The following year marked the beginning of an association with the painter Ame´de´e Ozenfant that would last until 1925. Ozenfant and Le Corbusier espoused purism, a form of painting based on representing everyday objects in semiabstract form, as in his Still Life with Various Objects (1924). The artist FERNAND LE´ GER strongly influenced his later painting. The two men published their ideas in the Purist manifesto, Apre`s le cubisme. In 1920, with poet Paul Derme´e, they founded L’Esprit Nouveau, a periodical they used to promote functionalism in architecture. Among the pieces they published was the French translation of ADOLF LOOS’s famous essay “Ornament and Crime.” It was also in L’Esprit Nouveau that Charles Jeanneret first used the pseudonym Le Corbusier, which he adopted from an ancestor. Many of his articles for the periodical were later collected as Vers une architecture (translated in 1923 as Toward a New Architecture). In 1922 Le Corbusier began working with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, an association that lasted for eighteen years. The same year he showed projects at the Salon d’Automne in Paris that demonstrated basic characteristics
of his private homes—free-standing pillars (pilotis) that support the building, flat and unornamented facades. Conceiving of houses as “living machines,” he organized interiors to maximize communal spaces. These characteristics are exemplified in the Citrohan Houses (1920–1922). The first private home he designed in Paris was for Ozenfant in 1922. His home for Raoul La Roche (1923) became the headquarters of the Le Corbusier Foundation when it was founded in Paris in 1968. Le Corbusier also designed a home at Garches for Michael Stein, brother of the American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein (1927). The Savoye House (1929–1930) in Poissy, constructed of concrete and plastered masonry, is a typical Le Corbusier house in an open, semirural context. The structure is dominated by a rectangular element with a flat, white facade and a horizontal ribbon of windows, and it is supported in part by a series of pillars. In the same year he finished the house, 1930, he married Yvonne Gallis. By the late 1920s Le Corbusier was actively involved in designing public buildings. His entry in a 1927 competition for a new League of Nations building in Geneva was eliminated on a technicality, but the disqualification attracted international attention to his work. The following year the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) was formed to promote modern architecture. Le Corbusier was actively involved with the organization, served as secretary of the French section, and helped draft its Athens Charter in 1934. In the Soviet Union he won a competition for the Centrosoyuz building (1929–1935), and he designed the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow in 1931. His Swiss Pavilion at the Cite´ Universitaire in Paris (1930–1932) is dominated by a rectangular structure supported by pillars. Le Corbusier added the Brazilian Pavilion to the same site in 1959. Also among his public buildings from the 1930s is the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1936).
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Many city plans that were never realized are also among Le Corbusier’s works, including plans for Algiers (1938–1942), Buenos Aires (1938), Saint Die´ (1945), La Pallice-Rochelle (1945), and Bogota (1950). He was, however, able to implement a city plan at Chandigarh, when the government of the Punjab appointed him architectural advisor for the new capital in 1951. He designed several buildings in the city, such as the Palace of Justice, the Secretariat, and the Palace of the Assembly. During the World War II era Le Corbusier formulated his Modulor concept, in which he aimed to structure architectural elements in proportion to human elements. His vision of large-scale housing was first realized in the eighteen-story Unite´ d’Habitation (1945–1952) in Marseilles, and he subsequently built other complexes. Among his other buildings are the United Nations Headquarters in New York (1949–1951), the chapel of Notre-Dame-du-
Haut at Ronchamp (1950–1955), the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (1960), and the Carpenter Visual Art Center at Harvard University (1964). Le Corbusier wrote extensively to promote his ideas on architecture. His publications include Urbanisme (The City of Tomorrow, 1929), Quand les cathe´drales e´taient blanches (1937; When the Cathedrals Were White, 1947), Propos d’urbanisme (1946), Les trois e´tablissements humains (1945), and Le Modular I (1948; The Modular, 1954).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, Geoffrey H., Le Corbusier, the Creative Search: The Formative Years of Charles´ douard Jeanneret, 1996; Besset, Maurice, Who E Was Le Corbusier?, 1968; Brooks, H. Allen, ed., Le Corbusier, 1987; Gardiner, Stephen, Le Corbusier, 1974; Vogt, Adolf Max, Le Corbusier, the Noble Savage: Toward an Archaeology of Modernism, 1998.
Lean, David (March 25, 1908–April 16, 1991) Director he British film maker Sir David Lean earned fame as an expert film editor in the 1930s. Known for his demanding perfectionism, he later directed sixteen feature films, the most famous of which are his monumental epics Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. Many consider him the finest British director of the post–World War II era. Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey, England. His Quaker family forbid him to go to the theater and kept him from seeing films, a pleasure he did not enjoy until he grew older. The family split, leaving Lean with his mother. He attended the Leighton Park School and later took a job with his father, an accountant.
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With his father’s assistance, he secured a lowlevel job at Gaumont Studios in 1928. Lean quickly worked his way up in the studio. By 1930 he was head editor for Gaumont–British Sound News, where he edited newsreels. In this position and at the British Movietone News, Lean rapidly won respect for his editing talent. He began to edit feature films in the 1930s at British-Dominion Studios, including 49th Parallel, The Last Adventures (1937), and an adaptation of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s Pygmalion (1938). Lean helped direct a version of Shaw’s Major Barbara (1942). The playwright NOE¨ L COWARD presented Lean with his first major directing opportuni-
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ty. Coward’s war propaganda film In Which We Serve (1942) tells the story of the HMS Torin and its crew and was one of Britain’s major propaganda films during World War II. Following its enormous success, Lean formed Cineguild with cinematographer Ronald Neame and associate producer Anthony Havelock-Allan. With Cineguild, Lean directed three additional Coward films in the 1940s. The Happy Breed (1944), filmed in Technicolor, follows the Gibbons family from 1919 to 1939. Blithe Spirit (1945) was based on Coward’s play about a novelist and the spirits of his two deceased wives. The most successful of the three was Brief Encounter (1945), which starred Coward and was adapted from his Still Life. The film, a romance between Alec and Laura, both of whom are married to other spouses, unfolds in the form of a flashback from Laura’s perspective. Brief Encounter, accompanied with SERGEI RACHMANINOFF’s Piano Concerto No. 2, won the Prix Internationale de Critique at the Cannes Film Festival. From Coward’s plays Lean moved to Charles Dickens, directing two adaptations of his novels, Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). Cineguild dissolved in 1949, and Lean produced and directed his next two films, The Sound Barrier (1952) and the comedy Hobson’s Choice (1954), for London Films. The former was a great success for Lean. His 1955 Hollywood film Summertime, a romance set in Venice, starred KATHARINE HEPBURN and marked the end of his shorter features. With The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), based on Pierre Boulle’s novel, Lean began his final period of massive, international epics. The film, shot on location in Asia and starring ALEC GUINNESS and William Holden, earned seven Oscars. The spectacular cinematography in the Arab landscape by Freddie Young in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) helped make that film one of Lean’s most enduring. Shot on location in the Arabian desert, the film portrays the efforts of British lieutenant T. E. Lawrence to unite Arab tribes against
the Turks during World War I. Lawrence of Arabia is as much a psychological portrait of the enigmatic and tormented Lawrence as a story. The role of Lawrence boosted the then–unknown actor PETER O’TOOLE to international stardom. Omar Sharif, who had also played Sherif Ali in Lawrence of Arabia, acted the part of Yuri Zhivago in Lean’s adaptation of BORIS PASTERNAK’s classic Dr. Zhivago (1965). Filmed in Spain, again with Young as cinematographer, Dr. Zhivago unfolds against the backdrop of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Lean again excels at bringing out the psychological dimension of the story, especially in the portrayal of the poet-philosopher-doctor Zhivago who suffers great personal loss during the Revolution and is torn between his love for his wife and his relationship with his mistress, Lara. In several of his later films, Lean worked with screenwriter Robert Bolt. Ryan’s Daughter (1970), filmed in Ireland, tells the story of an Irish newlywed, married to a teacher, who falls in love with a British soldier. Lean made no more films until his final epic, A Passage to India (1984), based on E. M. FORSTER’s novel of the same title. Lean’s technical achievements began in the editing room and ended in the production of epics on a massive scale. His earlier films incorporated striking montage sequences and often used flashback and distorted time elements to tell a story. The high visual impact of his later films helped bring them widespread international fame and critical praise. Lean was made Commander of the British Empire in 1953, won numerous Academy Awards, earned the D. W. Griffith Award in 1973, was knighted in 1984, and received a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute in 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brownlow, Kevin, David Lean: A Biography, 1996; Silver, Alain, and Ursini, James, David
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Lean and His Films, 1992; Silverman, Stephen M., David Lean, 1992.
Leary, Timothy Francis (October 22, 1920–May 31, 1996) Writer, Psychologist he American author and psychologist Timothy Leary was well known during his lifetime for his advocacy of psychedelic drug research. Leary was a longtime proponent of and partaker in mind-altering substances, and he attempted to apply scientific principles to their use. He coined the famous catchphrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out” during the 1960s hippie-counterculture movement. A highly controversial figure, Leary attracted numerous followers and detractors. At one point, U.S. President Richard Nixon labeled him “The Most Dangerous Man in America.” Leary was an only child born in Springfield, Massachusetts. His father was a dentist of Irish ancestry and abandoned the family when Leary was thirteen. After graduating from Classical High School in Springfield, he attended three different colleges. Leary was a consummate rule-breaker and was considered a disciplinary problem almost wherever he went. He studied for two years at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and in 1943 earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Alabama. During World War II, Leary served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Following the end of the war, he earned a master’s degree from Washington State University in 1946. Four years later, he earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. From 1950 to 1955, Leary worked as an assistant professor at Berkeley in California. His
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first wife Marianne committed suicide in 1955, leaving him a single parent bored with what he found to be a monotonous routine of going to work and caring for his family. From 1955 to 1958, he was a director of psychiatric research at the Kaiser Family Foundation. He lectured at Harvard University from 1959 to 1963 before being dismissed from his teaching post. It was at Harvard that he began to gain notoriety for his advocacy of psychedelic substances. Leary’s early psychological studies continued the work of pioneers like Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan (1892–1949) and the German psychologist Dr. Karen Horney (1885–1952), who stressed their belief in interpersonal forces as essential to mental health. Both Sullivan and Horney questioned aspects of the research of Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Leary’s interest in their work was connected to the relationship of interpersonal forces with mental and personality disorders. To this end, he developed his interpersonal circumplex model, which was published in The Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. His method employed Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) scores (which predated his research) to determine an individual’s characteristic interpersonal modes of reaction. The course of Leary’s life changed dramatically in 1957, when his colleague Anthony Russo persuaded him to go to Cuernavaca, Mexico, and experiment with psilocybin mushrooms used in the religious ceremonies of the indigenous Mazatec people of Mexico.
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Leary returned to Harvard a changed man that autumn. With several other colleagues, notably spiritual leader Ram Dass (known at the time as Dr. Richard Alpert, 1931– ), he started a research program called the Harvard Psilocybin Project—which was initially funded by the university. Leary, Dass, and others used a synthetic version of the hallucinogenic substance found in the mushrooms developed by research chemist Albert Hofmann (1906– ), who had by that time already invented the famous psychedelic drug LSD. Their experimental subjects varied widely, from well-known figures such as THELONIOUS MONK, ALDOUS HUXLEY, and Beat Generation figures ALLEN GINSBERG, William S. Burroughs (1914–1997), and JACK KEROUAC to prisoners and seminary students. Leary believed psychedelic drugs used in the proper dosages and atmosphere, accompanied by the guidance of psychology professionals, could better people’s behavior, successfully treat common addictions, and lead people into unprecedented realms of spiritual experience. In 1962, Leary and Dass founded the International Foundation for Internal Freedom in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While their research attracted significant interest from both students and others in Harvard’s vicinity, university officials began to grow uncomfortable with them promoting hallucinogenic substances (which were then still legal in the United States) among the students. Complicating matters was a developing black market in the area for the drugs, as their studies could not accommodate everyone who expressed an interest in participating in them. Having been fired from his post at Harvard in 1963, Leary sought out other avenues through which to spread his research and philosophy. He found one in the wealthy siblings Peggy, Billy, and Tommy Hitchcock, who secured the used of a mansion for him near Poughkeepsie, New York. Accounts of the activities in the mansion vary from Leary’s assertion that he was conducting research to allegations of indulgent, hedonistic drug use
and wild parties. In 1964, Leary coauthored The Psychedelic Experience with Dass and Ralph Metzner (1936– ). Author TOM WOLFE documented his visit to the Leary mansion in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968). Federal and local authorities raided the mansion on more than one occasion, and at the helm of his adversaries was future Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy (1930– ), who was then a local assistant district attorney. Following numerous FBI raids, the mansion was forced to close its doors. Strict new laws in the United States outlawed LSD in the 1960s. In 1966, Leary founded the League for Spiritual Discovery, a religion that declared LSD as its holy sacrament, in an unsuccessful attempt to retain legal status for the drug. Undeterred by the new legal restrictions, Leary persisted with his promotion of hallucinogens and psychedelics. During the months of late 1966 and early 1967, he toured college campuses with a multimedia performance entitled The Death of the Mind, in which he attempted to recreate LSD experiences. It was in early 1967 that he unleashed his famous phrase, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” to a crowd of hippies in San Francisco. In the late 1960s, Leary moved to California, where he married his third wife, Rosemary Woodruff, and worked with his colleague Brian Barritt to develop what he called his circuit model of consciousness. By the time the theory reached its fruition, it described eight circuits that allegedly produced different levels of consciousness. Some of these levels reached beyond earthly existence to outer space, and Leary was an ardent proponent of space exploration and colonization. He believed people could access extra-terrestrial circuits through the use of hallucinogens, meditation, and other techniques. With the U.S. Government’s increasing crackdown on drugs, Leary inevitably found himself in legal trouble. In late 1965, his daughter was caught with marijuana while crossing the border from Mexico into the United States. Leary took responsibility for it,
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was convicted under the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, was sentenced to thirty years in jail, penalized with a $30,000 fine, and ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment. The sentence was unusually harsh, and he successfully appealed the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court, claiming the law was unconstitutional. In a 1969 decision delivered by Justice John Marshall Harlan II (1899–1971), the Court unanimously declared the Marihuana Tax Act unconstitutional and overturned Leary’s conviction. By that time, however, he had already been arrested again for marijuana possession, and in 1970 he was sentenced to ten years in prison on drug-related charges. His legal troubles with drugs put an end to his campaign for governor of California around that time. Ironically, upon his entry into the penal system, he was given psychological tests that he had helped formulate. Naturally, he knew how to answer the questions in such a manner that he secured a place for himself in a minimum-security prison. Before the year ended, he had escaped with the aid of his wife and friends, who smuggled him abroad. While overseas, he and his wife divorced, and he became involved with the French socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith. They traveled widely to avoid arrest, but U.S. authorities caught up with him in Afghanistan and eventually returned Leary to prison in California. Leary wrote prolifically in prison and turned his attention to futurist matters. During this time he authored Starseed (1973), Neurologic (1973), and Terra II: A Way Out (1974), the last of which provided a detailed plan for space colonization. In 1976, California’s Governor Jerry Brown released Leary from prison, after which Leary moved to Laurel Canyon. He continued to write and lecture, and in 1978 he married filmmaker Barbara Blum. They would divorce in 1992. In an ironic twist of events, he befriended his former prosecutorial foe Liddy, who had by that time gained his fame and served prison time for his role in the Watergate burgla-
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ries, and they lectured on a highly successful and lucrative tour as debating ex-cons in 1982. Leary published his autobiography Flashbacks in 1983. By the mid-1980s, Leary had become welloff and had befriended many Hollywood celebrities and others. He continued his drug use in private but ceased public promotion of hallucinogens. Instead, he became a proselyte for space colonization, extending the human lifespan, and expounding on his eight-circuit model of consciousness. During the 1990s, Leary embraced the Internet and became an ardent promoter of virtual reality systems. He also befriended a younger generation of Hollywood actors and was a regular at raves and alternative rock concerts. In 1995, he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. He continued to use a combination of drugs until his death. Leary was cremated, and his ashes were launched into space aboard a Pegasus rocket that also carried the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991). Leary was not loved and respected by all. Some considered him an egomaniac, and others blamed him for overly stringent laws against the use of psychedelic drugs. However, his ideas heavily influenced both the 1960s hippie-counterculture movements and the work of other researchers such as psychologist and futurist Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bryan, John, Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary?, 1980; Greenfield, Robert, Timothy Leary: A Biography, 2006; Higgs, John, I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary, 2006; Kleps, Art, Millbrook: The True Story of the Early Years of the Psychedelic Revolution, 1975; Leary, Timothy, Flashbacks: An Autobiography, 1983; Whitmer, Peter O., Aquarius Revisited, Seven Who Created the Sixties Counterculture That Changed America: William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kes-
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ey, Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson, 1991;
www.timothyleary.us.
Led Zeppelin Musicians
Bonham, John Henry
Page, James Patrick
(May 31, 1948–September 25,1980)
(January 9, 1944– )
Jones, John Paul
Plant, Robert
(January 3, 1946– )
(August 20, 1948– )
orn of the blues-based rock music that emerged in the 1960s, the British band Led Zeppelin originated the heavy metal sound in rock music. Guitarist Jimmy Page was the primary architect of Led Zeppelin’s loud, distortion-laden sound, complemented by Robert Plant’s screeching vocals. Following the band’s enormous commercial success, a stream of other heavy metal bands emerged in the 1970s. Drummer John Bonham, known as “Bonzo,” was born in Redditch, Worcestershire. Bonham was a childhood friend of Plant’s, who was born in Bromwich, Staffordshire. Both Bonham and Plant played with a number of bands before they joined Led Zeppelin. Plant, influenced by the American blues singers, taught himself to sing in his youth and was performing in clubs by the time he reached his teens. He sang with the groups The Crawling King Snakes and The Band of Joy, both with Bonham on drums. Bonham was backing Tim Rose on drums when Plant introduced him to Page in the late 1960s. Page, born in Heston, Middlesex, taught himself how to play the guitar in his youth. He fell in love with rock music and in particular the music of ELVIS PRESLEY. In the early 1960s, he played guitars for the bands Carter Lewis and the Southerners and Neil Christian and the Crusaders. The 1963 single
“Diamonds” by Tony Meehan and Jet Harris, on which he played guitar, went to number one and marked his first success. By the mid-1960s, Page had become a much sought-after session guitarist. When Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds, Page, who was to become famous for his Les Paul guitars, joined the group as his successor until it disbanded in 1968. That year, he sought to form a new band. Having secured Plant on vocals and Bonham on drums, the band, tentatively dubbed the New Yardbirds, also had a fourth member, bassist John Paul Jones. Jones was born John Baldwin in Sidcup, Kent. Like Page, he was a well-respected session musician by the time he joined Led Zeppelin. Jones had contributed to the albums of a number of famous rock musicians, including THE ROLLING STONES, Jeff Beck, Donovan, and the Yardbirds, and through his work he crossed paths with Page. The group officially formed in 1968 and derived its eventual name from a comment made by one of the band members of The Who, who remarked that the band would go down like a “lead Zeppelin.” Their manager, Peter Grant, suggested the spelling “Led” to clarify pronunciation. Led Zeppelin released its first two albums, Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II, in 1969. Characterized by distortion, Page’s experi-
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mental guitar tuning, Plant’s characteristic screech, and Bonham’s energetic drumming, the albums added a new and much louder dimension to blues rock. Songs like “Dazed and Confused,” in which Page played his guitar with a violin bow, became staples of their long, energetic stage performances. Bonham’s “Moby Dick” drum solos were known to last half an hour. The song “Whole Lotta Love” (1969) reached number four in the United States, but Led Zeppelin never released a single in Britain. The band gained a large following on both sides of the Atlantic and promoted their work primarily through albums and marathon live performances. A number of other records followed in the early 1970s, among which are Led Zeppelin III (1970), Houses of the Holy (1973), and Physical Graffiti (1975). Though by no means quiet albums, they did have some songs with a more acoustic feel. The band is perhaps most famous for its untitled record of 1971, often called Led Zeppelin IV, which contains “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” and the rock and roll classic, “Stairway to Heaven.” Also evident on this record was Page’s interest in black magic and the occult. Page cemented his reputation as an occultist when he purchased the home of the black magic guru Aleister Crowley. Coupled with the band’s reputation for hedonistic living, its occult interests provoked criticism and protest. Having previously recorded for Atlantic, Led Zeppelin established its own label, Swan Song, in 1974. Their later works include the film The Song Remains The Same (1976) and the albums In Through The Out Door (1979) and Coda (1982). Tragedy marked the group’s
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later years and eventually led them to disband. Plant was involved in a near-fatal car accident in Greece in 1976, and Bonham died of an alcohol overdose in 1980. Since Led Zeppelin disbanded, its members have pursued their own solo careers. Jones has continued to work as a session musician and toured with the Diamanda Galas in 1994. Page released a solo album in 1988 and worked with singer David Coverdale as Coverdale-Page. Plant, also, has released solo material. Led Zeppelin reunited briefly in 1988, with Bonham’s son Jason playing drums. The year 2003 saw the release of the triple live album How the West Was Won, featuring previously unreleased performances from the band’s 1972 tour of the United States. The double DVD set Led Zeppelin was released in 2003, and the DVD Live at Knebworth, featuring the band’s last television performance, appeared in 2007. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, received a Polar Music Prize in 2006, and was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cole, Richard, Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored, 2002; Cross, Charles R., Led Zeppelin, Heaven and Hell: An Illustrated History, 1991; Davis, Steven, Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, 1985; Fast, Susan, In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music, 2001; Horkins, Tony, Led Zeppelin, 1997; Yorke, Ritchie, Led Zeppelin: The Definitive Biography, 1993.
LE´GER, FERNAND
Le ´ ger, Fernand (February 4, 1881–August 17, 1955) Painter, Screenwriter, Director nspired by the shapes and spirit of the modern machine age, the French painter Joseph Fernand Henri Le´ger had his roots in the Paris avant-garde of the first decade of the twentieth century. Large, bright forms driven by forceful contrasts of color, tone, and shape characterize his mature style. Le´ger’s work particularly influenced the Soviet Constructivists and the Dutch Neoplasticists as well as the development of the commercial art poster. Le´ger was born into a poor family in Argentan, Normandy, France. After working for two years as an architect’s apprentice in Caen, he moved to Paris in 1900 and worked as an architectural draftsman and a retoucher of pho-
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Fernand Le ´ ger (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42492)
tographs. After completing his military service in 1903 he enrolled at the E´cole des Arts De´coratifs in Paris. Although he failed to get into the E´cole des Beaux-Arts, he took classes there and at the Acade´mie Julien. A major Ce´zanne retrospective in 1907 had a deep influence on Le´ger’s development as an artist. The following year he rented a studio in the outskirts of Montparnasse, where he began to absorb the various art movements developing in Paris. He befriended the leading avant-garde poets and painters, including MARC CHAGALL, PABLO PICASSO, GEORGES BRAQUE, and ROBERT DELAUNAY. It was the Cubism of Picasso and Braque that most strongly influenced his early paintings, such as Nudes in the Forest (1909–1910). Critics labeled his particular style of cubism “tubism.” Around that time he sold his first painting to the art dealer Daniel Henry Kahnweiler and exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Inde´pendants. Le´ger served in World War I and fought on the front lines. Fascinated with the shape of the war weaponry, and in particular cylindrical shapes, he identified his war experience as a major step in the development of his art. After being gassed at the Battle of Verdun, he recovered and was released from military service in 1917. Play of contrasts was the guiding force behind Le´ger’s paintings. Tonal and color contrasts, contrasts of curves and straight lines, and contrasts of flat planes and volume characterize his mature work and were already exemplified in his Contraste de formes (1913) paintings. The postwar years also saw the beginning of his “mechanical period,” in which he painted gears, furnaces, factories, and other objects associated with the modern machine age, as in his Disk series of 1918. In 1919 Le´ger married Jeanne-Augustine Lohy. The following year he met the architect
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and painter LE CORBUSIER, and in 1921 he met the Dutch neoplasticists Theo van Doesburg and PIET MONDRIAN, upon whom his work had a significant effect. With the outbreak of World War II he moved to the United States. When the war ended he returned to France and joined the Communist Party. In his postwar paintings, he experimented with bands of color separated from the figures. Le´ger worked in many other media besides painting. He collaborated with the poet Blaise Cendrars on ABEL GANCE’s film La Roue (1921). In 1926 he wrote, directed, and produced the film Le ballet me´canique (The Mechanical Ballet), and he designed sets for
ALEXANDER KORDA’s The Shape of Things to Come (1934), based on H. G. WELLS’s book. Le´ger’s work extended to the ballet as well, notably his set designs for Serge Lifar’s David triomphant at the Paris Opera in 1937. He also painted murals—for the Brussels World’s Fair in 1935, for Nelson Rockefeller’s New York home in 1938—and created mosaics and stained-glass windows. A museum in Biot, France, houses some of his work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY De Francia, Peter, Fernand Le´ger, 1983; Le´ger, Fernand, Fernand Le´ger (1881–1955), 1987.
Lehmann, Rosamond (February 3, 1901–March 12, 1990) Novelist he primary characters in Rosamond Nina Lehmann’s novels are women struggling with emergence into adulthood, the dynamics of relationships, past mistakes, and their relationships with society’s demands. Lehmann wove emotional portraits of her characters and detailed atmosphere around relatively sparse plots. Lehmann was born into a well-to-do family in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, England, on the day Queen Victoria was buried. Her mother was an American; her English father found success as a writer and editor. John Lehmann, her brother, was also to distinguish himself as an editor and writer. Lehmann’s psychological distance from the conventions of her upbringing is evident in the struggling characters of her fiction. She attended a girls’ school before entering Girton College, Cambridge, to study English literature. From her early youth she felt a desire to write and did in fact write short stories and poetry, and one
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Rosamond Lehmann (쑖 Albert Harlingue / RogerViollet / The Image Works)
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of her poems was published in Cornhill when she was 16. At Cambridge, Lehmann met other artists, writers, and intellectuals and contributed on occasion to the magazine Granta. In 1923 she married Leslie Runciman and moved with him to Newcastle upon Tyne. While he worked in a shipping business, she wrote her first novel, Dusty Answer (1927), which takes place at Cambridge and traces the psychological and emotional development of Judith Earle between the ages of 18 and 21. The novel was an overnight success, gaining popularity in both England and the United States. The marriage, on the other hand, proved to be a failure. Lehmann and Runciman divorced, and in 1928 she married the painter and member of the House of Lords Wogan Phillips. The couple moved to Oxfordshire, where they counted among their regular visitors VIRGINIA WOOLF and other members of the Bloomsbury Group. They had two children before they divorced. The central character of Lehmann’s next novel, Invitation to the Waltz (1932), is the teenaged Olivia Curtis, a young woman from a respected family who moves into adulthood. Olivia appears ten years older in The Weather and The Streets (1936), now grown up and experiencing the torments of love. She has an affair with Rollo Spencer, a married man. Olivia becomes pregnant and seeks an abortion before ending the relationship. In Grace Fairfax, the main character in A Note in Music, Lehmann offers an emotional portrait of a middle-aged woman trapped in an unhappy marriage. By this time, Lehmann had already begun to use the variations of alternating narrative technique characteristic of her later work. Olivia Curtis’s story unfolds in both first and third person, while the other characters sometimes become narrators, providing a complex variety of perspectives. In 1941, Lehmann began a long relationship with CECIL DAY-LEWIS that ended when he married another woman. She gained a measure of popularity in England, accepting invi-
tations to speak to groups and on the radio. During World War II she contributed regular short stories to New Writing, many of which were later collected in The Gypsy’s Baby (1946). The Ballad and the Source (1944), Lehmann’s next novel, is a study of the bitter and elderly Sybil Jardine as seen through the eyes of the autobiographical Rebecca Landon. Rebecca, 14 years old, is a player in Sybil’s futile and manipulative attempts to rectify her grave error of the past—leaving her husband and daughter for another man. Her former husband refused to allow her to see their daughter, Ianthe, who has grown up with deep hostility toward her mother. In the character of Ianthe, Lehmann asserts that past mistakes repeat themselves. Rebecca Landon appears again in Lehmann’s final novel, A Sea-Grape Tree (1976). The Echoing Grove (1953), a somber novel that unfolds against the backdrop of war, involves the consequences of a love triangle in the Burkett family. Rickie Masters is at the center of the controversy, married to Madeleine Burkett and having an affair with her sister, Dinah. Again, Lehmann presents the narrative from alternating perspectives. The 1958 death of Lehmann’s daughter devastated her and nearly put an end to her literary output. In her later years, she developed an interest in spiritualism and psychic phenomena, becoming vice president of the Society for Psychic Studies. She coauthored the spiritualist work A Man Seen Afar (1965) with Wellesley Tudor Pole. Lehmann was made Commander of the British Empire in 1982 and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her autobiographical work The Swan in the Evening was published in 1976.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Siegel, Ruth, Rosamond Lehmann: A Thirties Writer, 1989; Simons, Judy, Rosamond Lehmann, 1992; Tindall, Gillian, Rosamond Lehmann: An Appreciation, 1986.
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Lehmbruck, Wilhelm (January 4, 1881–March 25, 1919) Painter, Poet, Graphic Artist, Sculptor hen Wilhelm Lehmbruck abruptly ended his life in 1919, he had become one of the leading Expressionist sculptors in World War I Germany. Working in both Paris and Berlin, he evolved a mature style marked by elongated, expressive human forms—often male and female nudes. Lehmbruck was the son of a miner, born in the mining town of Meiderich, near Duisburg, Germany. He attended the Meiderich Volksschule and finished with good marks in 1895. As a boy he developed his lifelong love of sculpture, executing a self-portrait in 1898. Lehmbruck also sculpted figures modeled on pictures he saw in his textbooks. After his father died in 1899, he earned extra money for the family by doing textbook illustrations. Lehmbruck studied at the Academy of Du¨sseldorf, where he came under the influence of the sculptor Karl Janssen, who had obtained many public commissions for large statues. He became a master student and during his time at the academy executed large, academic-style nudes. Among these is the Bathing Woman, which the academy acquired in 1902. A bronze figure, she bends forward carefully to wash her leg. In 1904 Lehmbruck viewed a large retrospective of the work of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), whose work he came to admire. His preoccupation with suffering and death is apparent in such sculptures as Stone-Roller (“Work”) (1903–1905), which depicts a laborer arduously rolling a stone uphill, and Firedamp (1904), a memorial to coal miners killed in an explosion. The latter portrays a grieving wife mourning over her husband’s dead body. Other sculptures from this period include The Bather (1905),
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Meditation: Mother and Child (1907), the tenfeet-tall Man (1909), and Grieving Woman (1909). Lehmbruck married Anita Kaufmann in 1908 and moved with her to Paris two years later. There he met AMEDEO MODIGLIANI, ANDRE´ DERAIN, COSTANTIN BRANCUSI, FERNAND LE´ GER, and other leading artists of the Paris avant-garde. These new acquaintances sparked a marked change in his style: his figures grew thinner and more expressive. This change is evident in the Kneeling Woman (1911), which depicts a mostly nude woman with her garment draped over her left knee. His nudes now evince more emotion, as in the subtle melancholy of the Statuette of Pensive Woman (1911) and the highly expressive pose of Seated Girl (1913–1914). The thin, elongated figure of the bronze Standing Youth (1913) is also characteristic of Lehmbruck’s mature works. With war looming, Lehmbruck returned to Germany in 1914 and associated himself with the German Expressionists in Berlin. Working in a hospital during the war, he saw firsthand the horrors of suffering, wounded, and dead soldiers. Lehmbruck sunk into deep depression evident in such works as his Fallen Man (1915–1916), in which the thin, nude body of a man has fallen to the ground wounded. Lehmbruck also painted, worked in graphic art, and wrote poetry. He was elected to the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts in 1919. He committed suicide at the age of 38.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Heller, Reinhold, The Art of William Lehmbruck, 1972; Hoff, August, Wilhelm Lehmbruck: Life and Work, 1969.
LEIGH, MIKE
Leigh, Mike (February 20, 1943– ) Director, Screenwriter, Playwright he British director Mike Leigh draws from modern English society to create the memorable character portraits characteristic of his films. His unique directing style begins with a series of improvisational rehearsals that lead to the formation of a final script. Although he made his first film in 1971, he has only recently begun to receive critical accolades with the films Naked and Secrets and Lies. Leigh was born to a doctor and his wife in Salford, England. He attended the Salford Grammar School before he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he studied from 1960 to 1962. Over the next several years, he studied drama and held a number of jobs related to the theater, including teaching and small acting parts. Leigh began writing plays, many of which ran at the Hampstead Theatre, before he entered the world of film. In the early play Babies Grow Old (1974), Mrs. Wenlock is an ill and elderly woman. When her pregnant and inconsiderate daughter visits with her husband Geoff, a doctor, they ask Mrs. Wenlock to adopt the child when it is born. Other plays from the 1970s include Abigail’s Party (1977) and Ecstasy (1979). The comedy Goose-Pimples (1981), one of Leigh’s most successful plays, transferred to the West End. The cast of sordid characters includes the car salesman, Vernon, and his lodger, Jackie. The story unfolds in Vernon’s flat, where he has invited his colleague, Irving, and his wife Frankie. Vernon is having an affair with Frankie. Jackie brings home Muhammad, who believes she is a prostitute and who she erroneously believes is wealthy, while Vernon is out with Irving and Frankie. The plethora of lies and misunderstandings erupts into a comic nightmare. Leigh’s other plays include Smelling a Rat (1989), Greek
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Tragedy (1989), and It’s a Great Big Shame! (1993). Leigh completed his first feature film, Bleak Moments, in 1971. He married Alison Steadman two years later, and she subsequently acted in many of his films and dramas. Over the next decade and a half, Leigh worked primarily in the theater and with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). His first television film for the BBC, Hard Labour, aired in 1973. Nuts in May (1976), The Kiss of Death (1977), Grown-Ups (1980), Home Sweet Home (1982), and Four Days in July (1984) also belong to the BBC television films. With High Hopes (1988), Leigh returned to making feature films and once again created a set of unforgettable characters, each representing some strain of unreality, who interact in a milieu of comic nonsense. Mrs. Bender, an elderly woman increasingly suffering from dementia, is the mother of the working-class motorcyclist Cyril and his upwardly mobile sister Valerie, a hysterical creature with gaudy tastes in fashion and a no-good husband. Adding to the comedy is Mrs. Bender’s encounter with her next door neighbors, the yuppie Boothe-Braines, whose lives are not as proper and pleasant as they appear on the surface. As in most of Leigh’s films, Life is Sweet (1990) features a cast of flawed characters, and extensive character development overshadows plot. Steadman plays the energetic Wendy, mother and wife of a less-motivated chef, Andy. Their daughters, Nicola and Natalie, are as different as night and day. Nicola is anorexic, moody, obsessed with sex, and relentlessly trying to attract the attention of her parents. Natalie, on the other hand, is a tomboyish laborer. Leigh’s strong character portrayals spring from his unusual production process. Instead of auditioning actors for roles in a written
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script, he holds a series of improvisational rehearsals without having a script or a finished story. Rather than use major international stars, he works with lesser-known actors, many of whom have appeared in multiple Leigh works. The characters and plot emerge during the impromptu sessions, and from these Leigh composes the final script. Naked (1993) was Leigh’s most successful film up to that time, and a brutal edge replaces the comic tone of his other films. The main character is an existential drifter, Johnny (David Thewlis), who is philosophical but has an appetite for sex and a propensity toward violence. He shows up at the flat of Louise, Sophie, and Sandra, the last of whom is a proper and conventional nurse. With Sandra out of town, Johnny interacts with Louise, his old girlfriend, and Sophie, a miserable punkish girl as well as a series of other characters as he roams the streets of London. Leigh won the best director award at the Cannes Film Festival for Naked and the best picture award for its successor, Secrets and Lies (1996). In the latter, suffused with a more serious tone, Leigh brings out the humanity with touching sensitivity of a black daughter—apparently the product of a rape—
and her white mother, who is forced by her daughter’s appearance to recall the painful memory of her ordeal. Leigh’s most recent film, Topsy-Turvy (1999) focuses on the creative lives of the British playwright/composer team Gilbert and Sullivan. All or Nothing (2002) treats the everyday lives of three working-class families and won the London Film Critics Cricle Award for best British film of the year. Vera Drake (2004) depicts the life of a working-class wife, mother, and housekeeper who secretly performs abortions. Leigh again returned to directing for the theater in 2005 with Two Thousand Years, an exploration of secular and religious divisions in a Jewish family, at the Royal National Theatre in London.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Carney, Ray, The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World, 2000; Coveney, Michael, The World According to Mike Leigh, 1996; Jones, Edward Trostle, All or Nothing: The Cinema of Mike Leigh, 2004; Movshovitz, Howie, ed., Mike Leigh: Interviews, 2000; Watson, Garry, The Cinema of Mike Leigh: A Sense of the Real, 2004.
Leighton, Margaret (February 26, 1922–January 13, 1976) Actress veteran of London and New York stages at the time of her death, the British actress Margaret Leighton was known for her versatility as an actress. After establishing her reputation as a member of the Old Vic company in London, she starred in numerous roles on Broadway. Leighton also appeared in films and in that arena was best known for her strong supporting roles.
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Leighton was born in Barnt Green, near Birmingham, Worcestershire, England. In 1938 she made her theatrical debut at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, playing the role of Dorothy in Laugh with Me (1938). After studying further at Sir Barry Jackson’s theater school in Birmingham, she eventually joined the Old Vic. Her London debut came in 1944, when she appeared as the daughter of the
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Margaret Leighton (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
troll king in Norweigian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (1944). Two years later Leighton debuted in New York, playing the part of Lady Percy in Henry IV, Part I (1946). By the late 1940s Leighton was a regular on both London and New York stages. Her performances in Separate Tables (1956) and American playwright Tennessee Williams’s Broadway smash hit The Night of the Iguana (1962), as the New England spinster Hannah Jelkes, won her Tony Awards. Leighton also starred in London and Broadway productions of Francois Billetdoux’s Tchin-Tchin with Anthony Quinn. Her other roles include Lady Macbeth in William Shake-
speare’s Macbeth, Celia Coplestone in T. S. ELIOT’s Cocktail Party (1950), and Orinthia in The Applecart (1953), in which she costarred with NOE¨ L COWARD. Leighton was a regular at the Stratford-upon-Avon and the Chichester Festivals. Her final stage role came in 1975 in A Fame and a Fortune in London (1975), with Sir ALEC GUINNESS. Supplementing her success on the stage were her appearances in nearly two dozen films, including Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948), The Winslow Boy (1949), The Astonished Heart (1950), The Good Die Young (1955), The Sound and the Fury (1959), and The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), an adapta-
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tion of JEAN GIRADOUX’s farce in which she starred with KATHARINE HEPBURN. For her supporting role in Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between (1971), Leighton won both an Oscar and an award from the British Society of Film and Television Arts. Based on a novel by L. P. Hartley and with a screenplay by HAROLD PINTER, the film concerns a boy who serves as a messenger between a wellbred Englishwoman and her farmer-lover. In John Ford’s Seven Women (1966) Leighton played one in a group of women at a missionary outpost under threat of siege in 1935 Mongolia.
Leighton’s television roles include an Emmy-winning performance as Queen Gertrude in Hamlet (1970) and Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1974). She was married for a time to the actor Michael Wilding.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Candee, Marjorie Dent, ed., Current Biography Yearbook, “Leighton, Margaret,” 1957; Hartnoll, Phyllis, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 4th ed., “Leighton, Margaret,” 1983.
Leinsdorf, Erich (February 4, 1912–September 11, 1993) Conductor, Pianist rich Leinsdorf started his career as a pianist and soon afterward developed as one of the world’s most renowned conductors and talented pianists. He is known for his precision, decisiveness, sharp memory, and stamina. After working in Europe in the early 1930s, he moved to the United States, where he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera House, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and elsewhere. Leinsdorf returned to West Germany in 1969 and also recorded music extensively. Leinsdorf was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, now Austria. His father died when he was 3, and he was raised by his mother and his aunt. Leinsdorf attended a local school and later enrolled in music school. When he was eight, his mother took him to his first real piano teacher, the wife of the composer Paul Pisk. Following his lessons with Pisk, Leinsdorf studied under Paul Emerich for five years. From 1922 to 1930 he attended the Reform-Real-Gymnasium, and he later enrolled in the University of Vienna. Leinsdorf studied
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conducting at the State Academy of Music and received his diploma in 1933. After graduating, Leinsdorf worked as a rehearsal and solo pianist for the Choral Society of the Democratic Arts Council. He frequented concerts and the rehearsals of other conductors. Lacking the drive to endure the long hours of practice required of a professional pianist, Leinsdorf increasingly moved toward conducting. He went to work for both BRUNO WALTER and ARTURO TOSCANINI, eventually working more with the latter. In the mid1930s he participated in the annual Salzburg Festivals. In 1937 Leinsdorf accepted a position as assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, debuting with Die Walku¨re. Leinsdorf soon became full conductor and also worked with the San Francisco Opera in 1938, when he conducted CLAUDE DEBUSSY’s Pelle´as et Me´lisande. The following year he took control of the German repertory at the Metropolitan and married his first wife, Anne Frohnknect, by whom he had five children.
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Erich Leinsdorf (쑖 Decca/Hanak/ Lebrecht / The Image Works)
In 1943 he joined the Cleveland Orchestra as a conductor and music director, and shortly thereafter he was drafted into the United
States Army. In 1947 he took a position with the Rochester Philharmonic. Ten years later he returned to the Metropolitan, and from
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1962 to 1969 he conducted at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He divorced his first wife in 1968 and the same year married the violinist Vera Graf. The following year, he returned to Germany as chief conductor of the Radio Symphony in West Berlin. Leinsdorf conducted many German and Italian works, including the operas Falstaff, Fidelio, Don Giovanni, Elektra, Parsifal, and Arabella, and symphonies by Brahms and Mendelssohn. Aside from his official posi-
tions, he toured the world extensively as a guest conductor. Leinsdorf also made many recordings, among which are all of Mozart’s symphonies recorded in London in 1955 to 1956. His writings include an autobiography, Cadenza: A Musical Career (1976) and The Composer’s Advocate (1981).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Leinsdorf, Erich, Cadenza: A Musical Career, 1976.
Lessing, Doris (October 22, 1919– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Essayist s the child of English parents, Doris May Lessing grew up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during the later years of British colonialism in Africa. Her early writings, many of which are heavily autobiographical, unfold in this African setting and are sharply critical of then-prevailing British attitudes, both toward Africans and among the British themselves. Lessing’s later works offer broader social commentary, and all of her work is known for its psychological portraits, particularly of women. Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Persia (now Iran), to British parents. Before her marriage, her mother had been a nurse in England. Her father, a World War I veteran, worked at the Imperial Bank of Persia, a position he disliked. The family moved to Rhodesia when Lessing was a child. Her father settled them into a difficult farm life, hoping to earn a fortune raising corn. Lessing grew to resent her mother’s attention to social expectations. She attended a Catholic school and a girls’ high school until she was 13; the rest of her education was left to Lessing herself.
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Doris Lessing (쑖 L. Birnbaum / Lebrecht / The Image Works)
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At the age of 15, Lessing escaped the farm, moved to the city, and worked as a nursemaid. Four years later, she married Frank Wisdom, with whom she had two children. Frightened by the constraints of her family life, she left her family and became involved with a circle of Communist intellectuals. There she met her second husband, Gottfried Lessing, by whom she had a son. Lessing soon left her second husband and moved with her son to England in 1949. Her enthusiasm for Communism soon waned, and in the 1960s she developed an interest in Sufi mysticism, especially the writings of the Sufi Idries Shah. Lessing’s first novel, The Grass Is Singing (1950), introduces themes that recur throughout her work—psychological portraits of women, criticism of English notions of superiority over Africans, the relationship of the individual to society, and commentary on social expectations. After the main character, Mary Turner, who lives in Africa, overhears talk that she will never marry, she marries a farmer with whom she is miserable. The Golden Notebook (1962) is one of Lessing’s most famous novels, both for its fragmentary presentation and for its (actually autobiographical) portrait of the writer Anna Wulf. Wulf suffers from writer’s block, but she is able to record varying aspects of her life in four notebooks: a red one for her time as a Communist, a black notebook for her time in colonial Africa, a blue one as her diary, and a yellow one for a story about her alter ego. The story unfolds in the form of excerpts from the notebooks interspersed with fragments of a fictional work entitled Free Woman. Finally she is able to weave these disparate elements of her life together. A series of autobiographical novels about Martha Quest consists of five volumes published as Children of Violence (1964–1965). The events of the story parallel those of Lessing’s own life, beginning on the African farm, winding through her involvement with the Communist group, and ending with her first years in London. Lessing’s other major series
is the five-part science fiction collection Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983). The novels The Diary of a Good Neighbor (1983) and If the Old Could . . . (1984) appeared under the pseudonym Jane Somers. The first concerns a successful magazine editor, Janna, whose emotionally bankrupt life is transformed by her budding friendship with Maudie Fowler, an older woman. In 1985, Lessing published The Good Terrorist, about a group of terrorists in London. Among Lessing’s later novels is the “horror” story The Fifth Child (1989), a scathing attack on notions of ideal family life. Harriet and David Lovatt dream of filling a large house they cannot really afford with children. With four children and a happy home life, they seem to have realized their dream. The fifth child, however, is something of a monster and shatters the dream. Mara and Dann was published in 1999, and Ben, in the World, a sequel to The Fifth Child, appeared the following year. In 2001, Lessing published The Sweetest Dream. The Grandmothers: Four Short Novels, appeared in 2003. A sequel to Mara and Dann, The Story of General Dann and Mara’s Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog, was published in 2005. In Lessing’s latest novel, The Cleft (2007), a twist on the origin of mankind in which Lessing portrays the original human race as entirely female. Only when men enter the world—through a the birth of mutant male child—do atrocities such as rape begin to occur. Lessing has also written many short stories. They appear in the collections This Was the Old Chief’s Country (1951), The Habit of Loving (1957), African Stories (1964) The Story of a Non-Marrying Man (1972), The Sun Between Their Feet (1973), and The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches (1992). Among Lessing’s nonfiction books are In Pursuit of the English (1960), about her first months in England, and Prisons We Choose to Live Inside (1987), her impressions of modern society, politics, history, racism, and other issues. She has also written the “inner space fiction” psychological novel Briefing
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for a Descent into Hell (1971); Memoirs of a Survivor (1975); the novel Love, Again (1996), about a woman who falls in love at the age of 65; her two autobiographies Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 (1994) and Walking in the Shade : My Autobiography, 1949–1962 (1997); plays collected in Play with a Tiger and Other Plays, published in England in 1996; and the libretto for the PHILIP GLASS opera The Marriages between Zones Three, Four and Five, based on one of her science fiction novels. Lessing received an honorary degree from Harvard in 1995.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bloom, Harold, ed., Doris Lessing, 2003; Fishburn, Katherine, Doris Lessing: Life, Work, and Criticism, 1987; King, Jeannette, Doris Lessing, 1989; Lessing, Doris, Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 (1994); Lessing, Doris, Walking in the Shade: My Autobiography, 1949–1962 (1997); Rowe, Margaret Moan, Doris Lessing, 1994; Whittaker, Ruth, Doris Lessing, 1988. www.dorislessing.org.
Levi, Carlo (November 29, 1902–January 4, 1975) Novelist, Journalist, Painter fter being exiled for anti-fascist political activity before World War II, Carlo Levi emerged as one of Italy’s leading writers after the war. He is best known for his documentary novel Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945), based on his experiences in exile, which won international acclaim as soon as it was published. Levi’s writings were subsequently translated widely; they helped popularize social realism in postwar Italian literature. Levi was born into a Jewish family in Turin, Italy. His father was a merchant and a painter, and his mother had ties to the Socialist Party through her brother. After studying medicine at the University of Turin and earning his M.D. in 1924, he worked as a medical research assistant. A man with varied interests, he completed a year of military service in 1925 and then devoted his attention to painting landscapes and still lifes largely influenced by the French Postimpressionists. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he exhibited his
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work in a number of European cities, including Rome, London, and Paris. In 1930 in Paris, Levi founded the anti-fascist Italian Action Party and worked on its publication, Giustizia e Liberta`. He returned to Italy in 1933 and was imprisoned on numerous occasions for his opposition to Fascism. His political activities during the Abysinnian War led to his exile in a small village in southern Italy. There he spent his time painting, observing the inhabitants in the small town of Gagliano, writing in his journal, and assisting the sick in the region. Levi’s year of exile and house arrest is reflected in Cristo si e` fermato a Eboli (1945; Christ Stopped at Eboli), set in a fictionalized version of the town in which he lived. The title, he said, came from some of the town’s inhabitants, who said Christ had stopped at Eboli before he got to their town. In the story he relates sympathetic, philosophical observations on the town’s inhabitants and landscape. Christ Stopped at Eboli was by far Levi’s most successful work, and it won sev-
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eral awards and became a best-seller in the United States and Italy. During World War II, Levi divided his time between Paris and Italy, eventually involving himself in the Resistance in Tuscany, and in connection with these activities he edited the paper Nazione del Popolo. In 1945 he became editor of Italia Libera. Among his other works are L’orologio (1950; The Watch), which examines the political climate in postwar Rome through the lives of a journalist and his acquaintances; Paura della liberta` (1947; Of Fear and Freedom); Le parole sono pietre (1955; Words Are Stones); and La doppia notte dei tigli (1959; The Linden Trees, or The Two-Fold Night). Levi also contributed drawings and articles to publications, and in the last years of his life he spent much of his time painting.
Carlo Levi (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-131771)
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ward, David, Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943–46: Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, Carlo Levi and the “Actionists,” 1996.
Lewis, C. S. (November 29, 1898–November 22, 1963) Novelist, Essayist, Scholar, Writer of Children’s Books he English author Clive Staples Lewis was a renowned scholar of English literature and a prolific and widely influential writer of Christian apologetics. He also wrote many novels, including a trilogy of science fiction books, and a popular and influential series of children’s books now widely considered classics. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a domineering lawyer; his mother, a kind and cheerful woman, made
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sure Clive and his older brother Warren had plenty of reading material. Clive went by the nickname “Jack” and kept it for the rest of his life. After his mother’s death from cancer in 1908 (a fate that was to befall their father in 1929), both boys were sent to a boarding school they despised. At age 13, Lewis enrolled in a preparatory school in England. Religious confusion tormented Lewis in his teens. After briefly espousing Christianity, he became interested in the occult and then be-
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came an ardent atheist. At age 15 his academic success won him a scholarship to Malvern College, one of England’s elite “public schools,” where he developed a deep interest in literature. The following year he moved in with a tutor, who specialized in preparing boys for the university, and his wife. After a brief time at University College, Oxford, Lewis entered the army to take his part in World War I. After fighting in France and recovering from wounds received at the Battle of Arras, Lewis continued his studies at Oxford University. He held two scholastic positions for the rest of his life—as a fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford (1925–1954), and as a professor of medieval and Renaissance English literature at Cambridge (1954–1963). Influenced in part by his friend J. R. R. TOLKIEN, Lewis again accepted Christianity in 1931. He described his reconversion in The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933), an allegory along the lines of John Bunyan’s classic Pilgrim’s Progress. He solidified his reputation as a literary scholar in 1936 with the publication of Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, a comprehensive study of the use of allegory in the courtly love poetry of the Middle Ages, which includes a fascinating discussion of the origins of romantic love in Western civilization. His first successful religious book, The Problem of Pain, appeared in 1940 and addressed the question of how evil can exist under a good God. Both books reflect Lewis’s genius for handling complex material in a graceful and readable way. Aside from his numerous nonfiction works defending Christianity, Lewis wrote many novels that brought the essence of Christianity alive for believers and nonbelievers alike. In the first of a trio of science fiction novels, Out of the Silent Planet (1938), men journey to Mars for the first time in history. The hero of this book and its successors is Edwin Ransom, a philologist loosely based on Tolkien. Perelandra (1943), the second volume, recreates the story of the fall of man on Venus, except that this time Eve resists temptation,
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and, with Ransom’s help, paradise is not lost. In That Hideous Strength (1945), Ransom, now modeled on Charles Williams, another English novelist, poet, and defender of Christianity who influenced Lewis, fights against a corrupt bureaucracy on earth. All three novels address the dangers of the modern worship of technology and the power it brings, and all bring alive the relief and delight of surrendering to and serving something larger than the individual ego, of surrendering to the ultimate reality whose nature is love. Lewis’s most popular novel is the Screwtape Letters (1942), told in the form of letters from a head devil, Screwtape, to his subordinate nephew, Wormwood. Screwtape instructs Wormwood to tempt a young man and repeatedly berates him when his deceptive wiles fail. Set against the background of the air-raids England endured in World War II, the novel movingly and humorously conveys the strength gained with a return to Christian faith. Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956) is the myth of Eros and Psyche retold from the perspective of Psyche’s ugly sister, Orual. Critics generally consider it the most complex and interesting of Lewis’s adult novels. Lewis’s seven bestselling children’s books, collectively known as The Chronicles of Narnia, take place in a land called Narnia. Lewis knew from his own experience that many children find it hard to relate to the Christ of the Gospels, and so he created a mythical version of Christianity in Narnia. In the first volume, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), a family of children, two boys and two girls, discover a door into another world in the back of a wardrobe, a world of talking animals where everything is alive. With the help of Aslan, the divine Lion, who sacrifices his life to free Narnia, they defeat the White Witch who has kept Narnia in perpetual winter. And Aslan returns to life more glorious and golden than ever. Lewis acknowledged as his teachers in the art of writing for children the nineteenth-century Scotsman, George MacDonald, and Edith
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Nesbit (1858–1924), two of the great writers of English children’s books, but he also contributed his own distinctive touch, blending figures from Greek mythology with fairy-tale motifs and describing profound spiritual experiences in terms that many non-Christian readers find as effective as do Christians. To take just one example of the latter, towards the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the third book in the series) the children and those they are on their quest with, including Caspian, the king of Narnia, sail into the “Last Sea.” Reepicheep, the talking mouse, falls into the water, and comes up sputtering “Sweet, sweet.” The king drinks deeply of the water, and when he raises his head, “Not only his eyes, but everything about him seemed to be brighter.” And he says, “I’m not sure it isn’t going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen—if I’d known about it till now.” They can only describe the water as “like light more than anything else . . . drinkable light.” And as they sail on, they no longer need to eat or sleep. The water gives them all the nourishment they need, and every day they grow more full of joy and yet more silent. “The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.” The series also includes The Silver Chair (1953) and the last volume, The Last Battle (1956), that tells of the end of Narnia. The books are recognized as classics in the great tradition of English children’s books, and they have had a strong influence on children’s literature in the United States. During most of Lewis’s adult life, his brother, Warren, a scholar in his own right but crip-
pled by alcoholism, lived with him. In 1956 Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American who converted to Christianity after reading his books. She died of bone cancer four years after their marriage. Lewis outlived his wife by only three years and died the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. His other works include Mere Christianity (1952), a printed collection of radio addresses he delivered during World War II; The Four Loves (1958); Miracles (1947); The Great Divorce (1946); and the autobiographical Surprised by Joy (1955). A well-received film, Shadowlands (1985), tells the story of Lewis’s relationship with Gresham in a moving, if somewhat distorted, way. In a century in which so many cultural leaders have seen traditional religion as dead, C. S. Lewis stood out for his ability to express what he felt to be living in Christianity, and to express it in such a way that many who would never have thought of themselves as Christians loved his work. Moreover, his lively pictures of the dangers of modern technology and science worship resonated with many who felt little sympathy for the spiritual aspect of his message.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Coren, Michael, The Man Who Created Narnia: The Story of C. S. Lewis, 1996; Lindskoog, Kathryn, C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian, 3d ed., 1987; Wilson, A. N., C. S. Lewis: A Biography, 1990.
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Lewis, Wyndham (November 18, 1882–March 7, 1957) Novelist, Painter, Short-Story Writer, Critic, Essayist ercy Wyndham Lewis was a principal founder of Vorticism, a movement in early twentieth-century English art and literature. His sharply satiric, direct, and openly critical writing style gives power to novels such as The Apes of God and his volumes of political commentary and literary criticism. Lewis was born on a yacht off the coast of Nova Scotia near Amherst. After his parents separated, he moved to London with his mother in 1893. In 1897–1898, he studied at Rugby University, where he ranked last in his class, and he later enrolled in the Slade School of Art in London. At first Lewis aspired to become a painter. He left school without completing his studies in 1901 and traveled around Europe for the next several years. During this time he made the acquaintance of the painter A UGUSTUS JOHN. In 1909, Lewis returned to London, where he began to make the acquaintance of the American writer EZRA POUND, T. E. Hulme, and other important young writers and thinkers. Several of his early short stories appeared in the English Review in 1909. In London Lewis also exhibited his paintings. With Pound and others, he founded Blast—The Review of the Great English Vortex. In 1914 Lewis and the other Vorticists, a term coined by Pound, sought to eliminate mere imitation of nature from art and use dynamic, abstract forms, taking as their symbol a vortex of creative energy, stationary yet dynamic. The movement had roots in Imagism as well as Italian Futurism (see F. T. MARINETTI and UMBERTO BOCCIONI) and Cubism (see PABLO PICASSO), although Lewis disliked them both. Lewis’s Vorticist paintings were, however, mostly confined to the years surrounding World War I. After serving in France during the war, he executed many war and battle
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scenes. His later paintings grew more realistic, notably his many portraits of well-known figures such as T. S. ELIOT (whose portrait the Royal Academy refused in 1938). By World War II he had renounced abstract art altogether. His output of visual art declined as he aged, due in part to the deteriorating eyesight that left him completely blind by 1953. The Tate Gallery in London held a major retrospective of his work in 1956, entitled Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism. The title character of Lewis’s semiautobiographical first novel, Tarr (1918; rev. 1928), is an artist living in Paris. Lewis intended the novel as criticism of Germany, as embodied in the character of Tarr’s fiance´, Bertha, and of Kreisler. The Apes of God (1930), a pointed satire on British literary and artistic circles, is often considered Lewis’s fictional masterpiece. His characters, some of whom he patterned after well-known contemporaries, live in delusional worlds and are caught up in political games, and the work created an uproar when it was published. His other novels include the satiric tragedy Revenge for Love (1937) and Self-Condemned (1954), which recalls the years he spent living in Toronto during World War II. Lewis, never known for tact or modesty, leveled heavy criticism at many prominent writers of his day. He particularly disliked the work of D. H. LAWRENCE, VIRGINIA WOOLF, and the entire Bloomsbury Group as well as the American writers Gertrude Stein and WILLIAM FAULKNER and the French writer JEAN-PAUL SARTRE. His literary and artistic criticism appeared in volumes such as Time and Western Man (1927); The Lion and the Fox (1927), a study that concentrates on William Shakespeare and Machiavelli; and Men without Art (1934). His outspoken criticism led to several libel suits against him.
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Lewis’s political views in the years leading up to World War II did considerable harm to his reputation among critics. In Left Wings over Europe (1936), he defended the German dictator Adolf Hitler and praised Fascism in Italy and Germany, positions he soon abandoned. Count Your Dead (1937) addressed the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and presented a favorable view of Spain’s future Fascist dictator, Francisco Franco. However, in subsequent political works such as The Hitler Cult (1939), The Jews, Are They Human? (1939), and Anglosaxony: A League That Works (1941), Lewis retracted his earlier views. In 1939 Lewis and his wife went to the United States. The outbreak of World War II trapped them in North America, and after liv-
ing briefly in New York City, they spent three years in a dilapidated Toronto hotel. When the war ended, they returned to England, and Lewis became an art critic for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s The Listener. Lewis’s other works include the short-story volume Rotting Hill (1951); two volumes of memoirs, Blasting and Bombadiering (1937) and Rude Assignment (1950); The Childermass (1928); The Human Age (1955–1956); and The Art of Being Ruled (1926), a volume of political theory.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Campbell, Roy, Wyndham Lewis, 1985; Pritchard, William H., Wyndham Lewis, 1972; Wagner, Geoffrey, Wyndham Lewis: A Portrait of the Artist as the Enemy, 1957.
Liebermann, Max (July 20, 1847–February 8, 1935) Painter, Graphic Artist t a time when Expressionism dominated the avant-garde of German painting, Max Liebermann helped popularize the French impressionistic style in Germany. His subjects were typically drawn from the German lower classes or from his frequent visits to the Netherlands. He was president of the Berlin Academy from 1920 to 1933. Liebermann was born in Berlin. From 1866 to 1868 he attended the University of Berlin, studying under Karl Steffeck. After finishing his studies there, he attended the Art Academy of Weimar from 1868 to 1872. The first painting he exhibited (in 1872), Women Plucking Geese, stirred considerable controversy in an art culture that promoted strict realism and was influenced by the work of the painter Josef Israe¨ls. The following year he traveled to Barbizon, France, where he befriended the
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French landscape painter Jean-Franc¸ois Millet (1814–1875). While Liebermann’s early paintings use low-key shades, he began to employ brighter colors after developing an interest in the works of French painters such as Camille Corot (1796–1875) and Charles-Franc¸ois Daubigny (1817–1878). Travels to the Netherlands, where he was introduced to Israe¨ls and plein air painting, were another influence on Liebermann’s early work, and he continued to return to Holland throughout his life. After Bathing (1904), which shows a group of nude bathers dressing under a bright blue sky, is one of many paintings drawn from his visits to the Dutch coast. Liebermann lived primarily in Berlin after 1884, painting scenes and figures from the lower classes—peasants, factory workers, children, orphans, city scenes, and other sub-
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jects. In the last decade of the nineteenth century he discovered the French Impressionists, particularly E´douard Manet (1832–1883) and Edgar Degas (1834–1917), and he was instrumental in popularizing Impressionism in Germany. He became a member of the Berlin Academy in 1898, served as head of the Berlin Secession in 1899, and served as president of
the Academy from 1920 until the Nazi authorities dismissed him in 1933. Liebermann also worked as a graphic artist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Paret, Peter, “The Enemy Within”—Max Liebermann As President of the Prussian Academy of Arts, 1984.
Lloyd Webber, Andrew (March 22, 1948– ) Composer ne of the most influential figures in British and American theater, Andrew Lloyd Webber combines rock, gospel, country, pop, and other forms of modern music with opera. His enormously popular shows include Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, and The Phantom of the Opera. Lloyd Webber was born into a musically oriented family in London. His mother, a music teacher, taught at Wetherby in South Kensington, where he first attended school. As a child he learned to play the viola and the piano, taking his first lessons from his mother. Lloyd Webber’s father was director of the London College of Music, and his brother, Julian Lloyd Webber, later became a renowned cellist. Lloyd Webber next attended the Westminster Underschool, an elite preparatory school in London. His first ambition was to devote his life to restoring dilapidated buildings, but he further developed his interest in music at school. His tastes ran contrary to the traditional classical music stressed in the academic environment, and he preferred instead Latin American and contemporary pop music. He collaborated with other students on several productions, including Socrates Swings. Lloyd Webber
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won a scholarship to Magadalen College, Oxford and later studied briefly at the Royal College of Music. Lloyd Webber began his collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice—who was then working for EMI—while he was still in school. Rice contacted him and asked him if he would ever be interested in working together, and the two finished Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1968. Lloyd Webber’s music for the production derives from many modern genres from pop, to rock, to country. The two expanded the show, which was successfully produced in Edinburgh and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York (1972). Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), a controversial rock opera based on the life of Jesus, marked their next collaborative effort. The single “Jesus Christ Superstar” and later the entire album were released before the show was produced onstage. The album sold more than three million copies, and the music gained an enormous audience in Europe, Australia, and the United States. The story, which does not include the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion, provoked a controversy in the United States. Nevertheless, it became one of the longest-running Broadway shows and was nominated for five Tony Awards.
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In 1973 Lloyd Webber began his annual Sydmonton Festivals, in which he showcases new works. He holds them for select groups of people at a chapel he restored and assigns a theme to each one. His next major production, Jeeves (1975), did not include Rice and proved a commercial failure. Rice returned to work with him on Evita (1978), about the life of Eva Pero´n, wife of the Argentinian dictator Juan Pero´n. Evita won a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, seven Tonys, and a Grammy, and it featured the popular song “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.” Rice and Lloyd Webber parted ways after Evita, and Lloyd Webber scored another major success with Cats (1981), taken from T. S. ELIOT’s book of verse for children, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Cats became the longest-running musical in the history of British theater and later in the history of Broadway. (Lloyd Webber and his entire family adored cats, and the family owned several Burmese cats while he was growing up.) With Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe, Lloyd Webber crafted a musical version of The Phantom of the Opera (1986). His later musicals include Song and Dance (1982); Starlight Express (1984); Aspects of Love (1989), based on a novel by DAVID GARNETT; Sunset Boulevard (1993); The Beautiful Game (2000); The Woman in White (2004); and a new production of The Sound of Music
(2004). His productions are known for their dramatic flair and strong melodies influenced by diverse styles of contemporary music. Lloyd Webber has also written the film scores for Gumshoe, The Odessa File, and Tell Me on a Sunday. His other works include the musicals By Jeeves (1996) and Whistle down The Wind (1996). Adapted from a story about Yorkshire children who mistake a fugitive for Jesus, the latter is set in Louisiana during the 1950s. Meat Loaf lyricist Jim Steinman contributed to the production, the music for which is among the most rock-flavored Lloyd Webber has written. Lloyd Webber has his own production company, The Really Useful Group. He was knighted in 1992, was given a peerage in the House of Lords in 1996, and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2002. His other honors include an Academy Award, three Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and six Laurence Olivier Awards.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Mantle, Jonathan, The Unauthorized Biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1989; McKnight, Gerald, Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1984; Snelson, John, Andrew Lloyd Webber, 2004; Walsh, Michael, Andrew Lloyd Webber, His Life and Works: A Critical Biography, 1997. www.andrewlloydwebber.com.
Loos, Adolf (December 10, 1870–August 23, 1933) Architect n influential force in the development of modern architecture, the Viennese architect Adolf Franz Karl Viktor Maria Loos, as he was christened, forged a style with the primary focus of comfort and functionality. He is best known for his work
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in private homes and is often credited with introducing modern architecture to private dwellings in Europe. Loos was born in Bru¨nn, Moravia, AustriaHungary, now Brno, in the Czech Republic. His father, a stone cutter and sculptor, died
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before Loos turned 9. In 1884 he entered the Obergymnasium of the Benedictines of Melk but quickly failed exams and had to leave. Loos hopped from school to school. At various times, he studied at the National School of Arts and Crafts in Reichenberg, the Superior Technical School in Dresden, and the Academy of Beaux Arts, intending first to become a mechanic and finally deciding to devote his life to architecture. In 1893 Loos traveled to the United States, remaining there for the next three years. His American sojourn was an important factor in the development of his architectural style, as he absorbed the influences of the Chicago School, which had produced the first modern skyscraper in 1885 and was at the forefront of the development of modern architecture. Loos returned to Vienna in 1896 and began to write provocative, opinionated articles expressing his ideas about architecture. He rejected the decorative bent of Art Nouveau architects such as HENRY VAN DE VELDE and his former classmate JOSEF HOFFMANN, and in his articles he passionately argued against the use of decoration in architecture. The most famous of these articles is Ornament and Crime (1908). He immersed himself in Vienna’s cultural life, gaining the friendship of such figures as the composer ARNOLD SCHOENBERG and the writer KARL KRAUS. (With these two, at the close of World War I, Loos formulated the “Guidelines for the Ministry of Arts” for the new Austrian republic.) Loos is best known for his contributions to the development of modern architecture in private homes. From the beginning he embraced a purely functional style built from an interplay of geometric shapes—particularly cubes, rectangles, and cylinders. He focused on efficient organization of compact spaces and the assurance of comfort. From 1904 to 1906 he worked on the Villa Carma, Clarens, on Lake Geneva near Mon-
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treux, Switzerland. The home, built for the professor Theodor Beer, was completed by another architect in 1912 following a disagreement with Loos. The Steiner House in Vienna (1910), often called the first modern home, was also one of the first homes constructed from reinforced concrete. During this time he also renovated or decorated interiors of stores, cafe´s, and apartments, such as the Cafe´ Museum (1899; later dubbed the “Nihilist Cafe´”) and the American Bar (1908) in Vienna. Loos was very particular about the materials used in construction, and he paid special attention to the appearance of interior and exterior surfaces. The most striking feature of the Scheu House in Vienna (1912–1913) was its flat, terraced roof. Living in Paris from 1924 to 1928, Loos designed a home for Dadaist founder Tristan Tzara in the city’s Montmartre section. He returned to Vienna in 1928, where he completed the Moller House the same year. Loos often designed homes with flat roofs, but a notable exception is the Horner House in Vienna (1930), which features a striking half-cylinder roof. Other homes include the Khuner House in Kreuzburg, Payerbach, Austria (1929–1930). Loos designed a number of larger buildings as well. The building for the tailors Goldman and Salatsch (also called the Looshaus) in Vienna, perhaps the best known of these, boasted a large, white stucco exterior with three-paned windows. Loos designed a store for the tailors in 1898 and an apartment house for them in 1909. He also designed workers housing and several large monuments, but most of these were never built.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gravagnuolo, Benedetto, Adolf Loos: Theory and Works, 1982; Tournikiotis, Panayotis, Adolf Loos, 1994.
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Lowry, Malcolm (July 28, 1909–June 27, 1957) Novelist, Poet, Short-Story Writer ost famous for his novel Under the Volcano, Clarence Malcolm Lowry wrote autobiographical novels that allow the reader to enter the minds of disillusioned protagonists confronted with a sense of personal failure and at odds with their surroundings. Lowry’s severe troubles with alcoholism hampered his literary output and led to his premature death at the age of 47. Lowry was born in New Brighton, near Birkenhead, Cheshire, England. His father, a prosperous cotton merchant, was something of an autocrat who instilled in Lowry a fear of authority figures. From the ages of 9 to 13, Lowry suffered from near blindness, brought on by an eye disease, which was then remedied by an operation. He enrolled in the Caldicott Preparatory School in Hertfordshire in 1917 and later studied at The Leys near Cambridge. At the latter, Lowry contributed short stories to the school magazine The Leys Fortnightly. He developed a love for jazz, began to play the ukulele, and acquired the habit of excessive drinking that plagued him for the rest of his life. Lowry quit school and went to sea, bound for China and working as a deckhand aboard the freighter Pyrrhus. The experience proved to be one of the many disastrous episodes in his life. The rest of the crew resented his upper-class breeding and tormented him. Lowry’s first novel, Ultramarine (1933), is drawn from journals he kept on his sea voyage. Its protagonist, Dana Hilliot, has gone to sea and suffers ridicule from the other crew members. He seeks escape in a variety of destructive ways, including alcoholism and engaging the services of prostitutes as well as in hard work and fantasizing. Portions of Ultramarine appeared in the Cambridge literary periodical Experiment. When he returned to England, Lowry studied English at St. Catharine’s College, Cam-
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bridge, and managed to earn his B.A. in 1932. The primary influence on his writing at this point was the American poet and novelist Conrad Aiken, whom he became friendly with during his Cambridge days. Lowry also gained the friendship of the poet DYLAN THOMAS. In 1933 he moved to Paris, where he married the American Jan Gabrial. By 1936, the couple had settled in New York. After a brief separation, they reunited, moved to Hollywood, and then moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico. The arrival date of the Lowrys in Mexico— November 2, the Day of the Dead—proved to be significant in his most famous novel, Under the Volcano (1947). After Lowry’s drunken escapades led to a split with his wife, he returned to Hollywood and married the former actress Margerie Bonner. The couple moved to a spartan cabin in Dollarton, British Columbia, near Vancouver. Lowry had begun writing Under the Volcano in Mexico in 1936 and worked on revisions in Canada. In 1940, he engaged an agent, Harold Matson, to find a publisher but was not successful for several years. In the mid-1940s, both Reynal and Hitchcock in New York and Jonathan Cape in London agreed to publish the work. The novel’s narrative structure employs flashback and interior monologue, and Lowry’s work often evokes comparisons to the stream-of-consciousness narratives of JAMES JOYCE. The story unfolds in the Mexican city of Quauhnahuac, overshadowed by the volcanos Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, on the Day of the Dead in 1938. The semiautobiographical protagonist, who reflects Lowry’s own sense of alienation and inner torment, is an alcoholic British ex-consul, Geoffrey Firmin, who is divorced from his former wife Yvonne and feels his life has been a failure. Hugh, Geoffrey’s brother, is a reporter with leftist leanings and a keen interest in both the Spanish
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Civil War and Yvonne. Yvonne and Hugh also suffer from a sense of failure. Yvonne has returned to Mexico to patch up her relationship with Geoffrey, who is drunk most of the time and alternately inclined toward reuniting and separating. The story ends in tragedy, with Yvonne’s death under a stampeding horse and Geoffrey’s at the hands of a police officer. Under the Volcano received some critical acclaim upon its publication but did not achieve widespread popularity until after Lowry’s death. The American director John Huston’s film version of Under the Volcano was released in 1984. In 1944, the Lowrys’ shack burned down, destroying his manuscript of In Ballast to the White Sea and other works. They later rebuilt the shack, but returned permanently to Europe in 1954. Lowry’s physical and mental health deteriorated in the 1940s, and he left the majority of his projects unfinished. He attacked his wife, suffered from hallucinations,
and was hospitalized on numerous occasions. His death in 1957 was attributed to alcohol. Thanks in large measure to the determined efforts of his widow, much of his writing was published posthumously. These posthumously published works include the short stories collected in Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961); Selected Poems (1962); Selected Letters (1965), edited by his wife and Harvey Breit; the unfinished novel Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid (1968); and October Ferry to Gabriola (1970). BIBLIOGRAPHY Bareham, Tony, Malcolm Lowry, 1989; Binns, Ronald, Malcolm Lowry, 1984; Bowker, Gordon, Malcolm Lowry Remembered, 1985; Bowker, Gordon, Pursued by Furies: A Life of Malcolm Lowry, 1993; Grace, Sherrill, The Voyage That Never Ends: Malcolm Lowry’s Fiction, 1982; Singh, Ravindra Prasad, Malcolm Lowry, Novelist, 1992.
Lucas, George Walton (May 14, 1944– ) Director, Producer, Screenwriter ost famous for his epic series that began with Star Wars, the American director George Lucas is one of Hollywood’s wealthiest and most successful independent producers. Lucas is also famous for his collaboration with STEVEN SPIELBERG on the Indiana Jones adventure films. Lucas was born in Modesto, California, to George Walton Lucas, Sr., and Dorothy Ellinore Bomberger. His mother was of German and Scots-Irish ancestry and came from a well-known family in Modesto. His father was of British and Swiss-German heritage. Both parents, staunch Methodists, supported the
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family by operating both a stationery store and the walnut ranch on which they lived. As a youth, Lucas was a poor student—not for lack of intelligence, but for lack of interest in his studies. He turned his attention instead to cars and racing, a sport to which he aspired until he was involved in a near-fatal car crash just before he graduated from high school. After high school, Lucas attended Modesto Junior College, where he developed an interest in cinematography. Lucas’s early exposure to moviemaking came in an unlikely venue. In 1960, an underground filmmaker, Bruce Baillie, began to screen movies from avant-garde 16-mm artists
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on a bed sheet he had hung up in his back yard. Baillie took his act on the road for a series he called Canyon Cinema, touring local coffeehouses. The Canyon Cinema coffeehouse showings attracted Lucas, as well as his friend John Plummer, both of whom attended as many of them as they could. After the coffeehouse showing piqued Lucas’s interests, he began to frequent other screenings. He met cinematographer Haskell Wexler (1922– ) at a racetrack, and the latter was impressed with Lucas’s knowledge of using the camera. Soon thereafter, Lucas enrolled in the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, where he met future director and producer Randal Kleiser (1946– ). Kleiser wrote and appeared in Lucas’s first student film Freiheit (1966), about a German student who is shot and killed while trying to cross into West Germany through a divided Berlin. A formative influence in Lucas’s career was a Filmic Expression class taught by Lester Novros (1909–2000). In the class, Novros emphasized the importance of movement, color, sound, time, and light. Slavko Vorkapich (1894–1976), a Serbian montagist and onetime colleague of SERGEI EISENSTEIN, was another strong influence on the early development of Lucas’s style and was serving as dean of the university’s film department at the time he attended. Like Novros, Vorkapich taught the importance of movement and energy. Both emphasized these elements over narrative. Inspired by Novros, Vorkapich, and a number of films made by the National Film Board of Canada, Lucas began to craft abstract 16mm works such as the photo montage Look At Life (1965) and The Emperor (1967). In 1967, he graduated from USC with a bachelor of fine arts in film. His penchant for racing bought him a way out of military service in 1967, when he tried to join the U.S. Air Force. He was turned down due to too many speeding tickets. He was later drafted into the U.S. Army but was diagnosed with diabetes. Following his 1967
rejection from military service, he returned to USC as a graduate student in film production. There, he directed the short film Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138: 4EB (Electronic Labyrinth), which won first prize at the 1967–1968 National Student Film Festival. Following the success of his film, he won a scholarship from Warner Brothers to watch director FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA make Finian’s Rainbow (1968). Lucas befriended Coppola and with him founded the American Zoetrope studio. Their collaborations included Lucas’s first fulllength feature film, THX 1138 (1971), an adaptation of his earlier futuristic student film. In 1969, Lucas married film editor Marcia Griffin (1945– ), who later shared an Oscar for Best Film Editing with Paul Hirsch (1945– ) and Richard Chew (1940– ) for Star Wars (1977). They divorced in 1983. When Coppola began to devote his energies to making The Godfather (1972), Lucas set out on his own and founded Lucasfilm, Inc., in Marin County in northern California. He scored a major success with the low-budget movie American Graffiti (1973), a semiautobiographical film in part inspired by his love of automobile racing. American Graffiti won two Golden Globe Awards and was nominated for five Academy Awards. On the heels of its success, he started writing the screenplay for the epic science fantasy Star Wars (1977), which was destined to become one of the most successful films of all time. Turned down by several studios, Lucas finally convinced Twentieth Century Fox to give the film a chance. In what was to prove an extremely lucrative move worth billions of dollars to date, he waived his director’s salary in exchange for forty percent of the box office earnings and the exclusive rights to Star Wars merchandising. Star Wars introduced the memorable characters Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Ben Kenobi, C3PO, and R2-D2 from Lucas’s fictional universe to international audiences. Lucas directed two successful sequels to Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
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and Return of the Jedi (1983) before going back in time to write a prequel trilogy consisting of The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005). Attack of the Clones was the first major motion picture shot exclusively in digital media. After the initial success of Star Wars, he began collaborating with Spielberg in the Indiana Jones adventure series Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, another Lucas/Spielberg collaboration, is scheduled for release in 2008. Lucas has been executive producer of a host of other films, including Kagemusha (1980), directed by AKIRA KUROSAWA; Labyrinth (1986), directed by Jim Henson (1936–1990); Howard the Duck (1986), directed by Willard Huyck (1945– ); Willow (1988), directed by Ron Howard (1954– ); and Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), directed by Coppola. He has also worked on television spinoffs of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. Several other projects are scheduled to be released in 2008 and 2009. Lucasfilm’s cutting-edge subdivisions, Skywalker Sound, the visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic, and Lucasfilm Arts have introduced many innovations in filmmaking and videogaming and are all successful and well-respected. Lucas has been nomi-
nated for four Oscars but has never won one individually, though he received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1992. In 2005, he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Lucas is also known for his charitable donations. The nonprofit George Lucas Educational Foundation, of which he is chairman of the board, was founded in 1991 to encourage innovation in schools. His 2005 donation of $1 million helped fund the construction of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The following year he donated a sizable sum of money to the film school at USC, and he is a member of the USC School of Cinema-Television Advisory Board. In 2006, President George W. Bush awarded Lucas the National Medal of Technology for his work at Industrial Light and Magic, marking the first time in history that an entertainment company won the award.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baxter, John, Mythmaker: The Life and Work of George Lucas, 1999; Salewicz, Chris, George Lucas, 1999; Maxford, Howard, The George Lucas Companion, 1999; Pollock, Dale, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, 1999; Smith, Jim, George Lucas, 2003.. www.lucasfilm.com. www.starwars.com.
Lutyens, Edwin (March 29, 1869–January 1, 1944) Architect s an architect, Edwin Landseer Lutyens began his career designing private homes in England. His gabled, traditionally styled dwellings contrast mark-
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edly with the flat-roofed, functional forms espoused by the architects of the International Style. In his later years he designed public
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buildings, the most important of which is the Viceroy’s House in New Delhi as well as war memorials. Lutyens, named after the Victorian painter Edwin Landseer (1802–1873), was born in London. His father was a former infantry officer who painted portraits of horses after his retirement. Lutyens’s mother, a former Catholic who had become a Protestant, raised her children in a religious atmosphere. Because of his fragile health in childhood, Lutyens was unable to attend school regularly and was taught primarily at home. He spent hours wandering around the Surrey countryside and admiring its barns and cottages. Later, he began to outline the fundamental shapes of the buildings on sheets of glass. In 1885 he entered the South Kensington School of Design. Two years later he became a pupil of the architect Ernest George, and soon afterward he set up his own architectural firm.
Edwin Lutyens (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-38057)
Lutyens first established himself as an architect of private dwellings, designing Tudorstyle homes that incorporated traditional building styles of Surrey adapted for contemporary use. Among these are Crooksbury, a summerhouse in Surrey (1890), Ruckmans at Oakwood Park in Surrey, and The Pleasaunce in Norfolk for Lord and Lady Battersea. Lutyens met the landscapist Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1942) in the late 1800s. Jekyll, an artist who came from a wealthy and well-connected family, had turned to landscaping after her eyesight began to fade. Her direct and simplified approach to her work was influenced by her acquaintance with the nineteenth-century art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900). Through her connections Lutyens obtained commissions, and she frequently collaborated with him, designing landscapes for his buildings. With Munstead Wood, at Godalming, Surrey (1896), a house he designed for Jekyll, Lutyens established his mature style in designing private homes. Two large gables protrude outward from the front, with the front door opening to a view of a tree-and-bush-lined walk. A high, buttressed chimney reaches upward next to one of the gables. The following year he married, with the reluctant consent of her wealthy family, Lady Emily Lytton, daughter of the Viceroy of India and granddaughter of the novelist Bulwer-Lytton. In 1904 Lutyens obtained a commission for his first office block, the headquarters of Country Life in London. Around 1906 he adopted a classical style, evident in his later public buildings. Five years later he designed the headquarters of the Theosophical Society, and in 1912 he began his work on planning New Delhi. In the early 1900s, the British government decided to replace Calcutta as India’s capital with a new city at Delhi, and Lutyens contributed extensively to the massive building project. He created a symmetrically patterned design for the city, the centerpiece of which is the domed Viceroy’s House (1913–1930), a neoclassical building constructed in marble
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and red sandstone that also incorporates Indian decoration. For this building Lutyens also designed lighting fixtures and many other elements of the interior. Since India gained its independence from Britain in 1947, the former Viceroy’s House has been the home of the nation’s president. After World War I, while still busy with New Delhi, he became architect to the Imperial War Graves Commission. The British government had decided to bury war casualties in small sites near the areas in which they died, and Lutyens was one of a number of prominent architects charged with the task of designing gravesites and war memorials. His most famous memorial is the tall Cenotaph, Whitehall, London (1919–1920), and among
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his many others are the Great War Stone (1919) and the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, Thiepval (1924). From 1926 to 1929 he designed the British embassy in Washington, D.C. At the time of his death, he had not finished a project for a large Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. He was knighted in 1918. BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, Jane, Gardens of a Golden Afternoon: The Story of a Partnership, Edwin Lutyens & Gertrude Jekyll, 1982; Brown, Jane, Lutyens and the Edwardians: An English Architect and His Clients, 1996; Gradidge, Roderick, Edwin Lutyens: Architect Laureate, 1981; Hussey, Christopher, The Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens, 1984.
World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Volume II
World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Volume I M–Z Jennifer Durham Bass
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COPYEDITOR: COMPOSITION & DESIGN:
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Jennifer Durham Bass Allison Blake Melissa Davis Lily Dougherty-Johnson Isabel Gottlieb Nicholas Gottlieb Emily Marturana Maxfield Richmond Elaine Alibrandi ATLIS Systems
Grey House Publishing, Inc. 185 Millerton Road Millerton, NY 12546 518.789.8700 FAX 518.789.0545 www.greyhouse.com e-mail: books @greyhouse.com While every effort has been made to ensure the reliability of the information presented in this publication, Grey House Publishing neither guarantees the accuracy of the data contained herein nor assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions or discrepancies. Grey House accepts no payment for listing; inclusion in the publication of any organization, agency, institution, publication, service or individual does not imply endorsement of the editors or publisher. Errors brought to the attention of the publisher and verified to the satisfaction of the publisher will be corrected in future editions. Except by express prior written permission of the Copyright Proprietor no part of this work may be copied by any means of publication or communication now known or developed hereafter including, but not limited to, use in any directory or compilation or other print publication, in any information storage and retrieval system, in any other electronic device, or in any visual or audio-visual device or product. This publication is an original and creative work, copyrighted by Grey House Publishing, Inc. and is fully protected by all applicable copyright laws, as well as by laws covering misappropriation, trade secrets and unfair competition. Grey House has added value to the underlying factual material through one or more of the following efforts: unique and original selection; expression; arrangement; coordination; and classification. Grey House Publishing, Inc. will defend its rights in this publication. Copyright 쑖 2007 by Grey House Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.) Durham, Jennifer L. World cultural leaders of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries / Jennifer Durham Bass. – [2nd ed.] 2 v. : ill. ; cm. Previous edition published: Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, 2000. Portions of the text published in previous edition: American cultural leaders. Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, 1993. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 1. A-L – v. 2. M-Z. ISBN: 978-1-59237-118-1 1. Arts, Modern–20th century. 2. Arts, Modern–21st century. 3. Artists–Biography–Dictionaries. I. Title. NX456 .D885 2007 700/.92/2 B
For my husband, Jeff Allen Bass
Table of Contents Volume I List of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, ix Preface, xvii Introduction, xxxi Biographical Profiles A–L, 1 Volume II List of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, ix Biographical Profiles M–Z, 615 Places to Visit, 1071 List of Leaders by Occupation, 1123 Glossary, 1135 Index, 1153 Primary Documents, 1195
vii
List of World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Volume I Aalto, Alvar, 3 Achebe, Chinua, 5 Adams, Ansel Easton, 6 Akhmatova, Anna, 8 Alain-Fournier, 9 Albee, Edward, 11 Allen, Woody, 12 Amis, Kingsley, 15 Andric´, Ivo, 17 Angelou, Maya, 18 Anouilh, Jean, 20 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 21 Arbus, Diane, 24 Armstrong, Louis, 25 Arp, Jean, 28 Ashbery, John, 29 Ashton, Frederick, 31 Astaire, Fred, 33 Asturias, Miguel A´ngel, 35 Auden, W. H., 36 Awoonor, Kofi Nyidevu, 39 Bacon, Francis, 43 Bakst, Le´on, 44 Balanchine, George, 46 Balthus, 47 Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones), 49 Barber, Samuel, 51 Bardot, Brigitte, 53 Barlach, Ernst, 54 Baroja y Nessi, Pı´o, 55 Barrault, Jean-Louis, 57 Barrie, J. M., 58 Barto´k, Be´la, 60 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 62 Basie, Count, 63 Bax, Arnold, 65 Beatles, The, 67 Beauvoir, Simone de, 69 Beckett, Samuel, 71 Beckmann, Max, 74 Beecham, Thomas, 75 Behrens, Peter, 77
Belloc, Hilaire, 78 Bellow, Saul, 80 Bennett, Arnold, 83 Berg, Alban, 85 Bergman, Ingmar, 87 Bergman, Ingrid, 89 Berlin, Irving, 91 Bernstein, Leonard, 93 Betjeman, John, 96 Bing, Rudolf, 97 Blackburn, Thomas, 99 Blackwood, Algernon, 100 Blais, Marie-Claire, 101 Blake, James Hubert “Eubie”, 103 Blasco Iba´n˜ez, Vicente, 104 Bliss, Arthur, 106 Blitzstein, Marc, 108 Blok, Alexander, 109 Boccioni, Umberto, 111 Bonham, John Henry, 587 Bonnard, Pierre, 113 Borges, Jorge Luis, 114 Boulez, Pierre, 116 Bourdelle, E´mile-Antoine, 118 Bowen, Elizabeth, 119 Brancusi, Constantin, 120 Brando, Marlon, 122 Braque, Georges, 125 Brecht, Bertolt, 127 Brendel, Alfred, 129 Breton, Andre´ Robert, 130 Britten, Benjamin, 131 Brodsky, Joseph, 134 Brook, Peter, 135 Brooke, Rupert, 137 Bunin, Ivan, 138 Bun˜uel, Luis, 140 Burgess, Anthony, 142 Burton, Richard, 143 Caballe´, Montserrat, 149 Calder, Alexander, 150 Calvino, Italo, 152 Camus, Albert, 154 Capote, Truman, 156
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WORLD CULTURAL LEADERS
Capra, Frank, 158 Caro, Sir Anthony, 160 Carreras, Jose´, 161 Carson, Johnny, 162 Caruso, Enrico, 164 Cary, Joyce, 166 Casadesus, Robert, 167 Casals, Pablo, 168 Cash, Johnny, 170 Cavafy, Constantine, 175 Cela, Camilo Jose´, 176 Celan, Paul, 177 Chagall, Marc, 179 Chaliapin, Feodor, 181 Chaplin, Sir Charles Spencer, 183 Chesterton, G. K., 186 Chevalier, Maurice, 187 Chillida, Eduardo, 190 Chirico, Giorgio de, 191 Christie, Agatha, 192 Clair, Rene´, 194 Clark, John Pepper, 196 Cocteau, Jean, 197 Colette, 199 Compton-Burnett, Ivy, 202 Conrad, Joseph, 203 Contanten, Tom, 409 Copland, Aaron, 205 Coppola, Francis Ford, 207 Corta´zar, Julio, 209 Coward, Noe¨l, 210 Craig, Gordon, 212 Cranko, John, 215 Crosby, Bing, 216 Cugat, Xavier, 218 Cusack, Cyril, 219 Dahl, Roald, 223 Dalı´, Salvador, 225 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 226 Day-Lewis, C., 228 De la Mare, Walter, 230 de Mille, Agnes, 231 De Sica, Vittorio, 233 Debussy, Claude, 234 Deighton, Len, 236 Delaunay, Robert, 237 Delaunay, Sonia, 238 Delius, Frederick, 240
Delvaux, Paul, 241 DeMille, Cecil B., 242 Denis, Maurice, 243 Dennis, Nigel, 245 Derain, Andre´, 246 Diaghilev, Sergei, 247 Diddley, Bo, 249 Dietrich, Marlene, 251 Dinesen, Isak, 253 Dolmetsch, Arnold, 254 Domingo, Pla´cido, 256 Douglas, Keith, 257 Douglas, Norman, 258 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 260 Du Maurier, Daphne, 262 Dubuffet, Jean, 264 Duchamp, Marcel, 265 Duchamp-Villon, Raymond, 267 Dufy, Raoul, 267 Durrell, Lawrence, 269 Du¨rrenmatt, Friedrich, 271 Dylan, Bob, 273 Eames, Charles, 281 Eames, Ray, 281 Eastwood, Clinton, 282 Eco, Umberto, 284 Eisenstein, Sergei, 286 Elgar, Edward, 288 Eliot, T. S., 290 Ellington, Duke, 293 E´luard, Paul, 295 Ernst, Max, 296 Evans, Edith, 298 Evans, Geraint, 299 Falla, Manuel de, 303 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 304 Faulkner, William Cuthbert, 305 Fellini, Federico, 307 Ferrier, Kathleen, 309 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 310 Ffrangcon-Davies, Gwen, 312 Fields, Gracie, 313 Firbank, Ronald, 314 Fitzgerald, Ella, 315 Fleming, Ian, 318 Fo, Dario, 319 Fokine, Michel, 321 Fonteyn, Margot, 323
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Ford, Ford Madox, 324 Forman, Milosˇ, 325 Forster, E. M., 327 Fowles, John, 328 France, Anatole, 330 Franklin, Aretha Louise, 332 Friel, Brian, 334 Frost, Robert, 336 Fry, Christopher, 339 Fuentes, Carlos, 341 Fugard, Athol, 342 Fuller, Roy, 344 Furtwa¨ngler, Wilhelm, 345 Gabin, Jean, 351 Gable, William Clark, 352 Galsworthy, John, 354 Gance, Abel, 356 Garcı´a Lorca, Federico, 357 Garcı´a Ma´rquez, Gabriel, 359 Garcia, Jerry, 409 Garland, Judy, 361 Garnett, David, 363 Gehry, Frank, 364 Genet, Jean, 368 Gershwin, George, 365 Giacometti, Alberto, 369 Gide, Andre´, 372 Gielgud, John, 374 Gill, Eric, 375 Gillespie, Dizzy, 377 Ginsberg, Allen, 379 Giraudoux, Jean, 382 Glass, Philip, 384 Godard, Jean-Luc, 385 Godchaux, Donna, 409 Godchaux, Keith, 409 Golding, William, 387 Goldwyn, Samuel, 389 Goodman, Benjamin David, 391 Gordimer, Nadine, 393 Gorky, Maxim, 395 Graham, Bill, 397 Graham, Martha, 399 Grahame, Kenneth, 401 Grant, Duncan, 403 Granville-Barker, Harley, 405 Grass, Gu¨nter, 406 Grateful Dead, The, 409
Graves, Robert, 412 Greene, Graham, 413 Grierson, John, 415 Gris, Juan, 417 Gropius, Walter, 418 Grosz, George, 420 Guilbert, Yvette, 422 Guille´n, Jorge, 422 Guinness, Sir Alec, 424 Guthrie, Tyrone, 426 Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson, 428 Harrison, George, 67 Harrison, Rex, 435 Hart, Lorenz Milton, 436 Hart, Mickey, 409 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 438 Havel, Va´clav, 440 Head, Bessie, 441 Heaney, Seamus, 442 He´lion, Jean, 445 Hellman, Lillian Florence, 446 Helpmann, Robert, 448 Hemingway, Ernest Miller, 449 Hendrix, James Marshall, 452 Henze, Hans Werner, 455 Hepburn, Katharine Houghton, 457 Hepworth, Barbara, 459 Hesse, Hermann, 461 Heston, Charlton, 463 Hindemith, Paul, 465 Hitchcock, Alfred, 468 Hockney, David, 470 Hoffmann, Josef, 472 Hofmann, Hans, 473 Holiday, Billie, 474 Holst, Gustav, 476 Horta, Victor, 478 Housman, A. E., 479 Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald, 481 Hughes, Howard, 484 Hughes, Ted, 486 Hunter, Robert, 409 Huxley, Aldous, 487 Ionesco, Euge`ne, 493 Ivens, Joris, 494 Ives, Charles Edward, 495 Jacobsen, Arne, 499 Jacobson, Dan, 500
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WORLD CULTURAL LEADERS
Jagger, Mick, 828 Jennings, Elizabeth, 502 Jime´nez, Juan Ramo´n, 503 John, Augustus, 504 John, Gwen, 506 Johns, Jasper, 507 Johnson, Philip, 508 Johnson, Robert Leroy, 511 Jones, Brian, 828 Jones, John Paul, 587 Jooss, Kurt, 512 Joyce, James, 513 Kafka, Franz, 519 Kahlo, Frida, 520 Kahn, Louis I., 522 Kandinsky, Wassily, 524 Karajan, Herbert von, 525 Karsavina, Tamara, 527 Kazan, Elia, 529 Kern, Jerome David, 530 Kerouac, Jack, 532 Kesey, Kenneth Elton, 535 Kiefer, Anselm, 537 King, B. B., 538 King, Stephen, 541 Kipling, Rudyard, 544 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 546 Klee, Paul, 548 Klimt, Gustav, 550 Kline, Franz, 551 Kokoschka, Oskar, 552 Kollwitz, Ka¨the, 554 Korda, Alexander, 555 Koussevitzky, Serge, 556 Kraus, Karl, 558 Kreutzmann, Bill, 409 Kubrick, Stanley, 559 Kundera, Milan, 562 Kurosawa, Akira, 563 Kushner, Tony, 566 Larkin, Philip, 571 Lawrence, D. H., 572 Laxness, Halldo´r, 574 Laye, Camara, 576 Le Carre´, John, 578 Le Corbusier, 579 Lean, David, 582 Leary, Timothy Francis, 584
Led Zeppelin, 587 Le´ger, Fernand, 589 Lehmann, Rosamond, 590 Lehmbruck, Wilhelm, 592 Leigh, Mike, 593 Leighton, Margaret, 594 Leinsdorf, Erich, 596 Lennon, John Winston, 67 Lesh, Phil, 409 Lessing, Doris, 598 Levi, Carlo, 600 Lewis, C. S., 601 Lewis, Wyndham, 604 Liebermann, Max, 605 Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 606 Loos, Adolf, 607 Lowry, Malcolm, 609 Lucas, George Walton, 610 Lutyens, Edwin, 612
Volume II Machado, Antonio, 617 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, 618 MacNeice, Louis, 619 Maderna, Bruno, 620 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 622 Magritte, Rene´, 624 Mailer, Norman Kingsley, 626 Maillol, Aristide, 625 Malevich, Kazimir, 628 Malle, Louis, 630 Mandelstam, Osip, 631 Mann, Thomas, 633 Manning, Olivia, 634 Mansfield, Katherine, 636 Manzu`, Giacomo, 637 Marc, Franz, 639 Marinetti, F. T., 640 Marini, Marino, 642 Markova, Alicia, 643 Marx, Adolph (Harpo), 645 Marx Brothers, The, 645 Marx, Herbert (Zeppo), 645 Marx, Julius Henry (Groucho), 645 Marx, Leonard (Chico), 645 Marx, Milton (Gummo), 645 Mason, James, 647 Massine, Le´onide, 649
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Matisse, Henri, 651 Maugham, Somerset, 652 McCartney, James Paul, 67 McKernan, Ron “Pigpen”, 409 McNally, Terrence, 654 Mendelsohn, Erich, 656 Messiaen, Olivier, 657 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 659 Milhaud, Darius, 660 Miller, Arthur Asher, 662 Miller, Henry, 664 Milles, Carl, 666 Mingus, Charles, 668 Miro´, Joan, 670 Mistral, Gabriela, 672 Mitchell, Joni, 673 Modigliani, Amedeo, 676 Moholy-Nagy, La´szlo´, 678 Molna´r, Ferenc, 680 Mondrian, Piet, 682 Monet, Claude, 683 Monk, Thelonious Sphere, 685 Moore, George, 687 Moore, Henry, 689 Morandi, Giorgio, 691 Moravia, Alberto, 692 Moreau, Jeanne, 693 Morley, Robert, 695 Morris, Mark, 696 Munch, Edvard, 697 Murrow, Edward R., 699 Mydland, Brent, 409 Naipaul, V. S., 707 Neruda, Pablo, 708 Neutra, Richard, 710 Newman, Paul Leonard, 711 Nicholson, Ben, 713 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 714 Nin, Anaı¨s, 716 Nolan, Sidney, 717 Nolde, Emil, 719 Nureyev, Rudolf, 720 O’Casey, Sean, 725 Oe, Kenzaburo, 726 O’Faolain, Sean, 728 O’Keeffe, Georgia Totto, 729 Okigbo, Christopher, 731 Olivier, Laurence, 732
O’Neill, Eugene Gladstone, 734 Orff, Carl, 736 Orton, Joe, 737 Orwell, George, 738 Osborne, John, 740 O’Toole, Peter, 741 Owen, Wilfred, 743 Oz, Amos, 745 Page, James Patrick, 587 Pagnol, Marcel, 749 Pascin, Jules, 750 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 752 Pasternak, Boris, 753 Paton, Alan, 755 Pavarotti, Luciano, 756 Pavlova, Anna, 758 Paz, Octavio, 759 Peck, Gregory, 761 Perse, Saint-John, 763 Petit, Roland, 764 Picasso, Pablo, 765 Pinter, Harold, 767 Plant, Robert, 587 Plath, Sylvia, 769 Poitier, Sidney, 771 Pollock, Paul Jackson, 773 Ponnelle, Jean-Pierre, 774 Porter, Cole Albert, 775 Poulenc, Francis, 777 Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis, 780 Powell, Anthony, 782 Presley, Elvis Aaron, 784 Priestley, J. B., 788 Prokofiev, Sergei, 790 Proust, Marcel, 793 Puccini, Giacomo, 794 Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 799 Rampal, Jean-Pierre, 800 Ransome, Arthur, 802 Rattigan, Terence, 804 Ravel, Maurice, 805 Redgrave, Michael, 807 Reed, Carol, 809 Remarque, Erich Maria, 810 Renoir, Jean, 812 Richards, Keith, 828 Richardson, Henry Handel, 813 Richardson, Ralph, 814
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Richter, Sviatoslav, 816 Rietveld, Gerrit, 817 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 818 Rivera, Diego, 820 Robbins, Jerome, 822 Rockwell, Norman Percevel, 823 Rodgers, Richard Charles, 826 Rolling Stones, The, 828 Rorem, Ned, 830 Rossellini, Roberto, 832 Rostropovich, Mstislav, 833 Roth, Philip Milton, 834 Rothko, Mark, 836 Rouault, Georges, 838 Rowling, J. K., 839 Rubinstein, Arthur, 841 Rulfo, Juan Perez, 843 Sandburg, Carl, 847 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 848 Sassoon, Siegfried, 850 Satie, Erik, 852 Schiele, Egon, 853 Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl, 854 Schnabel, Artur, 855 Schnitzler, Arthur, 857 Schoenberg, Arnold, 858 Schulz, Charles Monroe, 861 Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth, 863 Schwitters, Kurt, 865 Scorsese, Martin, 866 Seferis, George, 868 Selznick, David O., 869 Sendak, Maurice, 871 Senghor, Le´opold Se´dar, 873 Serling, Rod, 874 Shaw, George Bernard, 875 Shostakovich, Dmitry, 878 Sibelius, Jean, 879 Sickert, Walter, 881 Sillitoe, Alan, 882 Simon, Marvin Neil, 883 Sinatra, Francis Albert, 886 Sitwell, Edith, 890 Solti, Georg, 893 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 894 Sondheim, Stephen Joshua, 896 Soyinka, Wole, 898 Spark, Muriel, 900
Spencer, Stanley, 902 Spender, Stephen, 903 Spielberg, Steven Allan, 905 Springsteen, Bruce, 908 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 911 Starr, Ringo, 67 Stephens, James, 913 Stern, Isaac, 914 Sternberg, Josef von, 916 Stewart, James Maitland, 917 Stieglitz, Alfred, 920 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 921 Stoppard, Tom, 923 Strauss, Richard, 925 Stravinsky, Igor, 927 Streep, Meryl, 929 Sullivan, Edward Vincent, 931 Sutherland, Dame Joan, 934 Sutherland, Graham, 932 Sydow, Max von, 936 Symons, Arthur, 937 Synge, John Millington, 938 Tagore, Rabindranath, 943 Tamayo, Rufino, 945 Ta`pies, Antoni, 946 Tarkovsky, Andrei, 947 Tatlin, Vladimir, 949 Taylor, Mick, 828 Te Kanawa, Kiri, 950 Tebaldi, Renata, 952 Teyte, Maggie, 953 Tharp, Twyla, 954 Thomas, Dylan, 955 Thompson, Hunter Stockton, 957 Thorndike, Sybil, 960 Tinguely, Jean, 961 Tippett, Michael, 962 Tolkien, J. R. R., 964 Toller, Ernst, 966 Toscanini, Arturo, 968 Trudeau, Garretson Beekman, 969 Truffaut, Franc¸ois, 971 Unamuno, Miguel de, 975 Vale´ry, Paul, 979 Valle´-Incla´n, Ramo´n del, 980 Vallejo, Ce´sar, 982 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 983 Vaughan, Sarah Lois, 984
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Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 987 Velde, Henry van de, 989 Vidal, Gore, 990 Vigo, Jean, 992 Villon, Jacques, 993 Visconti, Luchino, 995 Vlaminck, Maurice de, 996 Vuillard, E´douard, 997 Wain, John, 1001 Walcott, Derek, 1002 Waller, Fats, 1004 Walpole, Hugh, 1006 Walter, Bruno, 1008 Walton, William, 1009 Warhol, Andy, 1011 Warner, Rex, 1014 Waters, Muddy, 1015 Watts, Charlie, 828 Waugh, Evelyn, 1018 Webern, Anton von, 1020 Weill, Kurt, 1021 Weir, Bob, 409 Welch, Denton, 1023
Wells, H. G., 1024 Welnick, Vince, 409 Werfel, Franz, 1026 White, Patrick, 1028 White, T. H., 1029 Wigman, Mary, 1031 Wilder, Thornton Niven, 1031 Williams, Hank, 1034 Williams, Tennessee, 1036 Wilson, August, 1039 Winfrey, Oprah Gail, 1041 Wolfe, Thomas, 1042 Wolfe, Tom, 1044 Wood, Ron, 828 Woolf, Virginia, 1046 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1047 Wyman, Bill, 828 Yeats, William Butler, 1053 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 1055 Young, Neil, 1056 Zangwill, Israel, 1063 Zeffirelli, Franco, 1065 Zukerman, Pinchas, 1066
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World Cultural Leaders of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries Volume II
M
MACHADO, ANTONIO
Machado, Antonio (July 26, 1875–February 22, 1939) Poet, Playwright ntonio Machado y Ruiz was one of the foremost poets of the Generation of ’98 in Spain. Like the work of his contemporary MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO, his verse is highly personal and concerns individual perceptions, experiences, and intuition. Machado also coauthored a number of plays with his elder brother, Manuel Machado y Ruiz. Machado was born in Seville, Spain, into a prosperous family with a history of achievement in intellectual endeavors. His father was a scholar with a particular interest in Andalusian folk traditions. Machado spent his early childhood in his family’s home, the Palacio de las Duen˜as, before the family moved to Madrid in 1883. He studied at the Free Institute, a liberal and progressive private school, and later at the Institute of San Isidro and the Institute of Cardinal Cisneros. In 1893 Machado and his older brother, Manuel, began contributing short satirical pieces to La Caricatura. Over the next several years he tried several professions, including acting and translating. Some of his work took him to Paris, where he met the Modernismo poet Ruben Darı´o. His first volume of poetry, Solitudes, was published in 1902, and it was expanded as Solitudes, Galleries, and Other Poems in 1907. Machado in his early verse is introspective, reaching back to childhood, longing for love, and admiring the natural landscape. In style the poems bear resemblance to the Symbolists, and his work in general was influenced by Unamuno. All of Machado’s poetry follows formal, traditional structure and rhyme patterns. Machado finally settled on teaching as a career, and for many years he earned his living teaching French to secondary-school students in Spain. His first position took him to the Castilian town of Soria, where he met Leonor Izquierdo in 1907. They married two years later. The Soria landscape and his experiences
A
there inspired his next major work, Fields of Castile (1912). One of its major poems, the ballad “The Land of Alvargonza´lez,” concerns the dismal plight of two brothers who murder their father to obtain his land. Leonor’s death from tuberculosis in 1912 was very traumatic for Machado. He secured a new teaching position in southern Spain, away from their former surroundings. In 1918 he earned his doctorate, and the following year he moved to the Castilian town of Segovia. On weekends he often took a train to Madrid. Influential in his later work was his love for a woman he called Guiomar, in reality the poet Pilar de Valderrama, who did not reciprocate his strong feelings. His last major volume of poetry is New Songs (1924), which evinces existential and metaphysical themes. Machado coauthored verse dramas with Manuel, beginning with Julianillo Valca´rcel in 1926. Along with its successor, Juan de Man˜ara (1927), it followed the style of Golden Age dramatists such as Tirso de Molina and Lope de Vega. Their other plays include Bitter Oleander (1928); La Lola Goes off to Sea (1929), their most famous play; the comedy Cousin Fernanda (1931); The Duchess of Benamejı´ (1932); and their only prose play, The Man Who Died in the War. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) divided Manuel and Antonio. Manuel supported the Nationalists, while Antonio and other members of his family backed the Republicans. Their position forced them to flee to France in 1939. The harrowing journey proved to be too much for both Machado and his mother, and they died within three days of one another. Machado’s other works include From an Apocryphal Songbook (1925) and Juan de Mairena (1936). He was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy in 1927.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Cobb, Carl W., Antonio Machado, 1971; Young, Howard T., The Victorious Expression; a Study
of Four Contemporary Spanish Poets: Miguel De Unamuno, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramo´n Jime´nez, Federico Garcı´a Lorca, 1964.
Mackintosh, Charles Rennie (June 7, 1868–December 10, 1928) Architect nspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement of Britain, Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed private homes and public buildings in Glasgow characterized by their simplicity and subtle elegance. While his designs exhibit a certain functionality that anticipated the International Style, he rejected the severity of that movement. Mackintosh is also known for his hundreds of furniture designs. Mackintosh was the son of a police lieutenant, born in Glasgow. From his father, who loved to garden, he acquired a strong love of nature at an early age that remained with him throughout his life. As a child, Mackintosh sketched the buildings of the Glasgow countryside. He studied at Reid’s Private School and Alan Glen’s High School, though he was generally uninterested in his work at either. While serving as an apprentice to the architect John Hutchinson, he took evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. There he studied painting, architecture, and draftsmanship and won several awards. Among the honors he received was the Alexander Thomson Traveling Scholarship, which allowed him to travel extensively through Italy. In 1889 he joined the firm of Honeyman and Keppie, and he became a full partner in 1904. Mackintosh continued to work with the firm for much of his career as an architect. At the Glasgow School of Art, he met J. Herbert McNair and the sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald. Influenced by the Arts
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and Crafts Movement initiated by William Morris, they exhibited to-gether as “The Glasgow Four,” participating in the Arts and Crafts Society Exhibition of 1896 in London and other exhibitions. The four worked together until 1898, when McNair accepted a teaching post at Liverpool University. Although they had officially disbanded by 1900, they all exhibited independently with the Secessionists in Berlin in 1900. Mackintosh married Margaret Macdonald the same year, and Macdonald was his intimate companion and collaborator until his death. At this point in his career, Mackintosh’s projects consisted mainly of private dwellings, such as Windyhill, Kilmacolm (1899–1901), and Hill House, Helensburgh (1902), but he worked on public buildings as well. Among his early buildings are the Glasgow Herald Building (1893) and the Martyrs’ Public School (1895). In his work, Mackintosh sought a simple, minimally adorned elegance, rejecting the excessive decoration and ornament espoused by the Victorians of the previous century. Among his most significant works are the four tearooms he designed for Catherine Cranston in Glasgow, intermittently between 1896 and 1917. Some of the interior walls featured murals designed by Mackintosh, and his furniture was an integral part of the designs. Mackintosh’s main project, however, was the Glasgow School of Art (1896–1909), a simple, rectangular structure with an unornamented facade. Part of the building was the li-
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brary, constructed on a pattern of lines and right angles. The straight line was typically a prominent feature of Mackintosh’s interiors. While he kept his designs simple, he flatly rejected the purely functional aesthetic of the International Style that followed (see WALTER GROPIUS). With its window–lined, semicircular-stair towers, Scotland Street School (1904–1906) was the most modern of his buildings. Also significant among Mackintosh’s work are his hundreds of furniture designs, particularly his high-backed and ladder-backed chairs, a number of which he created for the tearooms. Typically built from squares, rectangles, and lines, his pieces of furniture were often painted and stenciled. As World War I approached, Mackintosh parted ways with Honeyman and Keppie. A worsening addiction to alcohol combined with his difficulty to
deal with and insistence on working in Scotland inhibited the popularity of his work. He abandoned architecture altogether in the war era and worked the rest of his life painting watercolors, designing fabric patterns for manufacturers such as W. Foxton’s Limited, and designing book covers. His home in Glasgow was reconstructed and opened as a museum in the 1970s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Billcliffe, Roger, Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings, and Interior Designs (1979); Crawford, Alan, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1995; Howarth, Thomas, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Modern Movement, 2nd ed. (1977); Macleod, Robert, Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Architect and Artist, 1983.
MacNeice, Louis (September 12, 1907–September 3, 1963) Poet, Playwright, Teacher, Translator, Essayist ogether with his friends W. H. AUDEN, C. DAY-LEWIS, and STEPHEN SPENDER, Louis MacNeice was part of a generation of poets who, faced with the Depression and the rise of Hitler, became leftists and strong anti-Fascists; their poetry, often referred to as the distinctive poetry of the 1930s, reflected their social and political concerns. MacNeice is also known for his radio plays produced for British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). MacNeice was born in Belfast, Ireland. His father was an Anglican bishop, and his mother died from tuberculosis when he was seven. The constraints he felt from his strict religious upbringing form an integral part of his early poetry. He attended the Sherbourne Preparatory School for Boys in Dorset, England
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as well as the Marlborough College from 1921 to 1926. At the University of Oxford, MacNeice studied classics from 1921 to 1926. In 1929, MacNeice edited Oxford Poetry: 1929 with Spender. His first book of poetry, Blind Fireworks (1929), appeared the same year. Its poems evoke childhood memories— many of them unpleasant—as in “Happy Families (A Satirical Lyric).” Other themes treated in the volume are death (“The Sailor’s Funeral”) and his resentment of religious rituals (“Happy Thanksgiving”). MacNeice’s background in classics is evident in the many images he draws from Greek and Roman mythology. In 1930, he married Giovanna Marie The´re`se Babette Ezra, who was to leave him in 1936.
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MacNeice is frequently associated with Auden, Day-Lewis, and Spender, but his political work lacks the dogmatic spirit shown by the others. Like most leftist intellectuals in the pre–World War II climate, MacNeice was alarmed at the growth of Fascism. The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the imminent German threat, and the general political climate inspired many of the poems in Autumn Journal (1939), Last Ditch (1940), and Springboard (1947). MacNeice’s later poetry collections reflect his growing disillusionment with liberal intellectual circles and include Holes in the Sky: Poems, 1944–1947; Ten Burnt Offerings (1952), which consists of ten long poems that employ religious imagery; Autumn Sequel: A Rhetorical Poem in XXVI Cantos (1954), a sequel to Autumn Journal; Visitations: Poems (1957); Solstices: Poems (1959); and The Burning Perch (1963), published posthumously. The other major works for which MacNeice was known in his lifetime are a series of radio plays written for the BBC. Hedli Anderson, who was to become MacNeice’s second wife, played Marquesa in Christopher Columbus. The drama first aired in 1942 and was accompanied with music by Sir WILLIAM WALTON. Sunbeams in His Hat, a biography of the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, aired in 1944. The Dark Tower (1947), with music by BENJAMIN BRITTEN, is MacNeice’s most fa-
mous radio play. The Dark Tower and Other Radio Scripts was published in 1947. MacNeice’s academic career began at the University of Birmingham, where he taught classics from 1930 to 1936. From 1936 to 1940 he lectured at the Bedford College for Women in London. After 1940, he lectured at Cornell University in New York and at Cambridge in England. In 1950–1951, he served as Director of the British Institute in Athens, Greece. Among MacNeice’s prose works are Letters from Iceland (1937), written with Auden during their travels to that country; The Poetry of W. B. Yeats (1941); and Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay. His translations include Agamemnon (1936) and Goethe’s Faust, with E. L. Stahl (1951), and his other volumes of poetry include Poems (1935), Plant and Phantom: Poems (1941), and Collected Poems, 1925–1948 (1949). Sometime around 1941, MacNeice wrote part of an autobiography, The Strings Are False: An Unfinished Autobiography (1965). His only novel, Roundabout Way, appeared in 1932 under the pseudonym Louis Malone. He died of pneumonia in 1963.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Longley, Edna, Louis MacNeice: A Critical Study, 1996; Moore, D. B., The Poetry of Louis MacNeice, 1972; Smith, Edward Elton, Louis MacNeice, 1970; Stallworthy, Jon, Louis MacNeice, 1995.
Maderna, Bruno (April 21, 1920–November 13, 1973) Composer, Conductor, Teacher s a composer, Bruno Maderna was a principal exponent of electronic music after World War II. Influenced by modern Viennese composers, he experi-
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mented with electronic sounds and tape in his work. In 1954 he helped found the Studio di Fonologia Musicale, a major center for elec-
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tronic music. Through his teaching and conducting, he encouraged and promoted the work of many modern composers. Maderna was born in Venice and entered the world of music when he was young. By the time he was 12, he was conducting performances of Romantic and Classical music. In 1933 he entered the Benedetto Marcello Conservatoire in Venice, where he studied under Arrigo Pedrollo and learned to write for accompaniment. When he was 17, he went to Rome to study at the Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia under Alessandro Bustini. Maderna earned his degree in 1941 and returned to Venice, where he studied under the Italian composer and director of the Venice Conservatoire Gian Francesco Malipiero. During his studies he also continued to conduct, expanding his repertoire to include other Italian composers. From Malipiero Maderna acquired an appreciation for older music and an inclination toward polyphonic composition. World War II interrupted Maderna’s work, and after the armistice he joined the partisans. When the war ended, he began composing music for films, including Max Calandri’s Sangue a Ca` Foscari and Il fabbro del convento. Maderna also edited works by Vivaldi, and he edited or transcribed the works of many other composers during his lifetime, including Bach and Schubert. The next important influence on Maderna’s work was the German conductor Hermann Scherchen, whom he met in 1948. That year he traveled to Darmstadt to take Scherchen’s class for conductors at the Vienna Conservatoire. Under Scherchen’s influence, Maderna adopted the serialist style of composition in works such as Fantasia per due pianoforte (B.A.C.H. Variations) (1948) and Tre Liriche Greche (1948). Adapted from the twelve-tone system developed by ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, serialist composition employs the repetition of rhythmic values within a work. From 1947 to 1952 Maderna taught classes at the Venice Conservatoire. In the late 1940s he began his association with the Summer
School in Darmstadt. Composizione No. 2 for small orchestra, one of his many orchestral works from this period, was performed there in 1949. In Darmstadt, Maderna met other modern musical experimenters such as KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN and PIERRE BOULEZ. From this atmosphere of experimentation sprang his electronic recordings. Musica su due dimensioni (1952; revised 1958) marked his first use of tape. Luciano Berio and Maderna helped found the Studio di Fonologia Musicale at Milan Radio in Italy in 1954, which developed into a major center for electronic music. With Berio he composed Ritratto de citta` (1955; Portrait of a City), a work that incorporates electronically generated sounds from ordinary life—traffic, typewriters, etc. The two also founded Incontri Musicali (Musical Encounters), a review dedicated to electronic music. Notturno (1956), Sintaxis (1957; performed at Darmstadt), and Continuo (1958) used sine waves, white noise, and tape montage. In another work, Dimensioni II/Invenzione su una voce, Maderna used the voice of Berio’s wife, Cathy Berberian. In the revised version of Musica su due dimensioni, Maderna combined instrumentation (flute) with stereophonic recording. The combination of traditional instrumentation with electronic experimentation characterized much of his electronic work. Much of Maderna’s later output falls in the realm of dramatic work. He originally intended his Studi per ‘Il Proceso’ di Kafka (1950; Studies for Kafka’s The Trial) for the stage. Don Perlimplin, ovvero Il Trionfo dell’Amore e dell’ Invenzione is based on text by F EDERICO GARCı´A LORCA. Broadcast in 1962, it takes the form of a comic “radiophonic opera.” Other dramatic works include Hyperion (performed in Venice in 1964) and the opera Satyricon (1971–1973), based on the satire by Petronius (d. 66 A.D). In the late 1950s Maderna also composed music for numerous radio and television plays. In the last years of his life, Maderna completed numerous works for large orchestras,
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including Quadrivium (1969), Aura (1972; for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), and Biogramma (1972). He was also known for his teaching ability and well known as a conductor. Among his other works are Serenata (1954), an orchestral work; Honeyreˆves
(1961–1962); Oboe Concerto (1962); Grande Aulodia (1970); and Ausstra-hlung (1971), an electronic work for female voice, tape, and other instrumentation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fearn, Raymond, Bruno Maderna, 1990.
Maeterlinck, Maurice (August 29, 1862–May 6, 1949) Playwright, Poet, Essayist he Belgian Symbolist poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck is best known for his popular dramas Pelleas and Melisanda and The Blue Bird. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911. Maeterlinck was born Maurice PolydoreMarie-Bernard Maeterlinck in Ghent, Belgium. His family was wealthy and had a long history in Flanders. As a boy Maeterlinck attended a
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Maurice Maeterlinck (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-06555)
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Jesuit school, a trying experience that left him bitter but instilled in him his lifelong interest in religion and mysticism. The students at the school were forbidden to write poetry, but Maeterlinck, along with two other boys, secretly subscribed to the journal La Jeune Belgique, which published a poem he wrote. In his spare time Maeterlinck delved into books on science, literature, and mysticism. He entered the University of Ghent in 1885 and studied law. After briefly practicing law in Ghent following his graduation, Maeterlinck decided instead to become a writer. In 1886 he traveled to Paris and met writers of the French Symbolist movement, the most influential of whom was Villiers de L’Isle-Adam. The Symbolist movement, which soon included Maeterlinck, grew out of dissatisfaction with naturalism, romanticism, and realism. Mood, suggestion rather than direct statement, and the importance of the imagination were all important elements in Symbolist literature. Although he spoke several languages, Maeterlinck wrote all of his work in French. His first verse collection, Hot House Blooms, appeared in 1889 and was well received by a handful of critics. He became almost an overnight success with the publication of his first play, the five-act The Princess Maleine
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(1889), which in plot resembles a Shakespearean tragedy. Pelleas and Melisanda (1892), Maeterlinck’s retelling of the medieval story of Francesca da Rimini, is considered one of the masterpieces of Symbolist drama. An aging prince, Golaud, marries a beautiful woman, Melisanda, whom he finds weeping in the forest. Melisanda, however, falls in love with Golaud’s brother. Golaud’s resulting jealousy leads to tragedy; he kills Pelleas and wounds both Melisanda and himself. In 1902 the French composer CLAUDE DEBUSSY transformed Maeterlinck’s play into an opera. Maeterlinck’s other early plays include The Intruder (1890); The Blind (1890); The Seven Princesses (1891); Sister Beatrice (1901), written in blank verse; Monna Vanna (1902), a historical drama also written in blank verse; The Miracle of St. Antony (1902); and Joyzelle (1903). Later plays include Mary Magdalene (1909) and The Burgomaster of Stilmonde (1919). Many of Maeterlinck’s early plays, such as The Intruder and The Blind (which he dubbed “static plays”), lack intense dramatic action and have mystical qualities tinged with pessimism and melancholy. As in the writings of other Symbolists, thoughts, feelings, and ideas are expressed as subtle suggestion rather than direct statements. The natural world, in which Maeterlinck was deeply interested, also plays an important role in his writings. The Blue Bird (1908), a symbolic and optimistic children’s fairy tale, is one of Maeterlinck’s most widely read plays and was first performed at the Moscow Theatre of Arts. Following the instructions of a fairy, two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, embark on a search for the blue bird, a symbol of great happiness and understanding. They are accompanied by a number of personified natural elements—
Fire, Water, and Light—as well as Cat, Dog, Sugar, Bread, and Milk. Their first stop is the Land of Memory, where their deceased grandparents now live. Their grandparents give them a blue bird, but it turns black. Their next unsuccessful stop is the Palace of the Night, where they capture a number of blue birds that eventually die. After visiting Fate’s enchanted palaces and encountering such figures as the Luxuries of Earth, the Miseries, and the Happiness of Home, they arrive at the Kingdom of the Future, where babies wait to be born. They never find the blue bird they seek until the end of the play, when Light announces that she holds it and the children wake up at home to find everything has been a dream. In addition to poetry and plays Maeterlinck wrote a number of nonfiction prose works that convey his mystical and naturalistic view of life. Works along these lines include The Treasure of the Humble (1896), Wisdom and Destiny (1898), The Buried Temple (1902), and Death (1911). In the latter Maeterlinck urged people not to fear death: “Let us accustom ourselves to regard death as a form of life which we do not yet understand.” His philosophical nature studies include The Life of the Bee (1901), The Intelligence of the Flowers (1907), and later works on termites and ants. The Belgian king made Maeterlinck a count in 1932.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bithell, Jethro, Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck, 1913; Halls, W. D., Maurice Maeterlinck: A Study of His Life and Thought, 1960; Mahony, Patrick, Maurice Maeterlinck, Mystic and Dramatist: A Reminiscent Biography of the Man and His Ideas, 1984.
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Magritte, Rene ´ (November 21, 1898–August 15, 1967) Painter vershadowed by his more famous Parisian contemporaries, Rene´Franc¸ois-Ghislain Magritte was Belgium’s leading Surrealist painter. His compositions consist of unusual combinations of everyday objects, human figures, and natural phenomena, many of which he repeated throughout his career. Although he experimented briefly with other styles, Magritte continued to paint surrealistic works until his death. Magritte was born in Lessines, Hainaut, Belgium. When he was 13 his mother drowned herself in the Sambre River. From his early childhood he was fascinated with painting. Some critics contend the ghostly image of his mother’s corpse influenced paintings such as Musing of a Solitary Walker (1926), but Magritte downplayed those suggestions. The following year he met his future wife, Georgette Berger, whom he married in 1922 and who was a constant source of support for his work. In 1916 he entered the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied until 1918. Following the completion of his studies he worked as a wallpaper designer, illustrated advertisements, and designed covers for music scores. After experimenting with a variety of painting styles and doing his military service in 1921, Magritte reached a turning point in 1922. Deeply impressed with the Italian Pittura Metafisca painter GIORGIO DE CHIRICO’s The Song of Love (1914), which he saw in 1919, he began to move toward the Surrealist style, assembling bizarre juxtapositions of images. In 1925 he finished his first major work, The Lost Jockey, which depicts a miniature horse and rider in the midst of a forest. A set of symbols recur in Magritte’s work from this time onward—bowler-hatted male faces obscured by other objects, apples, drapes, cas-
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tles, turbulent waters, windows, and other images. Magritte sold his first painting in 1926, and from 1926 on he devoted himself entirely to his art. The following year he held his first one-man show in Brussels and subsequently moved to the Paris suburb of Perreux-surMarne. While living in Paris he met other Surrealist painters, poets, and writers, including ANDRE´ BRETON, PAUL E´LUARD, MAX ERNST, and SALVADOR DALı´. Although the Surrealists influenced his style, personality clashes with Bre´ton kept Magritte from intimate involvement with the group, and he soon rejected them altogether. He returned to Brussels and became the central figure in Belgium’s Surrealist movement. In 1928 and 1929 Magritte painted several of his well-known paintings. The False Mirror (1928) depicts a large eyeball reflecting a blue sky and white clouds; it became the source of the CBS logo. Threatening Weather (1928) shows the shapes of a torso, a tuba, and a chair suspended in the sky like clouds. In The Lovers (1928), two hooded faces are locked in a kiss. Inscribed on his famous painting The Treason of Images (1929), a painting of a tobacco pipe, was the declaration, “This is not a pipe.” In the mid-1930s Magritte’s style underwent another change after he glanced at a bird cage and thought for a second he saw an egg instead of the bird. Struck by the similarity between the cage and the egg, he began to seek similarities among other objects. The Surrealist style continued to dominate Magritte’s paintings throughout his life, although from time to time he digressed to experiment with other styles, painting a number of impressionistic works in the mid-1940s. He soon returned to Surrealism however, and later Surrealist paintings include Golconda (1953); Madame Re´camier de David (1949), in which he
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replaced the human figure of Jacques-Louis David’s famous portrait Madame Re´camier (1800) with a coffin; and The Castle of the Pyrenees (1959). In 1953 he executed murals for a casino at Knokke-le-Zoute. For a brief time after World War II Magritte painted a number of works intended to shock postwar audi-
ences, and he termed the period in his career the “Epoque Vache.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gablik, Suzi, Magritte, 1985; Sylvester, David, Magritte, 1992; Torczyner, Harry, Magritte: Ideas and Images, 1977.
Maillol, Aristide (December 8, 1861–September 27, 1944) Sculptor, Painter, Graphic Artist est known for monumental female nudes, the French sculptor Aristide Maillol fashioned his mature style from classical Greek and Roman sources. Maillol rejected the heroic naturalism of Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), creating instead basic, realistic figures that are subtly expressive. Maillol was also accomplished as an illustrator, painter, and maker of tapestries. Maillol was born in Banyuls-sur-Mer, France and lived his early childhood years with an aunt. As an adolescent he began to paint and privately nursed an ambition to become a painter. After settling in Paris in 1881, he attended the E´cole des Beaux-Arts from 1882 to 1886. During this time Maillol lived in squalor, but in the early 1890s his work began to receive some recognition. In 1890 he met the sculptor E´MILE–ANTOINE BOURDELLE and soon afterward discovered tapestries. In 1893 he established his own small tapestry studio (where he met his wife), and began to exhibit his tapestries in Paris. The painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) was impressed by his tapestries at the Salon de la Nationale, and around the same time Maillol began his association with the Nabis (see MAURICE DENIS, PIERRE BONNARD, and E´DOUARD VUILLARD), who embraced a highly decorative aesthetic.
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From the beginning the female form dominated his work. The oil painting The Sea (1895) depicts a nude female in the midst of crashing, vibrant green waves. Maillol began sculpting at the end of the decade, in part due to an eye disease that hindered his ability to paint, and continued his depictions of nude females, such as the bronze Leda (1900) and terra cotta Young Girl Seated (1900). His figures are subdued, displaying subtle melancholy or pensive gazes, but no intense emotion. Most famous of his early works are the Mediterranean (1901–1903) sculptures, which exist in marble and bronze versions and depict a seated female nude resting her elbow on her knee and her head in her hand. The writer ANDRE´ GIDE enthusiastically endorsed The Mediterranean and its creator, contributing to the popularity of both. Around this time Rodin saw and was impressed by his work. He found other enthusiastic supporters in Octave Mirbeau and Count Kessler, who became one of his main patrons. He exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1904. Other notable early works include Night (1902), Action Enchained (1906), the high relief Desire (1907), and the male nude The Cyclist (1907–1908). By 1910 Maillol had earned international fame as a monumental sculptor. Later works
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include Sorrow (1921–1923), a seated, melancholy female figure; his lead Monument to Paul Ce´zanne (1912–1925) in the Tuileries Garden in Paris; Venus with the Necklace (1918–1928), one of his many Venus works; Bather with Drapery (1921); Three Nymphs (1937); and The River (1939–1943). He frequently returned to the same subjects, most of which are variations on the female nude. Maillol began to paint again in the 1930s, depicting the female nude on canvas as well.
In 1910 he made the first of his many woodcuts for editions of Latin poets with Virgil’s Ecologues, for Kessler. Maillol also made his own rag paper, which Kessler began to manufacture in 1913. In 1944 he was injured in an automobile accident and left unable to speak because of a jaw injury.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Chevalier, Denys, Maillol, 1970; Lorquin, Bertrand, Maillol, 1994.
Mailer, Norman Kingsley (January 31, 1923– ) Novelist, Playwright, Journalist, Screenplay Writer, Director orman Mailer, immensely popular and equally controversial, is a prolific American writer who along with TOM WOLFE (1931– ), TRUMAN CAPOTE (1924–1984), HUNTER S. THOMPSON, and other authors helped pioneer New Journalism, also known as creative nonfiction. Mailer’s extensive body of work includes novels, essays, articles, plays, and screenplays. Mailer was born into a Jewish family in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. There he attended and graduated from Boys High School in 1939. Harvard University accepted Mailer when he was just sixteen. At Harvard, he studied aeronautical engineering, graduating with honors in 1943. His interest in writing developed while he was in college, and his first story was published when he was eighteen. After being drafted for military service, Mailer served in the South Pacific during World War II, and following the war he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1948 he published The Naked and the Dead (1948), a novel based on his war experiences that brought
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him immediate international acclaim. Three years later, he published Barbary Shore, a story set in a Brooklyn rooming house that examines Cold War politics in parable form. In the early 1950s, Mailer wrote screenplays in Hollywood, the experience of which provided the inspiration for his controversial (on account of its sexually explicit content) 1955 novel The Deer Park (later adapted into a drama). Around this time, Mailer turned to writing counterculture essays and helped found The Village Voice, to which he sometimes contributed, in 1954. His 1959 book Advertisements for Myself tackled issues in American society, such as violence, sex, and crime, and contained the famous essay “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.” His writing blended fiction with journalism, and it became an enormous influence on the 1960s generation in the United States. For his involvement in antiwar demonstrations during the Vietnam War, Mailer was arrested in 1967. The following year, he published the nonfiction writing The Armies of
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the Night (1968), which details the antiwar march on the Pentagon. The work won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a Polk Award. In Of a Fire on the Moon (1971), he examined the Apollo 11 moon journey. The same year, he published The Prisoner of Sex (1971), his statement on the women’s liberation movement of the time. Mailer toiled for ten years on the manuscript for Ancient Evenings (1983), a novel set in ancient Egypt. The year 1979 marked the beginning of an interesting chronicle in Mailer’s life. That year, he published The Executioner’s Song, a lengthy, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel based on the life and death of convicted Utah murderer Gary Gilmore. Gilmore’s insistence on being executed for his crimes contrasted with the attitude of most inmates who seek to escape the death penalty, a fact that fascinated Mailer. In turn, Mailer’s account of Gilmore’s
Norman Mailer (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LCUSZ62-42506)
plight caught the attention of another convicted murderer, Jack Henry Abbott (1944–2002). Abbott, a career criminal who had been in and out of correctional institutions since he was twelve, heard about Mailer’s story on Gilmore and began to write letters to the author. Mailer took an avid interest in Abbott, championed him as a literary prodigy, and soon began a campaign not only to publish his letters, but to grant him parole. During their threeyear correspondence, Abbott related his prison experiences to Mailer in painstaking detail, often peppering them with musings from famous leftist political and social thinkers he had read in prison libraries. A Utah parole board granted Abbott parole in 1981, on the condition that Mailer retain him as an employee. Random House published Abbott’s letters as In the Belly of the Beast (1981) with an introduction by Mailer. On the morning of July 18, 1981, just a few weeks after his release, Abbott fatally stabbed in the heart a waiter who refused to allow him to use the restaurant’s restroom facilities. After a long ordeal of both running from the law and facing it after he was caught, Abbott committed suicide in prison in 2002. Mailer has long since expressed regret over his involvement with Abbott. Mailer’s novel Harlot’s Ghost, the first volume in a CIA novel, was published in 1991. Oswald’s Tale (1995) is a nonfiction story of President John F. Kennedy’s assassin. In 1997, Mailer published The Gospel According to the Son, in which he reinterprets the four Gospels of the Bible in first-person narrative. The Time of Our Time (1998) represents a retrospective of his life and career. Among Mailer’s other works are An American Dream (1965), the novel Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), Marilyn (1973), and The Fight (1975). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mailer directed several experimental films such as Maidstone (1970), a story about a famous movie director who runs for president that showcases a graphic fight between actor Rip Torn (1931– ) and himself. In 1987,
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he directed a film version of his novel Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1985), starring Ryan O’Neal (1941– ) and Isabella Rossellini (1952– ). Mailer’s involvement in both politics and political journalism has been extensive. He often contributed political columns, essays, and articles to Esquire in the 1960s and published many political works such as The Presidential Papers (1963). Mailer’s writing style formed part of a movement dubbed “New Journalism” that blended fictional techniques with factual reporting. As a reporter, he covered both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions from 1960 to 1972 and in 1992 and 1996. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York in 1969. Mailer has led a tumultuous personal life, having been married six times. He inflicted a nonfatal stab wound on his second wife, Adele Morales, at a party in 1960 but has been married to his sixth wife, Norris Church, for almost twenty-five years. He is a frequent lecturer and debater on college campuses, has
contributed to dozens of magazines, and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Mailer’s latest works include Why Are We at War? (2003); The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (2004); a book he coauthored with his son John Buffalo Mailer, The Big Empty (2005); and the novel The Castle in the Forest (2007). Among Mailer’s other awards are the 1968 George Polk Award for reporting (Harper’s) and a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation in 2005. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dearborn, Mary V., Mailer: A Biography, 1999; Mailer, Norman, Advertisements for Myself, 1959; Manso, Peter, ed., Mailer: His Life and Times, 1985; Mills, Hilary, Mailer: A Biography, 1982; Rollyson, Carl, The Lives of Norman Mailer: A Biography, 1991. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ database/mailer_n.html.
Malevich, Kazimir (February 23, 1878–May 15, 1935) Painter, Designer azimir Severinovich Malevich was one of Russia’s leading proponents of modern abstract art in the immediate pre-Soviet and Soviet eras. After experimenting with Parisian influences in the early 1900s, he in 1913 formulated a purely abstract style he called Suprematism, based on the interplay of geometric shapes. Malevich abandoned Suprematism in his later life, and his paintings fell victim to Soviet censors. Malevich was of Ukranian-Polish ancestry, born in Kiev, now in the Ukraine. His father worked as an administrator at sugar refineries, and a succession of jobs forced him to
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move the family around. Malevich began to teach himself to paint in his youth, and he was eventually admitted to the Kiev School of Art. He married Kazimira Zgleits in 1899. Five years later Malevich went to Moscow, where he studied under Fedor Rerberg, hoping to gain admission to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. Malevich was never admitted to the school, but he held his first exhibition, a group of paintings inspired by the Symbolists, the following year in Kursk. The first of several exhibitions with the Moscow Artists’ Society took place in 1907. Around this time he moved
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away from the Symbolists, absorbing the styles coming out of Paris—notably Fauvism and Postimpressionism. Malevich participated in the Jack of Diamonds exhibition in 1910, a large exhibition of modern paintings to which he sent three Fauve-influenced paintings. Bright, impressionistic depictions of peasants, as in Man with a Sack (1911), are characteristic of his painting from this time. The next stage in Malevich’s development was a primitivist style in which he continued to use vibrant color but painted more simplified and well-defined forms, exemplified in Peasant Woman With Buckets and Child (1912). The influence of PABLO PICASSO and the Cubists worked itself into his paintings as well, evident in the angular forms in The Woodcutter (1912), The Carpenters (1912), and the abstract Samovar (1913). In 1912 he exhibited with a group calling itself The Donkey’s Tail. The development for which he is best known came in 1913, when he created Suprematism, a style that relies on simple, solid-colored geometric forms in abstract patterns. Airplane Flying (1915), for example, consists of a series of black, yellow, red, and blue rectangles. In other paintings he combined triangles, circles, and rectangles. Black Square (1915) and Black Cross (1916–1917) depict large, single, solid shapes. White on White (1918), one of his most famous works, features a small square rotated inside of a larger one. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 Malevich was appointed head of the Art Section
by the Moscow Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies. From 1919 to 1921 he taught in Moscow and Leningrad. He traveled to Germany in 1926, visiting the Bauhaus (see WALTER GROPIUS) and making the acquaintance of WASSILY KANDINSKY. Bright colors and figurative forms returned to his painting in the late 1920s, some of which resemble the Cubist–inspired paintings of 1912. Peasants reappeared in his painting as well. In 1924 Malevich was appointed director of the Leningrad Institute of Artistic Culture. As the Stalin regime tightened its grip on the arts, however, Malevich found himself increasingly under pressure. He was removed from his post at the institute in 1926, and during the last few years of his life his paintings were suppressed. Malevich also designed theater sets, including Leonid Andreev’s Anathema (1909), Mikhail Matiushin’s experimental opera Victory Over the Sun (1913), and revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Misteriia-Buff (1918).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Crone, Rainer, Kazimir Malevich: The Climax of Disclosure, 1991; Douglas, Charlotte, Kazimir Malevich, 1994; Douglas, Charlotte, Swans of Other Worlds: Kazimir Malevich and the Origins of Abstraction in Russia, 1980; Milner, John, Kazimir Malevich and the Art of Geometry, 1996. Zhadova, L., Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art, 1910–1930, 1982.
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Malle, Louis (October 30, 1932–November 23, 1995) Director ouis Malle emerged as a filmmaker during the era of French New Wave directors like FRANC¸ OIS TRUFFAUT. While he disassociated himself from the New Wave movement, his films often share its simple, informal, and realistic style. His early films propelled actress JEANNE MOREAU to international stardom. Malle’s body of work is diverse, covering many genres and with settings in France, the Americas, and England. Malle was born into a wealthy Catholic family in Thumeries, an industrial region in northern France. He was an heir to his family’s sugar fortune. In his childhood he received a Catholic education (for which he later had no kind words), studying at the Petit Colle`ge d’Avon near Fontainebleau. Malle then enrolled at the Sorbonne and studied political science before going to the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris (1950). Upon the completion of his studies there, he assisted the director Robert Bresson on A Condemned Man Escapes. Malle’s first major project was a documentary, Le Monde du silence (1956; The Silent World), made during a voyage aboard maritime explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s Calypso. The film was well received by critics and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1956. The black-and-white feature Ascenseur pour l’e´chafaud (1957; Lift to the Scaffold, also titled Frantic and Elevator to the Gallows) was the first of Malle’s films that shaped actress Moreau into an international celebrity. In the story, Moreau plays a superficial parisienne who plots with her lover to kill her husband. Frantic also features a music score by Miles Davis. Moreau starred as a housewife who has an extramarital affair in Malle’s first commercial success, Les Amants (1958; The Lovers). Les amants, along with Le feu follet (1963; The Fire Within) and Le voleur (1967; The Thief
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of Paris), centers around protagonists who find themselves at odds with society in one way or another. Le feu follet unfolds during the last two days of a suicidal alcoholic’s life, while Le voleur depicts the life of a man who rejects his privileged background and becomes a criminal. In the late 1960s Malle spent several months in India, providing the material for the feature-length documentary Calcutta (1969) and the television series L’Inde fantoˆme (Phantom India). His works from the early 1970s vary considerably, from the comedy Le souffle au coeur (1971; Murmur of the Heart) to Lacombe, Lucien (1973), about a teen-ager who informs for the Gestapo during the German occupation of France. Malle moved to the United States in 1975 and made a series of films with American settings. Actress Brooke Shields played the 12year-old protagonist of Pretty Baby (1978), set in a New Orleans brothel. Burt Lancaster plays the outlaw-protagonist in Atlantic City (1980). Malle made his most unique film, My Dinner with Andre´, in 1981. The story takes place in a Manhattan restaurant and centers entirely on the conversation of two men (Andre´ Gregory and Wallace Shawn). Yet Malle directs skillfully enough that the interest never flags as Andre´ describes to Wally—who interrupts periodically with questions and commentary—his quest for truth and meaning, his adventures and dreams, and his views on contemporary society. Alamo Bay (1985) takes place in a town called Port Alamo on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The story treats the tension between native fishermen and increasing numbers of Vietnamese immigrants. With Au revoir les enfants (1987; Goodbye, Children), Malle returned to a French setting. The autobiographical story takes place in a Catholic boys’ school in German-occupied France, where the
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fathers have undertaken to hide Jewish children from the Gestapo. Julien Quentin, spoiled and rich, befriends Jean Bonnet, a Jewish boy whose true name is Kippelstein. When, on a tip, Nazi authorities arrive to find the boys, Julien inadvertently glances at Jean when they ask who the Jewish boys are. Damage (1992) starred Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche in a story about sexual obsession in an upper-middle-class British family. In his final film, Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), Malle again worked with Gregory and Shawn. An informal tone pervades the film, which simply shows a run-through rehearsal
of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1897) in an old Manhattan theater (with Gregory as director and Shawn as Uncle Vanya). Malle, who was married to the American actress Candice Bergen, succumbed to lymphatic cancer in 1995. His other films include the comedy Zazie dans le me´tro (1960: Zazie in the Subway), the Mexican western Viva Maria! (1965), and Milou en Mais (1989; May Fools).
BIBLIOGRAPHY French, Philip, ed., Malle on Malle, 1993.
Mandelstam, Osip (January 15, 1891–December 27, 1938) Poet, Short-Story Writer, Critic sip Emilyevich Mandelstam was a leading member of the Acmeists, a group of poets that formed in preSoviet Russia as a reaction against Symbolism. He published relatively little before Soviet authorities destroyed his writing career, and much of his surviving verse owes its existence to the efforts of his widow. Mandelstam (also spelled Mandelshtam) was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland, in what was then the Russian Empire, and spent a happy childhood in St. Petersburg. His father, a leather merchant, had abandoned his own family’s strict religious tradition and did not encourage a religious atmosphere in the home. After being tutored by governesses, Mandelstam in 1899 entered the Tenishev Commercial School, a liberal and elite school in St. Petersburg at which the Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov later studied. He graduated in 1907 and later studied at the Sorbonne in France (1907–1908) and the University of Heidelberg (1909–1910).
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In 1908 and 1909 Mandelstam lived in St. Petersburg, where he began to frequent Symbolist circles. His first poems appeared in the journal Apollon in 1910. The following year he entered the University of St. Petersburg, where he began his association with the Acmeists (see also ANNA AKHMATOVA), who used strict forms and preferred direct statement to what they considered the abstractions and obscurity of Symbolism. His volume Stone, containing twenty-three poems, was published at his own expense in 1913 and contributed to the rising popularity of Acmeism at the time. Stone contains Mandelstam’s most optimistic verse and is concerned largely with personal experience and social culture. A decade later it had reached its third, enlarged edition. In 1917, following the revolution, he took a post as People’s Commissariat for Education in Petrograd. In 1922 he married Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina. The same year he settled in Moscow and published his second volume of poetry, Tristia, which carries a markedly pessimistic tone. Upon returning to St. Peters-
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burg (then Leningrad), he was refused trousers he had requested in his clothing ration by MAXIM GORKY. In the 1920s Mandelstam’s apolitical poetry began to run afoul of the Soviet censors, who increasingly demanded socially and politically oriented literature in the service of the state. The Noise of Time, a volume of stories, and his literary essays in On Poetry were published together in The Egyptian Stamp (1928), and the title story of the volume paints a dark portrait of a poet in the postrevolutionary Soviet state. The same year, with the assistance of Nikolay Bukharin, he published a three-volume set of collected works entitled Poems. Following his travels through Georgia and Armenia in 1930, his Journey to Armenia appeared in 1933. From 1931 to 1933 he wrote the verse that would appear in Moscow Notebooks. Mandelstam’s poetry is personal and pessimistic in nature, carefully crafted and rife with literary allusions. Love and death are recurring themes in his verse; death even more so in his later poetry, as in the cycle “Verses on the Unknown Soldier.” He contemplated people—friends, strangers, and those he observed, as in “Cinema.” Other early poems include “Silence,” “Bach,” and “Ode to Beethoven.” Mandelstam directed a number of poems to his mistresses, and many poems evoke imagery from nature and classical literature as part of his contemplation of the eternal. As censorship increased in the Soviet Union, Mandelstam was open among friends in his criticism of the strictures and the demands of Socialist Realism. Of the Acmeists, Akhmatova was also prevented from publishing, and her former husband, the poet Nicholas Gumilyov, was executed in 1921 on trumped-up charges of counterrevolutionary activity. During this time, Mandelstam also began to suffer from heart disease and ill health in general. Until his death, when he was allowed to work, he earned his living translating French,
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English, and German works—the lot of many silenced writers in the Soviet Union. His arrest in 1934 followed an epigram he wrote about the dictator Joseph Stalin, describing his fingers as “worms” and comparing his moustache to a cockroach. Mandelstam further identified Stalin as a “murderer and peasant slayer,” and these comments all fell into the hands of the police. After a harrowing interrogation, Mandelstam was released and sent into exile with his wife to Cherdyn. He never recovered his mental health following the ordeal, and in exile he was hospitalized and tried to commit suicide by jumping from a window. Following his release, he was allowed to move to Voronezh and lived on the brink of insanity. His Voronezh Notebooks, not published until after his death, date from this period. Its poetry—including the cycle “Ode to Stalin,” a meditation on a poet’s existence under Stalinism—is bleak and rife with despair, but he nevertheless held on to his love of nature and its beauty. In 1935, with the assistance of his wife, he recorded his writings. Mandelstam and his wife were allowed to return to Moscow in May 1937, and he was again hospitalized. Soviet authorities arrested him in a sanatorium and, after a letter to his wife in the fall of 1938, he was never heard from again. The date Soviet officials gave for his death was December 27, 1938. Nadezhda Mandelstam memorized much of her husband’s poetry or found other ways to preserve it, and Mandelstam’s works were published in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death. She also published two volumes of her own memoirs, Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, Clarence, Mandelstam, 1973; Cavanagh, Clare, Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition, 1995; Harris, Jane Gary, Osip Mandelstam, 1988; Mandelstam, Nadezhda, Hope Abandoned, 1974; Mandelstam, Nadezhda, Hope against Hope, 1970.
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Mann, Thomas (June 6, 1875–August 12, 1955) Novelist, Essayist, Short-Story Writer, Critic homas Mann’s novels explored the values, psychology, and political atmosphere of middle-class Europeans in the first half of the twentieth century. Mann is also noted for his literary essays and adamant opposition to Nazism. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929, “principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks, which won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature.” Mann was born in Lu¨beck, Germany, the third child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann and Julia da Silva Bruhns. His father came from a prosperous line of grain merchants and continued the family business, and was also senator and mayor of Lu¨beck. As a boy he attended preparatory and secondary schools. He wrote for the school paper, Spring Storm, but the required studies alternately bored and irritated him. He moved to Munich when his father passed away in 1891. Mann’s first published writing appeared in 1893. He worked as an insurance clerk before
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Thomas Mann (쑖 Lebrecht / The Image Works)
joining the staff of Simplicissimus, a weekly journal of satire; he soon decided to pursue writing as a career. Mann’s early stories and ideas were influenced by the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Arthur Schopenauer (1788–1860). He explored the conflict between the artist and middle class values, and the conflict between “life” and “spirit.” Life, he believed, consists of simple, naive vitality; creativity and imagination belong to “spirit.” His early stories were collected as Little Herr Friedemann in 1898. Buddenbrooks (1901), his first novel, established his reputation and depicts an artist in conflict with the members of a declining merchant family similar to the one Mann grew up in. The novel was a great success and sold around a million copies in Germany. Two years later the novella Tonio Kro¨ger, Mann’s own favorite of his works, was published. In 1905 Mann married Katia Pringsheim, who eventually bore them six children. During the time leading up to World War I he retained conservative political beliefs, but they gradually evolved into support for democracy after the war. However, Mann generally avoided politics, and in his essay, Reflections of an Unpolitical Man (1918), he defended Germany and expressed his belief that a creative artist has an obligation to society. The Magic Mountain (1924), Mann’s most famous novel, followed a three-week visit to a sanatorium in Daves with his ill wife. Hans Castorp, an engineer, travels to the International Sanitarium Berghof in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen. Hans only plans to stay for three weeks, but after falling ill himself, he extends his stay to seven years. Through reflection and conversation with other tuberculosis patients confined there, he reevaluates his life. His conversations center on questions of life, death, religion, and philoso-
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phy; they reflect the varying attitudes of middle-class Europeans of the time. The most noteworthy dialogue unfolds between Hans and an Italian patient, Settembrini, who places his faith in intellect and reason. Jolted by the assassination of the archduke Franz Ferdinand, Hans comes to realize that he does not belong in isolation. The novellas Disorder and Early Sorrow were published in 1926. In the novella Mario and the Magician (1929), set in Fascist Italy, Mann criticized the rise of a powerful dictator. As Fascism gained popularity in his native Germany, he became one of its most vocal critics, in spite of his inclination to distance himself from politics. In a Berlin address entitled “An Appeal to Reason” (1930), he called on the German people to oppose the rising Nazi power. Around the same time, Mann also wrote a number of essays on individuals such as Sigmund Freud (1929), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1932), and Richard Wagner (1933). The rise of Hitler in 1933 forced Mann and his family into exile in Zu¨rich, and they later moved to the United States. Germany revoked his citizenship and his honorary doctorate in 1936 when he denounced the Nazi regime, and he became a United States citizen in 1944. From 1938 to 1941 he lectured as a visiting professor at Princeton University. In 1941 he moved to southern California, where he lived until 1952. In 1933, Mann finished the first volume of his four-part Joseph and His Brothers, his
own interpretation of the life of the biblical son of Jacob. The work followed his investigations of the biblical story and archaeological sites in Palestine and Egypt in 1929. He worked intermittently on the next three volumes, The Young Joseph (1934), Joseph in Egypt (1936), and Joseph the Provider (1943). His grimmest novel, Doctor Faustus (1947), uses the life of a German composer, Adrian Leverku¨hn, as a metaphor for the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. Mann’s works are in general multifaceted, philosophical, and tinged with irony. Although the ills of European middle-class culture served as primary themes in his work, his criticism was motivated by his attachment to it. His other works include Death in Venice (1913); The Holy Sinner (1951); The Black Swan (1953); the humorous The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (1954); Order of the Day (1942), a collection of essays; and Essays of Three Decades (1947). Mann was a younger brother of Heinrich Mann (1871–1950), author of Small Town Tyrant (1905) and The Patrioteer (1918); and the father of Klaus Mann (1906–1949), author of Symphonie Pathe´tique (1935), and the actor and writer Erika Mann.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hayman, Ronald, Thomas Mann: A Biography, 1995; Prater, Donald, Thomas Mann: A Life, 1995.
Manning, Olivia (March 2, 1911–July 23, 1980) Novelist, Short-Story Writer he British-born novelist and shortstory writer Olivia Manning set her fiction against the turbulent political situations of the twentieth century—World War
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II, the Middle East, and Ireland. Her most famous works, the Balkan Trilogy, unfold in Romania and Greece during World War II, and
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her talent as a writer lies in her ability to paint the textures of her landscapes in clear, ironic terms. Manning was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and was the daughter of a naval officer. Her unhappy childhood influenced the tone and content of many of her novels and short stories. She was educated privately and in 1939 married Reginald Donald Smith, a writer and producer for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Her first novel, The Wind Changes, was published in 1937. The story unfolds in Dublin in 1921 amidst the climate of revolution against England. Sean, a revolutionary, has convinced the rebel leader Riordan, in exile since his role in the Easter Week Rising of 1916, to come out of exile and participate in another revolt. Sean’s interaction with two other characters—the self-willed English writer Arion and the painter Elizabeth—forms the basis of the story. School for Love followed in 1951 and depicts the life of the 16-year-old orphaned Felix Latimer in war-torn Jerusalem. Miss Bohun, with whom Latimer lodges, is one of Manning’s unflattering character portraits. Manning is best known for her Balkan Trilogy, a series of novels set in Europe during World War II that present both a compelling portrait of the destruction of a nation and an incisive analysis of a flawed marriage. The Great Fortune (1960) opens in Romania in 1939, when the newly married couple Guy and Harriet Pringle arrive in Bucharest. Guy is a lecturer with Socialist beliefs, and Harriet, who shows no inclination to politics, soon finds out that he cares less about her than he does about his work. The Spoilt City (1962) takes place in 1940 with the Pringles still living in Bucharest, and both the political situation and their marriage have deteriorated. In the third volume, Friends and Heroes (1965), Harriet has left Romania for Greece, where Guy joins her. She seeks diversion with
other men, but the end of the story finds her departing for Cairo with her husband. Cairo is the setting for Manning’s next series, the Levant Trilogy, which continues the story of the Pringles in The Danger Tree (1977), The Battle Lost and Won (1979), and The Sum of Things (1980). Manning’s fiction is marked by her pessimistic outlook, her portrayals of twentiethcentury political situations, and depictions of loneliness within family relationships. The Doves of Venus (1955), a comedy, concerns the lives of two women—the 18-year-old Ellie and Petta, who is moving into middle age. Difficult relationships figure prominently in the short stories collected in A Romantic Hero (1967). In The Rain Forest (1974) the husband and wife Hugh and Kristy Foster already suffer troubles in their relationship when they arrive on the island of Al-Bustan in the Indian Ocean. The island’s social climate aggravates the rift between them. The Remarkable Expedition (1947), Manning’s major nonfiction work, provides a detailed narrative of the rescue of Emin Pasha, governor of Equatoria, a province on the upper reaches of the White Nile. Emin Pasha, in reality the German doctor Eduard Schnitzer, introduced many reforms in the area during his governorship. When political violence erupted in the region, a team headed by Henry Morton Stanley went on a harrowing expedition to rescue Emin Pasha, who, as it turned out, did not want to leave. Among Manning’s other works are Artist Among the Missing (1949); A Different Face (1953), about a man who returns to an English town to find his investment in a school is gone; My Husband Cartwright (1956), illustrated by L EN DEIGHTON; The Play Room (1969); and The Camperlea Girls (1969).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dold, Bernard E., Two Post-1945 British Novelists: Olivia Manning & Tom Sharpe, 1985.
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Mansfield, Katherine (October 14, 1888–January 9, 1923) Short-Story Writer, Poet efore tuberculosis cut her life short, the New Zealand–born English writer Katherine Mansfield helped shape modern short-story writing with her ironic psychological pieces. Most of Mansfield’s stories take place in New Zealand and capture the character of her native land and its people. Mansfield was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp in Wellington, New Zealand. Her father was an importer, and both parents traveled abroad frequently. At the age of six she entered the Karori Public School, and she later attended the Wellington Girls’ High School. At the latter she contributed short stories to the High School Reporter. Mansfield then attended a private school that prepared students for further study in London,where she attended Queens College. There, she pursued
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her interest in music and contributed stories to the Queens College Magazine. In New Zealand, Mansfield had little access to literature, but in London she was introduced to avant-garde literary works and developed a love for reading them. Her first book of short stories, In a German Pension, was published in 1911. The same year she submitted the first of many stories that would appear in the new quarterly Rhythm (later the Blue Review), edited by John Middleton Murry, whom she married in 1918 after the failure of her marriage to George Bowden. Her poetry, which was never well known, also appeared in the quarterly under the pseudonym Boris Petrovsky. Mansfield’s best stories unfold in her native New Zealand landscape, but she wrote fiction in other settings as well. “The House” first appeared in Hearth and Home and concerns a young woman, Marion, who falls asleep on the porch of a house she and her lover have thought about buying. Her pleasant dream of marital bliss in the house turns sour after she hears the voice of an old lover. “The House” is one of many of Mansfield’s stories that treat the theme of difficulty in marriage. The stories in Prelude (1918) take place in New Zealand, inspired by the 1915 death of Mansfield’s brother, who lost his life during World War I when a grenade exploded in his hand. The stories evoke many of Mansfield’s memories associated with her family, her childhood, and New Zealand. Among them is “The Aloe,” about the evolution of a New Zealand family that moves from the town to the country, as seen through the eyes of the individual characters. Bliss and Other Stories (1920) included the Prelude stories, along with some additional pieces, and was the first of her works to establish her literary reputation.
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Many of Mansfield’s stories are tinged with subtle irony, and their primary focus is on the psychological aspects of her characters. Some critics have compared her writing style to the work of the Russian author Anton Chekhov (1860–1904). Mansfield’s writing excels at bringing out the hardness and lack of authenticity she sees in bourgeois attitudes and mores, especially in attitudes toward the less fortunate and in the conventionalities of marriage. The theme of loneliness and falsehood in marriage appears in pieces such as “A Marriage of Passion” and “The Stranger,” the latter of which is based on an episode between her own parents. “A Doll’s House,” in which a school girl invites all of her classmates except the two daughters of a washerwoman to a party, depicts, like other stories, the uncaring attitudes of the well-off for the poor. In the title story of The Garden Party (1922), usually considered Mansfield’s best work, a rich party
hostess carries on with the party she is giving when a local working-class man dies. Among the other stories in The Garden Party are the well-known “The Voyage” and “Daughters of a Late Colonel.” Although she suffered symptoms several years earlier, Mansfield was not diagnosed with tuberculosis until 1917; she died of the ailment at the age of 34. Murry published several volumes of her writings posthumously, including the short-story collections The Dove’s Nest and Other Stories (1923) and Something Childish (1924), the Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927), her poetry, and Letters (1927).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Alpers, Antony, The Life of Katherine Mansfield, 1980; Magalaner, Marvin, The Fiction of Katherine Mansfield, 1971; Nathan, Rhoda B., Katherine Mansfield, 1988.
Manzu ` , Giacomo (December 22, 1908–January 17, 1991) Sculptor, Painter, Illustrator, Designer, Costume Designer largely self-taught sculptor, Giacomo Manzu` is best known for his classical, realistic sculptures and bronze church doors. Manzu` generally executed many sculptures on a singular theme, and among his most popular subjects were female nudes, religious figures, and chairs. He was also an accomplished painter, illustrator, and theater designer. Manzu` was born Giacomo Manzoni to a large family in Bergamo, Italy. His father was a shoemaker who earned a meager living. Manzu` left school at the age of 11 and was apprenticed to a wood carver. Two years later he went to work for a group of artisans who did stucco decoration and gilding. These ap-
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prenticeships to craftsmen, combined with his own exploration of modeling and painting, served as his most significant early training. In 1927 and 1928 Manzu` served in the Italian Army at Verona. During this time he took evening classes at the Accademia Cicognini. When he finished his service he traveled to Paris, hoping to make it there as a sculptor. Circumstances forced him to return to Italy, however, and he spent the next several years experimenting with an array of materials that included metals, stone, marble, plaster, terracotta, wood, and clay. His first important work, Shulamite, was rendered in colored cement. In 1936 he ventured to Paris a second
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Giacomo Manzu` (쑖 Lelli Masotti 쑖Alinari / The Image Works)
time, familiarizing himself with the work of Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). Among Manzu`’s notable works from the 1930s is a series of portraits of female figures in bronze, wood, and wax, such as Woman Combing Her Hair. As Manzu`’s career developed in the late 1930s, he began to sculpt on themes. Manzu`’s cardinal theme led to more
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than fifty cardinals rendered as standing or seated figures. Other subjects Manzu` treated are chairs with fruit, David, women playing, female nudes, models undressing, and lovers. Known for their sensitivity and realism, Manzu`’s figurative sculptures derive from classical principles.
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In 1941 Manzu` took a job at the Accademia Brera in Milan. His Francesca won the Grand Prix of the Rome Quadriennale the following year. In 1950 he received one of his most important commissions, a large set of doors for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, which were not installed until 1964. In 1955 he was commissioned to design the main door of the Salzburg Cathedral in Austria. Another door commission followed for the Church of SanktLaurents in Rotterdam in 1969. Paintings also belong to Manzu`’s body of work, and he executed an extensive Painter and Model series in the 1950s and 1960s. His other works include an official portrait of Pope John XXIII, a death mask of the pope (1963), the fountain Dancer (1964; in Detroit),
and portal sculptures for the Rockefeller Center in New York (1965). Manzu` illustrated editions of Hesiod’s Works and Days, the New Testament, and Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex. IGOR STRAVINSKY’s ballet Histoire du Soldat (History of a Soldier) and Goffredo Petrassi’s Follia di Orlando (The Madness of Orlando), performed at the opera in Rome, are among the stage works to which he contributed costumes and set designs. Manzu` won many awards, including a prize at the Venice Biennale (1948) and the International Lenin Peace Prize in 1966.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Manzu`, Giacomo, Exhibition of Recent Work, 1968.
Marc, Franz (February 8, 1880–March 4, 1916) Painter, Graphic Artist ne of the founding members of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group of German Expressionist painters, Franz Marc sought to capture the spiritual essence of his subjects. He came to believe that animals convey a pure, natural state better than humans did. As his career developed, his forms grew more abstract, and the paintings from his last years moved almost entirely away from representational forms. Marc was born in Munich. His mother was of Alsatian background and came from a family of ardent Calvinists. Marc’s father was a landscapist. From his early youth Marc clung to a religious sense of life, and for several years he planned to become a priest. Marc loved to read, particularly German literature, and in 1898 entered the University of Munich. After studying philosophy there for two years,
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he left to study art at the Munich Academy. There he studied drawing under Gabriel Hackl and painting with Wilhelm von Diez. Marc painted his early works in an academic, naturalistic style. His 1902 portrait of his mother depicts a realistic figure sitting in a chair and reading a book. The following year Marc traveled to Paris, where he discovered the French Impressionists. Another significant influence on his art at this time was the Jugendstil movement in Germany. For the remainder of his career, Marc attempted to synthesize both French and German influences in his work. His early subjects came from nature and included many landscapes. In 1907 he visited Paris a second time, absorbing the influences of the Fauves and the Postimpressionists. Paintings such as the brilliantly lit Sheaf of Grain (1907) have the light and color intensity of Vincent van Gogh’s
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work. The same year he began to paint animal subjects—horses, cats, dogs, deer, cows, and others. Large Lenggries Horse Painting (1908) groups four horses bathed in sunlight under a blue sky. In 1909 Marc joined the Neue Ku¨nst-lervereinigung (New Artists’ Association), a group of Expressionist artists. Having been exposed to the Fauves in France and the bold color use of fellow member August Macke, Marc intensified the color in his paintings and developed his own color symbolism. The brilliant red horses of Horse in the Landscape (1910) and The Red Horses (1911) stand out in front of intense yellow and green backgrounds. Large, blue horses appear in numerous paintings, including Blue Horse (1911). Marc met WASSILY KANDINSKY in 1910 and with him edited the journal Der Blaue Reiter, from which the group of artists took its name. Marc helped organize two exhibitions, but his quest for capturing the spiritual essence of his subjects led him increasingly toward abstract forms that at times blended Cubism and Expressionism. Works such as Mountains (Rocky Way/Landscape) (1911–1912) combine ab-
straction with representational figures. While Painting with Cattle (1913), Stables (1913), and other paintings employ schemes of angular planes and intense color, few of Marc’s works adhere to the jagged, two-dimensional forms preferred by the Paris Cubists. Paintings from the years preceding Marc’s early death are his most abstract. Fighting Forms (1914) is a violent work that depicts the clash of a bright red form with a bluish-green form. Marc fought in World War I and lost his life in 1916. Among his other paintings are The Little Yellow Horses (1912), Dead Dear (1913), Colorful Flowers (1913–1914), Broken Forms (1914), Abstract Forms (1914), and The Unfortunate Land of Tirol (1914). Marc also contributed a series of illustrations for Stella Peregrina (1904–1909) and a number of woodcuts for Herwarth’s Walden’s in 1907–1908.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Levine, Frederick S., The Apocalyptic Vision: The Art of Franz Marc as German Expressionism, 1979; Rosenthal, Mark, Franz Marc, 1989.
Marinetti, F. T. (December 22, 1876–December 2, 1944) Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Essayist ith the publication of his Futurist Manifesto in 1909, Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti inaugurated the Futurist movement. The Futurists saw beauty in modernism and technology and rejected what they considered the antiquated literary, artistic, and cultural traditions of the past. In style, they abandoned traditional forms and sought to create dynamic, energetic, and high-impact works. Futurism’s political dimension called for violence, aggres-
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sion, and participation in war, and in the period after World War I it was associated with Fascism. Marinetti was born to Italian parents in Alexandria, Egypt. His father was a successful lawyer, and through his mother’s influence he acquired an interest in literature. He studied at the Jesuit St. Franc¸ois Xavier College in Egypt and founded the literary review Le Papyrus in 1894. The poetry and articles he contributed to the journal reflected his embrace
MARINETTI, F. T.
of modern literature. Marinetti studied in Paris and earned his law degree from the University of Genoa. Marinetti’s first book of poetry, La conqueˆte des e´toiles (1902; Conquest of the Stars), was published in 1902. Along with its successor, French Destruction (1904), it uses free and experimental forms that anticipate Futurism. From 1905 to 1909, Marinetti published the journal La Poesia, attacking the cultural atmosphere of the past and urging an Italy he viewed as backward to modernize and move into the future. In the political sphere, he targeted King Victor Emmanuel III and criticized English and German dominance in Europe. The Futurist movement began with Marinetti’s publication of Manifeste de Futurisme (1909; Futurist Manifesto) in a Paris daily. “Beauty exists only in struggle,” he declared. “There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character.” He championed speed and the magnificence of the automobile. Museums and libraries, he argued, were antiquated institutions in need of destruction. Marinetti also advocated violence and launched an offensive against feminism: “We want to glorify war—the only cure for the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.” In this and the many other manifestos written by Marinetti and his Futurist followers, they rejected sentimentality and tradition in art. The Futurists saw beauty not in nature, but in technology, energy, motion, machines, dynamism, and the city. Marinetti wrote in a bombastic and provocative style with the aim of shocking his readers into action. His zeal in promoting his ideas all over the world in an attempt to wake people up earned him the nickname “the caffeine of Europe.” Marinetti’s Futurism extended to all areas of the arts—poetry, literature, architecture, painting, and music. The artists U MBERTO BOCCIONI, Giacomo Balla, and Gino Severini published their own statement, The Manifesto of Futurist Painters, in 1910. The composers
F. T. Marinetti (쑖 Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo helped bring Futurism to music with their manifestos— Pratella’s The Manifesto of Futurist Musicians (1912) and Russolo’s The Art of Noises (1913). Russolo laced his compositions with machine noises, scrapes, whispers, and many other sounds he carefully classified. He invented special instruments to play the sounds his compositions required. In architecture, Antonio Sant’Elia adopted Futurist principles. It was not uncommon for riots to develop at Futurist poetry readings, and the poetry itself was chaotic and formless with rapid sequences of imagery and visually striking words. In the theater, the Futurists aimed to shock and “assault the nerves.” Marinetti outlined his ideas on the theater in his Teatro sintetico futurista (1916; Synthetic Futurist Theatre). His own plays include Le roi bombance (performed in 1909; The Feasting King) and Anti-neutralita` (1912; Anti-Neutrality). His novel Mafarka le Futuriste (Mafarka the Futurist) was published in 1910. Futurism took on a definite and aggressive political dimension. Marinetti strongly sup-
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ported Fascism and the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. His Guerra sola igiene del mundo (1915; War the Only Hygiene of the World) glorified war and urged Italy to fight in World War I. In Futurismo e Fascismo (1924; Futurism and Fascism), he tried to demonstrate a relationship between Fascism and Futurism. Mussolini appointed him to the Italian Academy in 1926, but after the 1920s, Futurism and Marinetti lost much of their popularity and support. His other works, written in both Italian and French, include The Untameables
(1922), and some of his writings were later collected in Let’s Murder the Moonshine.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Blum, Cinzia Sartini, The Other Modernism: F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist Fiction of Power, 1996; Hewitt, Andrew, Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Avant-Garde, 1993; Joll, James, Three Intellectuals in Politics, 1961; Voitle, Dorothy Morris, Marinetti and Early Futurism, 1971.
Marini, Marino (February 27, 1901–August 6, 1980) Sculptor ne of Italy’s leading twentieth-century sculptors, Marino Marini concentrated on three major themes in his work: the horse and rider, the female figure, and the sculpture-portrait. Rather than render strict representations of his subjects, Marini looked for the essence of his subject. His most famous works include many horse and rider sculptures and a portrait-sculpture of the Russian composer IGOR STRAVINSKY. Marini was born in Pistoia, Italy. As a youth he was exposed to a riding school, an experience which generated some early drawings of horses and contributed to his lifelong fascination with sculpting equestrian figures. Before becoming a sculptor, Marini trained as a painter, mostly in a traditional academic style. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and studied painting under Domenico Trentacoste. Marini’s paintings are abstract and employ bright colors. He used a variety of inks and pigments—watercolor, oil, Indian ink, and others. After working primarily in painting and graphic art during the 1920s, he turned more seriously to sculpture. Many influences
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have been cited for Marini’s equestrian sculpture—Chinese T’ang horses, Estruscan and Roman statues, and German sculpture among them. In 1935 he won the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Second Quadriennale in Rome, and two years later he was awarded the Prize for Sculpture at the International Exhibition in Paris. Marini sculpted in bronze, plaster, and wood, but not in stone. The equestrian sculptures make up a large portion of his body of work. His terra-cotta work The Quadriga (1943) depicts the fronts of four horses. Marini textured and colored surfaces with corrosive dyes or chisel marks. Rider (1953), one of many Marini sculptures to bear that title, depicts a horse and rider in bronze with black stripes. The Miracle (1953–1954) depicts a rider toppling from a reared horse. Among his other major equestrian sculptures are the Horsemen series and Monumental Rider (1957–1958). The other major subject Marini treated in his sculpture is the female figure. He executed a Dancer series in the 1940s and 1950s. His Pomona (1940) is a heavy, full-featured wom-
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an in bronze. He rendered Ersilia (1930–1949), another female figure, in polychrome wood with a chiseled surface. Marini occasionally sculpted other figures, including The Juggler (1938), Small Bull (1951), and Big Bull (1953). His work is neither representational nor abstract—his figures are recognizable human and animal forms as interpreted through the sculptor’s eye. Marini is also known for his sculpture portraits, the most famous of which is his head of Stravinsky (1950). Others include Melotti (1937), a bronze head of Curt Valentin (1952), Portrait of Lucy Lambert (1954), and Gabrielle Seefried (1955).
While sculpting, Marini also taught. From 1929–1940 he taught at the Villa Reale School of Art in Monza. He was professor of sculpture at the Accademia Brera in Milan from 1940–1970. In 1952 he won the prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, and two years later he won the Grand Prize at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Trier, Eduard, and Lederer, Helmut, The Sculpture of Marino Marini, 1961.
Markova, Alicia (December 1, 1910–December 2, 2004) Dancer, Teacher oted for her light step and tiny, delicate figure, Alicia Markova began her ballet career with SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes as a child of ten. She later codirected her own ballet company with Anton Dolin and worked with such noted choreographers as MICHEL FOKINE and LE´ ONIDE MASSINE. Markova also directed New York’s Metropolitan Ballet for several years during the 1960s. Markova was born Lilian Alicia Marks in Finsbury, North London. The eldest of four girls, she was a frail, delicate child. Believing ballet lessons would help strengthen her limbs, her parents sent her to the Thorne Academy as a child. Markova excelled at the academy and was soon dancing in competitions. When she saw ANNA PAVLOVA perform, she begged her father to arrange a meeting with her. Pavlova saw Markova at her home the next day. At the age of ten, Markova won a spot as principal dancer in a Kensington Theatre pantomime production of Dick Whittington. She
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next studied with former Ballets Russes dancer Seraphima Astafieva. During one of her classes Diaghilev arrived looking for extras for a Ballets Russes production of The Sleeping Princess. Although legally too young, Markova danced her first part (as the Fairy Dew Drop) with the Ballets Russes at the age of 10. Four years later Markova joined Diaghilev’s company permanently, adopting the stage name of Alicia Markova. Wearing a costume designed by HENRI MATISSE, she debuted in GEORGE BALANCHINE’s version of Le Rossignol (1925; The Nightingale), and created the title role in that work. Markova continued to study, receiving instruction from both Balanchine and Enrico Cecchetti. She remained with the Ballets Russes until Diaghilev’s death in 1929 resulted in its disbanding. At the invitation of FREDERICK ASHTON, Markova danced in a production of Dryden’s Mariage a` la Mode at the Lyric Theatre and was soon dancing in productions around England.
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She worked with Ashton on numerous occasions over the next several years and appeared in such roles as the De´butante in Fac¸ade (1932). In 1931 she joined the Vic Wells Ballet (later the Royal Ballet), and two years later she became its first prima ballerina (1933–1935). During this time she danced the lead in England’s first production of Giselle, which subsequently became her favorite role. Markova left the Vic Wells in 1935 and formed the Markova-Dolin Ballet with Anton Dolin. She appeared regularly in productions of Giselle, the Nutcracker, Death in Adagio, Swan Lake, with ROBERT HELPMANN as Siegfried, Coppe´lia, and Fokine’s Le Carnaval and Les Sylphides. VASLAV NIJINSKY’s wife choreographed The House Party (1936). Markova and Dolin later formed the London Festival Ballet, where she remained from 1949 to 1952. Markova also danced with the Ballet Rambert, the Ballet Theatre, and Massine’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, appearing in Rouge et Noir (1939) and other Massine creations at the latter. In 1941–1942 she worked with Fo-
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kine at the Ballet Theatre, dancing in productions of Swan Lake, Bluebeard (as the Princess), and Les Sylphides. Among her other notable roles are the Queen of Hearts in Balanchine’s Poker Game; Taglioni in the Dolin Pas de quatre; the Gypsy in Massine’s Aleko (1942), with a costume designed by MARC CHAGALL; and Juliet in Antony Tudor’s Romeo and Juliet (1943). In her later career Markova danced around the world, appearing in the Phillippines, Cuba, the Americas, and Europe. She retired from dancing in 1963 and the same year was created Dame of the British Empire. From 1963 to 1969 she directed the Metropolitan Ballet in New York. Markova lectured, taught, and periodically staged ballets after leaving the Metropolitan Ballet. She has appeared in television and film versions of Les Sylphides (1953) and Giselle. Markova died of a stroke the day after her ninety-fourth birthday. BIBLIOGRAPHY Markova, Dame Alicia, Markova Remembers, 1986.
MARX BROTHERS, THE
Marx Brothers, The Comedians, Actors
Marx, Leonard (Chico)
Marx, Milton (Gummo)
(March 21, 1887–October 11, 1961)
(October 23, 1892–April 21, 1977)
Marx, Adolph (Harpo)
Marx, Herbert (Zeppo)
(November 23, 1888–September 28, 1964)
(February 25, 1901–November 30, 1979)
Marx, Julius Henry (Groucho) (October 2, 1890–August 19, 1977) he Marx Brothers, consisting of Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo, and Zeppo, were an American group of brothercomedians who appeared in or on vaudeville, Broadway, and other stage productions, films, television, and radio. At the height of their popularity, Chico, Harpo, and Groucho were the main performers. Their witty routines satirized high society and American institutions, and they inevitably spawned chaos and tumult with every word and move. The Marx Brothers were born in New York City to Jewish immigrants from Germany. Their father, a tailor from Alsace, changed his family name from Marrix to Marx. The brothers grew up in Yorkville, a mostly German area of New York Cotu. Five of the brothers formed part of the family stage act at one point or another, and they had a sixth, Manfred, who died at the age of three. The brothers received little formal education, but Groucho in particular loved to read. They came from an artistic family—they had a grandfather who was an amateur ventriloquist, a grandmother who played the harp, and an uncle who acted in vaudeville shows— and were encouraged to play music when they were young. Some of the brothers took up different instruments—Chico the piano, Harpo the harp, and Groucho the guitar. Groucho also sang. Chico played the piano at nickelodeons and saloons, and both he and Groucho worked as song pluggers. Groucho took a job with the Gus Edwards vaudeville troupe.
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The origin of the brothers’ fame was in vaudeville, where Groucho debuted as a singer in 1905. In 1909, he and Gummo sang together in The Three Nightingales with Mabel O’Donnell. Harpo joined the trio in 1910, upon which the group became known as The Four Nightingales. Shortly thereafter, their mother Minnie and their Aunt Hannah joined them, and they renamed themselves The Six Mascots. In 1914, Minnie, who had already been serving as the group’s manager, started an agency to handle their performances. The troupe gradually began to incorporate more comedy—which included jokes and insulting audiences who interrupted them—into their routines while downplaying the music. They developed a popular half-hour sketch entitled “Fun in Hi Skule” in which Groucho donned a frock coat and satirized a teacher. Gummo, Harpo, and Chico were his students, with Gummo as a bland, average man and Harpo with what was to become his characteristic red wig. In 1913 and 1914, the brothers developed new sketches entitled “Mr. Green’s Reception” and “Home Again.” The brothers soon became known as The Four Marx Brothers. Gummo left the act in 1918, and Zeppo replaced him. Al Shean (1868–1949), the stage name of Minnie’s brother Albert Scho¨nberg who is most famous for his part in the vaudeville Gallagher and Shean duo, helped shape their stage personalities. Groucho began wearing his trademark greasepaint moustache, stooping as he walked and smoking a cigar. Harpo continued to wear his red wig
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and, following Shean’s advice, remained mute onstage. Chico, on the other hand, acquired a fake Italian accent, and Zeppo took on Gummo’s former role of the straight man. The Marx Brothers signed with the Orpheum Circuit, then a prominent theatrical chain. They attained success performing regularly at the Palace Theatre in New York, and by the 1920s, their fame had spread to other American theaters. At this point in their career, their act was unstructured and combined satire with improvisation. Their first appearance on Broadway was in the critically acclaimed musical revue I’ll Say She Is (1924). They performed under their stage names, which the entertainer Art Fisher had coined for them in 1914. Harpo’s name came from his talent for playing the harp, and Chico’s from his love of women. Groucho’s name derived from his serious demeanor. The origins of Gummo’s and Zeppo’s stage names remain unclear. On the heels of their first Broadway success, they appeared in the musical comedy The Cocoanuts (1925), written by George S. Kaufman (1889–1961) and Morrie Ryskind (1895–1985) with music by IRVING BERLIN. Animal Crackers, also written by Kaufman and Ryskind, followed in 1928. The Marx Brothers’ timing could not have been more perfect for their move from Broadway to Hollywood. They signed a contract with Paramount Pictures right around the time of the advent of “talkies,” or sound films with dialog. Film versions of The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930), both written by Kaufman and Ryskind, marked their first two screen successes. Monkey Business, in which the brothers play stowaways on a ship, followed in 1931. In Horse Feathers (1932), a satire on both colleges and Prohibition, Groucho portrayed Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff. who tries to buy football players from Chico’s and Harpo’s characters (and ends up buying them instead) to help his school win a big game. The Marx Brothers’ final film for Paramount was Duck Soup (1933), directed by Leo
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McCarey (1898–1969). Although it was not a huge commercial success, many critics today regard it as their best film. In it, Groucho played the looney Rufus T. Firefly, dictator of the fictional nation of Freedonia, which declares war with the neighboring nation of Sylvania over the love of the wealthy Mrs. Teasdale. Chico and Harpo played inept spies, while Zeppo played Lt. Bob Roland. It was to be Zeppo’s last role with the brothers, as he grew tired of playing less prominent characters. Ironically, Zeppo was reportedly the funniest of the brothers offstage. After his departure from the screen, he devoted his energies to a talent agency that he and Gummo ran in Hollywood. They represented the other three brothers and also helped launch the careers of such stars as comedian Jack Benny (1894–1974) and actress Lana Turner (1921–1995). At one point, Zeppo also owned a company that manufactured parts for the war effort during World War II. Producer Irving Thalberg (1899–1936) signed The Marx Brothers to MGM following their departure from Paramount. Thalberg worked to strengthen and elaborate on their earlier acts, and they completed two successful films before his unexpected death from pneumonia in 1937. The first of these was A Night at the Opera (1935), a satire on operas and high society written by Kaufman and Ryskind. A highlight of the film is a famous scene in which too many people try to stuff themselves into a room aboard an ocean liner. A Day at the Races, in which Groucho played Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, a sanitarium director employed under false pretenses, followed in 1937. Hackenbush and his friends (played by Harpo and Chico) try to save the sanitarium from falling into the hands of a corrupt prospector, who wants to turn it into a casino, by getting a misfit racehorse onto the track. Thalberg died during the preproduction of A Day at the Races, and the Marx Brothers made Room Service (1938) with actress and comedienne Lucille Ball (1911–1989) for RKO before returning to MGM for At the Circus
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(1939), Go West (1940), and The Big Store (1941). United Artists released their final two major films, A Night in Casablanca (1946) and Love Happy (1949). From the 1940s onward, Harpo and Chico performed at nightclubs and casinos, while Chico also led the Chico Marx Orchestra, and he died of arteriosclerosis in 1961. Groucho moved to radio and television entertainment and from 1947 to 1961 hosted the popular quiz show You Bet Your Life. He introduced JOHNNY CARSON as the new host of The Tonight Show on October 1, 1962. Groucho also published the autobiography Groucho and Me (1959) as well as Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (1965) and The Groucho Letters (1967). Although the brothers never made another major film, they worked together in scenes for The Story of Mankind (1957). Chico and Harpo appeared together in The Incredible Jewel Robbery (1959), in which they played would-be jewel thieves. Groucho made a brief showing as a suspect in a police lineup, and it was the last film in which all three brothers
appeared together. The Four Marx Brothers were showcased alongside other comedians in the television special The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians (1970), which featured animated versions of various famous comic acts. In 1973, Groucho received an honorary Academy Award “in recognition of his brilliant creativity and for the unequalled achievements of the Marx Brothers in the art of motion picture comedy.” BIBLIOGRAPHY Adamson, Joe, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo; A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World, 1973; Eyles, Allen, The Complete Films of the Marx Brothers, 1992; Gehring, Wes D., The Marx Brothers: A Bio-Bibliography, 1987; Louvish, Simon, Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers: Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, with Added Gummo, 1999; Mitchell, Glenn, The Marx Brothers Encyclopedia, 2003. www.marx-brothers.org.
Mason, James (May 15, 1909–July 27, 1984) Actor he English actor James Neville Mason first gained fame playing rotten characters in the films The Man in Grey and The Seventh Veil during the World War II era. He went on to star in more than a hundred films in both England and the United States, including such classics as Lolita, Madame Bovary, A Star Is Born, and North by Northwest. Mason was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England. His father was a textile merchant and his mother well educated. As boys, he and his brothers attended the Old College at Windermere. Mason moved on to Marlbor-
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ough College, where he took part in periodic house concerts. In 1928, he entered Peterhouse College, Cambridge. Mason at first decided to pursue a career in architecture, but while still at Cambridge he began to act. Upon the completion of his studies he entered the world of theater, performing in repertory companies and eventually on the West End. Mason starred as a reporter in his first film, Late Extra, in 1935. He married the actress Pamela Kellino, who had starred in the 1932 British version of LION FEUCHTWANGER’s Jew Su¨ss, in 1941. Until his big break in 1943, he played relatively minor roles in a number of
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James Mason (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
films, including Blind Man’s Bluff, about a man who loses his sight and regains it. That year he earned widespread popularity in England with his portrayal of the contemptible
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Lord Rohan in The Man in Grey (1943). Fame in the United States followed with his role as the dishonorable Nicholas, possessive guard-
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ian of a young musician (Ann Todd), in The Seventh Veil (1945). Odd Man Out (1947), directed by Sir CAROL REED and based on a book by F. L. Green, was among Mason’s favorites of his own films. In it he plays the escaped prisoner Johnny McQueen, member of a not-so-active political group. Mason’s other major films include Madame Bovary (1949), based on Gustav Flaubert’s classic; The Desert Fox (1951), in which he played Erwin Rommel, the German general who earned the name of Desert Fox for his campaigns in North Africa during World War II; and Five Fingers (1952) and Julius Caesar (1953), both directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. In A Star Is Born (1954), directed by George Cukor, Mason plays Norman Maine
opposite JUDY GARLAND’s Esther Blodgett. Mason’s later films include Forever Darling (1956), with Lucille Ball; ALFRED HITCHCOCK’s classic North by Northwest (1959), in which he starred as the villain with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint; Lolita (1962), in which he played Humbert in STANLEY KUBRICK’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel; Georgy Girl (1966); The Boys from Brazil (1978); and The Verdict (1982), with PAUL NEWMAN. Mason’s autobiography, Before I Forget, was published in 1981 with his own illustrations.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hirschhorn, Clive, The Films of James Mason, 1977; Mason, James, Before I Forget, 1981.
Massine, Le ´ onide (August 9, 1896–March 15, 1979) Choreographer, Dancer, Actor he ballet impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV recruited Le´onide Massine from the Bolshoi Ballet for his Ballets Russes in 1914. Massine developed into one of the world’s leading dancers and most influential choreographers, pioneering in the 1930s a new style of symphonic ballet. Massine was born Leonid Fedorovich Miassine in Moscow. Both parents were deeply involved in Moscow’s cultural climate. His mother sang soprano in the Bolshoi Theatre Chorus, and his father played the French horn in the Bolshoi Orchestra. Massine received his earliest scholastic instruction from his parents and an aunt. With some reluctance, his parents allowed him to go to the Moscow Imperial Theatre School when he was eight. Aside from his scholastic studies, Massine began acting at the Maly Theatre and dancing at the Bolshoi Ballet. At that time, the Bolshoi was under the direction of Alexander Gorsky,
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more progressive in his outlook than the aged classical adherent Marius Petipa at the rival St. Petersburg Ballet. Massine danced his first solo role as the dwarf Chernomor in Glinka’s Ruslan and the Ludmilla as a student and continued to dance such roles throughout his studies. Upon his graduation Massine joined the Bolshoi Ballet and danced regularly with the company. In attendance at one of his performances was Diaghilev, who recruited Massine for his Ballets Russes. The young Massine replaced VASLAV NIJINSKY in the role of Diaghilev’s prote´ge´ and lover, and Diaghilev introduced him to the music and culture of Europe. Massine’s debut with the Ballets Russes came in Paris in 1914 in La Le´gende de Joseph. His first performance in the United States came two years later. He continued to dance with the Ballets Russes until 1924, ap-
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pearing in many ballets choreographed by MICHEL FOKINE. It was Diaghilev who was responsible for the name change from Miassine to Massine, which he thought was easier for Western audiences to pronounce. Meanwhile, Massine had also begun to choreograph. Russian folk tradition inspired his first choreographic effort, Le Soleil de nuit (1915; The Sun of Night). Over the next several years, high-profile contributors to the music scores and sets assisted Massine’s rise to prominence as a choreographer. Parade (1917) used music by ERIK SATIE, a set designed by PABLO PICASSO, and libretto by JEAN COCTEAU. The Spanish- flavored Le Tricorne (1919; The Three-Cornered Hat) again used Picasso’s set designs as well as music by the Spanish composer MANUEL DE FALLA. With IGOR STRAVINSKY’s The Rite of Spring (1920), Massine began to show the influences of abstraction and modernism that characterize his mature choreographic style. His other works from his first period with the Ballets Russes include La Boutique fantasque (1919). Fokine left the Ballets Russes from 1921 to 1924 and in 1924 presented several choreographed numbers as the Soire´es de Paris. Massine returned to the Ballets Russes in 1924 and worked with the company until its dissolution in 1929. He choreographed a succession of ballets during this period: Ze´phyre et Flore (1925); Les Matelots (1925); Pas d’acier (1927), to SERGEI PROKOFIEV’s music; and Ode (1928). Following Diaghilev’s death, Massine served as principal dancer and choreographer of Colonel Wassily de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (1932–1938). Massine resigned from this post and formed the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, which he ran until 1942. He continued to choreograph works such as Jeux d’Enfants (1932), with scenery designed by JOAN MIRO´ ; Beach (1933); and Union Pacific (1933).
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As a choreographer, Massine evolved a modernistic style that revolutionized the ballet. He incorporated pantomime, extended Fokine’s use of expressive movement, and pioneered new means of working with space. To his demi-caracte`re ballets and character ballets he added his revolutionary symphonic ballets during the 1930s. The first of these, Les Pre´sages (1933), uses Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. In Les Pre´sages and symphonic ballets that followed—Choreartium (1933), to Brahms’s Fourth Symphony; La symphonie fantastique (1936), to music by Berlioz; Septie`me symphonie (1938; Seventh Symphony), and Rouge et noir (1939), set to DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH’s First Symphony, with scenery and costumes by HENRI MATISSE—Massine increasingly incorporated elements of modern dance. The ballets resemble the music score, often using small dances for groups or individuals to emphasize musical themes, then weaving the smaller dances into a whole. Massine moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1944. For the rest of his life, he worked with ballet companies in Europe and the United States. His other works include Gaıˆte´ Parisienne (1938); Nobilissima Visione, St. Francis (1938); Aleko (1942), a collaborative effort with MARC CHAGALL; three ballets with sets designed by the Surrealist painter SALVADOR DALı´; and the books My Life in Ballet (1968) and Massine on Choreography (1976). Massine also starred in films, the most notable of which was The Red Shoes (1948), choreographed by ROBERT HELPMANN.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Garcı´a-Marquez, Vicente, Massine: A Biography, 1995.
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Matisse, Henri (December 31, 1869–November 3, 1954) Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist, Illustrator enri E´mile Benoit Matisse, leader of the French Fauves, is best known for paintings that employ bold, rich color and expressive forms, particularly of women. Some art critics consider Matisse’s work equal in importance to that of PABLO PICASSO in terms of its impact on modern art.
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Matisse was born into a middle-class family in Le Cateau-Cambre´sis, France. His father was in the grain business. He studied law, became a clerk in a law office, and had very little interest in art until he was 20. Then, during his recovery from appendicitis, he fell in love with painting when his mother gave him a box of oil paints. In 1891 Matisse moved to Paris to study art at the Acade´mie Julien and then the E´cole des Beaux-Arts. In 1892, the French
Henri Matisse (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-103699)
painter Gustave Moreau allowed Matisse to study in his studio. Matisse’s early art education, with its emphasis on copying the masters, was very conventional, as were his early paintings, which were naturalistic and employed dark, unobtrusive colors as opposed to bright ones. The ordinary nature of Matisse’s painting began to change as he studied with Moreau, and as he studied the works of the Impressionists and Postimpressionists, including Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Ce´zanne. The Oriental rugs, Islamic art, and Byzantine models in which Matisse became interested also influenced his work, as did his association with the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro and the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). Matisse met with little success in art until his mid-thirties. His wife was the main breadwinner for their family of five and ran a small dress shop. Matisse did odd jobs for additional income and took a small monthly sum from his parents. By 1898 he had given up working on anything but his art. He began to study sculpture and exhibited his work at the Salon des Inde´pendants beginning in 1901. This cutting-edge salon featured the work of unconventional artists in disrepute with popular critics. For a short period of time in 1904–1905, Matisse became interested in and used a modified version of the technique of the Pointillists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, who used small strokes of pure paint to intensify color when the painting is seen from a distance. Matisse began to incorporate bolder colors into his paintings, and then to use freer forms, both evidenced in paintings such as La joie de vivre (1905; The Joy of Living). His fortunes began to change for the better in 1905. That year he abandoned the Pointillist technique altogether. His 1905 portrait, Green Stripe (Madame Matisse), features a
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large stripe of green running down the center of his wife’s face. His Woman with the Hat was displayed at the Salon d’Automne, where he had exhibited his work since 1903. The painting generated a storm of controversy, including criticism from Leo Stein, who later changed his mind and purchased the painting. Matisse painted with ANDRE´ DERAIN and MAURICE DE VLAMINCK and held joint exhibitions with them. They became known as the Fauves, or “the wild beasts,” so dubbed by one of their critics for their bold use of vivid color and distorted shapes. Through Leo Stein Matisse met his sister, Gertrude Stein, who liked his paintings and introduced him to PABLO PICASSO. He began to sell more paintings, in particular to two Russian art collectors. The Dance, a mural he painted for one of them, utilizes the dominant colors of blue, green, and red to depict five nude dancers moving freely in a circle. As in Matisse’s other paintings, the distorted forms of their bodies emphasize expression over realism. He began to travel around the world and as a result, his international reputation grew steadily. From 1908 to 1911 Matisse operated an art school. Some of his most significant works date from the period between 1909 and 1917 when he
lived outside of Paris at Issy-les-Moulineaux, including Still Life with Eggplants (1912) and The Piano Lesson (1916). In addition to painting, Matisse created expressive bronze sculptures, drew, and completed illustrations to accompany the work of the French Symbolist poet Ste´phane Mallarme´ (1932). After 1920, he spent a large portion of his time in Nice. His paintings from this period are generally striking, with bold, decorative color. Typical are Music (1939) and Large Interior in Red (1948). During the last few years of his life, the bedridden Matisse essentially abandoned painting and turned to cutting colored figures from paper and arranging them on canvases. From 1948 to 1951 he designed, mostly from his bed, the Chapel of Saint-Marie du Rosiare in Vence, a small town near Nice. He died in Nice in 1954.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Flam, Jack D., Henri Matisse: The Man and His Art, 1869–1918, 1986; Gowing, Lawrence, Matisse, 1979; Russell, John, The World of Matisse, 1969; Watkins, Nicholas, Matisse, 1984; Wilson, Sarah, Matisse, 1992.
Maugham, Somerset (January 25, 1874–December 16, 1965) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Essayist illiam Somerset Maugham’s ironic and pessimistic novels, written in simple and direct narrative style, include The Razor’s Edge and the autobiographical Of Human Bondage. He also achieved success as a playwright with a series of comedies staged in London and wrote short stories, essays, and travel books. Maugham was born in the British Embassy in Paris. His mother, renowned in Paris cir-
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cles for her beauty, was interested in art and literature. Maugham’s happy childhood ended abruptly with her death when he was eight, and his father, a lawyer, died of cancer two years later. As a child Maugham spoke better French than he did English, and when an aunt and uncle took him in in England, his language handicap proved to be only one of the barriers in front of him. His unhappy experience at King’s School, Canterbury, com-
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pounded the loneliness he endured in his new home. Maugham spent a year in Heidelberg, went to St. Thomas’s Medical School in London, and earned his M.D. in 1897. Liza of Lambeth (1897), Maugham’s first novel, derives from his experiences in medicine. The drama unfolds against the carefully detailed backdrop of a Lambeth slum. Liza, the teenaged daughter of an alcoholic mother, falls in love with Jim, a married man, with tragic consequences. Several other novels followed his moderately successful first effort, including The Making of a Saint (1898); The Hero (1900); Mrs. Craddock: A Novel (1902); and The Magician (1904), based on the life of the occultist Aleister Crowley. Cynicism and irony permeate Maugham’s straightforward, realistic writing style. By his early adulthood, Maugham had already accepted the agnosticism and skepticism he held for the rest of his life. During World War I, he served with an ambulance unit, and he later operated as an agent in Russia against the Bolsheviks before the 1917 revolution. That year was an eventful one for him, as he also fell ill with tuberculosis and married Syrie Wellcome. Their unhappy union ended in divorce in 1929. Maugham, though better known as a novelist, also enjoyed success with his plays. His first popular hit, Lady Frederick (1907), ran for more than a year at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The story takes place in Monte Carlo, as the widow Lady Frederick Berolles, in financial trouble, considers a succession of plans and marriage proposals to help her out of her situation. Among Maugham’s better-known plays are The Land of Promise (1913); The Circle (1921), a comedy staged at the Haymarket Theatre in London; East of Suez (1922); Our Betters (1923); and The Constant Wife (1927), one of his more popular dramas in the United States. Of Human Bondage (1915), Maugham’s semiautobiographical novel, is noted for its complexity and compelling realism. Though the book is rife with subplots, the main drama centers around the soul searching of the pro-
Somerset Maugham (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42520)
tagonist, Philip Carey. Originally titled the Artistic Temperament of Stephen Carey, it is often considered his best work. Maugham derived the story of The Moon and Sixpence (1919) from the life of the French painter Paul Gauguin. In the narrative, the London stockbroker Charles Strickland abandons his life and his family, moves to France, and becomes a painter. Cakes and Ale: The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930) contains controversial caricatures of Thomas Hardy and HUGH WALPOLE, the latter of whom knew Maugham and was deeply offended by the portrait. Willie Ashenden, the narrator, is Maugham’s voice. The Walpole character, the narrow-minded and self-serving Alroy Kear, approaches him for information on Edward Driffield, a deceased novelist whose biography he has been commissioned to write. Kear is ready to misrepresent the true details of Driffield’s life in order to serve his own ends. The Razor’s Edge (1944) is narrated by a character named Mr. Maugham, who through
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his shallow acquaintance Elliot Templeton meets the war veteran Larry Darrell. Darrell, having almost lost his life in the war, has embarked on a search for meaning that fascinates Mr. Maugham. The Razor’s Edge was later made into a successful film. Maugham’s other novels include The Painted Veil (1925); Christmas Holiday (1939); and The Hour Before the Dawn (1942). Maugham traveled widely, lived much of his life in the south of France, and spent the World War II years in the United States. Among his other works are the short-story collections Orientations: Short Stories (1899), The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1928), First Person Singular (1931), Ah King (1933), and Quartet (1948); the autobiographical works
The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer’s Notebook (1949); the travel books The Land of the Blessed Virgin: Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia (1905) and On a Chinese Screen (1922); and the essay collections Books and You (1940), Great Novelists and Their Novels (1948), The Vagrant Mood (1952), and Points of View (1958). Many adaptations of his works have been produced for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Burt, Forrest D., W. Somerset Maugham, 1985; Calder, Robert, Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham, 1990; Loss, Archie K., W. Somerset Maugham, 1987; Raphael, Frederic, Somerset Maugham, 1989.
McNally, Terrence (November 3, 1939– ) Playwright, Screenwriter he American playwright Terrence McNally, who has won numerous Tony Awards and other honors for his stage efforts, is most noted for his frank and open portrayals of gay themes on the Broadway stage. McNally was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas. He moved to New York City in 1956 and there attended Columbia University, graduating with an English degree in 1960. Following his graduation, he moved to Mexico, where he finished a one-act play and submitted it to the Actors Studio in New York. Although the studio declined to produce it, it invited McNally to serve as its stage manager. While at the Actors Studio, he was the prote´ge´ of playwright EDWARD ALBEE and gained hands-on experience with theater production. His first play to see the Broadway
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stage was The Lady of the Camellias (1963), adapted from Alexandre Dumas, fils’s, (1824–1895) 1848 novel of the same title. The show ran for only thirteen performances and was followed by his first original Broadway play, And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1964). Due to its openly homosexual subject matter, it stirred a minor scandal in New York and lasted for a mere sixteen performances. In 1968, McNally asked that his name be removed from the credits for the musical Here’s Where I Belong, which closed after only one performance. He finally began to win critical praise with early Broadway plays such as Bad Habits (1974) and the farce The Ritz (1975), set in a gay bathhouse. His first credited Broadway musical was The Rink (1984), which he became involved with after the composer John Kander (1927– ) and lyricist Fred
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Ebb (1933–2004) (who gained fame as the Kander and Ebb team) had written the score. McNally has written a number of works for both the stage and television that deal with the subject of the AIDS epidemic. These include The Lisbon Traviata (1985) and Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), a play about fears people harbor against homosexuals and AIDS. The plot concerns two married couples who spend the Fourth of July weekend at a summer house on Fire Island once owned by a man who died from AIDS. Sally, the deceased man’s sister, has inherited the house, and all of the visitors are afraid to get into the swimming pool that her brother once used. A Perfect Ganesh (1993), which was not produced on Broadway, also treats gay themes, as does Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994). The latter was, however, produced on Broadway and examines the relationships of eight gay men. Love! Valour! Compassion! ran for 248 performances and won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1995. McNally has also written on the subject of AIDS for television, most notably his Emmy Award-winning 1990 television film Andre’s Mother. The story depicts the impact of a man’s death from AIDS on his lover, his mother, and his grandmother. McNally became more well-known with later works such as the Off-Broadway play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune (1987), which he adapted into the popular film Frankie and Johnny (1991) starring Al Pacino (1940– ) and Michelle Pfeiffer (1958– ). In the story, the loner-type Johnny, recently released from prison, goes to work at the same restaurant where Frankie waitresses, and a romance buds between the two. In 1993, McNally’s original musical Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992), another collaboration with Kander and Ebb that explores the relationship between two men imprisoned together in Latin America, ran for 904 performances on Broadway. For the play, McNally won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical in 1993. He worked with composer Stephen Flaherty (1960– ) and lyricist Lynn Ahrens (1948– )
on Ragtime (1997), an adaptation of the American author E. L. Doctorow’s novel of the same title that tells the story of Coalhouse Walker Jr., a feisty black pianist who demands retribution when a group of whites destroy his Model T. The play also features such historical figures as the Hungarian-born magician and escape artist Harry Houdini (1874–1926), the African-American author and educator Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), the American financier J. P. Morgan (1837–1913), and the American automobile magnate Henry Ford 1863–1947), who pioneered assembly lines and mass production. McNally wrote Hidden Agendas (1994), which was never produced, in response to the controversy surrounding photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989). Mapplethorpe’s homeoerotic photographs exhibited with public funds raised an outcry from conservative groups. Master Class (1995), produced on Broadway for 598 performances between 1995 and 1997, was a character study of the Greek-American opera soprano Maria Callas (1923–1977) and won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1996. Corpus Christi (1997), which was not produced on Broadway, provoked an uproar for its portrayal of Jesus and his disciples as homosexuals. The controversy grew heated enough to spark death threats against board members of the Manhattan Theatre Club, which was to produce the play. TONY KUSHNER and other playwrights threatened to withdraw their own plays from production if the theater did not produce it, and it was eventually staged. Nearly two thousand angry protesters appeared on opening night. McNally’s later plays include The Full Monty (2000), which ran for 770 performances on Broadway and was adapted from a 1997 British film of the same title, and the Off-Broadway musical A Man of No Importance (2002). Deuce (2007), directed by the Australian Michael Blakemore (1928– ), starred British actress Angela Lansbury (1925– ) and American actress Marian Seldes (1928– ) and ran for 121 Broadway performances.
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Aside from his stage works, McNally has also written screenplays for television and film, a number of them adaptations of his own plays. McNally has received, in addition to his numerous Tony Awards, two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a Rockefeller
Grant. He has been a member of the Dramatists Guild Council since 1970 and has served as its vice president since 1981.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Zinman, Toby Silverman, ed., Terrence McNally: A Casebook, 1997.
Mendelsohn, Erich (March 21, 1887–September 15, 1953) Architect, Teacher he German architect Erich Men-delsohn, a leader in modern architecture, received his first commission to build the Einstein Tower in Potsdam after World War I. In his architectural designs, he sought to combine functionality with a sense of artistic expression. In his later life, he designed hospitals in Palestine and synagogues in the United States. Mendelsohn was born in Allenstein, Germany, now Olsztyn, Poland. His father was a businessman of Russian-Polish origin, and his mother was a musician. Architecture interested Mendelsohn early on, and as a child he admired his window view of the Allenstein castle. The young Mendelsohn also set his hands to work building sandcastles and other structures. After studying in Berlin, he attended the Technical Academy in Munich, earning extra money by selling paintings, designing costumes, and creating displays in store windows. In Munich Mendelsohn met members of the Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), including PAUL KLEE, FRANZ MARC, and WASSILY KANDINSKY. In his early style he was also influenced by the Belgian architect HENRY VAN DE VELDE. After graduating in 1914, he briefly opened his own office before he fought in World War I. In the trenches,
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he sketched a series of architectural designs that were later exhibited in Berlin as Architecture in Steel and Concrete. After the war, Mendelsohn worked out of Berlin. He married Louise Maas, a cellist, in 1915 and soon obtained his first major commission, to build the Einstein Tower in Potsdam. The building, an observatory and laboratory completed between 1919 and 1921, was an odd structure that quickly became a conversation piece in Germany. Mendelsohn was unable to satisfy his interest in the possibilities of poured concrete with the Einstein Tower on account of a concrete shortage, and the building had to be constructed with concrete over brick. In his designs, Mendelsohn sought to combine functionality with expressiveness. He developed a style marked by long, horizontal bands of glass windows, curvilinear forms and facades, and organic shapes. During the 1920s in Germany, he designed cinemas (the Universum Theatre in Kurfu¨rstendamm, 1927–1928), stores, and other buildings. His hat factory at Luckenwalde (1920–1923) brought notice for its horizontal ventilation system, which Soviet officials asked him to duplicate at a Leningrad Textile Trust factory. In 1924, Mendelsohn visited the American architect FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT in the United
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States. He returned to Berlin, where he designed the Herpich Store (1924) and the Columbus House (1929). The latter was a large office building with open space in the interior that allowed tenants to place temporary divisions. Soon after its construction, however, the Gestapo began to use Columbus House, and it suffered damage in the war. It was eventually destroyed altogether under the East German Communists. Among the stores he designed were the Schocken stores in Nuremburg (1926), Stuttgart (1927), and Chemnitz (1928), and in 1929 he also worked on the triangular structure the Metal Worker’s Union used as its headquarters. With other architects such as WALTER GROPIUS, Mendelsohn formed the Ring, a group dedicated to promoting modern architecture. Mendelsohn, however, placed more emphasis on creativity and expressiveness than did many of his colleagues, who focused more strictly on functionality. With the rise of the Nazis, he left Germany and settled in England. There, in partnership with Serge Chermayeff, he designed the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill (1933), notable for its glass-enclosed staircase. While he was still in England, Mendelsohn began to get commissions from Palestine, and eventually he moved there. In Palestine he worked increasingly with stone and began to concentrate more on interiors. At Rehoboth
he designed the home (1935–1936) of Chaim Weizmann, the chemist, Zionist leader, and first president of Israel. The house was built with reinforced concrete and a white stucco exterior and featured a spiral staircase in the interior. Mendelsohn also created the Government Hospital in Haifa (1937); the Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem (1936–1938), a stone structure featuring a chapel balcony that extends out on the side of Mount Scopus; and the Anglo-Palestine Bank (1938) in Jerusalem. In 1941, Mendelsohn moved to the United States and lectured on architecture at universities around the country. By 1945 he had settled in San Francisco, where his major work was the Maimonides Hospital (1946). Over the next several years, he designed several synagogues and community centers, including the Temple Emanu-El in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a synagogue and community center in Cleveland marked by its concrete dome. Mendelsohn died of cancer in 1953.
BIBLIOGRAPHY James, Kathleen, Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture of German Modernism, 1997; Mendelsohn, Erich, Erich Mendelsohn, Complete Works of the Architect: Sketches, Designs, Buildings, 1992; Von Eckardt, Wolf, Eric Mendelsohn, 1960.
Messiaen, Olivier (December 10, 1908–April 27, 1992) Composer, Teacher purred by a devout Catholic outlook and an inclination to incorporate unique elements into his music, Olivier-Euge`ne-Prosper-Charles Messiaen was a significant influence on the experimental music of KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN and other
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younger composers. Influenced by music that ranged from Gregorian chants and Asiatic music to birdsong, he constructed highly individualized modal techniques. Messiaen was born in Avignon, France. His father, Pierre Messiaen, was a scholar of En-
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glish literature and translated the complete works of William Shakespeare into French. His mother was the poet Ce´cile Sauvage. Messiaen was interested in music from a young age and began to compose at the age of 7. He taught himself to play the piano and studied harmony with Jean de Gibon. Gibon gave him a score of CLAUDE DEBUSSY’s Pe´lleas et Me´lisande, with which he immediately fell in love. Messiaen studied music at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included the French organist Marcel Dupre´ and the composer Paul Dukas (1865–1935). While he earned a number of awards for his work and did well in his studies, he pursued other musical interests outside the Conservatoire—birdsong, Hindu rhythms, and Greek music. His first published work, Preludes for Piano, appeared in 1929. Two years later he became organist at the Church of the Trinity in Paris. With Offrandes oublie´es (1930; Forgotten Offertories), Messiaen established his reputation as a composer. A three-part work that depicts the Cross, man’s fall into sin, and salvation, it was the first of his works to be performed in public. During the 1930s Messiaen composed several cycles for the organ—L’Ascension (1933), Nativite´ du Seigneur (1938; The Birth of the Lord), and Les corps glorieux (1939), a religious work notable for its experimental tone color and rhythm. In 1936, with Andre´ Jolivet, Daniel Lesur, and Yves Baudrier, he founded the group La Jeune France (Young France). The four composers rejected both the academic mode of music and the modern styles embraced by E RIK SATIE, DARIUS MILHAUD, and other members of Les Six. The same year he completed his Poe`mes pour Mi, dedicated to his first wife, Claire Delbos, and took teaching posts at the Schola Cantorum and the E´cole Normale de Musique. Messiaen served in World War II and in 1940 was taken prisoner by German soldiers at Nancy. He was interned at Go¨rlitz, where he wrote Quatuor pour la fin du temps
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(Quartet for the End of Time), one of his first works to incorporate birdsong. Having only a clarinet, piano, cello, and violin to work with, Messiaen composed the piece for these instruments. He, along with three fellow prisoners, first performed the work during his incarceration. Upon his release in 1942 he began to teach at the Paris Conservatoire. Among his students were PIERRE BOULEZ and Stockhausen. Messiaen, an ardent Catholic, composed on many religious subjects. Among these works are Trois Petites Liturgies de la pre´sence divine (1944; Three Short Liturgies of the Divine Presence) for eighteen female voices and orchestra; Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Je´sus (1944; Twenty Looks upon the Infant Jesus) for piano; Visions de l’amen (1943; Visions of Amen) for two pianos; Apparition de l’e´glise e´ternelle (1932; Apparition of the Eternal Church); Messe de la Pentecoˆte (1950; Mass for Pentecost) for organ; and La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Je´sus-Christ (1965–69; The Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ) for orchestra and choir. Messaien’s other works include the song cycles Chants de terre et de ciel (1938; Songs of Earth and Heaven) and Harawi (1945); the ten-movement orchestral work TurangalıˆlaSymphonie (1948), in which he employed an ondes martenot; Chronochromie (1960) for eighteen solo strings, wind, and percussion; Me´ditations (1969); and St. Franc¸ois d’Assise (1983), commissioned by the Paris Opera. In the 1950s he composed several works around birdsong, including Le re´veil des oiseaux (1953; The Awakening of the Birds), which contains the songs of thirty-eight birds; Oiseaux exotiques (1956; Exotic Birds), and Catalogue d’oiseaux (1959; Catalog of Birds). He described his ideas on music in Technique de mon langage musical (1944; Technique of My Musical Language).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hill, Peter, ed., The Messiaen Companion, 1995; Nichols, Roger, Messiaen, 1986.
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Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig (March 27, 1886–August 17, 1969) Architect, Teacher ith LE CORBUSIER and the American FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was one of the most influential architects of public buildings in the twentieth century. After establishing himself as a leader in modern architecture in his native Germany, he settled in the United States. His work transformed the Chicago skyline in the 1950s and 1960s and had a profound impact on the development of the modern skyscraper. Believing that “less is more,” Mies van der Rohe espoused extreme simplicity and extreme functionality, constructing his flat-roofed buildings from squares, rectangles, and planes. Mies van der Rohe was born into a Catholic family in Aachen, Germany. His father was a stone mason and builder, which exposed the young architect-to-be to building from his birth. From 1896 to 1899 he attended the Catholic Cathedral School, and he also attended the gymnasium. Mies van der Rohe (a name he coined from his father’s surname and his mother’s maiden name) studied engineering, drawing, and math at night, and he spent a year working as a bricklayer’s apprentice. His most important schooling as an architect, however, began in 1905, when he went to work for the architect and furniture designer Bruno Paul. Around this time he built his first house, the Aloı¨s Riehl House at Neubabelsberg. The well-connected Riehls introduced him to many of his future clients. From 1908 to 1911 Mies van der Rohe worked in the office of PETER BEHRENS, at which time WALTER GROPIUS was also employed there. After breaking with Behrens he opened his own office in Berlin in 1913, and the same year he married Ada Bruhn. Mies van der Rohe served in World War I and returned to his architecture practice after the war. His early conceptions of steel-framed, glass-
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walled skyscrapers date from the immediate postwar period. His 1922 skyscraper design shows a tall structure composed of cylindrical elements. The following year he designed a concrete office building. Mies van der Rohe joined the Deutscher Werkbund and became its vice president. In 1924 he founded the Ring, an organization formed to counter the conservatism of the League of German Architects. In 1926 he met LE CORBUSIER, with whom he shared a devotion to modern, functional architecture. The two designs that stand out in his early years are the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona exhibition and the Tugenhadt House (1930) in Brno, now in the Czech Republic. The latter, a home based on rectangular shapes, features a large band of glass windows. As in many of his interiors, walls were kept to a minimum in an effort to maximize spaciousness. His use of marbles and rare woods lend a hint of elegance to structures that otherwise display little decoration. From 1930 until the Nazis closed the school in 1933, Mies van der Rohe was director of the Bauhaus (see Gropius). He settled permanently in the United States in 1937, becoming a citizen in 1944. From 1938 to 1959 he was director of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In addition to designing much of the campus, he designed private homes, mass housing, museums, and skyscrapers. Notable among his private homes is the Farnsworth House near Fox River, Illinois (1950), which later led to a legal battle with its owner, Dr. Edith Farnsworth. Mies van der Rohe designed many apartments in Chicago, including the tall structures on Lake Shore Drive (1948–1951). With some of his students in 1953, he designed the Convention Hall on the south side of Chicago. The skyscraper, however, dominated the last years of his life. In 1958 he built a thirty-eight-
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story skyscraper on Park Avenue in New York, the Seagram Building, a structure of bronze and glass that sits on a granite platform. The following year work started on The Federal Center in Chicago (1959–1973). The design for his tallest skyscraper, the fiftyeight-story IBM building in Chicago, belongs to 1967. Other works include the Nationalgal-
erie in West Berlin (1962–1968) and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1966–1969).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cohen, Jean-Louis, Mies van der Rohe, 1996; Schulze, Franz, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography, 1985; Spaeth, David, Mies van der Rohe, 1985.
Milhaud, Darius (September 4, 1892–June 22, 1974) Composer ith an opus of 443 works, Darius Milhaud was one of the most prolific and influential composers of the twentieth century. He worked in the spirit of musical experimenters like ERIK SATIE. His varied body of work includes symphonies, songs, chamber music, operas, and ballets.
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Milhaud is best known for his developments in polytonality, or the simultaneous use of different keys. Milhaud was born into a Jewish family in Aix-en-Provence, France, where Milhauds had lived for eight hundred years. As it had done for many painters, the Provenc¸al landscape was to inspire many of Milhaud’s musical compositions. He received his musical training at the Paris Conservatory, where he studied under Paul Dukas, Vincent d’Indy, and Charles Marie Widor. Having been rejected for military service on account of his health, Milhaud worked during World War I as secretary to Paul Claudel, diplomat and poet, then serving as France’s ambassador to Brazil. Both Brazil and Claudel inspired many of his works. The tropical-flavored ballet L’homme et son de´sir (1918; Man and His Desire), based on a scenario by Claudel, was written while Milhaud lived in Brazil. As did many of Milhaud’s experimental works, Man and His Desire provoked a heated controversy when it premiered in Paris. Milhaud composed many other works around Claudel’s material. He completed incidental music for chorus and full orchestra for Claudel’s satiric play Prote´e (1913–1919) as well as opera music for modern versions of
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Aeschylus’s Greek tragedies Agamemnon (1913), Les choe´phores (1915–1916), and Les eume´nides (1917–1922). As for Quatre poe`mes de Claudel pour baryton (1915–1917; Four Poems by Claudel for Baritone), the title is self-explanatory. After the war, Milhaud returned to Paris and continued to compose. In 1925 he married his cousin, Madeline Milhaud, who remained devoted to him for the rest of his life. The writer JEAN COCTEAU and the composer Erik Satie became father figures to a group of six composers, including Milhaud, whom one critic labeled “Les Six.” The other members of the group were FRANCIS POULENC, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Louis Durey, and Georges Auric. Although they came from divergent backgrounds and pursued different goals with their music, the members of Les Six shared an interest in experimentation and rejection of the formal, romantic style of the nineteenth century. Cocteau provided the scenario for Milhaud’s score Le Boeuf sur le toit (1919; The Nothing-Doing Bar; literally, The Ox on the Roof), which he presented in Paris as a pantomime. RAOUL DUFY contributed designs and costumes to the production. Milhaud’s frenzied, polyphonous score has proven itself one of his most enduring and widely performed works. The ballet score La cre´ation du monde (1923; The Creation of the World) uses a scenario by Blaise Cendrars and reflects Milhaud’s interest in American jazz, which he acquired during a tour of the United States. Milhaud produced many dramatic works, including L’Orestie (1920) and Les malheurs d’Orphe´e (1924; The Sorrows of Orpheus). The latter, based on the Greek myth, uses a text by Armand Lunel, Milhaud’s longtime friend and collaborator. Christophe Colomb (1928; with Claudel’s scenario) is a dramatic and highly polytonal piece that depicts Columbus’s discovery of America in terms of the foredoomed Native Americans. His other operas include Le pauvre matelot (1926; The Poor Sailor, with a scenario by Cocteau), Maximilien (1930; with libretto by FRANZ
WERFEL), Me´de´e (1938), and David (1952–1953). Fleeing the Nazis during World War II, Milhaud took a professorship at Mills College in Oakland, California in 1940. He returned to France to teach at the Paris Conservatory after the war and thereafter divided his time between France and the United States. Milhaud also lectured in Santa Barbara, Colorado, and Tanglewood. His enthusiasm for experimentation and natural rapport with students made him a popular teacher, and his best-known students include the American composers Steve Reich and Dave Brubeck. Milhaud’s style of composing changed little throughout his career. In form, mood, and intent, he produced a varied output. His compositions are marked by their dissonance and use of bitonality and polytonality. Milhaud admired and absorbed modern musical influences as diverse as ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’s twelve-tone system and Harlem jazz, but he refused to associate himself with a particular school. The Service sacre´ (1947) and the choral symphony Pacem in Terris (1963) are among Milhaud’s numerous choral works. He composed the latter to commemorate the spirit of the “Peace on Earth” encyclical issued by Pope John XXIII in 1963. Also part of his body of work are twelve symphonies, the first of which he did not compose until 1940. Milhaud wrote his fourth symphony in honor of the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution of 1848. The many song settings he composed also form a significant portion of his work. In addition to song settings for poetry by Lunel, Claudel, Frances Jammes, Le´o Latil, JORGE GUILLE´ N, and many others, Milhaud composed spiritual songs such as the Poe`mes juifs (1916). Among his other works are Saudades do Brasil (1921), a polytonal work for large orchestra; the suite for two pianos Scaramouche (1936); and the orchestral work Suite Provenc¸al (1937). His autobiography Notes Without Music was published in 1949.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Collaer, Paul, Darius Milhaud, 1988; Milhaud, Darius, My Happy Life, 1994.
Miller, Arthur Asher (October 17, 1915–February 10, 2005) Playwright ne of America’s most famous playwrights, Arthur Miller’s credits include such widely performed classics as The Crucible and Death of a Salesman. Characterized by minimalist dialog, his dramas often paint bleak portraits of deteriorating American family and social life. Miller was born into a Jewish family of Polish origin in Harlem. His father owned a women’s clothing business that failed during the stock market crash of 1929. As a result, the family moved to Brooklyn, where Miller spent most of his childhood. Miller attended Abraham Lincoln High School but seemed to prefer sports to studying. He did, however, enjoy attending vaudeville shows as a child. He graduated in 1932, and although the family could not finance his college education, Miller enrolled at the University of Michigan and worked his way through school. At the University of Michigan, Miller’s initial major was journalism, and he worked as a reporter and night editor for the Michigan Daily, the student paper. Around this time, he wrote his first works, Honors at Dawn and No Villain, which won him Avery Hopwood Awards in 1937–1938. The latter was revised first as They Too Arise and later retitled The Grass Still Grows, and the revision won a Theatre Guild Award in 1938. Miller changed his major to English and in 1938 graduated with an English degree. Upon his graduation, he joined the ill-fated Federal Theater Project, which was part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and aimed to create jobs in theater.
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However, suspicions over Communist involvement in the program spurred Congress to abort it, and Miller concentrated on writing radio plays for shows such as Columbia Workshop and Calvacade of America. In 1940, he married Mary Slattery, who had been his college sweetheart. Due to a knee injury he suffered in college, Miller was exempt from military service during World War II. In 1944, Miller won the Theatre Guild’s National Award for his first Broadway play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, which, though well-received by critics, was a commercial failure. The story concerns two brothers who compete for their father’s approval. Both his novel Focus (1945) and television adaptation of George Abbott’s and John C. Holm’s Three Men on a Horse brought little success. Miller’s fortunes began to change in 1947, however, when ELIA KAZAN directed his play All My Sons. Produced at the Coronet Theater, the show ran for more than three hundred performances, earned the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and won two Tony Awards. In the play, a young man learns that his father’s practice of sending defective parts to the Air Force led to the deaths of both World War II soldiers and his older brother’s suicide. The following year, Miller built a studio in Roxbury, Connecticut, where he would live for many years. There he wrote Death of a Salesman (1949), which premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949, at the Morocco Theater. Kazan again directed the production, which won a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award for
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Best Play, and another New York Drama Critics’ Award. Death of a Salesman ran for almost 750 performances and starred Lee J. Cobb as the protagonist Willy Loman. Loman is a salesman whose somewhat meaningless and downward-spiraling life ends in tragedy. In 1952, Kazan was summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and named eight people who he alleged had been, along with himself, members of the Communist Party. Kazan’s accusations, motivated by an effort to avoid being blacklisted in Hollywood, named Miller. Disturbed, Miller went to Salem, Massachusetts, home of the famous witch trials of the late seventeenth century. There he wrote his famous play The Crucible (1953), a not-soveiled effort to equate the Salem Witch Trials with the Communist “witch-hunt” of the McCarthy era. Although The Crucible was not well-received at the time of its publication, it later became one of Miller’s most widely produced works and remains so today. Kazan’s testimony resulted in the end of their friendship and a ten-year period of silence between them. In 1955, a one-act version of A View From the Bridge, a verse drama by Miller, opened together with his play A Memory of Two Mondays. The following year, Miller revised the former into a two-act play produced by PETER BROOK in London. Miller and Slattery divorced in 1955, and the following year he married the famed American actress Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962). Just before their marriage, HUAC subpoenaed Miller to testify before it. Although they had promised Miller he would not have to name names, he was asked to do so and refused. Although the decision was later overturned, a judge found him guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress, fined him, sentenced him to thirty days in prison, and denied him a passport. Following this ordeal, Miller wrote the screenplay The Misfits (1961), an emotionally difficult project in which Monroe starred. Miller and Monroe divorced in 1961, and Monroe
died of a drug overdose in 1962. The same year, Miller married the Austrian-born Ingeborg Morath (1923–2002), who had worked as a photographer on The Misfits. With After the Fall (1964), Miller returned to writing for the stage. The play reflected Miller’s experiences while married to Monroe and before HUAC, and it also sparked a rekindling of his friendship with Kazan. With Kazan’s help directing, the play opened at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square Park. Its portrayal of Monroe sparked heated controversy, and the production was unsuccessful. The year 1964 also saw the production of Incident at Vichy, a drama set in a holding room in Vichy, France, during the Nazi occupation in World War II. In the play, a varied cast of characters await questioning for either sympathizing with Jews or being Jewish. The following year, Miller was elected president of International PEN, which, it asserts, “exists to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere, to fight for freedom of expression and represent the conscience of world literature.” Miller’s 1968 family drama The Price, in which two estranged brothers must settle their deceased father’s estate, was his most successful play in years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Miller wrote experimental plays as well as texts for his wife’s photography books, including In Russia (1969) and Chinese Encounters (1979). His 1972 comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business was adapted as the musical Up from Paradise, and neither was successful. The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1977) attacked the Soviet state for its treatment of dissidents, and the teleplay Playing for Time (1980) treated the subject of survival at the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz. In 1983, Miller produced a successful version of Death of a Salesman in Beijing, and the venture was later documented in his book Salesman in Beijing (1984). The television movie version of Death of a Salesman (1985), starring Dustin Hoffman (1937– ), was an enormous success in the United States. A
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1999 fiftieth-anniversary revival of the play on Broadway again proved a resounding success, winning a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Timebends, Miller’s autobiography, was published in 1987. His later plays include The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1992), and Broken Glass (1994). A 1996 film version of The Crucible, for which Miller wrote the screenplay, starred Daniel DayLewis (1957– ) as John Proctor and Winona Ryder (1971– ) as Abigail Williams. Following the death of his wife in 2002, Miller married the thirty-four-year-old artist Agnes Barley (1970– ). In 2005, Miller died of congestive heart failure at his Roxbury home. The black comedy Resurrection Blues, which he was still working on at the time of his death, was published posthumously in 2006. Among Miller’s other awards are Spain’s Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature (2002) and the Jerusalem Prize (2003). The
University of Michigan houses a collection of Miller memorabilia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbotson, Susan C. W., Student Companion to Arthur Miller, 2000; Bigsby, Christopher, Arthur Miller: A Critical Study, 2005; Bigsby, Christopher, ed., Remembering Arthur Miller, 2005; Bigsby, Christopher, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller, 1997; Bloom, Harold, Arthur Miller, 1987; Brater, Enoch, Arthur Miller: A Playwright’s Life and Works, 2005; Carson, Neil, Arthur Miller, 1982; Gottfried, Martin, Arthur Miller: His Life and Work, 2003; Griffin, Alice, Understanding Arthur Miller, 1996; Miller, Arthur, Timebends, 1987; Moss, Leonard, Arthur Miller, 1980; Schlueter, June, and Flanagan, James K., Arthur Miller, 1987; Welland, Dennis, Miller: A Study of His Plays, 1979; Welland, Dennis, Miller, the Playwright, 1983. www.umich.edu/∼amfiles/.
Miller, Henry (December 26, 1891–June 7, 1980) Writer enry Miller was born in New York City, in the Yorksville section, on December 26, 1891, and grew up in Williamsburg and Bushwick in Brooklyn. Miller had a difficult childhood and an abusive mother. He attended City College of New York but disagreed with the curriculum. After two months of college Miller quit to take a job with a cement company in New York. In 1913 Miller began a yearlong tour of the West. He took jobs on ranches, and met the famous anarchist Emma Goldman. He returned to New York to help his father with his tailor business, and brought his newfound radical politics home with him.
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In 1917 Miller married Beatrice Sylvas Wickens. The couple had a daughter, Barbara Sylvas, two years later. Miller’s writing career began shortly thereafter. During a three-week vacation from his job with Western Union, Miller wrote his first book, Clipped Wings. The collection of stories featured messengers, like those Miller encountered at Western Union, who face desperate situations and tragic ends. He later called the book a failure, but it inspired him to pursue the craft of writing. After writing his first book, Miller’s life took a dramatic turn. He fell in love with a dancer named June Edith Smith. By 1924 he had left his wife to marry Smith and left his
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job to, in Miller’s own words, “devote entire energy to writing.” Miller describes his first years of writing as “accompanied by great poverty.” He was so desperate that he had to go door-to-door to try to sell his first work, a poetry book called Mezzotints. In the following years Miller’s life wandered, without much direction or progress on his writing career. While still living in New York in 1927 Miller and his wife opened a speakeasy. Miller wrote notes for autobiographical novels but did not come close to publishing the work. When the couple had saved up enough money they went to Europe. Miller returned to New York briefly in 1929 to finish the novel The Gentile World but soon returned to Europe alone. Miller’s years in Paris—sometimes sleeping on the street, sometimes scraping together his living as a proofreader or English teacher, but always writing—were a formative experience. Many of Miller’s subsequent novels, most notably Tropic of Cancer, feature American ex-patriot characters living in similar situations. The year 1933 began what Miller called his Black Spring period, of “great fertility, great joy.” Miller divorced his second wife in 1934, the same year his momentous novel Tropic of Cancer was published. Tropic of Cancer is set in 1930s Paris and features a Henry Miller-like protagonist. The book’s style fluctuates between traditional narrative structure and stream-of-consciousness, and moves among past, present and future. The book has received an enthusiastic critical response over the years from big names like NORMAN MAILER, SAMUEL BECKETT and GEORGE ORWELL, who in 1940 called Miller, ‘the only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races in some time.” Tropic of Cancer was published in France in 1934, but due to the book’s graphic nature its sale was banned in the United States for over twenty-five years. Tropic of Cancer actually achieved the status of being the most censored novel in America. It was not until 1961, in a trial that was an important landmark in
censorship law, that the ban was lifted. Miller’s work had certainly not gone unread during its long period of censorship, however. The book was a highly desirable black-market item. Copies smuggled in from France brought Miller a growing number of underground fans, as well as the louder endorsement of literary stars of the day, such as Orwell. Miller’s next book, Aller Retour, New York, was published in 1935. Miller would spend the next few years meeting and corresponding with influential writers of his time like T. S. ELIOT, DYLAN THOMAS, W. T. Symons, LAWRENCE DURRELL, and ANAIS NIN (the last was a longtime friend, correspondent and lover of Miller’s). In 1938 he published such works as Money and How It Gets That Way, and Max and the White Phagocytes and wrote for the French revue Volontes. Besides writing, Miller was also interested in painting. He made hundreds of watercolors over the course of his life. In 1943 and 1944 he had exhibitions that he deemed a “success” at The Green House, American Contemporary Gallery, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and various locations in London. He finished his book Sexus in 1945; it was published in 1949. Sexus describes the period of Miller’s life between his divorce from his first wife, Beatrice, and his marriage to his second, June. Sexus is part of a trilogy Miller called the “Rosy Crucifixion” series consisting of Sexus, Plexus and Nexus. The three are all semi-autobiographical works. Though still explicit (Miller’s writing was banned at the time he wrote them), these novels represent a more mature and thoughtful Miller. In 1944 Miller married again, to Janina M. Lepska from Denver, Colorado. That same year Miller moved to the isolated coastal town of Big Sur, California, where he would spend the rest of his life. He called Big Sur “my first real home in America.” Miller’s home is now a museum and cultural center devoted the writer’s life and work. Miller had two children with his new wife: a daughter, Valentine, born 1945, and a son, Tony, born 1948. How-
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ever, he split with Janina in 1951; she was replaced by another woman, Eve McClure, in 1952, who went back to Europe with Miller that same year. The couple married in California the following year. Henry Miller was, perhaps, not the most responsible father. He wrote that when he saw his first daughter Barbara in 1955, it had been thirty years since he had seen her last. Through the 1950s Miller continued to paint and exhibit watercolors. He once said, “when I write, I work, but when I paint, I play.” The late 1950s also saw Miller write books such as Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, Reunion in Barcelona, Nexus, and in 1960 To Paint Is to Love Again. In 1957 he was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Sciences. Miller’s third wife, Eve, died in 1965. He married for a fourth time in 1967 to a Japanese woman named Hoki Tokuda. Tropic of Cancer was published in the United States by Grove Press in 1961. Miller de-
scribed the book’s 1963 publication in England, by John Calder, as a “great success.” In that year Miller also signed a contract for a film version of Tropic of Cancer, which actually came out in 1970, along with another film based on a Miller book, Quiet Days in Clichy. By the end of his life Miller’s fame had caught up with him, and his quiet seaside cottage became overrun with fans, tourists and journalists. Henry Miller’s last years were spent in Pacific Palisades, in Southern California. He passed away in 1980 due to old age.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brassai, Henry Miller: The Paris Years, 1996; Kersnowski, Frank L. and Alice Hughes, eds., Conversations with Henry Miller, 1994; Ferguson, Robert. Henry Miller: A Life, 1993. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/ 0,9171,760361-3,00.html. www.henrymiller.org/miller.html. www.coastgalleries.com/miller/bio.cfm; www.henrymiller.info.
Milles, Carl (June 23, 1875–September 19, 1955) Sculptor, Teacher weden’s most influential sculptor in the early twentieth century, Carl Milles drew on early Greek and European sculpture after beginning his studies under the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). Best known for his monumental public fountain sculptures, he established himself as Sweden’s leading sculptor before moving to the United States in 1929. Milles’s work directly influenced the German Expressionists as well as the development of later twentieth-century sculpture in the United States.
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Milles was the son of a lieutenant, born Carl Emil Wilhelm Andersson at O¨rby, Lagga, near Uppsala, Sweden. Physical frailty and boredom with school, among other things, made his childhood relatively difficult. From 1885 to 1892 he attended the Jacobskola in Stockholm. A poor student because he did not take any interest in his schoolwork, he developed a habit of bribing his classmates to cover for him while he passed his time among the activity along the waterfront. He did, however, derive some pleasure from modeling animals.
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In 1892 Milles was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker and woodworker. He took evening classes at the Technical School in woodwork, modeling, and carving. After completing his studies in less than the usual time, he won a prize of two hundred kroner from the Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts. Intending to take a position in South America, he left for Marseilles in 1897. His attraction to the artistic life of Paris kept him in France, however, and he never finished the journey to South America. Milles remained in Paris until 1904, living an impoverished existence and earning a living working for cabinetmakers and ornament molders and doing other odd jobs. He eventually fell under the influence of Rodin, who had seen and admired his work and offered to teach him. In 1902 Milles won an award for his Sten Sture Monument in Uppsala, securing his reputation as a sculptor in Sweden. In 1905 he married the Austrian artist Olga Granner. Early works, such as the Scheele Monument (1912), were impressionistic sculp-tures influenced by his study under Rodin. His association with the German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand initiated a new direction in his style, which now began to draw from medieval and Greek sources. In 1913 he completed, with Ferdinand Boberg, a series of reliefs for the Uppenbarelse Church outside of Saltsjo¨baden, among which were a set of bronze doors. Sea God (1913) a large, animistic sculpture, depicts a female nude in the embrace of the sea god. In 1915 Milles sculpted a series of reliefs depicting Four Ages of Exchange from bartering to international finance. The Naiad Fountain (1916) is one of many Milles fountains portraying nudes in highly expressive poses. Sunglitter (1918) depicts a nude, mermaidlike figure—a recurring image in his sculptures—in swift motion riding on the back of a dolphin. In The Archer (1919) a masculine figure stands poised with his bow atop a great bird.
Carl Milles (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, Lot 12735-817, XIII T 17)
Milles taught at the Stockholm Art Academy from 1920 to 1931. In 1923 he completed a major fountain project at Halmstad, and three years later he had his first exhibition on international soil—at the Tate Gallery in London. Milles finished several major projects before moving to the United States in 1929, including the Europa Fountain (1926), the Gustav Wasa Monument (1927), and the Diana Fountain (1928; in Stockholm). Upon settling in the United States, Milles took a teaching post at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He continued to produce fountains, including the Poseidon Fountain (1930), the Jonah Fountain (1932), Orpheus Fountain (1936; Stockholm), the Meeting of the Waters (1940; St. Louis), and the Aganippe Fountain (1955), set up posthumously in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among Milles’s other works are the marble Peace Monument (1936); portrait busts; poly-
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chrome statues; the Harrisburg Doors (1938), a series of reliefs on the theme of industry; and sculptures for the Rockefeller Center in New York. Milles became an American citizen in 1945.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Rogers, Meyric R., Carl Milles: An Interpretation of His Work, 1940.
Mingus, Charles (April 22, 1922–January 5, 1979) Composer, Bandleader, Bassist, Pianist he American musician Charles Mingus was known for his innovative forays into untested waters in jazz music. He recorded profusely, often recruiting littleknown accompanists for his bands. Mingus is considered a pioneer in free jazz, a 1950s and 1960s form of American music that attempted to dismantle the conventional boundaries of the jazz genre. Mingus, also known for his explosive temper, was dubbed “The Angry Man of Jazz.” Mingus was born on the U.S. Army base in Nogales, Arizona, but grew up in the Watts area of southern Los Angeles. His ethnic background was diverse, combining Chinese, English, African-American, and Swedish ancestry. His earliest musical influences came from church music, and he sang in the choir as a youth. After hearing famed musician DUKE ELLINGTON’s (1899–1974) music on the radio, he fell in love with jazz. As a youth, he studied double bass with the principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic and composition under Lloyd Reese. He began writing complex tunes in his teens that resembled Third Stream Jazz, a form of music that blended classical and jazz elements. He completed his first concert piece, Half-Mast Inhibition, when he was seventeen. In 1943, he toured with jazz trumpeter and musician LOUIS ARMSTRONG. Later in the decade, he performed with Lionel Hampton’s (1908–2002) band, and in
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1950 he joined a trio with vibraphonist Red Norvo (1908–1999) and jazz guitarist Tal Farlow (1921–1998). In the early 1950s, he briefly played with Ellington’s band, as well as with saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920–1955). His prowess on the bass, the instrument for which he is best known, began to grow. In 1952, Mingus, with percussionist Max Roach (1924– ), cofounded Debut Records in order to attain the artistic freedom he wanted with his recordings. In 1953, the company released a live recording from Toronto’s Massey Hall entitled Jazz at Massey Hall, featuring Mingus (who had replaced the injured bassist Oscar Pettiford [1922–1960]) performing with Roach, Parker, famed trumpeter DIZZY GILLESPIE (1917–1993), and pianist Bud Powell (1924–1966). With “Revelations,” a distinct blend of jazz and classical elements performed at the Brandeis Festival of Creative Arts in 1955, Mingus established himself as a leading jazz composer. In 1956 he released one of his most famous recordings, Pithecanthropus Erectus, which, although he had made numerous recordings by then, marked his first major effort as both composer and bandleader. Saxophonist Jackie McLean (1931–2006) and pianist Mal Waldron (1926–2002) joined him on the album, which showcased a musical journey of the development of man from an evolutionary viewpoint.
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The Clown followed in 1957 for Atlantic Records and inaugurated twenty years of collaboration between himself and drummer Dannie Richmond (1935–1988). On occasion pianist Jaki Byard (1922–1999) joined them, and the trio earned the nickname “The Almighty Three.” By this time, Mingus had begun recording with composer and horn player Gunther Schuller (1925– ) and in 1961 released the album Pre-Bird Mingus. Other recordings from this period include Tonight at Noon (1957), Blues and Roots (1960), and Tijuana Moods (1962). Over a period of about a decade, Mingus churned out more than two dozen records for a host of different labels. He commonly worked with a group of eight to ten players on a rotation basis, which became known as the Jazz Workshop. Mingus drove his players to explore new musical frontiers and worked them at a feverish pace. Members of his Jazz Workshop included Byard, McLean, baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams (1930–1986), tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin (1930–1970), the alto saxophonists John Handy (1933– ) and Charles McPherson (1939– ), trombonist Jimmy Knepper (1927–2003), the multitalented Erick Dolphy (1928–1964), and pianist Horace Parlan (1931– ). Mingus was one of the innovators of the free jazz era. Along with Dolphy (on saxophone), Richmond, and trumpeter Ted Curson (1935– ), he formed a band after being inspired by Ornette Coleman’s (1930– B) 1960 performances at the Five Spot jazz club in New York. The group produced the album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus (1960). Mingus’s 1963 The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, its contents bolstered with notes from his psychotherapist, is generally ranked among the greatest jazz masterpieces for its orchestration. The same year, he released the solo record Mingus Plays Piano. In 1964 he assembled a new sextet consisting of Dolphy, Richmond, Byer, tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan (1931–1993), trumpeter Johnny Coles
(1926–1997), and himself. Although the group made a number of recordings, some of its members battled illness, and Dolphy died on June 28, 1964. In 1971 Mingus accepted the Slee Chair of Music at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he taught briefly. Beneath the Underdog, his autobiography, was published the same year. In 1974, Mingus formed yet another group, this time a quintet with saxophonist George Adams (1940–1992), trumpeter Jack Waltrath (1946– ), pianist/organist Don Pullen (1941–1995), Richmond, and himself. The group recorded two successful albums entitled Changes One (1974) and Changes Two (1974). Mingus’s experimental Cumbia and Jazz Fusion (1976) fused jazz with Colombian music. Atlantic released one of his last recordings, Me Myself and Eye, in 1978. In the late 1970s, Mingus began to suffer from a debilitating nerve ailment now known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, putting a stop to his extensive touring schedule and eventually disabling him from playing altogether. He did, however, continue to compose and produce recordings, even going so far as to sing into a tape recorder. One of his last efforts, which he never finished, was a series of recordings with the Canadian singer JONI MITCHELL. He died at the young age of fifty-six in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges River in India. Ironically, Epitaph, the recording that is considered one of his best, was discovered posthumously. Schuller conducted a thirtypiece orchestra performing the premiere of the nearly two-hour-long score in 1989. Mingus’s musical legacy lives on in the form of a number of tribute bands, including the Mingus Big Band, which plays his music regularly in New York City, as well as the Mingus Orchestra and the Mingus Dynasty. Many notable musicians have recorded cover versions of his songs. Choreographers have used his music in their work, most notably in 1972’s The Mingus Dances by Alvin Ailey (1931–1989).
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In spite of his success, Mingus’s volatile temper and difficult personality hampered his career to a degree. He was not unknown to grow angry and even violent with his audiences or his fellow bandmates and was arrested for assault on at least one occasion. The United States Postal Service honored Mingus with a thirty-two-cent stamp in 1995, and two years later he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously. Mingus received numerous grants throughout his career—from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Guggenheim Foundation—as well as an honorary degree from Brandeis University. The Library of Congress has housed the Charles Mingus Collection since 1993. The
collection includes manuscripts, photographs, letters, broadcasts, business papers, recording sessions, and interviews.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jenkins, Todd S., I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus, 2006; Mingus, Charles, Beneath the Underdog, 1971; Mingus, Sue Graham, Tonight at Noon: A Love Story, 2002; Priestley, Brian, Mingus: A Critical Biography, 1982; Santoro, Gene, Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus, 2000. www.loc.gov/performingarts/encyclopedia/ collections/mingus.html. www.mingusmingusmingus.com.
Miro ´ , Joan (April 20, 1893–December 25, 1983) Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist he Catalan painter Joan Miro´ was a prominent member of the Surrealist movement in Paris in the late 1920s, and his mature work contributed to the development of modern abstract art. Miro´ also created ceramics, tapestries, murals, lithographs, and ballet scenery. Miro´ was born into a Catalan family in Barcelona, Spain. His father was a watchmaker and goldsmith. As an adolescent Miro´ disliked his studies, and after quitting high school he attended a commercial school. He later took classes at La Lonja School of Fine Arts. After being overworked as a drugstore clerk for two years, he suffered a complete breakdown. His parents sent him to Montroig to recover, and he subsequently spent many summers there. Miro´ next attended the Academy Galı´ in Barcelona and studied under Francisco Galı´, who encouraged individuality in his students. Galı´ introduced him to modern art from Paris
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and instructed him to draw from models he touched and felt rather than saw. From 1915 to 1919 Miro´ worked in Spain. His still-lifes, portraits, landscapes, and nudes of this period, such as The Balcony (1917) and The Olive Grove (1919), show influences of the Fauves, who used bold, rich color, and the angular forms of the Cubists. In 1919 Miro´ traveled to Paris, where he met PABLO PICASSO, Max Jacob, and other artists. Over the next several years, he continued toward the development of his mature style. Other works from this period, such as Still Life with Rabbit (1920) and The Farm (1921–1922), employ geometric elements and patterns. In 1924 Miro´ began his association with the Surrealists (see ANDRE´ BRETON). For several years afterward, his paintings—some of which he called “dream pictures”—are highly subjective and follow the Sur-realist emphasis
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on the subconscious, dreams, and imagination. Typical of his Surrealist period are Harlequin’s Carnival (1925), The Siesta (1925), and Lasso (1927). A 1928 journey to Holland inspired his three Dutch Interiors (1928) and his Imaginary Portraits (1929), both of which he adapted from the Dutch paintings he studied. Beginning in 1929, Miro´ executed a number of papiers colle´s, which he exhibited in 1930. His peculiar style of distorted forms, microorganisms, odd and curvilinear shapes, and purely abstract figures is often called “biomorphic abstraction.”
Joan Miro ´ (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42511)
Grotesque human forms and violent colors characterize Miro´’s paintings from the period of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). His most famous work from this period, a mural entitled The Reaper, hung with Picasso’s Guernica in the Spanish pavilion at the Paris World Exhibition in 1937. In the 1920s and 1930s, Miro´ also designed ballet scenery, including a set (with MAX ERNST) for a Ballets Russes production of Romeo and Juliet and a set for LE´ ONIDE MASSINE’s Jeux d’enfants. During the first years of World War II Miro´ painted his Constellations, a series of small, intricate, and optimistic works begun in France and completed in Spain. He traveled to the United States in 1947 and painted murals for a hotel in Cincinnati and later for Harvard University (1951). In the early 1950s, he also worked on lithographs and collaborated on a series of ceramics with the potter Llorens Artigas, whom he originally met at the Academy Galı´. His ceramic murals for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) building in Paris, Wall of the Moon and Wall of the Sun (1957–1959), earned the Great International Prize from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. In his later years, Miro´ finished a number of large sculptures. He received Spain’s Gold Medal of Fine Arts in 1980.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dupin, Jacques, Miro´, 1993; Lassaigne, Jacques, Miro´, 1963.
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Mistral, Gabriela (April 7, 1889–January 10, 1957) Poet, Teacher, Diplomat n 1945, the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral became the first Latin American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, “for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world.” Her lyrical, emotionally charged verse made her one of the most popular Latin American poets of the twentieth century. Mistral was born Lucila Godoy Alcayaga in Vicun˜a, northern Chile, and was of Spanish, Jewish, Indian, and Basque descent. Her father, a well-read poet and a former student of theology, abandoned the family when she was only 3. Mistral, a shy and introverted child, attended school as a young girl. Her mother and older half-sister, both teachers by profession, supplemented her education with tutoring at home. When the family moved to La Serena, Mistral began contributing poetry and articles to the local paper. At the age of 15 she began teaching school, and she subsequently worked her way up to higher teaching positions. Among her students in the hostile climate of southern Chile was the poet PABLO NERUDA, also a Nobel laureate. From 1922 to 1924, she lived in Mexico, where she collaborated with that country’s Secretary of Education in designing educational programs for poor children in rural areas. Mistral coined her pseudonym from two of her favorite poets, GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO and the French Nobel laureate Fre´de´ric Mistral. As a young adult she espoused a Socialist philosophy and was also deeply interested in yoga, theosophy, folklore, and Catholicism. Teaching played an important role in her poetry. She often wrote verse with the intention of teaching children, some of which is collected in the section of poetry entitled “For Children” in the 1922 collection Desolation. The most prominent themes in her deeply emo-
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tional poetry are love, children, death, art, religion, politics, the poor, and nature. In style, Mistral’s poetry shows the influence of Modernismo, a French-influenced literary movement in the late nineteenth century espoused by the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Darı´o, with whom she corresponded. She often wrote free-verse and emphasized the content of her poetry over the technical aspects. Her poetry is generally warm, lyrical, and full of emotion. Two failed love affairs permanently marred Mistral’s romantic life, and she never married. In 1907 she met and fell in love with a rail worker, Romelo Ureta. Two years later, after their split, Ureta committed suicide. Ureta’s suicide inspired Sonnets of Death, which won the Gold Medal at the Floral Games in Santiago in 1914 and marked Mistral’s first success with poetry. A second affair with a poet ended when he decided to marry another woman. Mistral captured her suffering over her romantic losses in “Dolor” and other poems that appear in the 1922 collection Desolation. Mistral officially retired from teaching in 1925 and subsequently entered a career as a diplomat, working for the Chilean government, the League of Nations, and later the United Nations. For the rest of her life, she lived all over the world and was a regular correspondent for many of Latin America’s foremost newspapers and literary journals. Her numerous articles covered social, philosophical, religious, literary, political, and other topics. Many of the poems collected in Felling (1938) express Mistral’s religious searchings, notably those contained in the first two sections entitled “Death of My Mother” and “Hallucination.” Her continued love of nature, the South American landscape, and children are also dominant themes in Felling’s poetry. The poems of Tenderness (1945), some previously
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published, chiefly concern children and a maternal longing Mistral was never able to fill. The 1942 suicides of her friends, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his wife, deeply affected her, as did the suicide of her nephew and adopted son Juan Miguel three years later. Mistral’s health declined steadily afterward, and The Wine Press (1954), her final volume of poetry, is tinged with a sorrow not characteristic of its predecessors. Poems such as “Mourning,” about her nephew’s suicide, express her private sorrow. “The Trail,” “The Prisoner’s Woman,” and other poems evince her dismay over the world’s turbulent political climate during and after World War II. Mistral’s other works include Readings for Women (1923). In addition to her 1945 Nobel
Prize, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Florence and the National Award for Chilean Literature in 1951. The American writer Langston Hughes translated some of her poetry into English, and it appears in Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (1957). At the time of her death from pancreatic cancer in 1957, Mistral was in the middle of writing the long poem “Song to Chile.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Agosin, Marjorie, ed., A Gabriela Mistral Reader, 1993; Vasquez, Arce de, Gabriela Mistral: The Poet and Her Work, 1964.
Mitchell, Joni (November 7, 1943– ) Singer, Songwriter, Painter he Canadian-born folk singer Joni Mitchell attained fame during the 1960s folk movement in the United States, both in New York City and in California. The range of her music has spanned from her early acoustic folk recordings to later experiments with jazz, pop, rock, and progressive music. Although her music never found widespread commercial success, she remains well-respected among musicians in many genres, and many artists have covered her songs over the years. Mitchell is known for experimenting with open, nonstandard guitar tunings that allow for varied harmonies without the use of complex chords. She is also a respected painter and has created the artwork for her albums. Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada. Her father was in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and her mother was a teacher. As a military man, her
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father was forced to move the family often, particularly during the World War II years when Mitchell was an infant. Her father was stationed at a number of bases in Western Canada during the war. Following the war, Mitchell’s father began working as a grocer, and they moved to both Maidstone and North Battleford in Saskatchewan. The family finally settled down in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which Mitchell regards as her hometown. At the age of seven, Mitchell began taking piano lessons and writing her own music. At school, she also excelled in art. When she was nine, she fell ill with polio during an epidemic in Canada. While she recovered in the hospital, she developed an interest in singing. Mitchell taught herself to play the guitar and the ukulele as a teenager, and she soon began busking (playing music in public places) and playing gigs in coffeehouses and other venues in Saskatchewan. Following her
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high school graduation, she enrolled in the Alberta College of Art and Design. After staying for only a year, she returned to playing music. In 1965, Mitchell she married the folk singer Chuck Mitchell. Although the marriage was brief, she kept his surname as her stage name. By this time, she was actively writing her own material. Her songs were unique and her guitar style that employed alternate tunings innovative. She had a wide ranging voice, which at one time covered four octaves, that lent melodic beauty to the poetry of her lyrics. In the mid-1960s, while she was playing at a Florida club, the guitarist and singer-songwriter David Crosby (1941– ) (see NEIL YOUNG) walked in and was immediately struck by her performance. Crosby took Mitchell back to Los Angeles and introduced her and her music to his friends, and she stayed with Crosby for a while. Mitchell first attained a measure of fame through other artists covering her songs. A number of artists recorded “Urge for Going,” her first song to hit the charts. Country singer George Hamilton IV (1937– ) recorded it, as did folk and blues singer Tom Rush (1941– ). Other artists have recorded “Urge for Going,” and Mitchell herself did so in 1967. It was released as a B-side of the 1972 single “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio” but was never released on an album until her 1996 Hits compilation. In 1968, Rush recorded her “The Circle Game.” The same year, Mitchell gained further popularity when folk singer Judy Collins (1930– ) recorded her “Both Sides Now.” The British folk-rock group the Fairport Convention recorded “Chelsea Morning” and “I Don’t Know Where I Stand” for their debut album in 1967, and they followed with a version of her “Eastern Rain” on their second record. In 1967, Mitchell moved to New York, where the folk scene flourished, and then back to California. She released her first solo album, Song to a Seagull (1968), featuring only herself and her acoustic guitar. After its release, she toured extensively to promote it. While playing at the Troubador in Los An-
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geles, she met the English-born singer-songwriter Graham Nash (1942– ). Clouds (1969), her second album, featured her own recordings of her songs that others had already made into hits, including “Both Sides Now,” “Chelsea Morning,” and “Tin Angel.” The same year, she appeared on JOHNNY CASH’S The Johnny Cash Show, on which she would be a guest two more times. Mitchell felt more at ease playing in clubs and at first did not transition well to performing in larger venues. She played an equinox festival at Big Sur, which was filmed and later released as the film Celebration at Big Sur (1971). Her next album, Ladies of the Canyon (1970), reflected both a new musical maturity and an appreciation for her new home in California. It also contained her first major hit, “Big Yellow Taxi,” with its famous lines: Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
The album also featured “Woodstock,” a song about the famed music festival that became a hit for Crosby, Stills, & Nash and for Matthews Southern Comfort. She wrote the song after missing the festival on her manager’s advice that the timing might prevent her from making a scheduled appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. In 1971, she released her album Blue, which is widely considered one of her best recordings. Songs like “A Case of You,” “This Flight Tonight,” “Carey,” and “All I Want” exemplify the confessional songwriting style that characterized her early music, and backing musicians included Stephen Stills (1945– ) and James Taylor (1948– ). The album’s “River” was rediscovered as a Christmastime song and recorded by numerous artists for the holidays in the 2000s. Rock and jazz influences began to infuse her work over the next few years, including For the Roses (1972), which featured the country-tinged “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio.” Court and Spark (1974), a collaboration
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with the jazz saxophonist and composer (1948– ) Tom Scott, marked the beginning of a major shift in her musical style. The album blended pop, rock, folk, and jazz and featured the hit songs “Free Man in Paris,” “Car On a Hill,” and “Help Me.” “Help Me” remains one of her best-selling singles and reached the top ten. Mitchell spent much of the mid- to late 1970s exploring jazz, as in The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975). Her lyrical focus switched, too, to stories and vignettes rather than her earlier confessional writing. In 1975, Mitchell participated in concerts in the Rolling Thunder Revue tours with BOB DYLAN and folk singer Joan Baez (1941– ), and the next year she performed in The Band’s The Last Waltz. Hejira (1976) a sparse, jazz-inspired album, with the title referring to Mohammed’s “flight from danger,” features only Mitchell’s acoustic guitar, jazz musician Larry Carlton’s (1948) guitars, and Jaco Pastorius’s (1951–1987) fretless bass. The album’s metaphorical lyrics, wide-ranging vocal melodies, and modal guitar patterns made it particularly unique in her body of work. The double album Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (1977) took Mitchell’s forays into abstraction to a great distance, which did not sit well with many critics, and featured the lengthy song “Paprika Plains.” She followed up with Mingus (1979), collaboration with bassist CHARLES MINGUS, who died before they finished the album in 1979. Mitchell finished the album , which features “A Chair in the Sky,” “Sweet Sucker Dance,” and “The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines,” with Pastorius, jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter (1933– ), and jazz pianist Herbie Hancock (1940– ). In 1980, Mitchell released Shadows and Light (1980), a live album that showcased highlights of her recent tours. Following its release, she slowed the pace of her original recordings, signing with Geffen and producing only a limited amount of original material for the label. With Wild Things Run Fast (1982), she returned to pop songwriting and
produced her biggest hit in years, “Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody,” which intertwines lyrics from the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” with her own “Chinese Cafe.” Dog Eat Dog (1985) was a different kind of experiment for Mitchell in which she utilized the talents of British synth-pop performer Thomas Dolby (1958– ), an experimenter in modern sound and synthesized music. For Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm (1988), she assembled a diverse group of musicians to help out on the album, including the American country singer Willie Nelson (1933), the British pop-punk star Billy Idol (1955– ), the funkrock duo Wendy and Lisa, American rock artist Tom Petty (1950– ), British progressive rock artist Peter Gabriel (1950– ), and the Eagles’ Don Henley (1947– ). “My Secret Place,” a duet with Gabriel, was one of the album’s more famous songs. After its release, Mitchell took part in former Pink Floyd vocalist, songwriter, and bassist Roger Waters’s (1943– ) The Wall Concert in Berlin (1990), a massive production of the Pink Floyd classic concept album The Wall (1979) staged in honor of the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall that had divided East and West Germany since 1961. Night Ride Home (1991), her final album for Geffen, returned her closer to her acoustic and vocal beginnings. Turbulent Indigo (1994), rife with dark themes, won Grammy Awards for Best Pop Album and Best Recording Package in 1995. During its recording, she divorced bassist and songwriter Larry Klein (1959), whom she had married in 1982 after he was hired as bassist and sound engineer for Wild Things Run Fast. Klein was a collaborator on many of her albums from that time through Turbulent Indigo. Among her latest albums are Taming the Tiger (1998) and Both Sides Now (2000), the latter consisting of mostly covers of jazz standards performed with an orchestra and winner of a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2000. The orchestral ar-
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rangements by composer/arranger Vince Mendoza (1961– ) contributed to the album’s good reviews, and it featured new versions of “A Case of You” and the title track. The two-disc Travelogue (2002) consists of reworkings of her old songs, again with lavish orchestral arrangements. The melodic sound and wide range of Mitchell’s voice have altered significantly as the now dusky-voiced singer has aged, lending a different quality to newer interpretations of her old songs. Her latest album, Shine, was released in 2007. In addition to her Grammys, Mitchell has received numerous awards throughout her
long career. In 1995, she received Billboard magazine’s Century Award, and she was awarded the Polar Prize the following year. Mitchell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 and won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002. She has also received numerous awards from her native Canada.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bego, Mark, Joni Mitchell, 2005; Luftig, Stacey, ed., The Joni Mitchell Companion: Four Decades of Commentary, 2000. www.jonimitchell.com.
Modigliani, Amedeo (July 12, 1884–January 24, 1920) Painter, Sculptor s both a painter and a sculptor, Amedeo Modigliani was known for his long, thin human faces and figures. His body of work, relatively small on account of his premature death, includes some twenty-five heads and many portraits of well-known Parisian figures. Modigliani struggled for recognition during his lifetime, and his works attracted more notice after his death. Modigliani was the youngest child of four, born in Livorno, Italy. His parents came from well-to-do Sephardic Jewish backgrounds. His father was a wood and coal merchant whose business failed the year Modigliani was born, and his mother helped support the family by teaching and translating. Modigliani dealt with physical difficulties in his childhood as well, falling ill with pleurisy in both 1895 and 1900 and battling typhus in 1899. Because of his precarious health, he never received a full education. In 1898 he began to study painting, learning the basics under Guglielmo Micheli.
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During this time he painted primarily still lifes and portraits in an academic style. In 1900 Modigliani left Livorno, moving to Florence in 1902 to study at the life-drawing school. After a few months there, he returned to Venice, where he lived until 1906 and studied intermittently at the Institute of Fine Arts. There Modigliani developed his lifelong love for Italian Renaissance art and gained exposure to the latest developments in European art, particularly the Art Nouveau movement out of Germany. Modigliani moved to Paris in 1906. The following year he exhibited several works at the Salon d’Automne and grew to admire the works of the French painter Paul Ce´zanne. In 1908 a number of his paintings were exhibited at the Salon des Inde´pendants. From the beginning Modigliani preferred to paint and sculpt the human form. In either bright or dark colors, his paintings from this period (such as Lady in Riding Habit, 1909) depict
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long, thin figures, but not to the extremes he was soon to embrace. In Paris Modigliani met the leaders in artistic and literary circles, such as PABLO PICASSO, the poet Max Jacob, and the Romanian sculptor CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI. After meeting Brancusi, he began to study African sculpture, the influence of which began to be seen in his own sculpture. Working primarily in sandstone but also in marble, he formed heads with long faces and very thin, angular noses. In 1912 he exhibited eight heads at the Salon d’Automne. Modigliani soon abandoned sculpture and returned to painting. In more severely thin, flattened forms with oval-shaped faces, he painted portraits of unknown models and well-known figures of his day. Among his subjects are Henri Laurens (1915), Picasso (1915), Beatrice Hastings (1915), JUAN GRIS (1916), JEAN COCTEAU (1916), Gaston Modot (1918), and Jeanne He´buterne (1917–1918 and 1919). After an affair with the English poet Beatrice Hastings (1914–1916), Modigliani’s fragile health worsened, complicated by his abuse of drugs and alcohol. In spite of the enthusiastic efforts of art dealer Paul Guillaume (who purchased Modigliani’s works and rented a studio for him) and the Polish poet Leopold Zborowski, relatively few of his works found buyers.
In 1917 Modigliani began a series of warmly colored, sensous nude females, including Nude on a Divan (1918), the Seated Woman (1918), Venus (1918), Elvire (1919), and Reclining Nude (1919). Some of these appeared in his only one-man show, at Berthe Weill’s Gallery. The exhibition, however, proved to be a disaster when authorities alleged the nudes were indecent and removed them. His other works include a single self-portrait (1919), a few landscapes (1919), and a series of Caryatids. The year 1917 also saw the beginning of his relationship with the painter Jeanne He´buterne, with whom he had a daughter the following year. Modigliani’s health declined rapidly, and he died in 1920 of tubercular meningitis. The day after his death, He´buterne, then nine months pregnant, committed suicide by jumping from a window. Modigliani’s work gained little recognition outside of Paris during his lifetime. After his death, a 1922 exhibition at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune helped popularize his work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Diehl, Gaston, Modigliani, 1969; Fifield, William, Modigliani, 1976; Mann, Carol, Modigliani, 1980; Sichel, Pierre, Modigliani: A Biography of Amedeo Modigliani, 1967.
Moholy-Nagy, La ´ szlo ´ (July 20, 1895–November 24, 1946) Painter, Photographer, Teacher contributor to the development of kinetic sculpture and abstract art, the Hungarian-born artist La´szlo´ MoholyNagy was an influential member of the faculty of the Bauhaus in Germany before he settled
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in the United States in the late 1930s. His artistic work encompassed many different areas, including photography, film, painting, and sculpture. Moholy-Nagy is also known for his theories on art education.
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Moholy-Nagy was born in Ba´csbarsod, a small village in southern Hungary. He attended the preparatory high school A´llami Fogimna´zium in Szeged and after graduating in 1913 moved to Budapest. There he studied law, although from the beginning he was more interested in literature. Before determining on a career as an artist, he held literary ambitions, and between 1911 and 1918 he wrote a number of poems. As an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Moholy-Nagy served on the Russian front during World War I. At this time he began to sketch on military postcards, and, while recovering from a wound to his thumb, he executed his first watercolors and pencil drawings. After his military service he returned briefly to studying law, but he soon abandoned his studies to devote himself to art. Some of his early works were included in the Veteran Artists’ Exhibition in Budapest in 1918. Two years later he settled in Berlin, where he met and was influenced by KURT SCHWITTERS and other Dadaists, who embraced a chaotic, antiestablishment art. Moholy-Nagy was also influenced by the Constructivists, who fashioned abstract sculptures from industrial materials (see VLADIMIR TATLIN). The avant-garde journal MA began to publish his woodcuts soon after his arrival in Berlin, and he executed illustrations for Walter Hasenclever’s play Die Menschen in 1920. The following year he married the photographer Lucia Schulz. Moholy-Nagy immersed himself in both radical politics and theoretical aspects of art, signing a “Manifesto of Elemental Art” (1921) and the “Manifesto of the Dynamic-Constructive Energy-System” (1922). The following year he became head of the metal workshop at the Bauhaus in Weimar, one of the most influential schools in modern art and architecture. Working with its founder, WALTER GROPIUS, Moholy-Nagy edited the Bau-hausbook series. The series included several of his own works, such as Malerei, Fotografie, Film (1925; Painting, Photography, Film).
While at the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy formulated his ideas on art education, which he applied with considerable influence in both Germany and the United States. He envisioned a holistic approach to artistic training and rejected emphasis on specialization. MoholyNagy remained at the Bauhaus until 1928, when both he and Gropius resigned under political pressure. Following his departure, he returned to Berlin, established a commercial design business, and executed several designs for the theater. Moholy-Nagy worked in many different media and materials, producing canvases, photcollages, photomontages, and films. Interested in kinetic sculpture (see also JEAN TINGUELY), he created in 1930 his rotating Lichtrequisit (Light-Space Modulator), which probed the relationship between light and motion. These two elements constituted the primary focus of his work in all media. In 1926 he finished his first documentary film, Berliner Stilleben (Berlin Still-Life), which was followed by Marseille Vieux Port (Marseilles Old Port) in 1929. Lichtspiel Schwarz-Weiss-Grau (1930; Lightplay BlackWhite-Gray) transformed the movements of the light-space modulator for film. In 1936 he designed special effects for director ALEXANDER KORDA’s film of H. G. WELLS’s The Shape of Things to Come, but Korda never used them. In 1932 Moholy-Nagy married Sybil Pietzsch. Like many artists living in Germany, he found himself threatened by the Nazis after 1933. He fled to Amsterdam in 1934 and then to London in 1935. Two years later he settled in Chicago, where he organized and led the New Bauhaus, later the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Moholy-Nagy had the first U.S. exhibition of his photographs in New York in 1931, and his photographs appeared in books such as Mary Benedetta’s The Street Markets of London (1936) and JOHN BETJEMAN’s An Oxford University Chest (1938). In his later years he continued experimenting with new materials, as in his Double-Loop (1946), a sculpture con-
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structed of Plexiglas. He was diagnosed with leukemia in 1945 and died the following year. Vision in Motion (1947) was published posthumously and relates his theories and ideas on art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Mansbach, Steven A., Visions of Totality: La´szlo´ Moholy-Nagy, Theo Van Doesburg, and El Lissitzky, 1979; University Gallery, University of Delaware, La´szlo´ Moholy-Nagy: From Budapest to Berlin, 1914–1923, 1995.
Molna ´ r, Ferenc (January 12, 1878–April 1, 1952) Playwright, Novelist, Short-Story Writer erenc Molna´r rose to prominence as a playwright in pre–World War I Budapest and became one of Hungary’s most famous literary figures. His plays are strewn with his pronounced wit, sarcasm, and satire, often directed at Budapest society and the turmoil of romantic relationships. Molna´r’s numerous novels and short stories achieved less recognition outside of Hungary than did his plays. Molna´r was born Ferenc Neumann into a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest. His mother was an invalid and his father, a gastroenterologist, spent little time with him. Molna´r was tutored at home for his early education. From an early age Molna´r showed an interest in writing and an ambitious tenacity that drove him to prolific output. At the age of 14 he started the first of his own periodicals, Halada´s (Progress), and he enjoyed writing his own plays to stage in the house. Molna´r also pursued interests in music, medicine, and mysticism. From 1887 to 1895 he attended the Reforma´tus Gimna´zium, after which he studied law in Budapest and Geneva. While working on his legal studies, he finished his novella Magdolna (1898). Having abandoned law, Molna´r went to work as a journalist. In 1906 he joined the staff of the Budapest Naplo´, after which he married his editor’s daughter Margit Ve´szi. Ve´szi was the first of several wives in Mol-
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na´r’s life, and his numerous high-profile affairs were often the stuff of Budapest gossip pages. One affair with the wife of an industrialist led to a duel between Molna´r and her husband. Molna´r completed his first play, A doktor u´r (1902; The Lawyer), for Hungary’s National Theater. The Lawyer introduces the strain of comic satire that permeates his dramas. The protagonist, Puzse´r, steals solely for the purpose of keeping Dr. Sa´rka´ny, a lawyer, in business. The whole cast of characters, which includes Dr. Sa´rka´ny’s wife and the chief of police with whom she is having an affair, proves to be equally unsavory. Az o¨rdo¨g (1907; The Devil) brought Molna´r international acclaim. The devil of the title successfully encourages an adulterous affair between Olga Zanden, a banker’s wife, and her old lover Karl, a painter. After its initial failure in Budapest, Liliom (1909; Liliom) evolved into Molna´r’s most popular play. Its success began with a production in Vienna in 1913. Adapted from an earlier story entitled “Bedtime Tale,” Liliom is half realistic and half fantasy. The title character of the play is a bouncer for Mrs. Muskat, owner of a carousel, in turnof-the-century Budapest. Liliom runs off with Julie, marries and beats her, and shows little ambition to get a job. When they learn Julie is expecting a child, Liliom participates with an
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acquaintance in a botched robbery. While his partner escapes, Liliom faces prison time and stabs himself to avoid it. Liliom moves to the realm of the afterlife, where he is sentenced to spend fifteen years in hellfire. He fails in his one chance to escape by doing a good deed and is returned to hell for eternity. Liliom was the basis for more than one film, the first of which was A Trip to Paradise (1921). Molna´r produced a succession of plays before and during World War I, including the comedy A testor (1910; The Guardsman); the dream play A farkas (1912; The Wolf); A fehe´r felho (1916; The White Cloud), winner of the Voinits Award; Carnival (1917); and Fashions for Man (1917). A hattyu´ (1920; The Swan), a satire on royalty, enjoyed success around the world. The comedy takes place in a fictitious kingdom where the widowed Princess Beatrice is trying to restore her family name by marrying
Ferenc Molna ´ r (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, Lot 12735-826, XXV G 17)
her daughter Alexandra to Prince Albert, heir to the throne. Albert shows no interest in Alexandra until her mother orchestrates a scheme to arouse his jealousy. The scheme meets with some obstacles, but they are finally overcome and the family restored. During World War I Molna´r worked as a correspondent on the Galician front, an experience reflected in his volume of essays Egy haditudo´sito´ emle´kei (1916; A War Correspondent’s Diary). By this time Molna´r was a notorious figure in the Budapest cafe´s and clubs, known for his love of wine, women, cigarettes, and literature. His sardonic wit and reputation for brutalizing his wives lent a continuous air of scandal to his name. Among Molna´r’s later plays are A vo¨ro¨s malom (1923; The Red Mill) (1924; The Glass Slipper), Olympia (1928), The President (1929), Harmonia (1932; Harmony), Arthur (1932), Delilah (1937), and Delicate Story (1940). Ja´te´k a kaste´lyban (1926; The Play’s the Thing) turns again to one of Molna´r’s favorite subjects: the difficulties of romantic relationships. The composer Adam is moved to jealousy and suicidal despair when he overhears his fiancee´’s conversation with a former lover. Anxious to remedy the situation, Adam’s friend writes a play into which he inserts the content of their conversation. When Adam sees the play, he believes the two were only rehearsing for it. Although Molna´r is best known for his plays, he wrote numerous novels and short stories during his lifetime. His first, Az e´hes va´ros, was published in 1901. A Pa´l utcai fı´uk (1907; The Paul Street Boys), a story about two juvenile gangs, was the most successful of his novels and proved particularly popular in his native Hungary. Of his short-story collections, Muzsika (1908; Music) has attracted the most attention. In “Coal Pilferers” and other stories in the collection, Molna´r treated the plight of the poor and working classes. Molna´r’s prolific output continued until his death. By 1928 his Collected Works numbered twenty volumes. In his later life he suffered from illness and depression, largely a result of
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his exile, as a Jew, from Europe during World War II. Molna´r spent the last years of his life in New York, suffered a major heart attack in 1945, and died of stomach cancer in 1952. He received numerous awards and honors during his lifetime, among which were his election to the Petofi Society in 1908, his election to the Kisfaludy Literary Society in 1911, his receipt
of the Franz Joseph Order in 1916, and his receipt of the Legion of Honor in France in 1927.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gyo¨rgyey, Clara, Ferenc Molna´r, 1980; Smith, Joel A., The Romantic Comedy of Ferenc Molna´r, 1995.
Mondrian, Piet (March 7, 1872–February 1, 1944) Painter leading figure in twentieth-century abstract art, Piet Mondrian began as a landscape and still-life painter in the Dutch tradition. During the World War I era he helped found a movement known as De Stijl, also known as neoplasticism, in which he attempted to depict fundamental, objective reality with primary colors, black lines, and rectangular forms. Mondrian was born Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan in Amersfoort, Utrecht, the Netherlands. His father, headmaster at a Calvinist primary school, was an amateur draftsman. After his family moved, Mondrian attended another Calvinist primary school. His uncle was a painter who adhered to the Hague school of landscape painting, and both he and his father gave him early training in art. In spite of his artistic talent and desire to become a painter, Mondrian obtained an education degree and certifications to teach primary (1889) and secondary (1892) school. In 1889 he began taking lessons from the Realist painter Johann Braet van Ueberfeldt near Winterswijk. Mondrian joined several art societies—among which were the Kunstliefde in Utrecht and the Arti et Amicitiae—and with these groups exhibited his first works in 1893–1894. Meanwhile he took night classes at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam.
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Mondrian’s earliest paintings, such as Woods with Stream (1888) and Still Life: Jug and Onions (1892), draw from traditional Dutch landscape and still-life painting. In 1899 he obtained a commission to paint a ceiling in a private home, for which he created an allegorical depiction of the seasons. Around the turn of the century, Mondrian’s style began to evolve away from strict realism, though he continued to paint still lifes and landscapes, the latter of which he often drew from scenes along the Gein River, as in House on the Gein (1900) and Trees Along the Gein (1907). In 1903 he won the Willink van Collem Prize for a still life. Mondrian pursued a new direction in his painting after he met luminist (a term critics applied generally in his time to modern Dutch painting and that should not be confused with the nineteenth–century American Luminists) artists, notably Jan Toorop. He switched his palette to primary colors, black, and white and began to paint in a Pointillist style, in which small dots of primary color combine in the viewer’s eye when seen from a distance. Around this time Mondrian also joined the Theosophical Society. Following a 1909 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Mondrian became
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one of the Netherlands’ leading modern artists. Paintings from this period include The Red Cloud (1907), Woods Near Oele (1908), and The Red Tree (1908). The year 1911 marked another turning point in Mondrian’s style. One of his paintings, Soleil, was exhibited at the Salon des Inde´pendants in Paris, and the same year he saw his first Cubist paintings, by PABLO PICASSO and GEORGES BRAQUE. Paintings such as Landscape with Trees (1911–1912), Trees (1912–1913), and Oval Composition with Trees (1913) belong to his short period of experimentation with Cubism. Mondrian returned to the Netherlands in 1914 and was forced by the outbreak of war to stay there. He lived in an artists’ colony in Laren and during that time met one of his most loyal patrons, S. B. Slijper. With Theo van Doesburg and other painters, he founded De Stijl (The Style). Mondrian contributed essays to the group’s magazine and signed a De Stijl manifesto in 1918. Many of his writings were collected as Le Ne´o-Plasticisme in 1920. By this time Mondrian had developed his mature style, which he called neoplasticism. Seeking to break reality into its fundamental
elements, he used only blacks, whites, grays, and the primary colors. Many of his paintings he simply titled Composition. Using thick, black lines that cross at right angles, he divided many of his canvases into rectangles of primary color. He returned to Paris in 1918 but maintained his ties with De Stijl until he broke with the movement in 1925. In 1931 he joined the Association Abstraction-Cre´ation. Fleeing the Nazi threat to France, Mondrian went to London in 1938 and settled in New York two years later. In his last paintings, including Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue (1937–1942) and Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942–1943), Mondrian replaced the black lines of his previous paintings with grids composed of primary-colored rectangles and squares. His work was exhibited widely in New York during the World War II era.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Champa, Kermit Swiler, Mondrian Studies, 1985; Fauchereau, Serge, Piet Mondrian and the Neo Plasticist Utopia, 1994; Milner, John, Mondrian, 1992; Seuphor, Michael, Piet Mondrian: Life and Work, 1957; Welsh, Robert P., Piet Mondrian, 1872–1944, 1966.
Monet, Claude (November 14, 1840–December 5, 1926) Painter laude-Oscar Monet was at the center of the French Impressionist movement that developed toward the end of the nineteenth century, and as one of the youngest and longest-lived of the group he was the only one of its numbers to continue attracting critical attention into the twentieth century. Fascinated with the effect of light on nature, he and the other Impressionists used color variations and contrasts and broken
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brush strokes to shape on their canvases impressions of people, outdoor scenes, and other subjects. Rather than serving as realistic reproductions of a subject, the resulting forms captured its emotional intensity and essence. Monet was the son of a grocer, born in Paris, but his family moved to a town near the Channel Coast at Le Havre when he was young. As a teenager he studied drawing and
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won local accolades for his skillful caricatures. Around 1856, the landscape painter Euge`ne Louis Boudin (1824–1898) first introduced him to his lifelong love of plein air painting, or painting in the open air. At the age of 19 Monet began to study in Paris in the studio of Charles Jacque. He worked at the Acade´mie Suisse, where he met the painter Camille Pissarro (1830–1903). After a brief period of military service in Algiers (where his artistic vision was further shaped by the light and forms of the African landscape) and recovery from an illness, he returned to Le Havre, where he met and was further influenced by the Dutch landscape painter Johan Barthold Jong-kind (1819–1891). Later that year Monet resumed his studies in Paris, this time under Charles Gleyre, through whom he met Pierre–Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Fre´de´ric Bazille (1841–1870),
Claude Monet (쑖 Pierre Choumoff / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
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Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), Eduoard Manet (1832–1883), and Alfred Sisley (1839–1899)— the painters who formed the core of Impressionists. They were, for a time, virtually his only sources of support. Until his unfinished 1865 painting The Picnic, Monet received little notice from art critics. His first exhibition also came in 1865, and over the next two years he attempted large scale outdoor canvases that proved less successful than the smaller studies of Parisian life, such as Terrace at Sainte-Adresse (1867) that he painted at the same time. His portrait of Camille Doucieux (1866) also attracted notice, and Monet slowly began to earn enough money to support himself. In 1870 he married Camille, who had already borne one of their children, Jean. The following year he rented a house at Argenteuil (near Paris), the locale of which provided much of the subject matter for his paintings over the next decade. The brilliant sun on the French coasts also fascinated Monet, and his frequent journeys to the region to study the light contributed to his bolder use of color in the 1870s. It was around this time that the term “Impressionism” was born. At an 1874 exhibit featuring the work of Monet, Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Pissarro, Renoir, Paul Ce´zanne (1839–1906), and Berthe Morisot, a critic, objecting to Monet’s forms in his Impression: Sunrise (1872), thought they looked like unfinished first impressions and dubbed the painters “impressionists.” In 1883, three years after the death of his wife, Monet moved to Giverny, marking a turn in his choice of subjects as well as an increasing distance from the Impressionist circle. He traveled around Europe and painted natural scenes, such as the cliffs at Normandy, and two series with architectural motifs in London and Venice. The increasing success of his painting enabled him to purchase, in 1890, his own house in Giverny. He married Alice Hoschede´, an art collector. During the last twenty years of his life, Monet painted a series of studies depicting the same subject under different lighting and
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atmospheric conditions. These include fifteen Haystacks, exhibited in 1891, and the Rouen Cathedrals (1892–1894). At Giverny he constructed an elaborate water garden, which, with its Japanese bridge, weeping willows, lily pond, and bamboo provided the subject matter of many of Monet’s paintings during the last twenty years of his life, including a series of Water Lilies. In 1925 he painted large murals for rooms in the Orangerie of the Tuileries in Paris. Monet began to lose his eyesight
in his old age but continued to paint until his death in 1926.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gache-Patin, Sylvie, Monet: The Ultimate Impressionist, 1999; Gordon, Robert, and Forge, Andrew, Monet, 1983; House, John, Monet: Nature Into Art, 1986; Seiberling, Grace, Monet’s Series, 1981; Spate, Virginia, Claude Monet: Life and Work, 1992; Wildenstein, Daniel, Monet: Or the Triumph of Impressionism, 1999.
Monk, Thelonious Sphere (October 10, 1917–February 17, 1982) Pianist, Composer n the early part of his career, the American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk was a key founder of the bebop movement in jazz. Monk later evolved a highly improvisational style marked by dissonant harmonies, bare-bones compositions, complex chord progressions, and a hard-driving piano playing style that has been described as percussive. Monk’s animated and artful live performances featured the pianist donned in suits, sunglasses, and hats, forming an integral part of his colorful and improvisational style. Monk was born to Thelonious Monk and Barbara Batts in Rocky Mount, in eastern North Carolina. His family moved to New York, in the San Juan Hill neighborhood, in 1922. Monk took up piano playing at a young age, teaching himself at first but later taking formal lessons. As a youth, he accompanied his mother as she sang in church, and he later played the organ for a traveling evangelist. Monk competed frequently—and won so many times that he was eventually banned from the contest—in the Apollo Theater’s amateur night competitions and started to find gigs as a jazz pianist. He briefly attended
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Stuyvesant High School but dropped out when he was sixteen. After studying briefly at the Juilliard School, Monk became the house pianist for Minton’s Playhouse in Manhattan, where he honed the style that he would become known for. He was a regular competitor at the afterhours “cutting competitions,” and during that time he also met and played with other famous bebop performers such as trumpeter DIZZY GILLESPIE (1917–1993), saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920–1955), trumpeter Miles Davis (1926–1991), and guitarist Charlie Christian (1916–1942). Monk made his first recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet in 1944. Hawkins (1904–1969), a tenor saxophonist, was instrumental in promoting Monk’s work. Also among Monk’s early studio recordings, with trumpeter Cootie Williams’s (1910–1985) band, was “Round Midnight” (1944). Unlike contemporaries such as Gillespie and Davis, he enjoyed little popularity early in his career due to the difficulty and unconventional nature of his compositions. In 1947, Monk signed with Blue Note and made a series of recordings for them between
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then and 1952. Noteworthy among these are “Criss Cross,” “Humph,” “Carolina Moon,” “Evidence,” and “Thelonious.” The year 1947 also marked his marriage to Nellie Smith, with whom he would enjoy a long and happy union. Their son, T.S. Monk (1949– ), later became a noted jazz drummer. In 1950, Monk recorded a number of works as Parker’s sideman, including “Bloomdido” and “My Melancholy Baby.” The following year, Monk suffered a blow to his career when police searched the car in which he and pianist Bud Powell (1924–1966) were sitting. Authorities discovered heroin and charged both Monk and Powell in the drug incident. Although Monk was not a heroin user, he refused to cooperate with authorities or to testify against Powell. As a result, he served sixty days in jail and lost his New York City cabaret card, essentially prohibiting him from playing in New York clubs. Undeterred, Monk continued to record and perform in other cities for the next several years. In 1953 and 1954, Monk recorded a number of albums for Prestige Records with such notables as tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins (1930– ) and drummer Art Blakey (1919–1990). In 1954, Monk played and recorded in Paris, marking his first European performance. There he met Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a member of the Rothschild banking dynasty, who would remain friendly with Monk for the remainder of his life. “Nica,” as she was known, was a wellknown patron of New York jazz music and assisted Monk in reacquiring his cabaret card. Monk signed with Riverside Records in 1954. Up to that point, his music was on the unconventional side and had not gained wide recognition with the public. In an effort to publicize the artist, the label convinced Monk to record interpretations of jazz standards that appeared on such albums Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington (1955). In 1956, Monk recorded his first popular success, Brilliant Corners, consisting of his own music. Rollins played on the title track, which proved to be so difficult to play that ed-
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itors had to piece it together from multiple takes. Monk again began to play in New York, making a splash during a six-month gig with a quartet that included saxophonist John Coltrane (1926–1967) and later tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin (1928– ) at the Five Spot Cafe´. For three years in a row between 1958 and 1960, Down Beat magazine critics voted him best pianist, and he began to tour internationally. Monk also wrote the score for French director Roger Vadim’s (1928–2000) film Les liaisons dangereuses (1959; Dangerous Liaisons). In 1962, Monk signed with Columbia Records, which had the resources to promote his work to a wider audience. A 1964 issue of Time magazine featured Monk on its cover. Although he gained increasing popularity, his output of original material began to dwindle. His last major recording for Columbia, Underground (1968), featured the most significant of his later material. Monk essentially disappeared from the music scene in the early 1970s, making his last recording in 1971 and two of his final public appearances at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1975 and 1976. In spite of his outwardly showman-like stage appearance, Monk was a private person, particularly in his later life. He reportedly spoke to few people in his later years, including his band members, besides his wife. There has been speculation that he suffered from mental illness that was never diagnosed or treated. Baroness de Koenigswarter hosted Monk as a guest in her Weehawken, New Jersey, home during the last years of his life. Monk died of a stroke in 1982. Actor and producer CLINT EASTWOOD produced a documentary of Monk’s life in 1988 entitled Straight, No Chaser. Monk was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1993. He won a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation posthumously in 2006 “for a body of distinguished and innovative musical composition that has had a significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz.”
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BIBLIOGRAPHY De Wilde, Laurent, Monk, 1997; Gourse, Leslie, Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk, 1997; Raschka, Christopher, Mysterious Thelonious, 1997
www.monkinstitute.com. http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_ monk_thelonious.htm.
Moore, George (February 24, 1852–January 21, 1933) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Poet, Critic, Essayist eorge Augustus Moore tried painting, poetry, and writing plays before he emerged as a successful novelist and one of the most famous figures in England and Ireland in the early twentieth century. He participated with WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, JAMES STEPHENS, and others in the Irish Renaissance before his outspoken departure from Ireland in 1911. Among his most famous works are Esther Waters and the trilogy Hail and Farewell. Moore was born into a family of Irish landholders in County Mayo, Ireland. Aside from managing his land, his father raced horses and pursued a career as a politician. Moore was tutored at home before his parents sent him to St. Mary’s, Oscott, in England. By all accounts his years there were disastrous, and he was sent home in 1867 before he had finished his studies. Two years later he entered the School of Art at the South Kensington Museum. Having determined to become a painter, Moore next went to Paris, where he took classes at the Beaux Arts and with the painter M. Jullian. In Paris he also met a number of Impressionist painters, such as E´douard Manet, who executed several portraits of him. Believing he lacked the skills to pursue painting further, Moore turned instead to writing. He began to collaborate with others writing plays, producing in 1876 Martin Luther. Before turning to novels, he published two volumes of poetry—Flowers of Passion
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(1878) and Pagan Poems (1882). In 1882 Moore returned to London and published his first novel, A Modern Lover, the following year. One of his longest works, it was designed for the circulating library system. After A Modern Lover failed with the critics, the public, and the libraries, Moore launched an attack against the circulating libraries and produced Mummer’s Wife (1885). Mummer’s Wife is usually regarded as his most naturalistic book, influenced by French writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Honore´ de Balzac, and E´mile Zola. A Drama in Muslin (1886) turned to Irish themes, and Moore’s autobiographical Confessions of a Young Man (1888) was his most personal novel to date. Anticipating his return to Ireland to participate in the Irish Renaissance, Moore released a book of Irish-inspired short stories entitled Parnell and His Island in 1887. Esther Waters (1894) is often considered his best novel. The protagonist of the story is the servant Esther, who falls in love with William Latch. Latch abandons her for another woman, leaving her with a son to raise. Esther takes several servant jobs and eventually develops a relationship with Fred Parsons, who is trying to convert her to the Plymouth Brethren. Latch reappears and is still interested in Esther. He has grown rich, but his fortunes and his health fail. He dies, forcing Esther to return to work as a servant.
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Moore published two additional novels before he returned to Dublin, Evelyn Innes (1898) and Sister Teresa (1901). Disgusted with England’s role in the Boer War, he settled in Ireland. With Yeats and cousin Edward Martyn he founded the Irish Literary Theatre (1899), later to become the Abbey Theatre. Yeats and Moore sought to provide a forum for the production of serious artistic plays in Ireland. They quarreled often, however, and Moore’s involvement in the theater was shortlived. With Yeats he wrote the play Diarmuid and Grania (1901), and he developed from this association an interest in Irish folklore and mythology. Moore remained in Ireland for a decade before he returned to England. The Untilled Field (1903), a book of Irish-flavored short stories, belongs to this period, as does his novel The Lake (1905). Moore accompanied his vocal departure for England in 1911 with his trilogy Hail and Farewell, consisting of Ave (1911), Salve (1912), and Vale (1914). The most successful of his works from his years in Ireland, the heavily autobiographical trilogy recounts his reasons for going to Ireland, his participation in the Irish Renaissance, and his ultimate rejection of it. His denunciations and criticisms of his associates provoked outrage and threats to sue. The French naturalist influences began to disappear from Moore’s work in his later writings. Instead, he drew from Walter Pater, the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, and E´duoard Dujardin. Turgenev and Dujardin, with whom he established friendships, inspired him to focus on the inner lives of his characters rather than their external environments. He began to use interior monologue to convey psychological and emotional states. Melodic structure in the works of the German composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) also exerted an influence on the forms of Moore’s later novels. Moore’s agnosticism and particular animosity toward Ireland’s clergy emerge in his many
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depictions of crooked, oppressive, or misled clerics. In The Brook Kerith (1916), he reinterpreted the story related in the Gospels centering on the lives of Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus, and the apostle Paul. In Moore’s version, Joseph of Arimathea is inspired by the Book of Samuel to become a prophet. Seeking a role model and hero, he focuses his energies on Jesus. Moore’s Jesus is crucified but does not die on the cross. His near death is instead an experience that forces a reexamination of life. Paul grows disillusioned with his own ministry when he learns what really happened to Jesus. Stephens helped Moore with dialog in his collection A Story-Teller’s Holiday (1918). His novel He´loı¨se and Abe´lard (1921) is based on the tragic twelfth-century romance between the scholar and monk Abe´lard and his pupil, He´loı¨se. Other novels include A Mere Accident, Spring Days, Mike Fletcher, and Vain Fortune, Ulick and Soracha (1926), and Aphrodite in Aulis (1931). Moore also established himself as an art critic around the turn of the century. He became art critic for The Speaker in 1891 and published several books on art, including Impressions and Opinions (1891), Modern Painting (1893), and Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters (1906). His autobiography Conversations in Ebury Street was published in 1924, as was his Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe (1924).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Farrow, Anthony, George Moore, 1978; Gray, Tony, A Peculiar Man: A Life of George Moore, 1996; Seinfelt, Frederick W., George Moore: Ireland’s Unconventional Realist, and Two Companion Essays, Wagnerian Elements in the Writing of George Moore/Thomas Mann and Some American and British Writers, 1976.
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Moore, Henry (July 30, 1898–August 31, 1986) Sculptor, Teacher enry Moore was the most influential figure in a group of British abstract artists that also included BARBARA HEPWORTH and BEN NICHOLSON. Moore molded his creations into abstract, organic forms often inspired by the rhythms and patterns of stones, bones, and other natural objects. The female form is the dominant theme in his body of work, which includes many massive, reclining female figures. Moore was one of eight children born to a coal miner and his wife in Castleford, Yorkshire, England. Both of his parents were ambitious by nature. His father was self-educated and involved in the local trade union. Moore attended two schools in his early childhood before winning a scholarship to the Castleford Grammar School, where he studied from 1909 to 1915. There an art instructor, Alice Gostick, encouraged Moore’s artistic talents. His father, however, urged him to pursue a more practical career, and Moore briefly studied to become a schoolteacher. In 1917 he enlisted in the British Army and was posted in France the same year. He later transferred to the Cambrai Section. After being poisoned by gas shells, Moore returned to England to recuperate. With a grant he received in 1919, he entered the Leeds School of Art for two years of study. During his second year there he met Hepworth, then a fellow student. Moore (and Hepworth) next studied at the Royal College of Art in London, where his most important acquaintance was its director William Rothenstein. Although Rothenstein was conservative in his tastes, he supported Moore’s semiabstract creations. Around this time Moore began to frequent London’s museums, developing a particular admiration for the ancient art of the Mayas, Aztecs, Etruscans, and Africans. The most representational
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Henry Moore (쑖 2006 John Hedgecoe / Topham / The Image Works)
of Moore’s sculptures, such as his Head of a Girl (1923), belong to this period in his life. He obtained a teaching post at the Royal College of Art and began to sculpt in earnest. The year 1926 saw the first of his many reclining female figures. His sculptures at this time, such as his Mask (1929), show a clear influence of pre-Columbian art and are primarily rendered in wood and stone. London’s Warren Gallery hosted Moore’s first one-man show in 1928. The following year he finished his first public commission, the relief North Wind for the London Transport Board, and married painting student Irina Radetzky. With Hepworth and Nicholson, Moore joined Paul Nash’s Unit One in 1933. Other influences at this time include Cubist PABLO PICASSO and the Romanian-born sculptor CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI. With Brancusi Moore shared a preference for carving his sculptures
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directly rather than working from models. In the early 1930s, Moore’s sculptures grew increasingly abstract. Like Hepworth he pierced organic forms, often covering holes and cavities with string or wire. The female figure— reclining nudes, heads, seated figures, and mothers with children—was the primary subject of Moore’s abstract renditions. However, he also began to sculpt other forms (Bird and Egg, 1934, for example) inspired by the natural objects he collected and scrutinized—stones, pebbles, bones, and other specimens. Dislocated forms such as FourPiece Composition: Reclining Figure (1934) began to appear in his sculpture. His controversial works raised eyebrows among critics, the public, and the Royal College. He found a loyal supporter in the sculptor Jacob Epstein, but his works did not attain widespread popularity until the World War II era. Under pressure at the Royal College, Moore left in 1932 and took a post at the Chelsea School of Art. Among his sculptures from the late 1930s are his Recumbent Figure (1938); Three Points (1939–1940), a figure in which he experimented with pointed forms; Stringed Figure (1939), in which he covered concavities with string; and Bird Basket (1939). With the outbreak of World War II Moore’s teaching career ended, and he found himself able to sustain himself on his art alone. He settled in Hertfordshire and during the war finished a series of drawings known as the Shelter Drawings. In these color renditions he depicted Londoners crammed together in bomb shelters, faces, and bodies sleeping in rows. Moore also drew a series of pictures of the coal miners of his native region. During the 1940s Moore finished numerous family group sculptures, many of which were reproduced in bronze in groups of seven or nine. In 1943 he was commissioned to sculpt a Madonna and Child for the Church of St. Matthew in Northampton. A major retrospective exhibition held in New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1946 established Moore as an
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international figure. He won the sculpture prize two years later at the Venice Biennale. Among his major works from this period are the Three Draped Standing Figures in stone (1947–1948) for Battersea Park, London; the Madonna for St. Peter’s Church in Claydon, Suffolk, in 1949; and the Reclining Figure for the 1951 Festival of Britain. The thin forms of his bronze Standing Figure (1948) and Double Standing Figure (1950) contrasted with his normally massive and bulky shapes. Moore also created warrior figures (Warrior with Shield, 1953–1954 and Falling Warrior, 1956–1957), helmets, animal heads, and seated figures. In 1955–1956 he finished a series of totem figures in his bronze Wall Reliefs and Upright Motives. By this time Moore’s sculpture was in demand around the world, and he worked on numerous public commissions. He finished a brick sculpture relief for the Bouwcentrum in Rotterdam (1955). His other major commissions include large, reclining female figures for the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris (1957–1958) and for the Lincoln Center in New York (1963–1965); Atom Piece, to memorialize the splitting of the atom, for the University of Chicago (1964); and works for the City Hall of Toronto, Ontario (1966), and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1978). Moore’s later works include Knife-Edge Two-Piece (1962), his bronze Moon Head (1964), and his Three-Piece Sculpture No. 3: Vertebrae (1968). The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto houses one of the largest collections of his work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Berthoud, Roger, The Life of Henry Moore, 1987; Finn, David, One Man’s Henry Moore, 1993; Packer, William, Henry Moore: An Illustrated Biography, 1985; Read, Herbert, Henry Moore: A Study of His Life and Work, 1966.
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Morandi, Giorgio (July 20, 1890–June 18, 1964) Painter, Graphic Artist, Teacher est known for his landscapes and still lifes, Giorgio Morandi was associated with the pittura metafisica school in Italy in the early twentieth century. Morandi’s peaceful, pensive depictions, however, differ dramatically from the brilliantly colored surrealistic allegories of the movement’s leader GIORGIO DE CHIRICO. Morandi was born in Bologna, Italy, the eldest of five children. In 1906 he went to work at his father’s sales office, but the following year he determined to devote himself to art. From 1907 to 1913 he studied at Bologna’s Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers included Domenico Ferri and Augusto Majani. Morandi earned high marks for his work there, which until the last two years of his study he rendered in an academic style. In 1909 he attended the Venice Biennale, and in subsequent months he developed a love for the work of the French Impressionists, particularly Auguste Renoir. Morandi spent several years fine-tuning his style and experimenting with techniques drawn from various influences on his art. The heavy brushstrokes of the Impressionists are present in Portrait of a Woman (1912), while angular-planed depictions such as Still Life (1914) resemble the Cubist experiments taking place in Paris at that time (see PABLO PICASSO and GEORGES BRAQUE). In 1913 he began his loose association with the Futurists (see UMBERTO BOCCIONI and F. T. MARINETTI), exhibiting his work with them for the first time the following year. In 1915 he served briefly in the Italian Army before being discharged for medical reasons. The year 1914 marked the beginning of his long career as a teacher. He took a position teaching in elementary schools, where he re-
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mained until 1929. From 1930 to 1956 he taught etching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. By the end of the decade, his forms sharpened and his palette consisted primarily of muted browns and oranges, whites, and soft blues. In 1919 Morandi met Giorgio de Chirico, a leader in the metaphysical school of painting. Under his influence, he sought to depict the essences of his subjects rather than realistic representations. Over the years Morandi’s subject matter changed little. He titled many of his paintings simply Still Life, Landscape, or Flowers. Bottles, vases, and jars populate his still lifes, which together with the landscapes consistently retain a low-key, contemplative atmosphere. In the 1920s, he returned to the thick brushstrokes and thickly applied paint of some of his earlier creations. In addition to his oils and watercolors, he executed many etchings. His first, Bridge over the Sevena, was executed in 1912. During the 1920s and 1930s he made many more, treating the same subjects he painted—primarily landscapes and still lifes. His work began to gain recognition in the early 1920s. A number of them were exhibited in several German cities in 1921, and he had his own room at the Fiorentina Primaverile exhibition the following year. In 1928 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. By the 1940s Morandi’s works regularly appeared in the most prestigious international exhibitions, and he had one-man shows in the major cities of Europe and America.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Solmi, Franco, et al., Morandi, 1987.
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Moravia, Alberto (November 28, 1907–September 26, 1990) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Essayist, Politician lberto Moravia was one of Italy’s major literary figures of the twentieth century. He wrote in a realistic style about characters in bondage to their circumstances or suffering from alienation. World War II Italy provided the backdrop for many of his stories. Moravia was born Alberto Pincherle to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, an architect, in Rome. At the age of 9 he fell ill with tuberculosis of the bone. He suffered from the disease until he was cured at the age of 18. His lengthy convalescence allowed him time to learn foreign languages, study literature, and write. Time of Indifference, Moravia’s first novel, was published in 1929 and depicts a family in which nobody is moral or even living in reality. Mariagrazia Ardengo is having an affair with the unprincipled Leo Merumeci, who not only wants to cheat the family of its money through the sale of their home but initiates an affair with Mariagrazia’s daughter, Carla. Carla sees Leo as a means of escape, as does her more honorable brother Michele, who despite his honorable nature refrains from exposing Leo’s corruption so that Leo will obtain a position for him. Later in the 1930s, Moravia published Wheel of Fortune (1935), The Imbroglio (1937), and The Wayward Wife (1937). Moravia married Elsa Morante in 1941, the same year his Fancy Dress Party appeared. The novel satirizes the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the character of the Latin American dictator General Tereso. The intrigue-ridden story is driven by the cunning of Tereso’s chief of police, Cinco, who orchestrates a false attempt on Tereso’s life. Italian authorities banned the novel. Two Adolescents (1944) deals with a boy’s loss of innocence and his coming to terms with his sexuality. The young, middle-class Agostino resents the intrusion of his widowed
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mother’s new lover, Renzo, into his life and is disturbed to hear himself referred to as “innocent.” Agostino forms a pseudofriendship with Berto, a lower-class boy with a circle of rough friends. The boys linger around the twelve-fingered pedophile Saro, and the group as a whole precipitates a sexual awakening in Agostino. The Woman of Rome (1947), another of Moravia’s popular novels, is narrated by a model-turned- prostitute, Adriana. Moravia’s novels, rendered in realistic prose, reflect a bleak outlook, moral uncertainty, and the failure of love. His philosophical leanings were Marxist/leftist and atheistic, though he was militant about neither politics nor religion in his fiction. The earlier works in particular are shaped by the chaotic climate in Italy surrounding World War II. The Conformist (1951) was inspired by the assassination of Moravia’s cousins at the hands of French Fascists in 1937. The World War II atmosphere also forms the backdrop of Two Women (1957), about the plight of the shopkeeper Cesira and her daughter Rosetta in the months before the liberation of Rome. Rosetta, a moral and devoutly religious girl, flees inhospitable Rome with her mother. The pair lose their money to rampant inflation and live with various families, during which time Rosetta befriends the antiFascist and philosophical Michele. When Rosetta and her mother enter a church to pray, Rosetta is raped by Moroccan soldiers, destroying her innocence forever. The Empty Canvas (1960) and The Lie (1965) both treat issues surrounding the creation of works of art, the first with a painter and the latter with an author. The Journey to Rome (1988) is about the sexual obsessions of Mario De Sio, who loves to read Guillaume Apollinaire’s poetry and is haunted by the image of his mother engaged in a sexual act with her lover. Mario goes to Rome to visit his fa-
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ther and his fiance´e Esmerelda, and on the plane he meets Jeanne and her daughter Alda. Each of these three women performs a sexual function for Mario, but in the end they leave him unfulfilled. Moravia’s many other works include the short-story collections Roman Tales (1954), More Roman Tales (1959), Paradise (1970), The Voice of the Sea and Other Stories (1976), and Erotic Tales (1983); the essay collection Man as an End (1963); the autobiography Alberto Moravia’s Life (1990); and the novels
The Epidemic (1944); Disobedience (1948); Conjugal Love (1949); A Ghost at Noon (1954); Two: A Phallic Novel (1971); Time of Desecration (1978); 1934 (1982); The Voyeur (1985); and the posthumously published The Friday Villa (1990) and The Leopard Woman (1991). Moravia was elected to the European Parliament in 1984 and died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Rome in 1990.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Peterson, Thomas Erling, Alberto Moravia, 1996.
Moreau, Jeanne (January 23, 1928– ) Actress, Director
Jeanne Moreau (쑖 1982 Ron Scherl / The Image Works)
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eanne Moreau began her professional acting career in 1947 and appeared in her first film two years later. With BRIGITTE BARDOT and Catherine Deneuve, she became one of the most popular actresses in French cinema. Having appeared in more than a hundred films, Moreau has won audiences around the world. She is best known for her skillful characterizations of independent women in the French New Wave films of the 1950s and 1960s. Moreau was born in Paris. Her mother was a dancer of English and Irish ancestry. Her father, who was often drunk and resented his wife’s English influence, grew up in the French countryside and moved to Paris to seek his fortunes. Moreau studied at a number of schools including a Catholic school, a school in England, and the Lyce´e Edgar-Quinet. Her father ordered her to stay away from the theater and the cinema, believing his daughter should have more respectable interests. Against her father’s prohibition Moreau skipped class one day to see a production of JEAN ANOUILH’s Antigone. Soon unauthorized trips to the theater regularly replaced her classes, and she determined she would become an actress. Her father violently disapproved of her ambition, but her mother supported her. She studied at the Conservatoire Nationale d’Art Dramatique and there met her first husband, Jean-Louis Richard. Moreau debuted at the Avignon Theatre Festival with a small part in Maurice Clavell’s La terrasse du midi (1947). At the age of 20 she joined the Come´dieFranc¸aise and became its youngest full-time cast member. Portraying Veroushka in Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, she enjoyed a success with her first role. Moreau acted with the Come´die Franc¸aise until 1952, appearing in many French plays by ANDRE´ GIDE and others. Upon her departure she joined the progressive The´aˆtre National Populaire (1951–1952) and was soon appearing in many other French theaters. She played the lead female role in JEAN COCTEAU’s La Machine Infernale
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(The Infernal Machine) in 1954. The British director PETER BROOK convinced her to play Maggie the Cat in his production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1956). Moreau had already appeared in a number of second-rate films by this time, including her debut film Le Dernier Amour (1949; The Last Love), Touchez-Pas au Grisbi (1953; Don’t Touch the Loot), and her first color film La Reine Margot (1954; Queen Margot). However, her Maggie the Cat, which impressed film director LOUIS MALLE, led to international stardom. Moreau appeared in two of his films in the late 1950s, Ascenseur pour l’e´chafaud (1957; Lift to the Scaffold; released as Frantic, 1961) and Les amants (1958; The Lovers). With the release of the latter, in which she played the adulterous wife Jeanne Tournier, Moreau was an international film star. During the 1960s Moreau reached the pinnacle of her career in French New Wave films and others, appearing in Brook’s Moderato cantabile (1960; Seven Days, Seven Nights), MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI’s La notte (1961; The Night), FRANC¸ OIS TRUFFAUT’s Jules et Jim (1961), and LUIS BUN˜ UEL’s Le Journal d’une femme de chambre (1964; Diary of a Chambermaid). In Jules et Jim she played the tempestuous Catherine, involved in a love triangle with Jules and Jim. She worked often with Malle and Truffaut. Moreau created many roles of independent, alienated, passionate, or intelligent modern women. She starred as a prostitute who ruins one of her clients in Eva (Eve; 1962), directed by Joseph Losey. The same year she appeared in Le Proce`s (1962; The Trial), Orson Welles’s version of FRANZ KAFKA’s novel. With Carl Foreman’s The Victors (1964) she made her first film in England. She appeared with Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield in the World War II story The Train the same year. Malle’s musical comedy Viva Maria! (1965), also starring Bardot, ranks among her successful films. The following year she appeared in Tony Richardson’s Mademoiselle, based on a JEAN GENET story, which caused an uproar at the Cannes Film Festival.
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One of the few French actors and actresses to win success in the United States, Moreau was increasingly recruited for Hollywood films but still continued to make films in France. She was considered for the role of Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichols’s The Graduate before it went to Anne Bancroft. Other later films include Nathalie Granger (1972), ELIA KAZAN’s The Last Tycoon (1977), Querelle (1982), Wim Wenders’s Bis ans Ende der Welt (1991; Until the End of the World), Cet amour-la` (2001), Franc¸ois Ozons’s (1967– ) Le Temps qui reste (2005; Time to Leave), Rome´o et Juliette (2006), and De´sengagement (2007). In 1977, after many high-profile love affairs—with Malle, the fashion designer Pierre
Cardin, and others—Moreau married her second husband, the Hollywood director William Friedkin. Lumie`re (1976; Light), a semiautobiographical film about actresses, marks the first of her two directing efforts. She also directed L’Adolescente (The Adolescent) in 1979. Moreau founded the short-lived Capella Films in 1982 and has served on the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. She has received numerous awards and continues to appear in films.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gray, Marianne, La Moreau: A Biography of Jeanne Moreau, 1994.
Morley, Robert (May 26, 1908–June 3, 1992) Actor, Playwright, Director or more than sixty years the Englishborn actor Robert Morley appeared in hundreds of roles both on stage and on screen. His rotund figure and delightful charm made him particularly adept at comedic characters, but Morley also handled serious roles with ease. He wrote and directed a number of plays, among which is Edward, My Son. Morley was born in Semley, Wiltshire, England. On account of his father’s gambling habit his childhood was somewhat tumultuous, and the family moved around England frequently. After giving up his initial desire to pursue a diplomatic career, Morley eventually determined upon an acting career and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He made his professional debut as an actor in Margate in 1928, and made his London stage debut the following year.
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Having begun to appear in many different roles, he attained his first major success with his London portrayal of the Irish-born writer Oscar Wilde in 1936. Two years later a New York production of Oscar Wilde gave Morley his American debut, and he later revisited the role in the film Oscar Wilde (1960). Throughout the 1930s and 1940s he continued to appear in a variety of stage roles, including Henry Higgins in GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’s Pygmalion (1937), Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), and the Prince Regent in The First Gentleman (1945). Morley wrote or co-wrote several plays himself, the best known of which is Edward, My Son (1947). Morley lent his short, rotund figure to hundreds of stage roles and more than sixty film appearances, excelling in comic roles. He made his film debut as Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette (1938), a performance for he was
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nominated for an Academy Award. The films in which he appeared include the film version of Shaw’s Major Barbara (1941); The African Queen (1951), with Humphrey Bogart and KATHARINE HEPBURN; Gilbert and Sullivan (1953); Around the World in 80 Days (1956); Topkapi (1964); Cromwell (1970); Lola (1971); Theatre of Blood (1973); Hugo the Hippo (1975); Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978); The Human Factor (1979); Oh! Heavenly Dog (1980); The Great Muppet Caper (1981); The Deadly Game (1982); High Road to China (1983); The Wind (1986); Istanbul (1989); Around the World in 80 Days (1989); and The Lady and the Highwayman (1989). While he pursued his film career Morley continued to appear on stage. Among his no-
table later roles were Mr. Assano in A Majority of One (1960) and Frank Foster in How the Other Half Loves (1970). His other writings include A Musing Morley (1974); The Pleasures of Age (1989), an optimistic look at old age; and Around the World in 81 Years (1990), in which he fondly recounts his numerous travels. Morley was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1957. His son Sheridan Morley is a noted journalist, critic, and biographer, among whose works is the biography Robert My Father (1994).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Morley, Margaret, Larger Than Life: The Biography of Robert Morley, 1979; Morley, Robert, The Robert Morley Bedside Reader, 1974.
Morris, Mark (August 29, 1956– ) Dancer, Choreographer nce known as the bad boy of modern dance, Mark Morris is now the one of its most established and respected veterans. Known for his visually arresting, brash, and irreverent choreography, Morris’s work represented a sea change in modern dance: from dance minimally connected to its accompanying music, when there was music at all, to dance as a visual reflection of the music. Today, his dance group, operating out of permanent headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, is one of the largest in the nation, and his choreography remains in demand across the globe. Born in Seattle, Washington on August 29, 1956, to parents who encouraged his pursuit of the arts, Morris trained in Balkan folk dance and flamenco, as well as traditional ballet. His early professional career was spent working under modern dance notables such
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as Eliot Feld, Laura Dean, and Lar Lubovitch. In 1980, he debuted his own dance troupe in New York City, The Mark Morris Dance Group. However, his truly formative years took place in Europe. In 1988, he signed a three-year contract that provided that he would serve as dance director for the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, and that the Mark Morris Dance Group would serve as the national dance company. The result was critically disastrous. The Belgian dance fans, traditionally inclined, struggled to accept his often violent and campy choreography. It did not help that his productions often mocked Belgian traditions, and once, even their Queen’s hairstyle. Often, the booing began within minutes of the curtain’s rise. While Morris struggled with the public during his time in Brussels, creatively he flour-
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ished. It was there that he decided to have live music accompany nearly all of his pieces, which was commonplace in Europe but not in American dance. His dances are so linked to their music that he now views live music as a necessity. Another Belgian influence came in the form of his desire to have a permanent home for his dance group. In America, most dance groups, including his own, rented out studio space for their practices, often going to several different studios each week. In Belgium, his dance group was treated to its own quarters, dance halls, and cafeteria. Though it took him well over a decade to realize his dream, in 2001 the Mark Morris Dance Group moved into its permanent headquarters in Brooklyn. The five-story former state office building has been converted into a 31,000 square foot dancer’s dream, with three large rehearsal studios with room for spectators, dressing rooms and showers, and a physical therapy clinic. It was also while in Belgium that he finished some of his best known work, including the critically praised L’Allegro, il Penseroso
ed il Moderato (1988). However, the work he is still most known for is The Hard Nut (1991), a campy remake of The Nutcracker set in 1960s suburbia. Notable other works include a dance version of the Virgil Thomson–Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints in Three Acts (2001), and O Rangasayee, a solo piece set to an Indian raga. Morris’s other achievements include the formation of the White Oak Dance Project with MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV in 1990, a group formed to choreograph and perform new dance, and the receipt of a MacArthur “genius” grant in 1991. He officially retired from performing in 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bohlen, Celestine, “Dancers’ Brooklyn Fixer-Upper,” The New York Times, 8 March 2001; Cunningham, Michael, “The New Season/Dance; An Older, Wiser Bad Boy of Dance,” The New York Times, 10 September 1995; Teachout, Terry, “A Choreographer Who First Hears the Dance,” The New York Times, 9 January 2000. www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Morris-M.html.
Munch, Edvard (December 12, 1863–January 23, 1944) Painter, Graphic Artist he prolific output of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was one of the primary influences on the development of German Expressionism in the first decade of the twentieth century. Although he continued to paint until his death, Munch’s most influential work, including his famous painting The Scream (1893), belongs to the period between 1890 and 1908. Munch was born into a middle-class Protestant family in Løten, Norway. Tuberculosis took his mother’s life when he was 5, an event
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that left a permanent psychological and emotional scar on Munch. More traumatic still for Munch was the death from tuberculosis of his older sister Sophie, the sibling with whom he was particularly close, when he was 15. She is depicted in his painting The Sick Child (1885–1886). His father, a doctor, military man, and brother of the historian P. A. Munch, raised the family in a strict religious atmosphere that Munch grew to resent. Mental illness also plagued his family, and Munch
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The Scream by Edvard Munch (쑖 Topham / The Image Works)
himself suffered a nervous breakdown in 1908. In 1881 Munch enrolled in the Royal School of Art and Design. More important to his art, however, was his association with the Kristiania Bohe`me, a group of writers and artists in Kristiania (now Oslo) who adhered to the aesthetics of naturalism. Particularly influential with Munch were the painter Christian Krohg and the novelist Hans Jaeger. At this point in his life, Munch adopted Jaeger’s tenets of atheism and free love. In the early 1880s several members of the group developed an interest in Impressionism, which influenced
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early Munch paintings such as Morning (A Servant Girl) (1883). During the early 1880s, Munch also painted many portraits of his family members. In 1889, Munch traveled to Paris, where he discovered the Postimpressionists, the Synthetists, and the Symbolists and began to develop his mature painting style. The forms in his creations moved away from impressionistic influences and became more fluid, tortuous, and anguished. Central to Munch’s paintings of this period are his many experiences with death of loved ones, illness, failed love, and isolation. He used bright, violent colors to
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express his subjects’ tormented states of mind and feeling, and he portrayed the entire background of the subjects as shaped by those states. His most famous painting, The Scream (1893; also known as The Cry), has become a symbol for modern man’s anguish. His human figures often have blurred, distorted, or nonexistent facial features, as in The Kiss (1893), where the hazy female and male faces merge into one. His paintings also explore his perceptions of men and women. An exhibition of Munch’s work in Berlin in 1892 led to a scandal and then to his fame in Europe. In the 1890s and early 1900s, he completed a major series of works on love and death that he eventually titled Frieze of Life. The paintings were exhibited at the Berlin Secession in 1902. Works in the series include The Voice (1893), A Death (1893–1894), and Young Woman Embracing Death (1894). In 1894 Munch also began creating his many etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts. They bear stylistic resemblance to his other work and are considered a major force in twentieth-century graphic art. His creations of this period were a major influence on the development of German Expressionist painters such as ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER.
The nervous breakdown Munch suffered in 1908 marked a turning point in his outlook and painting style. After his recovery he abandoned his life of frequent travel and settled permanently in his native Norway. His works express a newfound optimism and include many portraits and landscapes. From 1909 to 1916 he worked on a series of murals for the auditorium at Oslo University, which features a brilliant sunrise entitled The Sun. Although Munch never fully abandoned the psychological aspect of his earlier work, he devoted more attention to external, natural settings in his later paintings. His other works include many self-portraits executed throughout his career. His friendships with literary figures led to collaborations with the playwrights August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen. Munch bequeathed all of his works to the city of Oslo, and many of them are housed in the city’s Munch Museet.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Eggum, Arne, Edvard Munch: Paintings, Sketches, and Studies, 1984; Heller, Reinhold, Munch: His Life and Work, 1984; Stang, Ragna Thiis, Edvard Munch: The Man and His Art, 1979.
Murrow, Edward R. (April 25, 1908–April 27, 1965) Broadcast Journalist founder and pioneer of broadcast journalism, Edward R. Murrow was instrumental both in establishing electronic news broadcasting and moving the new form of reporting into the mainstream media. Murrow first made a name for himself as a radio broadcaster reporting from Europe during the hostilities leading up to and during World War II. In the 1950s, his outspoken crit-
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icism of the anticommunist zealot Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957) helped put an end to the senator’s activities. By the end of his career, Murrow had delivered more than five thousand broadcasts. Murrow was born Egbert Roscoe Murrow near Polecat Creek, near Greensboro in central North Carolina. He was the youngest son of Quaker parents. Until he was six, he and
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his siblings lived on an unprofitable, rustic farm that lacked indoor plumbing or electricity. The family moved to Blanchard, in northern Washington State, during his early childhood. Murrow attended high school in Edison, a nearby town. An excellent student, he also had outstanding abilities as a basketball player and was a member of the county championship team. Murrow was senior class president and joined the debating team as well. After high school, he attended Stanford University and the University of Washington before graduating from Washington State College, where he majored in speech. From his college days, Murrow was an active voice in political affairs. In 1929 he was elected president of the National Student Federation of America after delivering a speech urging his fellow students to take a greater interest in world and national politics. Upon his graduation the following year, he moved to New York. From 1932 to 1935, Murrow was assistant director of the Institute of International Education. In that position, he served as the Assistant Secretary of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, which often provided aid to displaced German-Jewish scholars. In 1935, he married Janet Huntington Brewster. The same year, CBS hired Murrow as its director of talks and education, and he would remain with the network throughout his broadcasting career. Murrow virtually created CBS’s first real news staff, which at the time of his hire consisted only of Bob Trout (1909–2000). Murrow and Trout, who would later become famous for his World War II broadcasts, formed a strong and fruitful working relationship. Murrow traveled to London in 1937 to take up the directorship of CBS’s European Bureau. There, he worked to convince European figures to broadcast with CBS (to compete with rival NBC). It was at this time that he recruited William L. Shirer (1904–1993), who broadcast from Berlin in the years leading up
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to World War II and with Murrow would come to be considered a principal founder of broadcast journalism. The widespread public first learned Murrow’s name during the Anschluss of March 1938, in which the German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) annexed Austria to Germany. Shirer, who could not broadcast the news from Austria, contacted Murrow in Poland. Murrow sent Shirer to London, where the latter broadcast an uncensored eyewitness account of Hitler’s annexation. Murrow promptly flew to Austria, where he took over for Shirer. Working together, Murrow and Shirer compiled a “European News Roundup” of public reaction to the Anschluss, bringing reporters and politicians stationed around Europe and the United States together for a broadcast. Murrow reported from Vienna. The broadcast, featuring reports delivered from different locations in a single broadcast, was ahead of its time and inspired CBS’s long-running news series World News Roundup. Murrow’s continued broadcasts from the tension-filled prewar crisis atmosphere in Europe made him a household name in the United States. He remained in London, delivering live broadcasts from rooftops during the Battle of Britain (July 10, 1940–October 31, 1940) and later reporting during the height of the London Blitz (September 7, 1940–May 10, 1941) after World War II broke out. During the war, Murrow hired an entire generation of broadcast journalists for CBS, including Shirer, Charles Collingwood (1917–1985), Richard Hottelet (1917– ), Bill Shadel (1908–2005), Eric Sevareid (1912–1992), and Howard K. Smith (1914–2002). The group of journalists became known as “Murrow’s Boys.” Murrow coined two catchphrases that would come to characterize his London broadcasts—the opening line “Hello, America. This is London,” and later the shortened “This is London.” By the close of 1940, when German bombing raids became continuous, Londoners bid each other good night with “So
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long, and good luck,” a phrase that Murrow adopted for the close of his radio broadcasts, signing-off “Good night and good luck”. In 1941, Murrow returned to a warm and well-attended dinner CBS had organized to welcome his return to the United States. After the U.S. entered the war in 1941, Murrow flew with more than twenty Allied bombing raids over Berlin, reporting on his experiences and the events he witnessed. As one of his final war-era assignments, he reported from the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. His vivid accounts drew criticism for their graphic nature, but Murrow held his ground and insisted that his reports did not provide enough detail to describe the horrors he witnessed. Some of what he saw, he said, left him without words. In 1946, Murrow took over the vice presidency of CBS and also served as the network’s director of public affairs. Shirer resigned from CBS in 1947 after Murrow refused to find a replacement sponsor for one that had withdrawn its sponsorship of his Sunday news show. Shirer maintained that the network slackened its support for him after some controversial commentary, while some at the network felt that Shirer was doing too little legwork to back up increasingly controversial statements. He and Murrow essentially parted ways from that point onward. With his troubles with Shirer, Murrow abandoned his vice presidency post and returned to radio broadcasting in 1947. Three years later, he narrated the radio documentary The Case for the Flying Saucers, which aimed to take an objective look at the public’s growing interest in unidentified flying objects. From 1951 to 1955, Murrow hosted This I Believe, all the while continuing his news broadcasts on CBS until 1959. Murrow recorded a series of spoken-word records entitled I Can Hear It Now, marking the beginning of his partnership with producer Fred W. Friendly (1915–1998). The albums evolved into the Friendly-Murrow weekly radio show Hear It Now and eventually the
award-winning CBS television documentary series See It Now, considered a pioneering prototype of the modern television documentary. During the 1950s, Murrow began appearing on television in addition to his radio programs. To start out with, he delivered short editorials on the CBS Evening News and covered special events. See It Now, which first aired in 1951, garnered popularity for its heated criticism of the postwar Red Scare and was partially responsible for the political demise of Senator McCarthy, who turned the search for communists in the United States into a virtual witch hunt. The show’s anti-McCarthy stance culminated in a thirty-minute critical documentary on the senator entitled A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy that aired on March 9, 1954, and consisted almost entirely of clips of McCarthy and the senator’s own words. The CBS network refused to advertise for the show or allow Murrow and Friendly to use its logo, and Murrow and Friendly financed preshow advertisements with their own money. The show generated heated controversy and thousands of letters to the network, the vast majority of them favoring Murrow. When Murrow offered McCarthy a chance to answer accusations against him, the senator appeared with a response that is thought to have helped further contribute to his downfall. Unfortunately for Murrow, the controversy surrounding the show also sowed the seeds for a rift between CBS and himself. After experiencing the low ratings that news documentaries garnered at the expense of game shows and other popular entertainment series, Murrow added new subject matter to his broadcasting repertoire. In 1953, he began hosting the Friday prime-time chat program Person to Person, in which he engaged celebrities in informal interviews. See It Now continued to air regularly until 1955 but after that appeared only sporadically until 1958, and Murrow continued to host Person to Person until 1961.
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In 1956, Murrow narrated the prologue for American producer Michael Todd’s (1907–1958) Around the World in 80 Days. The same year, Murrow and famed news anchor Walter Cronkite (1916– ) covered the Republican National Convention, though the two never worked together again. In 1958, Murrow began to host the talk show Small World, which featured unrehearsed debates between political figures facilitated by simultaneous international hookups. Shortly thereafter, Murrow contributed to the first episode of the documentary series CBS Reports. He took a sabbatical from broadcasting from mid-1959 to mid-1960. His last major contribution to television broadcasting was a segment entitled “Harvest of Shame” for CBS Reports (1960), in which he documented the plight of migrant farm workers. Although Murrow and CBS president William S. “Bill” Paley (1901–1990) had initially remained close friends at the beginning of Murrow’s career, the two found themselves increasingly at odds as Murrow’s commentary on controversial subjects grew more opinionated and Paley wanted to devote more time to opposing viewpoints. A speech in Chicago in which Murrow criticized television’s increasing emphasis on entertainment furthered the breach between the two men. Murrow portrayed himself in British director Lewis Gilbert’s (1920– ) black-and-white war film Sink the Bismarck! (1960), which recounted the true story of a British naval effort to destroy a German warship. He resigned from CBS in 1961 to head up the United States Information Agency (USIA), which was the parent organization of Voice of America, an international news broadcasting organization sponsored by the U.S. federal government. In his new position, Murrow helped revive the careers of some of McCarthy’s victims. In 1962, Murrow brought educational television to New York City in the inaugural broadcast of WNDT, which later became the Public Broadcasting Service’s WNET.
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By this time, Murrow had begun to fall ill with lung cancer, severely hampering his career at the USIA until his death two days after his fifty-seventh birthday in 1965. Although See It Now had broadcast one of the earliest reports on the connection between smoking and cancer, Murrow remained a heavy smoker throughout his life. His left lung was surgically removed in 1963, after which he lived two more years. Among Murrow’s awards were two George Polk Awards in 1951 and 1952; the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964; an honorary knighthood of Great Britain in 1965; a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word, Documentary, or Drama Recording in 1966 for Edward R. Murrow—A Reporter Remembers, Vol. I The War Years; and nine Emmy Awards. Following his death, the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy was established at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The foundation houses Murrow’s library and papers as well as awarding research fellowships.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bernstein, Mark, World War II on the Air : Edward R. Murrow and the Broadcasts That Riveted a Nation, 2003; Cloud, Stanley, The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism, 1996; Edwards, Bob, Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism, 2004; Finkelstein, Norman H., With Heroic Truth: The Life of Edward R. Murrow, 1997; Gates, Gary Paul, Air Time: The Inside Story of CBS News, 1978; Lichello, Robert, Edward R. Murrow: Broadcaster of Courage, 1971; Kendrick, Alexander, Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow, 1969; Kuralt, Charles, Edward R. Murrow, 1971; Merron, Jeffrey L., Persico, Joseph E., Edward R. Murrow: An American Original, 1997; Rudner, Lawrence Sheldon, The Heart and the Eye: Edward R. Murrow as Broadcast Journalist, l938-l960, 1977; Seib, Philip M., Broadcasts from the Blitz: How Edward R. Murrow Helped Lead America Into War, 2004; Smith, Robert Franklin, Ed-
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ward R. Murrow: The War Years, 1978; Sperber, A. M., Murrow: His Life and Times, 1998; Vonier, Sprague, Edward R. Murrow: His Courage and Ideals Set the Standard for Broadcast Journalism, 1989;
www.museum.tv/archives/etv/M/htmlM/ murrowedwar/murrowedwar.htm. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ murrow_e.html. http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/bio/literary/ murrow.htm.
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Naipaul, V. S. (August 17, 1932– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Essayist idiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul fled his native Trinidad and settled permanently in England, where he established himself as a novelist during the 1950s. Best known for his pessimistic depictions of life in Trinidad and in the fledgling democracies of the Third World, he has also written travel books and several studies of India. Naipaul was knighted in 1989. Naipaul was born to Indian parents in Chaguanas, Trinidad. His grandfather, of Hindu background, immigrated to the island as an indentured servant. Naipaul’s father was the primary influence in his life. A journalist who was hostile to the Hindu religion, his father lived much of his life an unhappy man. Forced to live in homes owned by his wife’s family, he was miserable and eventually suffered a mental breakdown. The younger Naipaul attended Queen’s Royal College in Portof-Spain in his youth and enjoyed reading English novels. Anxious to leave Trinidad, Naipaul worked hard to earn a scholarship to study in England. Having succeeded in earning a scholarship, Naipaul left Trinidad to study at Oxford University in 1950. He worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation and in 1955 married Patricia Ann Hale. The Masseur (1957), his first novel, was published in 1957 and earned him the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. The following year he began contributing reviews to The New Statesman. Like The Masseur, The Suffrage of Elvira (1958) unfolds in Trinidad. With his characteristic irony and cynicism, Naipaul created a story of corruption and bribery that unfolds around Trinidad’s first democratic election. The inability to function of fledgling democracies emerging from the era of European colonialism is a recurrent theme in Naipaul’s writings. Miguel Street (1959) captures the local flavor in Port-of-Spain’s Miguel Street, offer-
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ing a series of character sketches and a portrait of an environment Naipaul ultimately rejected. The novel won the Somerset Maugham Award. Although Naipaul had by this time won prestigious awards for his Trinidad novels and attracted critical notice, his work did not win the English public until the appearance of A House for Mr. Biswas (1961). Naipaul modeled the main character, Mr. Mohun Biswas, on his father. Biswas is a journalist who spends his adult life trying to win his independence. Never having owned a house, he finally obtains his own home, symbolizing his triumph. Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion (1963) was the first of Naipaul’s works set in England and won the Hawthornden Prize. The Mimic Men (1967), winner of the W. H. Smith Prize, again takes place in England. The narrator is a West Indian colonial minister living in London. Naipaul’s fragmentary narrative moves between past and present and fantasy and reality as the narrator tries to make sense of the pieces of his life. In a Free State (1971) consists of three stories as well as an epilogue and a prologue. “One Out of Many” unfolds around the life of a character who is accidentally sent to Washington D.C. The protagonist of “Tell Me Who to Kill” is a West Indian living in London. In the title story, English civil servants find themselves living in a new African state ravaged by civil war. In all three stories the protagonists find themselves struggling with life in alien cultures—another common theme in Naipaul’s writings and an issue in his own life. In a Free State won the Booker Prize. Guerrillas (1975), about a failed uprising in the Caribbean, was the first of Naipaul’s stories to attract an American audience. A Bend in the River (1979) again presents a pessimistic picture of graft and corruption in an
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emerging independent state after colonialism. Set in Africa, the story brings together a group of diverse characters living under a corrupt political system run by a demagogue. The Enigma of Arrival (1987) is a heavily autobiographical story that traces a writer’s journey from Trinidad to England. His other novels include Finding the Center (1984), A Turn in the South (1988), and A Way in the World (1994). Among Naipaul’s other works are the shortstory volume A Flag on the Island (1967), which collects stories written during the 1950s and 1960s; the essay collection The Overcrowded Barracoon (1972); and the nonfiction works The Middle Passage (1962), The Five Societies—British, French, and Dutch— in the West Indies (1963), The Loss of El Dorado (1969), and Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981).
After spending a year in India in the early 1960s, Naipaul wrote three nonfiction works on that country: India: An Area of Darkness (1965), India: A Wounded Civilization (1977), and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Boxhill, Anthony, V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction: In Quest of the Enemy, 1984; Hughes, Peter C., V. S. Naipaul, 1988; Kamra, Shashi, The Novels of V. S. Naipaul: A Study in Theme and Form, 1990; Kelly, Richard, V. S. Naipaul, 1989; King, Bruce Alvin, V. S. Naipaul, 1993; Mason, Mondita, The Fiction of V. S. Naipaul, 1986; Mustafa, Fawzia, V. S. Naipaul, 1995; Nightingale, Peggy, Journey Through the Darkness: The Writing of V. S. Naipaul, 1987.
Neruda, Pablo (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) Poet, Diplomat ablo Neruda is the pseudonym of Neftalı´ Ricardo Reyes y Basoalto, the Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician who was one of the most popular literary figures in Latin America and Spain during his lifetime, and whose poetry is still learned by heart all over the Spanish-speaking world. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, “for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams.” Neruda was born to Rosa Basoalto and Jose´ del Carmen Reyes in Palla, a town in southern Chile. His mother died while he was still an infant. He was raised by his father, a rail worker and a stern figure, and his stepmother, who treated him very well. When Neruda was two, the family relocated to near-
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by Temuco, traditionally territory of the Araucanian Indians. As a boy, he liked to read and write poetry, the latter in spite of his father’s objections. Beginning in 1910, he attended the Temuco Boys’ School, where he attracted the attention of GABRIELA MISTRAL, who was then the principal of the girls’ school and one of his teachers. The region’s turbulent weather—storms, torrential winter rains, and heavy winds—was to have a profound impact on Neruda’s poetry. In 1921 Neruda moved to Santiago. He attended the University of Chile and studied French. His first major collection of poetry appeared in 1923 as Crepusculary. The poems expressed a sense of hopelessness and presented a bleak view of modern Latin American civilization. Twenty Love Poems
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and a Song of Despair (1924), his second major book of poetry, brought alive the passions and despairs of first love so vividly that, at 20, Neruda was hailed as a true poet. And in fact all over Latin America people still learn the poems by heart to express the intensity of first love. With Twenty Poems, Neruda became well known in Chile, but his popularity did not earn him enough money to live. Other collections of his early work include Attempt of the Infinite Man (1926), Rings (1926; written with Toma´s Lago), and The Enthusiastic Slingshooter (1933). Although his early poems touch on social themes, they are characterized by a more personal style than the work that followed. The body of Neruda’s poetry covers a wide range of style and content. Over the years his work was significantly influenced by the experiences and landscape of his childhood, the development of his Marxist political beliefs, his relationships with women, his experiences as a diplomat in many foreign countries, and literary movements such as Ultraı´smo, Modernismo, and Surrealism. The ultraist poets combined hard-hitting imagery with complex metrical forms (see JORGE LUIS BORGES). Neruda’s early work shows influences of Modernismo, which in turn was influenced by the Symbolists and the Parnassians in France. The Surrealists believed the unconscious is a vital component in human creativity. Neruda’s diplomatic career began when the Chilean government appointed him to a post in Burma (now Myanmar). The impoverished condition of Asians in Burma, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Batavia (now Jakarta), and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), all in which he served in diplomatic posts, made a deep impression on him. In Indonesia he met his first wife, Maria Antonieta Hagenaar. After a brief return to Chile in 1932, Neruda moved to Argentina as the Chilean consul. He won the friendship of the Spanish poet and dramatist FEDERICO GARCı´A LORCA, who was in Buenos Aires for a performance of his popular play Blood Wedding. The two met again when the Chilean government sent Neruda to Spain
in 1934. There Neruda met his second wife, an Argentinean, Delia del Carril; he also became involved with the Communist Party around the time the Spanish Civil War broke out. The dark and gloomy poems of Residence on Earth (1933) were influenced stylistically by the Surrealists, and thematically by his increasing interest in Marxism. His political views emerged still more strongly in two sequels, Residence on Earth, 1925–1935 (1935) and Third Residence, 1935–1945. Believing that art served no purpose unless it helped society in some way, Neruda abandoned the personal and individual nature of his earlier work and began to write from a social perspective. Having gained new hope for humanity and society from Marxism, he sometimes presented a more optimistic outlook than he had expressed in his previous poetry. General Song (1950), one of Neruda’s most famous writings, is an epic poem reflecting his respect for the native cultures and terrain of Latin America prior to the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores and his dislike of modern Western culture. From 1939 to 1943 Neruda held diplomatic posts in Paris and Mexico. He entered Chile’s senate as a member of the Communist Party in 1945 but was removed and forced into hiding after publicly criticizing the president, Gabriel Gonza´lez Videla, whom he had supported during the elections. Neruda fled Chile in 1948 and spent the next four years abroad. During his years of exile, he met his third and final wife, Matilde al Urrutia. By 1952 it was safe for him to return to Chile. Although he continued to favor Marxism and the Communist Party, his poetry again began to acquire more of the personal elements of his early work, as reflected in the love poems of The Captain’s Verses (1952) and One Hundred Love Sonnets (1954) and the autobiographical poems of Estravagario (1958) and Memorial of Isla Negra (1964). Along with his return to the personal element in his poetry, Neruda also began to embrace a simplicity in both style and theme that reflected his desire to reach the widest possi-
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ble audience with his poetry. This direction is evidenced in his three volumes of odes, Elemental Odes (1954), New Elemental Odes (1955), and Third Book of Odes (1957). In such poems as “Ode to a Dead Carob Tree,” “Ode to Winter,” and “Ode to a Star,” he wrote about common objects, people, places, and natural occurrences, often with delightful touches of humor, always as a love poet, addressing the objects he writes about as living beings. Neruda’s body of work from the last twenty years of his life includes twenty-eight volumes of poetry. The Soviet Union awarded him the Stalin Peace Prize for Literature in 1950 and the Lenin Peace Prize in 1953. In 1971, while serving as Chile’s ambassador to France, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His struggle with cancer did not prevent him from re-
ceiving the prize in Stockholm. After receiving the Nobel Prize, Neruda lived out his remaining days in Chile. His memoirs, I Confess I Have Lived, were published after his death. In 1994 The Postman, an Italian film based on the time he spent in exile in Italy, came out and received high praise. It brought out memorably how open Neruda was to friendships with people in the working class, and how effectively he shared with them his love of poetry.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bizzarro, Salvatore, Pablo Neruda: All Poets the Poet, 1979; Costa, Ren de, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 1979; Neruda, Pablo, Memoirs, 1978; Reid, Alistair, Introduction to Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, 1990; Teitelboim, Bolodia, Neruda: An Intimate Biography, 1991.
Neutra, Richard (April 8, 1892–April 16, 1970) Architect ustrian-born architect Richard Neutra helped redefine American architecture as one of the leading members of the modern movement. His focus on melding steel and glass with the surrounding natural environment yielded hundreds of unique residential pavilions that still dot the hills above Hollywood. His most famous design, the Lovell Health House, was notably featured in the film, L.A. Confidential, as an archetype of its era. Neutra was born in Vienna, Austria, on April 8, 1892. He decided to become an architect at the age of eight, to follow in the footsteps of his boyhood idol, architect Otto Wagner. Those plans were only slightly delayed by World War I; during his service in the Austrian army, he received his first commission for the design of a tea house in Prussia. After the
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war he worked in the studio of Erich Mendelsohn. Together, in 1921, they designed the Berliner Tageblatt, then the largest building in Berlin. Their city planning design for Haifa, Palestine, won them first prize in an international competition. With the prize money from the competition lining his pockets, Neutra left Europe for America. He settled first in Chicago, where he became an associate of Louis Sullivan and FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT. After two years working under Wright, Neutra moved west to Los Angeles, where, in 1925, he founded his own architectural firm. Two years later he began work on the house that would define his career: the Lovell Health House. Its white stucco walls, ribbon windows, flat roofs, and series of patios and terraces float out of the Hollywood hills it
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rests upon. With this design, the Lovell Health House stresses Neutra’s functionalist approach. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who designed homes on the sole basis of their own ideas and designs, Neutra sought to match the home not only to the landscape but to its owner. He would often present his clients with incredibly detailed questionnaires to fill out, gathering information on everything from whether clients like to entertain to whether they collect art. He would then put intense labor into ensuring that his buildings matched his clients perfectly, with everything from recessed barbeque pits to skylights that avoid exposing the walls to the sun. Ayn Rand found his philosophy so appealing she based her architect Howard Roark in The Fountainhead on Neutra. Neutra’s work was not limited to residential buildings. His “ring-plan” design for the Corona Avenue School in Los Angeles influ-
enced the construction of American academic buildings for decades. During World War II, he worked on several projects with the Federal Housing Authority to build low-cost postwar housing. After the war he continued to be involved in large projects, including the San Pedro Community Hotel in California, offices for the Ferro Chemical Corporation in Cleveland, and the American Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan. Richard Neutra died of a heart attack on April 16, 1970 while on a tour of Germany.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lindheim, Burton, “Richard Neutra, Architect, Dies; Helped Shape Modern Outlook,” The New York Times, April 18, 1970; Domer, Dennis, World Book, 2000. www.britannica.com/eb/article-9055400/ Richard-Joseph-Neutra.
Newman, Paul Leonard (January 26, 1925– ) Actor, Director he American actor Paul Newman, famous for his long and distinguished career on the Hollywood screen, is best known for his piercing blue eyes and for playing rebellious characters who live on the edge of society and the law. He has appeared in a number of other roles, however, and has found success as a director as well. Newman is also the founder of the food company Newman’s Own, which donates its profits to charities. Newman was born Paul Leonard Newman to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a well-off suburb of Cleveland. His father ran a successful sporting goods store. As a youth, Newman earned
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good grades and excelled in sports, but his mother also encouraged his early interest in theater. He made his acting debut at age seven, playing the court jester in his school’s production of Robin Hood. Newman graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1943, after which he attended Ohio University in Athens. During World War II, he served in the Pacific Theater in the United States Navy. Colorblindness prevented him from fulfilling his desire to become a pilot. Following the war, he finished his studies at Kenyon College. He later studied acting at Yale University and at the Actors Studio in New York City.
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Newman made his Broadway debut in the original production of William Inge’s (1913–1973) Picnic (1953), and he later appeared in the original Broadway productions of The Desperate Hours (1955) and TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), the latter with Geraldine Page (1924–1987). In 1962, he starred in Richard Brooks’s (1912–1992) film version of Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), also with Page. Newman’s first film, The Silver Chalice (1954), brought no success, but he gained notice with Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), in which he played boxer Rocky Graziano; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), in which he starred with Elizabeth Taylor (1932– ); and The Young Philadelphians (1959), with Barbara Rush (1927–) and Robert Vaughan (1932– ). Newman’s film career blossomed in the 1960s and continued until his retirement in 2007. In 1960, he played Ari Ben Canaan in Austrian director Otto Preminger’s (1906–1986) Exodus (1960), set during the founding of the state of Israel. His first appearance as the pool hustler Fast Eddie Felson came in Robert Rossen’s (1908–1966) The Hustler (1961). He starred as the ruthless and callous youth Hud Bannon in Martin Ritt’s (1914–1990) Hud in 1963 and the same year played the young and unlikely Nobel-prize winning author Andrew Craig in Mark Robson’s (1913–1978) The Prize (1963). In 1966, Newman played the cynical private investigator Lew Harper in Jack Smight’s (1925–2003) Harper (1966). One of his more famous roles, as prisoner Luke Jackson in Stuart Rosenberg’s (1927–2007) Cool Hand Luke, came the following year. The defiant Jackson, whose spirit authorities actively try to break, repeatedly escapes from prison only to be recaptured. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was one of a number of films Newman starred in under director George Roy Hill (1921–2002). In the movie, he portrayed the legendary nineteenth-century bank and train robber and outlaw Butch Cassidy. His other
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films with Hill include The Sting (1973), as Henry Gondorff, who partners with Robert Redford’s (1936– ) Johnny Hooker to con a big-time mob boss; and Slap Shot (1977), as hockey coach and player Reg Dunlop. In 1971, Newman starred in and directed Sometimes a Great Notion (1971), based on the novel of the same title by KEN KESEY. In The Towering Inferno (1974), directed by John Guillerman (1925– ) and Irwin Allen (1916–1991), he portrayed Doug Roberts, an architect who has designed the world’s tallest building. Roberts’s worst fears come true when faulty wiring he has discovered leads to fire at the building’s premiere party. In Sidney Lumet’s (1924– ) The Verdict (1982), Newman played the down-and-out lawyer Frank Galvin, who emerges from his funk and rethinks a medical malpractice case in order to seek a fair settlement for his clients and restore his name as an attorney. He returned as Fast Eddie Felson (the earlier character from The Hustler) in MARTIN SCORSESE’S The Color of Money (1986), a performance for which Newman won an Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1999, Newman appeared in Mexican director Luis Mandoki’s (1954– ) Message in a Bottle. He played mob boss John Rooney in Sam Mendes’s (1965– ) Road to Perdition (2002), with Tom Hanks (1956– ) starring as his hit man Mike Sullivan. In 2002, Newman also appeared in a Tony award-winning performance in Broadway revival of THORNTON WILDER’S Our Town. Another significant force in Newman’s career has been his wife, actress Joanne Woodward, to whom he has been married since 1958. The two met while filming Martin Ritt’s (1914–1990) The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and married after the film was finished. The couple has costarred in numerous films over the years, including Leo McCarey’s (1898–1969) Rally ’Round the Flag, Boys! (1958); Mark Robson’s (1913–1978) From the Terrace (1960); Ritt’s Paris Blues (1961); Melville Shavelson’s (1917–2007) A New Kind of Love (1963); James Goldstone’s (1931–1999) Winning (1969); Rosenberg’s WUSA (1970)
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and The Drowning Pool (1975); and James Ivory’s (1928– ) Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990). Newman both starred in and directed Harry & Son (1984), in which Woodward also appeared. He has directed several feature films starring his wife—Rachel, Rachel (1968), based on Canadian author Margaret Laurence’s (1926–1987) A Jest of God; a screen version of Paul Zindel’s (1936–2003) play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972); and the film version of Williams’s famous play The Glass Menagerie (1987). The television film The Shadow Box (1980), in which he directed Woodward, won a Golden Globe Award. Newman’s long interest in car racing has inspired voice and narrative roles in recent years. He voiced the character of retired race car driver Doc Hudson in Cars in 2006. The following year, he narrated Dale, a documentary about the legendary NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt (1951–2001), who perished in a racing accident at the Daytona 500 in 2001.
In 1982, Newman founded the food company Newman’s Own, which donates its profits to charities. To date, the company claims to have donated more than $200 million to thousands of charities. Newman announced his retirement from acting in May 2007. He has won numerous awards, including an Honorary Academy Award in 1985 “in recognition of his many and memorable compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft” and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993. BIBLIOGRAPHY Landry, J. C., Paul Newman, 1983; Lax, Eric, Paul Newman: A Biography, 1996; Morella, Joe, Paul and Joanne: A Biography of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, 1988; O’Brien, Daniel, Paul Newman, 2004; Oumano, Elena, Paul Newman, 1989; Quirk, Lawrence J., The Films of Paul Newman, 1981; Stern, Stewart, No Tricks in My Pocket: Paul Newman Directs, 1989.
Nicholson, Ben (April 10, 1894–February 6, 1982) Painter, Sculptor n his paintings and reliefs Ben Nicholson synthesized elements of Impressionism, Postimpressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, and abstraction. With HENRY MOORE and BARBARA HEPWORTH, his second wife, he was instrumental in popularizing modern abstract art in England. Nicholson was born into a family of painters in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England. His father was the noted painter Sir William Nicholson, and his mother, who also painted, was the sister of the painter James Pryde. Nicholson’s only formal education in art came in 1910–1911 at the Slade School of Fine Art
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in London. He traveled widely in Europe from 1911 to 1914 and from 1914 to 1917 lived in London. Nicholson first exhibited his work in 1919 and held his first one-man show at the Adelphi Gallery in London in 1922. His father’s work influenced his early paintings, which include many semiabstract still lifes and landscapes that show the influence of the Impressionists, such as the Cumbrian Landscape (1927). The Synthetic Cubist movement in Paris (see PABLO PICASSO and GEORGES BRAQUE) also influenced Nicholson, as is evident in his many Cubist still lifes.
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In 1925 Nicholson joined the Seven and Five Group. In Paris he joined Paul Nash’s Unit One and the Association AbstractionCre´ation, also visiting the studios of several abstract and modern artists. The Dutch painter PIET MONDRIAN, whom he met in 1933, was the most important of his new acquaintances, and under his influence Nicholson began to incorporate geometric figures in his abstractions. Having divorced his first wife, Winifred Roberts, Nicholson married Hepworth, an abstract sculptor, in 1938. The interplay of circles and rectangles that now characterized his paintings also manifested itself in a number of reliefs. Works such as White Relief (1937–1938), Painted Relief (1939), and White Relief (1941) show his concern with geometric interplay as well as a propensity to experiment with surface texture. With Russian Constructivist Naum Gabo and architect J. L. Martin, he coedited Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, a 1937 manifesto to promote Constructivism. The Constructivists arose in pre-Soviet Russia and sought to combine abstraction with functionality in architecture and geometric precision in all art. Nicholson’s later works often feature simpler forms and silhouettes that are not entirely representational or abstract, such as Tow-
ednack (1948), Three Moons (1953), Plate of Pears (1955), and Burnt Siena (1962). He continued to produce geometric reliefs, as in Zennor Quoit (1955) and Hole’d Stone (1956). Nicholson received several commissions for large works. In 1949 he painted two concave panels for the New Zealand steamship Rangitane. Two years later he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Festival of Britain, and in 1952 he completed a wall painting for the Time-Life building in London. Nicholson exhibited often at the Lefe`vre Gallery and the Gimpel Fils Gallery (London) as well as the Durlacher Gallery (New York). From the 1930s onward, his works were exhibited widely in Europe and the United States. The Tate Gallery in London held a major retrospective of his work in 1969. Among the numerous awards Nicholson received for his work are the first prize at the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (1952); the first Guggenheim international painting prize in 1956; the international prize for painting at the Sao Paulo Bienal in 1957; and the Order of Merit in 1968.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hodin, J. P., Ben Nicholson: The Meaning of His Art, 1957; Lewison, Jeremy, Ben Nicholson, 1993; Nash, Steven A., Ben Nicholson: Fifty Years of His Art, 1978.
Nijinsky, Vaslav (March 12, 1890–April 8, 1950) Dancer, Choreographer aslav Fomich Nijinsky’s strength, physique, and ability to leap into the air and seemingly hang suspended there captivated audiences in Europe, North America, and South America. A leading figure in SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes, he was
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the world’s most celebrated male dancer of his day, dubbed le dieu de la danse (the god of the dance). Nijinsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine, to parents who were also dancers. His father traveled frequently and later left his mother. Nijin-
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Vaslav Nijinsky (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-19576)
sky became interested in dancing as a youth and showed early promise. At age nine, he enrolled in the St. Petersburg Imperial School of Ballet and studied under Nikolai Legat. He first performed on stage in 1908 with the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre. For the next two years, his fame in St. Petersburg grew as he played the Prince in Giselle and other leading roles in The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Chopiniana, and other productions. Nijinsky danced opposite such noted ballerinas as Mathilde Kschessinskaya, ANNA PAVLOVA, and TAMARA KARSAVINA. In 1909 Diaghilev asked Nijinsky to join his newly formed Ballets Russes, a Russian dance company he based in Paris. Nijinsky became an overnight sensation in the French capital,
playing such roles as the Golden Slave in Sche´he´rezade (1910) and the puppet in Petrushka (1911). Nijinsky also starred in Les Sylphides (1909), Le spectre de la rose (1911), and other productions. MICHEL FOKINE choreographed many of Diaghilev’s shows, designing them specifically for Nijinsky. Nijinsky choreographed succeeding shows such as CLAUDE DEBUSSY’s The Afternoon of the Faun (1912), in which he played the faun, and IGOR STRAVINSKY’s Le sacre du printemps (1913; The Rite of Spring), which created an uproar at its debut at the The´aˆtre du Chatelet in Paris on account of Stravinsky’s music. Nijinsky’s choreography was sensuous, bold, and controversial. In 1913 Nijinsky, who had been Diaghilev’s lover as well as his prote´ge´, married another dancer in the company, Romola de Pulszky, and an angry Diaghilev fired him from the Ballets Russes. The couple lived in Hungary, and their daughter, Kyra, was born in 1914. Because he was a Russian national, Nijinsky was briefly interned in Hungary during World War I. He returned to Diaghilev’s company in 1916 with a guarantee of the artistic freedom he desired from Diaghilev’s heavy hand. Til Eulenspiegel (1916), choreographed by Nijinsky, debuted at the Manhattan Opera House in New York. Around the time of Nijinsky’s return to the stage in 1916, his mental health began to succumb to the pressures that surrounded him. He began to keep a diary and drew grotesque, distorted pictures of war casualties and other subjects. In 1917 schizophrenia permanently ended his dancing career. He spent the rest of his life in and out of European mental institutions and died in London in 1950.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Buckle, Richard, Nijinsky, 1971; Nijinsky, Vaslav, The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, 1936; Parker, Derek, Nijinsky: God of the Dance, 1988.
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Nin, Anaı¨s (February 21, 1903–January 14, 1977) Novelist, Short-Story Writer naı¨s Nin spent her life relentlessly analyzing her own emotional and mental states and searching for sexual fulfillment in a multitude of relationships. Nin’s impressions of her relationships as well as those of many close to her, form the substance of her often surrealistic fiction and her volumes of diaries. Nin was born in Neuilly-Seine, France. Her father, a musician of Spanish descent, was physically and sexually abusive, and he later had an incestuous affair with her. After the split of her parents’ stormy marriage, her mother moved Nin and her two brothers to Spain and eventually settled in New York. Nin was a very introverted child and at an early age developed her lifelong obsession with keeping diaries. She attended Catholic and public schools, neither of which she liked, and quit when she was 16. After she gave up school, Nin earned money as both a model and a dancer. In 1923 she married Hugo Guiler, a banker, and they moved to Paris in 1925. Nin’s first major work was D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932), a psychoanalytical study of D. H. LAWRENCE’s work. Like Lawrence, Nin would concentrate most of her writing on the themes of love and sexual relationships. Around this time she met the American author Henry Miller, who became one of her many lovers. Their affair is the subject of Nin’s Henry and June (1932). Nin first visited the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank, a student of Sigmund Freud, in 1933. Rank, with whom she also had an affair, treated her and helped her set up her own practice in New York. Among her patients was Laura Archera, a musician and the future wife of the English writer ALDOUS HUXLEY. Through Rank, Miller also set up his own practice.
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Ladders to Fire (1946) was the first novel in the five-volume series Cities of the Interior (1959), and Children of the Albatross followed in 1947. These five works are written in lyrical prose and explore the psychological lives of women seeking sexual fulfillment. The Four-Chambered Heart (1950) centers on a heated affair between Djuna and Rango, the latter of whom is a guitarist married to an invalid. In A Spy in the House of Love (1954), Sabina, like Nin herself, seeks fulfillment in a series of extramarital affairs. Solar Barque (1958) concluded the series and centers around a woman who rediscovers her husband after looking and experimenting elsewhere. Nin’s fiction received little critical acclaim during her lifetime and its quality is still a subject of debate. Poor critical response and the controversial nature of her work led publishers to reject her manuscripts. During the writing of these novels, Nin married a second husband, Rupert Pole, while still married to Hugo. For years she kept her second marriage secret from Guiler and divided her time between him and Pole, who believed she had divorced Guiler. Nin’s most widely read works are her eight volumes of diaries, the first volume of which appeared as part of the series The Diary of Anaı¨s Nin in 1965. Nin had difficulty publishing the diaries. The volumes, to which she devoted a large portion of time every day, chronicle her sexual and other relationships in detail that was far too intimate for the taste of many of the people she writes about. Many of her acquaintances refused to grant permission for her to publish her impressions of them. While the diaries amount to a detailed psychological portrait of Nin, some critics fault her for not being entirely truthful in her accounts.
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Among Nin’s other works of fiction are House of Incest (1936); the trilogy of stories Winter of Artifice (1939); the collection of short stories Under a Glass Bell (1944); This Hunger (1945); Seduction of the Minotaur (1961); and Collages (1964). Nin’s two volumes of erotica, Delta of Venus and Little Birds, were published after her death from cancer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bair, Deirdre, Anaı¨s Nin: A Biography, 1995; Scholar, Nancy, Anaı¨s Nin, 1984; Spencer, Sharon, Collage of Dreams: The Writings of Anaı¨s Nin, 1981.
Nolan, Sidney (April 22, 1917–November 27 or 28, 1992) Painter, Designer ustralia’s best-known twentieth-century painter, Sidney Robert Nolan gained international acclaim for his pictorial depictions of legendary figures and events in Australian history. At first influenced by the various European movements of abstract art, he developed a mature style characterized by the use of bright colors, unusual materials, and simplified forms. Nolan also designed sets for the stage. Nolan was born in the Carlton suburb of Melbourne, Australia. His father worked for the tramways. In his early youth Nolan studied at the Brighton Road State School and the Brighton Technical School. In 1932 he entered the Praharan Technical College. To earn money, Nolan held a series of jobs, at various times designing advertising display signs and working in the gold mines. In the mid-1930s he took night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria’s School of Art. In his spare time, Nolan devoured works of literature and studied the works of other painters. The currents of abstract art in France and Germany in the early twentieth century—the Dadaists and the Surrealists as well as such artists as LA´ SZLO´ MOHOLY-NAGY and PAUL KLEE in particular—influenced his early work. In 1937 he exhibited a number of landscapes,
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and he determined to paint as a career around the same time. In the late 1930s he executed collages of nineteenth-century engravings as well as some abstract monotypes. He held his first one-man show in Melbourne in 1940. The most important acquaintance of Nolan’s early years was the art patron John Reed, with whom he founded the Contemporary Art Society. Reed and Max Harris published the avant-garde literary journal Angry Penguins, which often featured Nolan’s work. His striking green Arabian Tree (1943) decorated the cover of an issue of Angry Penguins that purported to contain the verse and life story of a heretofore unknown poet named Ern Malley. It was later proved a literary hoax and widely discussed in the local press. During this time, and throughout his career, Nolan also created book illustrations and jacket designs. In paintings such as Boy and the Moon (1940) and Luna Park (1941), Nolan used broad, flat areas of color. He shared MoholyNagy’s taste for unusual materials, often painting in Ripolin enamel (and later polyvinyl acetate). The Head of Rimbaud (1939), rendered in pencil, oil, and boot polish, is characteristic of his abstract forms from this period and was included in the Contemporary
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Art Society Inaugural Exhibition. Nolan used sand in his brilliantly colored beach scene Boats (1945). His typically bright colors are evident in works such as Railway Guard, Dimboola (1943). Nolan was drafted into the army in 1942 and deserted in 1944 (he later obtained a dishonorable discharge). Following his service he began to paint what were to become his most famous works—paintings drawn from the legends and folklore of Australia. Foremost among these is his series of Ned Kelly paintings, depicting scenes from the stories of the legendary nineteeth-century bushranger and outlaw. Nolan finished his first Kelly work in 1945 and painted a series of them in 1946–1947 following travels through northeastern Victoria, known as Kelly country. In these works, Kelly is often portrayed in his square-headed, makeshift armor. While Nolan had by this time moved away from abstraction, he painted deliberately simplified figures. The story of the shipwrecked Eliza Fraser provided material for another series of Nolan’s paintings. According to the legend, Fraser and an escaped convict survived a shipwreck. Fraser agreed to plead for his pardon in exchange for getting her to the mainland but betrayed him at the last minute, after which he escaped and she returned to England and earned money telling her story. The nineteenth-century explorers Burke and Wills, who died in their attempt to cross the continent on foot, also appeared in a number of his works. In the 1950s Nolan turned his attention to London, exhibiting there for the first time in
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1951 and settling there permanently soon afterward. His subject matter expanded to include non-Australian subjects. Following a trip to Italy in 1952–1953, he painted several works on religious themes, such as the Temptation of St. Anthony (1952). Other subjects he treated include the Leda myth, Antarctic explorers, and Chinese landscapes. In the late 1950s he began a series of Gallipoli paintings depicting the events surrounding the bloody repulse suffered by the Australian and New Zealander troops at the hands of the Turks when commanded to land at Gallipoli during World War I. Nolan held his first one-man show in New York in 1956. Aside from painting, he designed stage sets. His first effort in this arena was for Serge Lifar’s ballet Icarus (1940) in Sydney. In 1962 he created scenery for Kenneth Macmillan’s production of IGOR STRAVINSKY’s The Rite of Spring at Covent Garden. He designed works for the Royal Opera House in London, notably for Camille Saint-Sae¨n’s Samson and Dalila (1981). At the time of his death, Nolan had gained widespread international recognition as Australia’s leading painter. He was created Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1961, was knighted in 1981, and became a member of the Order of Merit in 1983. He received honorary doctorates from the University of London, Leeds University, and the University of Sydney.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Clark, Jane, Sidney Nolan: Landscapes and Legends, 1987; Sayers, Andrew, Sidney Nolan: The Ned Kelly Story, 1994.
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Nolde, Emil (August 7, 1867–April 15, 1956) Painter, Graphic Artist he German painter Emil Nolde used bold, dissonant colors and grotesque forms in his landscapes and ominous paintings on religious themes. Aside from paintings, he produced woodcuts, watercolors, and etchings. Nolde was born Emil Hansen into a poor family in Nolde, Germany. From 1884 to 1888, he served as an apprentice at a furniture factory, and he subsequently worked as a draftsman and a teacher. Nolde earned extra money selling his grotesque, distorted pictures of the Alps on postcards. His interest in painting eventually led him to Munich, where he studied briefly under Adolf Hoelzel. After moving to the island of Alsen, he painted impressionistic landscapes, seascapes, and other natural scenes. One of his most noteworthy early works is Mountain Giants (1896–1897). Throughout his career, his use of bold, intense color was the most important element of his work; he was influenced in this area by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and E DVARD MUNCH. His paintings feature tortured figures and bold, shocking color combinations and images. In 1906, the Expressionist group Die Bru¨cke (The Bridge), whose other members included ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER, asked Nolde to join them. Nolde, the oldest member of the group when he joined it, tended to be independent and reclusive. He did not like being associated with a group and left them after a year and a half. He did gain from Die Bru¨cke, however, the expertise he needed to make woodcuts. While Nolde was not a regular attender of church or an adherent of specific dogmas and doctrines, he was a religious man and began to paint on Christian themes around 1909. His religious paintings bear no resemblance to the realistic European Madonnas and crucifixion
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scenes of past centuries. Instead, Nolde attempted to capture the emotional essence of biblical events, biblical figures, and traditional religious figures. His paintings on Christian motifs include Dance Around the Golden Calf (1910), Eve (1910), The Pentecost (1909), Christ Among the Children (1909), the series The Life of St. Mary of Egypt (1912), the ninepart The Life of Christ (1911–1912), The Last Supper (1912), and Become Ye As Little Children (1929). Religious themes continued in his work until the end of his life. In 1913–1914, Nolde traveled to the East Indies on an archaeological expedition. He had already developed an interest in masks and tribal art after seeing them in museums and visiting the Belgian painter James Ensor, who used masks extensively in his work. Masks began to appear in his own work, as in the painting Masks (1911). The other prominent motif in Nolde’s work is the landscape, and among his many landscapes are Marsh Landscape (1916) and March (1916). Aside from painting, Nolde completed many drawings, woodcuts, watercolors, and etchings, treating the same themes as he did with painting. His etchings include the series Brutal Force (1904), Hamburg Harbor (1910), and Prophet (1912). Nolde supported the National Socialist Party before it came to power. However, the Nazis banned his work and declared it “decadent,” as they did with the work of other Expressionist painters. He was forbidden to paint during World War II but resumed his work after the war.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Pois, Robert A., Emil Nolde, 1982; Selz, Peter Howard, Emil Nolde, 1963; Selz, Peter, German Expressionist Painting, 1957.
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Nureyev, Rudolf (March 17, 1938–January 6, 1993) Dancer, Choreographer, Actor udolf Hametovich Nureyev danced with Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet for three years before he defected to France in 1961. His flamboyant, energetic stage presence subsequently earned him worldwide popularity as he appeared in classical ballet roles, modern dance productions, and films. His celebrated partnership with Britain’s MARGOT FONTEYN began in 1962. Nureyev was born in Irkutsk, U.S.S.R., to parents of Tatar-peasant ancestry. Both parents were enthusiastic members of the Communist Party. The family lived in destitution, unable even to afford a pair of shoes for Nureyev when he entered school. Nureyev knew he wanted to become a dancer at a young age and danced as often as he could with school groups, increasingly ignoring the rest of his studies. On one occasion, his mother managed to buy a single ticket for an Ufa Ballet production of The Song of the Cranes and slip the whole family in. The ballet made a deep impression on Nureyev, and he dreamed of studying in Leningrad. Nureyev danced from time to time with the Ufa Ballet, which invited him to join as a permanent member. However, he was determined to go to Leningrad. Through persistence he obtained much-needed lessons that enabled him to audition for the Kirov Ballet school. After a successful audition he was taken on at the school, where he studied under the Russian author Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837). Not yet having refined his technique or developed his muscles, he found himself at a disadvantage among the other students, who had had the benefit of more formal training. In addition to the scorn heaped upon him by his fellow pupils, Nureyev earned the wrath of his superiors by his rebellious nature. He refused to join the Communist youth organization, often broke his curfew to see
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ballets, and spent much of his spare time practicing on his own to compensate for his deficiencies. Despite the trials he endured, his persistence paid off. He graduated in 1958 and danced for the next three years with the Kirov Ballet. Among his major roles were the male leads in Don Quixote and Giselle, the Prince in Swan Lake, and the Prince in The Sleeping Beauty. The Soviet government had already begun to harass Nureyev when he made the decision to defect to the West in 1961. His rebellious attitude, coupled with his rumored homosexuality (then a crime punishable by exile to Siberia), made him unpopular with the authorities. Believing the authorities would dismiss him from the Kirov Ballet and forbid him from leaving the country again, he escaped from Soviet security agents after performing in France and was granted asylum. Nureyev subsequently danced with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas and in 1962 made his American debut with Ruth Page’s Chicago Opera Ballet. Later that year he joined the Royal Ballet in London as a guest artist. After his defection, Nureyev’s lifelong aversion to joining groups kept him from taking many permanent positions. He did, however, gain worldwide fame for his numerous performances with Fonteyn. With her he appeared as Albrecht in Giselle (1962), Armand in Marguerite and Armand (which FREDERICK ASHTON created specifically for them), and Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake. Ashton also choreographed a solo dance for his London debut. In addition to dancing, Nureyev choreographed a number of productions. He revised Swan Lake (1964), and the London Festival Ballet produced his Romeo and Juliet in 1977. The latter was repeated at La Scala in Italy (1981) with Fonteyn as Lady Capulet. The Paris Opera Ballet, with which he served as
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artistic director from 1983 to 1989, staged his Manfred in 1979. The following year, the Berlin Ballet presented his version of The Nutcracker for the Berlin Ballet. Nureyev also dabbled in modern dance, appearing in productions for MARTHA GRAHAM, Murray Louis, and Paul Taylor. Graham created Lucifer for him in 1975, and three years later he appeared in Louis’s Canarsie Venus and Vivace. Nureyev acted in the films Valentino (1977) and Exposed (1983). With ROBERT HELPMANN he codirected a film version of Don Quixote in 1973. He is the subject of the films I Am a Dancer (1972) and Rudolf Nureyev (1991).
In 1983, when little was known about the disease, Nureyev contracted HIV. He lived for another decade. He was known for his ability to leap to great heights, his undying charisma, and his commanding stage presence. BIBLIOGRAPHY Barnes, Clive, Nureyev, 1982; Bland, Alexander, Fonteyn and Nureyev: The Story of a Partnership, 1979; Brown, Howard, Nureyev, 1993; Percival, John, Nureyev: Aspects of the Dancer, 1975; Solway, Diane, Nureyev: His Life, 1998; Stuart, Otis, Perpetual Motion: The Public and Private Lives of Rudolf Nureyev, 1995; Watson, Peter, Nureyev: A Biography, 1994.
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O’Casey, Sean (March 30, 1880–September 18, 1964) Playwright he Irish playwright Sean O’Casey is best known for his trio of plays produced in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin between 1923 and 1926, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars, characterized by their sensitive and realistic portrayals of workingclass people during the political turmoil in Ireland. Many critics feel that these plays make him the greatest Irish playwright of his generation. In his later dramas, rejected by his country and living in England, O’Casey continued to write about other aspects of Irish culture. O’Casey was born John Casey into a working-class Protestant family in Dublin. The family plunged into poverty after the death of his father in 1886. O’Casey attended school for only three years and thereafter took responsibility for teaching himself. His brother, Isaac, an actor, first introduced him to the theater in 1891. Financial circumstances forced him to go to work as a laborer at the age of 14. His first piece of published writing appeared in The Peasant and Irish Ireland in 1907. O’Casey immersed himself in the Irish nationalist cause between 1910 and 1915. He began using the Irish form of his name, Sean O’Casey, and learned Gaelic. A particular influence on him at this time was the Labour leader Jim Larkin, the model for Ayamonn Breydon in his play Red Roses for Me. A writer for the Irish Worker and a member of the paramilitary Irish Citizen Army, O’Casey drafted the constitution for the latter. However, his enthusiasm for the nationalist cause and organized politics waned after some time, and he did not participate in the Easter Rising of 1916. Instead, O’Casey turned his efforts to the theater. His early plays, for which he is most remembered, are realistic, tragicomic works
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that unfold in Dublin slums during the chaos and rebellions of the early twentieth century. The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), produced by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, takes place during IRA guerilla violence against the British and follows two men, Seamus Shields and the poet Donal Davoren. Minnie Powell proves to be their salvation in the midst of a Black and Tan raid. O’Casey is noted in his early plays for his characterizations of the common people in Dublin, incorporating their colloquialisms and street language, and his blend of tragedy and comedy in depicting the effects of the Irish conflict with England on them. Juno and the Paycock (1924) also produced at the Abbey Theatre, proved to be O’Casey’s most successful play and won the Hawthornden Prize. The story takes place against the backdrop of the civil war in Ireland. In the midst of the conflict, Juno, a hardworking, optimistic, and devout mother and wife, struggles unsuccessfully to hold on to her family. The Plough and the Stars (1926), set during the Easter Rising in 1916, provoked riots at its production on account of O’Casey’s unflattering portrayal of Irish nationalists. The play has no definite protagonist and depicts the survival struggles of residents in the midst of the trouble. In 1926, O’Casey moved permanently to England, where he married the Irish actress Eileen Carey Reynolds. Having broken with the Abbey Theatre over its refusal to produce his antiwar play The Silver Tassie (1929), he wrote plays for production in England. The Silver Tassie provoked a critical reaction from the poet and Irish nationalist WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS and a subsequent response from O’Casey; it was eventually produced at the Apollo Theatre in London. The Silver Tassie and succeeding plays such as Within the Gates (1934) broke with the earlier naturalistic style and were expressionistic.
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Other plays that followed include Windfalls (1934), The Flying Wasp (1937), and the antifascist The Star Turns Red (1940). The semiautobiographical Red Roses for Me (1946) takes place in Dublin during the Irish railway strike in 1911 and concerns the death of strike leader Ayamonn Breydon, who rejects the pleas of his loved ones and the security of a job to lead the strike. In his later plays, O’Casey became a commentator on Irish culture and its influences. The farce Purple Dust (1940) presents a negative portrait of two Englishmen, Stoke and Poges, who go to Ireland to restore and live in a mansion during World War II. Cock-A-Doodle Dandy (1949) depicts the struggle for control over an Irish village by what O’Casey saw as forces of good and evil. O’Casey attacked Irish intellectuals in his last major play, Behind the Green Curtains (1961).
O’Casey’s other plays include The Bishop’s Bonfire (1955), The Green Crow (1956), and The Drums of Father Ned (1958). His six-volume autobiography appeared between 1939 and 1956 and was later published as Mirror in My House (1956) in the United States and Autobiographies (1963) in Britain. Two volumes of his letters, edited by David Krause, were published in 1975 and 1980. BIBLIOGRAPHY Atkinson, Brooks, Sean O’Casey, From Times Past, 1982; Greaves, C. Desmond, Sean O’Casey: Politics and Art, 1979; Hunt, Hugh, Sean O’Casey, 1980; Kosok, Heinz, O’Casey The Dramatist, 1985; Krause, David, Sean O’Casey and His World, 1976; Mitchell, Jack, The Essential O’Casey: A Study of the Twelve Major Plays of Sean O’Casey, 1980; O’Connor, Garry, Sean O’Casey: A Life, 1988; Scrimgeour, James R., Sean O’Casey, 1978.
Oe, Kenzaburo (January 31, 1935– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Essayist idely hailed as the finest novelist in post–World War II Japan, Oe Kenzaburo, to give his name in the traditional Japanese order, drew heavily from the World War II and postwar atmosphere in Japan for his early works. The birth of his mentally handicapped son, coupled with his interest in the postwar politics, added a new dimension to his writing in the 1960s. Describing him as one “who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today,” the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. Oe was born into a wealthy family in the mountain village of Ose in Shikoku, Japan,
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which provided the setting for much of his fiction. The family lost most of its considerable landholdings after World War II. Oe studied at the University of Tokyo from 1954 to 1959, and during these years his writing began to gain notice. His first major work to see publication was his Lavish Are the Dead (1957), which appeared in the magazine Bungakukai. His first novel, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (1958), takes place in a desolate mountain village during the war. Fifteen delinquent boys, unwanted by their parents, have been evacuated to the hostile village and struggle unsuccessfully to establish themselves in the midst of a plague. The Catch (1958) won the Akutagawa Prize and also takes place during wartime, when a village finds itself holding a
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black airman captive. The less successful Our Age was published the following year. In the 1960s some of Oe’s fiction developed a more political tone directed against the conservative element embodied in Japan’s “Emperor System.” The stories “Seventeen” and “A Political Boy is Now Dead,” both 1961, were inspired by the 1960 assassination of the chairman of the Japanese Socialist Party, Asanuma Inejiro, who died by the hand of 17year-old Yamaguchi Otoya. These two stories generated a flurry of objection from a wide spectrum of political groups. Oe’s marriage in 1960 produced a child three years later who effected a major change on his writing. The child, Hikari, was born with a head abnormality that resulted in brain damage. Hikari inspired A Personal Matter (1964), considered by many critics to be Oe’s best work. The heavily psychological novel follows the protagonist, Bird, through the trauma surrounding the birth of a retarded son. Bird hopes the son will die, but the child lives, and he even plans to kill him. In a change of heart, Bird determines to accept responsibility for raising the child. The Silent Cry (1967) is at once an examination of family relationships, politics, and the relationship of Japan’s past to its present. Mitsu, an introverted scholar, is the older brother of the outspoken political activist Takashi. The brothers return to their family’s village, where Takashi sets himself up against a wealthy Korean trying to establish a large, modern store. Takashi’s life ends in disgrace and suicide. The Silent Cry is one of Oe’s most stylistically complex narratives, interweaving a story set in the village’s past with Mitsu’s and Takashi’s present. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is another recurrent theme in Oe’s work. The essays in Hiroshima Notes (1965) draw from his visit to the city bombed during World War II. In the novel The Pinch-Runner Memorandum (1976), Oe combines his examination of the nuclear age with the other major theme in
his writings, a father and his mentally disabled son. In the story, a nuclear engineer with an 8-year-old retarded son miraculously becomes younger as his son matures. The son’s mature voice incites his father to join him against the Patron, who plans to finance the manufacture of nuclear weapons in Japan. An Echo of Heaven (1989) is based on the tragic life of Marie Kuraki, a teacher, intellectual, and spiritual doubter in search of fulfillment. Kuraki’s two sons, one retarded and the other injured in an accident, both committed suicide. After her divorce, Kuraki sought consolation and fulfillment on a commune and later a Mexican-Japanese farm before her death from breast cancer at age 45. Two of Oe’s 1996 works depict the triumph of a family’s effort to raise a handicapped child. In A Healing Family (1996), Hikari shines as a successful composer with his own recordings who has, in this respect, overcome his mental disability. A Quiet Life (1996) is told in the form of a journal kept by a writer’s daughter, the philosophical Ma-Chan. Her father has gone to California to take a university post, leaving her to care for her retarded brother-musician. Somersault (1999), about a Japanese religious cult inspired by the Aum Shinrikyo cult that released sarin gas into the Tokyo subway system in 1995, is among his most recent works translated into English. His other writings include the short-story collection Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1969), The Floodwaters Have Come in unto My Soul (1973), Contemporary Games (1979), Awake, New Man (1983), the science fiction work The Treatment Tower (1990), and The Changeling (2001).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Napier, Susan Jolliffe, Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, 1991; Wilson, Michiko N., The Marginal World of Oe Kenzaburo, 1986.
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O’Faolain, Sean (February 22, 1900–April 20, 1991) Short-Story Writer, Novelist, Editor, Essayist ean O’Faolain’s realistic fiction formed part of a revival of Irish literature in the early twentieth century, part of what is often referred to as the Irish Renaissance. His first published stories unfold against the backdrop of the Troubles in Ireland, and his later works examine questions of love, religion, loyalties, and other themes in a distinctly Irish setting. O’Faolain was born John Francis Whelan in County Cork, Ireland. His father was a staunch supporter of the British Empire, an attitude against which O’Faolain rebelled as a teenager. His mother’s piety did not suit his outlook either, and the mature O’Faolain became decidedly anticlerical. As a youth, he enjoyed going to the Cork Opera House and visiting relatives in the country. In 1918, O’Faolain entered University College, Cork, part of the National University of Ireland. Affected by Britain’s suppression of the 1916 Easter Rising, he began to study Gaelic, changed his name to its Gaelic version, and became involved with the Irish Republican Army. O’Faolain fought with the Republican side during the Irish Civil War. In 1924, he earned his M.A. in Irish from the National University, where he also received an M.A. in English two years later. Study at the National University was followed by two years at Harvard, where he earned another M.A. Not yet having established himself as a writer, O’Faolain taught in England, the United States, and Ireland in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He married Eileen Gould, who wrote children’s stories, in 1928. His stories form part of an awakening in national literature in Ireland in the early twentieth century. O’Faolain shied away from the romantic leanings of other countrymen such as WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS and opted for a style more closely related to nineteenth-century Russian
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Realists like Ivan Turgenev and Anton Chekhov. His early stories, such as the title story of the collection Midsummer Night Madness and Other Stories (1932), are set during the Troubles in Ireland. Opposition to the British is a given in the stories, but O’Faolain adds a picture in which the fractured style reflects the disunity among Irish revolutionaries. Narrated by an Irish rebel named John, the story concerns Alexander Henn, a wealthy Anglo-Irish aristocrat and bachelor who is neither at home with his fellow Irish nor with British aristocrats. Stevey Long impregnates Gypsy Gammle but implicates Henn and threatens to destroy his home if he will not marry her. Henn obliges and so does Gypsy, who really loves Long. O’Faolain’s later stories treat themes of Irish life, love, and the meaning of existence. They include the collections A Purse of Coppers (1937), set in late 1920s and early 1930s Ireland; The Man Who Invented Sin and Other Stories (1948); I Remember! I Remember! (1961); and The Heat of the Sun (1966). The novel A Nest of Simple Folk (1933), the first work to attract widespread notice, begins in 1854 and portrays the downfall of an Irish rebel. Its protagonist, Leo O’Donnell, is raised by his maternal aunts at the family estate, Foxehall, after the death of his father. He changes his name to the more genteel Leo Foxe-Donnel and eventually acquires the estate. After spending many years living recklessly without any aim in life, Leo finds his mission with the Fenians when he hears James Stephens. His involvement in a plot against the police lands him in prison for a decade, after which he resumes his rebel activities. He marries a cousin, Julie Keene, and is arrested and imprisoned for five years. On account of all of these events, Leo loses Foxehall and the support of his friends and family.
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He fights in the Easter Uprising, where he dies. The elderly Cornelius Crone looks back on the story of his younger life in Bird Alone (1936). Crone, like many O’Faolain characters, is a rebel and part of a family of divided religious and political loyalties. Come Back to Erin (1940) concerns the Hogan-Hannafey family of Cork. O’Faolain’s other works include A Life of Daniel O’Connell (1938), his autobiography Vive Moi! (1964), The Irish: A Character Study (1949), An Irish Journey (1940), the short-story collections Selected Stories (1978) and The Collected Stories of Sean O’Faolain (1980), the novel And Again?
(1979), and The Great O’Neill : A Biography of Hugh O’Neill Earl of Tyrone, 1550–1616 (1942). O’Faolain served as director of the Arts Council of Ireland from 1957 to 1959. From 1940 to 1946, he edited The Bell, a magazine devoted to Irish culture, and he contributed to the periodical after his editorship. He was elected to the Irish Academy of Letters in 1932 and lectured widely at universities in the United States.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Doyle, Paul A., Sean O’Faolain, 1968; Harmon, Maurice, Sean O’Faolain, 1994.
O’Keeffe, Georgia Totto (November 15, 1887–March 6, 1986) Painter eorgia O’Keeffe was among the most successful female American artists of the early twentieth century. Known particularly for her paintings of the American southwest and of New York architecture, she blended realism with abstraction. Natural elements, from rocks and shells to landscapes and bones, were her most frequent subjects. O’Keeffe was the second of seven children born in a dairy farmhouse in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her father immigrated to the United States from Hungary, and both parents were dairy farmers. As a child, O’Keeffe attended Town Hall School in Wisconsin and studied art privately under Sara Mann, a local watercolorist. Both her teachers and her parents recognized and encouraged her artistic talent. She later attended Sacred Heart Academy in Madison, Wisconsin, living there as a boarder in 1901 and 1902. In 1902, the family moved south to Williamsburg, Virginia. O’Keeffe remained in Wis-
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consin to attend Madison High School until 1903, when she joined her family in Virginia. There she attended and boarded at Chatham Episcopal Institute, from which she graduated in 1905. She subsequently enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied in 1906 and 1907. In 1907 and 1908, she attended the Art Students League in New York, where her most important teacher was the Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase (1849–1916). The following year, O’Keeffe won the art league’s William Merritt Chase still-life prize—a scholarship to attend summer school in Lake George, New York—for her oil painting Untitled (Dead Rabbit With Copper Pot). Following her summer classes, she worked as an illustrator in Chicago until 1910, when she moved home to Virginia to recover from a case of the measles and assist her family with its faltering finances. From that period until
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1912, O’Keeffe taught art to elementary school children in Texas and did not paint. While attending a class for art teachers at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1912, she was introduced to the work of painter Arthur Wesley Dow (1857–1922) through instructor Alon Bement (Dow’s colleague at Teachers College at Columbia University). Dow emphasized light/dark contrasts and harmony of line and color in compositions, which was a formative influence on the style O’Keeffe developed. For the next several years, O’Keeffe taught art, spending some time as Bement’s assistant, in Columbia, South Carolina, and at West Texas State Normal College. While teaching in South Carolina, O’Keeffe created a series of abstract, innovative charcoal drawings heavily influenced by Dow’s ideas. The drawings eventually made their way into the hands of photographer and impresario ALFRED STIEGLITZ (1864–1946), who organized exhibitions of her work and secured a spot for her in his niece’s apartment in New York. The pair quickly fell in love, prompting Stieglitz to leave his wife and live with O’Keeffe, and the two married in 1924 (as soon as they legally could). The couple divided their time between Manhattan and Lake George. O’Keeffe became a frequent subject of Stieglitz’s photography, often in the nude, and allowed him to exhibit them. Through Stieglitz, O’Keeffe met early modernists in New York, such as the painter Charles Demuth (1883–1935), the painter Arthur Dove (1880–1946), the painter and poet Marsden Hartley (1877–1943), the photographer Paul Strand (1890–1976), and the photographer and painter Edward Steichen (1879–1973), all of whom were to influence the development of her painting style. She also viewed works of avant-garde European painters at Stieglitz’s gallery. Stieglitz began to organize annual exhibitions of her work in 1923, a practice he continued with passion until his death. Although she had started out as a watercolorist, O’Keeffe’s medium of choice was now
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oil painting. Her 1920s paintings are marked by close-ups of natural and architectural forms created on a large scale. Paintings of large flowers, such as Petunia, No. 2 (1924) were typical of this period and formed part of a 1925 exhibit that also included architectural paintings of New York buildings such as City Night. Radiator Building—Night, New York (1927) is another noteworthy painting from this era in her career. With her name already known from the controversy surrounding Stieglitz’s nude pictures of her, O’Keeffe earned a reputation as one of the most important American artists of her time, and her paintings sold for increasingly large sums of money. In 1929, O’Keeffe traveled to New Mexico with Strand’s wife Rebecca. The two started out in Santa Fe and ended up as guests of arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879–1962) in Taos. For the next two decades, she spent part of nearly every year working there. Fascinated with ancient bones, the southwestern landscape, and the state’s unique architectural forms, she used them as subjects for her paintings such as her Rancho de Taos Church series (1929–1930). In 1932, O’Keeffe suffered a nervous breakdown, followed by a hospital stay in 1933. She spent part of 1933 and 1934 recovering in Bermuda and subsequently returned to New Mexico. Upon her return, she discovered Ghost Ranch, an area with richly colored cliffs that became subjects of some of her most famous landscapes. In 1940, she bought a house on the ranch. Although she loved New Mexico, she still painted and exhibited in New York. Her New York exhibitions brought her enormous popularity, and both the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art honored her with retrospectives in 1943 and 1946, respectively. In 1945 she bought a home in Abiquiu near Ghost Ranch, a setting that inspired many of her later paintings. Stieglitz passed away in 1946, after which O’Keeffe spent several years in New York. By 1949, however, she had made
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New Mexico her permanent home and exhibited rarely. In the 1950s, she made a series of paintings depicting the architectural aspects of her Abiquiu house. During that decade, she also traveled the world, gaining inspiration for such paintings as Above the Clouds I (1962/1963) that derived from her first aerial views from a plane. O’Keeffe’s eyesight began to deteriorate in the early 1970s due to macular degeneration. She met the ceramicist Juan Hamilton (1946– ) in 1973. She and Hamilton became close friends, and he did household chores for her, taught her to work with clay, and assisted her with day-to-day affairs and her book Georgia O’Keeffe (1976). Her final oil painting, The Beyond, was completed in 1972. During the last years of her life, she worked in watercolor, charcoal, and graphite. In 1984, with her health in decline, O’Keeffe moved to Santa Fe to be closer to medical treatment. She died in 1986, and her cremated ashes were scattered around the Pedernal, a mountain within view of her house at Ghost Ranch. Much of her work now resides at the
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, founded in 1997 in Santa Fe. O’Keeffe received numerous honorary degrees from universities. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1962. In 1970, the Whitney Museum of American Art sponsored the first major exhibition of her work since Stieglitz’s death. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan awarded her the National Medal of Arts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Constantino, Maria, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1995; Lisle, Laurie, Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, 1986; .Messinger, Lisa Mintz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 2001; O’Keeffe, Georgia, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1976; Patten, Christine Taylor, Miss O’Keeffe, 1992; Pollitzer, Anita, A Woman On Paper: Georgia O’Keeffe, 1988; Robinson, Roxana, Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, 1989; Turner, Robyn, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1991; Winter, Jeannette, My Name is Georgia: A Portrait, 1998. www.okeeffemuseum.org.
Okigbo, Christopher (August 16, 1932–August 1967) Poet, Editor lthough he published only three volumes of poetry before civil war cut his life short, Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo is one of the most widely read and translated Nigerian poets of the twentieth century. His poetry explores cultural and religious conflicts between Africans and Europeans. Okigbo was born into an Ibo family in Ojoto, Nigeria, and later incorporated traditional Ibo myth and culture into his poetry. He attended Government College in Umuahia and went on to study Western classics at the Uni-
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versity of Ibadan. After receiving his degree in 1956, he held several jobs as a teacher, librarian, and secretary. Okigbo’s published writings consist of three major poetry collections: Heavensgate (1962), Limits (1964), and Silences (1965). His work incorporates his native Ibo mythology, which is often contrasted with Christianity. Okigbo, who was raised in a Roman Catholic family, portrays the church as a destructive force on traditional African culture. Other major themes in his poetry are the Nigerian political climate and his struggles as
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an artist and poet. Okigbo dedicated as much time to the form of his work as he did to its content. He combined both African and Western stylistic elements and was influenced by English-language poets such as T. S. ELIOT and EZRA POUND. The sound and imagery of his verse were meticulously crafted, and he frequently employed terse phrases. His poetry is often difficult to understand, and some critics fault his work for lack of clarity. Okigbo, fighting with Biafran rebels seeking independence from Nigeria, lost his life in that country’s civil war in 1967. At the time of his death he planned to found a publishing
company with the Nigerian novelist CHINUA ACHEBE. An edition of his collected poetry was published in 1971 as Labyrinths, with Paths of Thunder and was followed by Collected Poetry in 1986. During his lifetime Okigbo’s poetry appeared in the literary magazines Black Orpheus and Transition, and he served as an editor of the latter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Egudu, Romanus, Four Modern West African Poets, 1977; Nwoga, Donatus Ibe, ed., Critical Perspectives on Christopher Okigbo, 1984.
Olivier, Laurence (May 22, 1907–July 11, 1989) Actor, Director, Producer aurence Kerr Olivier developed parallel careers in film and the theater and was perhaps Britain’s most accomplished twentieth-century actor. Known for his ability to portray diverse characters, he appeared in leading roles and directed and/or produced dozens of successful films for the screen and for television. In the theater he acted many Shakespearean roles, codirected the Old Vic from 1944 to 1949, and served as the director of London’s National Theatre from 1962 to 1973. Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England. Having had some background in acting and the opera, his father had turned to teaching and then to the clergy. Olivier’s mother favored him but died when he was young. As a child he was sent to the All Saints choir school and for a time considered becoming a clergyman. At school Olivier performed often in plays, quickly become a favorite among the spectators. The actress Ellen Terry saw him perform and was impressed with his ability. His father, too, recognized his talent and with
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Laurence Olivier (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62103707)
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the assistance of a scholarship sent him to Elsie Fogerty’s Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art. As he had at the All Saints school, Olivier played many Shakespearean roles. His professional debut came in 1925, and two years later he joined Barry Jackson’s Birmingham Repertory. He appeared in such plays as R. C. Sheriff’s Journey’s End and began to act in London theaters, performing such roles as John Hardy in The Stranger Within. Olivier debuted in the United States in 1929, but his real success came when he appeared in the original production of NOE¨ L COWARD’s Private Lives. Soon afterward he shared the roles of Romeo and Mercutio with JOHN GIELGUD in a London production of Romeo and Juliet, with Peggy Ashcroft as Juliet. In 1930 Olivier married Jill Esmond, the first of his three actress-wives. The success of Private Lives led to his first film, Temporary Widow (1930). By the late 1930s Olivier had become a film star, appearing with second wife Vivien Leigh in Fire over England (1937) and making a number of films in the United States. Among these are Wuthering Heights (1939), in which he starred as Heathcliffe, Rebecca (1939), and Pride and Prejudice (1940). In 1941 he appeared in Lady Hamilton (1941; American title That Hamilton Woman). During the same period Olivier was busy appearing in Shakespearean roles at the Old Vic Theatre. He played Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (1937). TYRONE GUTHRIE directed him as the title character in Hamlet, and Olivier played Hamlet to Leigh’s Ophelia at a production of the play at Elsinore Castle in Denmark. He and Leigh played Romeo and Juliet in New York in 1940. After serving as a lieutenant in the Fleet Air Arm in World War II, Olivier codirected the Old Vic with RALPH RICHARDSON until 1949. He continued to appear in leading Shakespearean roles, including the title role in Richard III, Hotspur in Henry IV, Part I, and Justice Shallow in Henry IV, Part II. In film Olivier produced, directed, and acted in film versions of Henry V (1944) and
Hamlet (1948). He also produced The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), an adaptation of TERENCE RATTIGAN’S The Sleeping Prince in which he starred with Marilyn Monroe. He appeared in The Beggar’s Opera (1953); Richard III (1956), which won a British Film Academy Award; the film version of JOHN OSBORNE’s The Entertainer (1960); and Spartacus (1960) with Kirk Douglas and Peter Ustinov. For his performance in Sleuth (1972) with Michael Caine he received a New York Film Critics Award. In spite of the overwhelming success of his films, Olivier continued to work in the theater. In 1961 he was appointed director of the Chichester Festival Theatre. The same year he married Joan Plowright, with whom he had appeared in The Entertainer. Olivier directed London’s National Theatre Company from 1962 to 1973 and continued to act as well. On numerous occasions he played Astrov in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, starring at various times with MARGARET LEIGHTON (1945) and SYBIL THORNDIKE (1962). Among Olivier’s later films are Marathon Man (1976); The Boys from Brazil (1978); FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI’s Jesus of Nazareth (1978), in which he played Nicodemus; and Richard Wagner (1982). He was also involved in numerous television projects. He earned Emmys for his performances in Long Day’s Journey into Night (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975), with KATHARINE HEPBURN, and the series Brideshead Revisited (1982). In 1976 he played Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which also featured Natalie Wood. His 1983 television version of King Lear was also highly acclaimed. Olivier won numerous Academy Awards over his career. He was knighted in 1947 for services to the theater and given a life peerage as Baron Olivier of Brighton in 1970. He received the Order of Merit in 1981. His memoirs, Confessions of an Actor, were published in 1982 and his On Acting in 1986.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bragg, Melvin, Laurence Olivier, 1984; Holden,
Anthony, Laurence Olivier, 1988; Lewis, Roger, The Real Life of Laurence Olivier, 1997; Spoto, Donald, Laurence Olivier: A Biography, 1992.
O’Neill, Eugene Gladstone (October 16, 1888-November 27, 1953) Playwright idely viewed as a transformational figure, Eugene O’Neill launched modern theater to a broad audience and remains the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a keen observer of human behavior who lived something of a vagabond life even at the height of his success, credited Swedish modernist playwright August Strindberg as a major influence, and presented something new to the American stage: reality, serious ideas, and the internal lives of his characters. As O’Neill noted in a speech read upon his receipt of the Nobel Prize: “. . . it is not only my work which is being honored, but the work of all my colleagues in America. . . this Nobel Prize is a symbol of the recognition by Europe of the coming-of-age of the American theatre.” O’Neill was born in a New York City hotel located at Broadway and 43rd St. His father,
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Eugene O’Neill (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42540)
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James, was a successful traveling actor who was well-known for his ongoing portrayal of the Count of Monte Cristo, a role he played more than 6,000 times. His mother, Ella, was a devout Catholic who hailed from proper middle class roots and never really took to the touring life her husband’s job demanded of the family, even though they returned to a New London, Connecticut home, every summer. O’Neill had two older brothers: Jamie, to whom he was close, who died in his forties from alcoholism, and Edmund, who died before O’Neill’s birth. Shattered by the loss, Ella also became a morphine addict—a drug to which she was introduced to dull the pain of her third child’s birth. When he was seven, O’Neill was sent to the first of two Catholic boarding schools where he spent the next eight years feeling lonely and rejected. At 14, he enrolled at Betts Academy in Stamford, Connecticut, a more liberal environment that better suited his withdrawn demeanor. There, he consumed the classics. O’Neill went on to enroll at Princeton University for only nine months, dropping out in favor of drinking and carousing with his brother. Thus precipitated his “lost years,” which lasted about a half-decade, in which he drank to excess, took up with prostitutes, and took to the high seas, returning from one trip, to Honduras, with malaria. He also attempted suicide, got married, fathered a son, dissolved his marriage, and developed tuberculosis. His six months of recuperation at Gaylord Farm Sanitarium in Wallingford, Connecticut, both
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saved his life and launched his career. This was where he began to write plays. Upon his release, O’Neill headed to Harvard to study play writing with George Pierce Baker; this enterprise was funded by his father. O’Neill returned a writer. During the summer of 1916, the Provincetown Players, progenitors of early modern American theater, famously produced O’Neill’s first play at their wharf-side theater at the tip of Cape Cod. Bound East for Cardiff was the first of his one-act plays performed by the troupe, which went on to establish a theater in New York’s Greenwich Village. In 1920, O’Neill’s first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, was produced on Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize that same year. Two years later, he won his second, for Anna Christie, the tale of a girl forced into prostitution at a young age who tries to hide her past and find love with a young sailor. Strange Interlude claimed a third Pulitzer in 1928, with its soliloquies and nine acts. O’Neill’s output was prodigious: between 1920 and 1943 he wrote 20 major long plays and numerous shorter pieces that include those generally viewed as the “sea plays” drawing on his life as a seaman—such as his first play, as well as his autobiographical plays. He married the writer Agnes Boulton (whom he met at a Greenwich Village tavern known as “The Hell Hole”) in 1918, a union that lasted until 1927, when he fell in love with the woman who became his third wife, actress Carlotta Monterey. For nine years, however, O’Neill and Agnes shared a productive life as well as two children, Shane and Oona. This was also a time of tragedy for O’Neill: his father died in 1920, his mother died soon thereafter, and not long after that, his brother Jamie died. O’Neill himself was a distant father whose sons both committed suicide. Daughter Oona, whose father cut her off when she married the much-older CHARLIE CHAPLIN at age 18, went on to enjoy a stable family life. In 1936, overworked and ill, O’Neill, with Carlotta, moved to a house in Seattle so he
could convalesce. Word arrived during this time that he had won the Nobel Prize, but he did not travel to Stockholm to receive his award in person. In a speech he wrote that was delivered by the American charge d’affaires, O’Neill said: “. . . my plays are only, through luck of time and circumstance, the most widely-known examples of the work done by American playwrights in the years since the World War. . . .” He and Carlotta built Tao House in Danville, California—now owned by the National Park Service—with the $40,000 prize. The house provided O’Neill a sanctuary from which he wrote many of his best later plays including The Iceman Cometh, Moon for the Misbegotten, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, in which the seeds of his own tragic family life spilled forth. Considered an autobiographical play, O’Neill asked that it not be released until 25 years after his death. His wife waited three years. It posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. O’Neill developed Parkinson’s disease in the 1940s. In 1944, the O’Neills sold Tao House and moved to San Francisco. For the last two years of his life, O’Neill lived at the Hotel Shelton in Boston, where he died of pneumonia on November 27, 1953. Among O’Neill’s last words are reported to be these: “Born in a hotel room—and God damn it— died in a hotel room.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Readings on Eugene O’Neill, Greenhaven Press, 1998; Byer, Jackson R. and Mary C. Hartig, Facts on File Companion to American Drama, 2003; Gelb, Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O’Neill, 1973; Sheaffer, Louis, O’Neill: Son and Artist, 1973; Sheaffer, Louis,. O’Neill: Son and Playright, 1968, Sternlicht, Sanford, Reader’s Guide to Modern American Drama, 2002. www.eoneill.com www.nps.gov. www.nobel.se.
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Orff, Carl (July 10, 1895–March 29, 1982) Composer est known for his oratorio-mime Carmina Burana, the German composer Carl Orff aimed at creating a “total theater” experience that combines music, mime, and dance. Orff also developed extensive ideas on music education. Orff was born in Munich into a family with a tradition of prominent military men. He studied at the Munich Academy of Music and later with the German composer Heinrich Kaminski. Orff wrote his first opera, Gisei, in 1913. After serving in World War I, he conducted at Munich, Mannheim, and Darmstadt. With the German dancer Dorothee Gu¨nther, Orff founded in 1924 the Gu¨nther School for gymnastics, dance, and music. The following year he finished his first version of Monteverdi’s Orfeo (revised in 1931 and 1940). He began to develop extensive theories on educating children in music, on which he elaborated in Schulwerk (1930; Music for Children). Orff edited a number of seventeenth-century operas and from 1930 to 1933 worked on the fairy tale opera Die Kluge (The Clever Woman). In 1937 he produced the work widely considered his masterpiece, Carmina Burana. An oratorio based on the spirited medieval poems of the wandering scholars, the work combines accessible and delightful songs, mime, and dance. For his other works
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he turned to both medieval mystery plays and Greek tragedy, as in his trilogy of musical dramas Antigonae (1949), Oedipus der Tyrann (1959), and Prometheus (1966). Orff sought to integrate folk song, dance, mime, and opera to create a “total theater” experience. The use of ancient and exotic instruments formed an integral part of his creations, and he devoted special attention to the construction of rhythm. Catulli carmina (1943; Songs of Catullus) and Trionfo di Afrodite (1953; The Triumph of Aphrodite), complete the trilogy begun with Carmina Burana. Other works include Die Bernauerin (1947; The Tragedy of Agnes Bernauer), the story of a bath attendant sentenced to death for impersonating a duchess and marrying a duke; an Easter cantata; the farcical Astutuli (1953), often seen as a satire on Germany’s Nazi leaders; Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione (1956); a nativity play; Ludus de nato infante mirificus (1960); De temporum fine comdia (1973; Play of the End of Time). Orff recorded the majority of his works.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Orff, Gertrud, The Orff Music Therapy: Active Furthering of the Development of the Child, 1974.
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Orton, Joe (January 1, 1933–August 9, 1967) Playwright, Novelist efore his tragic death at age 34 Joe Orton found international success with three exaggerated black comedies for the stage. Orton recognized no limits in his farcical satires of conventional mores, sexual preoccupations, dramatic conventions, societal expectations, and religious hypocrisy. He also wrote several novels, which remain unpublished, and television dramas. Orton was born John Kingsley Orton into a working-class family in Leicester, Leicestershire, England. His mother was an aggressive woman who liked to sing in pubs, and his father worked as a gardener for the city. Having first failed his exams at a business college, Orton attended Clark’s College from 1945 to 1947. In 1949 he joined several dramatic groups, including the Leicester Dramatic Society. Two years later he entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). At the RADA he met Kenneth L. Halliwell, the primary influence on his life and writing. The two lived together for the rest of their lives. Orton showed little promise as an actor and under Halliwell’s influence began to write. Orton and Halliwell co-wrote a number of unpublished novels, among which are The Silver Bucket, The Mechanical Womb, The Last Days of Sodom, and The Boy Hairdresser. Orton’s solo effort Between Us Girls also remained unpublished. In 1959 Orton and Halliwell began their practice of defacing library books, substituting obscene illustrations and other emendations for the original material in the books. The pair enjoyed sitting in the library and watching shocked readers until the authorities pinpointed them as the offenders in 1962. Both spent six months in jail. In the meantime, Orton had written his only published novel, The Vision of Gombold, which appeared posthumously as Head to Toe.
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Following his prison sentence Orton secured a literary agent, Peggy Ramsay, and made the first of several visits to Tangier. His first success came with his 1963 radio play The Ruffian on the Stair (from The Boy Hairdresser), broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964), the first of his three full-length plays, impressed TERENCE RATTIGAN and enjoyed success on London’s West End. As in all of Orton’s theatrical scenarios, the family of Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a dysfunctional one driven by obsessions, secrets, and uncontrollable sexual passions. When Kath brings home Sloane from the library, her father Kemp recognizes him as the murderer of his former employer. Kath seduces Sloane, as does her brother Eddie. Sloane becomes a double murderer when he kills Kemp, who has threatened to expose his guilt, and Kath sits lonely and pregnant at the play’s close. Gloomy as the plot sounds, the play in fact had strong farcical elements. Orton’s farces grew more farcical with each play. The unsavory characters of Loot (1965) include Dennis and his friend Hal, who are busy trying to stash money from a bank robbery in the coffin of Hal’s recently deceased mother, Mrs. McLeavy. Their attempts to get rid of Mrs. McLeavy’s corpse, whose place in the coffin has been taken by the money, are complicated by the police officer Truscott and Nurse Fay, who first had eyes for Mr. McLeavy and now has her sights set on Dennis. What the Butler Saw (1969), Orton’s final full-length farce, was not performed until after his death. Dr. Prentice is a psychiatrist and director of a mental institution who is not unknown as a seducer of secretaries. His latest victim is the interviewee Geraldine Barclay, whom he is in the middle of trying to seduce when his sex-obsessed and bisexual wife
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shows up. The hotel page, one of her recent affairs, is trying to blackmail her. The ensuing confusion leads to a comical series of changes in clothes and identities. Aside from his theater works, Orton finished several television dramas, among which are The Good and Faithful Servant (1964), The Erpingham Camp (1965), and Funeral Games (1968). The latter starred HAROLD PINTER’s wife Vivien Merchant and was Orton’s most savage attack on religion. The central characters are two demented clerics, Pringle and McCorquodale, who both attack unfaithful wives. In one case, the clergyman’s obsession leads him to murder his wife.
In 1967 Orton wrote a screenplay entitled Up against It for THE BEATLES, but the rock group later rejected it. Later that year Halliwell, suffering from mental deterioration and filled with jealousy of Orton’s success, beat him to death and then committed suicide.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bigsby, C. W. E., Joe Orton, 1982; Charney, Maurice, Joe Orton, 1984; Lahr, John, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton, 1978; Rusinko, Susan, Joe Orton, 1995.
Orwell, George (June 25, 1903–January 21, 1950) Novelist, Essayist, Journalist eorge Orwell is the pseudonym of the English writer Eric Arthur Blair, most famous for his novels depicting the evils of totalitarian regimes, Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell was also a prolific journalist and essayist, known for his independent intelligence and clear, direct, often understated prose. Orwell was born in Motihari, India. His father worked in the Indian civil service, and his mother, of French descent, was the daughter of a teak merchant. Orwell was an introverted and dejected child. He returned with his family to England and enrolled in a boarding school, where he excelled in his studies. In 1917 he began studying at Eton College on a scholarship. After he graduated he became district superintendent in the Imperial Police in Burma. In this position, Orwell acquired a distaste for British rule over Burma and imperialism in general. He abandoned his post in 1927 and returned to England to pursue writing. Desiring to learn about the experiences of
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the poor at first hand, Orwell dressed himself as a tramp and spent much of his time in the slums of the East End in London and in Paris. Orwell based his first books on his experiences as a young adult. Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) records his experiences living as a tramp in the Paris and London slums. Burmese Days (1934) draws from his years working for the Imperial Police in Burma. The main character in A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), Dorothy Hare, is a dejected girl who lives a bland existence going through the motions her father and her church require of her. Dorothy’s life changes when she loses her memory and embarks on a series of personal adventures—adventures that recall Orwell’s own experiences tramping and teaching. Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) depicts a young, unsuccessful writer who works in a bookstore and is disturbed by the prevailing desire among people to pursue power and money. Like Orwell, he has given up a career to become a writer.
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Given his experiences, it is not surprising that after Orwell returned to England in 1927 he began to embrace increasingly radical political beliefs. He eventually became a socialist and wrote a number of political treatises. The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) was an account of the lives of coal miners in northern England. The same year Orwell went to Spain as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War and ended up fighting for the Republican side. He was shot through the throat at Teruel and by the end of the year returned to England, a fugitive from the Communists, who accused him of “Trotskyism.” By the time he left, he had developed a strong dislike not only of fascism, but also of Communism. His Homage to Catalonia (1938) tells the story of the time he spent in Spain during the war. The novel Coming Up for Air (1939) laments the destruction of England through industrialization and the threat of impending war. After the outbreak of World War II Orwell worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and later for the leftist Tribune. He is most famous for his final two novels, Animal Farm (1944) and 1984 (1949), both depicting the evils of totalitarian Communism. In the former, a mixed group of farm animals throw off their heartless master, a symbolic representative of capitalism. Their attempt to establish a utopia fails when the pigs take control, using the slogan that all animals are equal, but that some are “more equal,” and establish a totalitarian dictatorship. Finally, a power struggle erupts among the pigs themselves. Although Orwell earned money from his writing, he never had a really successful book until Animal Farm, whose
allegorical picture of the totalitarian end of the hopes of the Russian Revolution found popular favor after the war, when the full horror of Stalin’s dictatorship became obvious to everyone. Animal Farm is told in the form of a beast fable, but the nightmarish world depicted in 1984 brings the evils of totalitarianism to life. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is an average worker for an omnipresent government headed by the mysterious “Big Brother.” Big Brother is watching everybody through surveillance and spies, and everyone is brainwashed into supporting the system. When it becomes apparent that Winston dislikes and distrusts Big Brother, the full weight of the regime comes down on him. He has an affair with a woman, Julia, and together they hope to find a way to escape. Both are arrested by the Thought Police, tortured, and brainwashed into supporting the system, in the end completely betraying each other. Orwell died of tuberculosis shortly after completing 1984. In addition to his novels and political treatises, he wrote many articles and essays, which were published as The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell (1968). Some of his essays are still seen as classics, especially “Politics and the English Language,” with its clear and powerful indictment of the way fuzzy thinking and the desire to manipulate corrupt language.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Crick, Bernard R., George Orwell: A Life, 1982; Shelden, Michael, Orwell: The Authorized Biography, 1991.
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Osborne, John (December 12, 1929–December 24, 1994) Playwright, Actor, Producer, Director ohn James Osborne was the first of the “Angry Young Men” who emerged to challenge the complacencies and rigidities of society in Great Britain after World War II. Look Back in Anger, first produced in 1956, was the earliest success in his body of plays showcasing angry and disillusioned protagonists. Osborne also acted, directed, produced, and wrote for both the screen and television. Osborne was born in the London suburb of Fulham; he endured an unhappy childhood. His father, a commercial artist, was an invalid and died in 1941. Osborne’s troubled relationships with women began with his mother and extended through his five marriages. After his father’s death, a charitable organization financed his education at Belmont College, Devon. The environment brought out Osborne’s rebellious nature, and school officials expelled him after he struck the headmaster. Following his expulsion, Osborne returned to London and worked briefly as a journalist for various periodicals, including Gas World and Miller. His first exposure to the theater came when he tutored children in a juvenile acting company. The year 1948 brought his debut as an actor, and he was soon performing regularly in provincial repertory companies. Osborne also began to write his own plays, the first of which was The Devil Inside Him, a joint effort with the actress Stella Linden. The protagonist, a Welsh youth who is rejected by his family and his community, is the first in a long series of rebellious outsider figures that dominate Osborne’s drama. His Personal Enemy, co-written with Anthony Creighton, was produced in 1955, and he first acted on a London stage the following year. The experimental English Stage Company produced Look Back in Anger, and the critics labeled Osborne an Angry Young Man. The
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play’s protagonist is the young and turbulent Jimmy Porter, who has risen from his working-class background to an uncomfortable position on the fringes of middle-class society. LAURENCE OLIVIER starred as the unsuccessful variety show entertainer Archie Rice in the initial production of Osborne’s The Entertainer (1957), his second major success. Along with Epitaph for George Dillon (1958), The Entertainer was produced in New York in 1958. Osborne’s plays focus more on developing strong, individual characters than on plot structure. In his experimental plays, controversial in both style and subject matter, he reacted against prevailing dramatic styles and social mores. Osborne’s protagonists are fundamentally rebellious, at odds with society’s expectations, whether religious, social, or economic. They often suffer great losses or lash out violently at their inhospitable environments. Osborne is also noted for his characters’ frequent tirades. With Tony Richardson, who directed several of Osborne’s plays, he founded Woodfall Film Productions in 1958. Woodfall produced several film versions of Osborne’s dramas, including Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Entertainer (1960). Osborne’s screen adaptation of Henry Fielding’s novel, Tom Jones (1963), won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. Osborne’s play Luther (1961), directed by Richardson, dramatizes his interpretation of the life of the sixteenth-century religious reformer, Martin Luther. He portrays Luther as figure who successfully rebels against the hypocrisy of his day but still harbors doubts. Luther premiered at the Theatre Royal, was produced in New York in 1963, and won a Tony Award for Best Play. Osborne produced new plays regularly during the 1960s and 1970s. Plays for England (1962) consists of two plays, The Blood of the
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Bambergs and Under Plain Cover. The protagonist of Inadmissible Evidence (1964), Maitland, finds his life slowly disintegrating, eventually becoming a complete shambles. A Patriot for Me (1965), one of his most controversial plays, depicts the life of the homosexual Austrian officer Alfred Redl from 1890 to his suicide in 1913. Later plays include The Hotel in Amsterdam (1968), West of Suez (1971), A Sense of Detachment (1972), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973), A Place Calling Itself Rome (1973), The End of Me Old Cigar (1975), Watch It Come Down (1976), and A Better Class of Person (1981). De´ja` vu (1992), Osborne’s final play, is a sequel to Look Back in Anger and revisits Jimmy Porter after thirtyfive years. Although he generally disliked the medium of television, Osborne wrote a number of tele-
vision plays, many of which the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired. These include A Subject of Scandal and Concern (1960), The Right Prospectus (1970), The Gift of Friendship (1972), Jill and Jack (1974), You’re Not Watching Me, Mummy (1978), and Try a Little Tenderness (1978). A Subject of Scandal and Concern starred RICHARD BURTON as George Holyoake, the last person jailed for blasphemy in England. Osborne wrote two autobiographies, A Better Class of Person (1981) and Almost a Gentleman (1991).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Michael John, Anger and Detachment: A Study of Arden, Osborne, and Pinter, 1976; Carter, Alan, John Osborne, 1973; Hinchcliffe, Arnold P., John Osborne, 1984.
O’Toole, Peter (August 2, 1932– ) Actor he Irish-born actor Peter O’Toole went from an actor known only to Britain’s theatergoers to an international star following his portrayal of T. E. Lawrence in DAVID LEAN’s Lawrence of Arabia. O’Toole’s ability to interpret troubled, introspective, or complex leaders and authority figures translated into successful stage and screen roles not only as Lawrence, but as Hamlet, Henry II, and others. O’Toole was born into a poor family in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. Looking for work, his father, of whom he was very fond in his youth, moved the family to England during his childhood. He attended school until he was 13, after which he dropped out and found work as a copyboy, and later a reporter for the Yorkshire Eve-
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ning Post. After serving two years in the Navy, he determined to make acting his career. Lack of formal training would normally have barred entrance to London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), but O’Toole persisted in asking for an audition. He was eventually accepted on a scholarship and studied there from 1952 to 1954. Upon completing his studies at the RADA, he joined the Bristol Old Vic in 1955, and it was there that O’Toole received his real acting training. His first professional role was a small part as a cab driver in The Matchmaker. He appeared in a wide variety of roles in plays by GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, SAMUEL BECKETT, and others. In 1956 he made his London debut as Peter Shirley in Shaw’s Major Barbara,
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Peter O’Toole (쑖 UPPA / Topham / The Image Works)
and in 1958 he married the actress Sian Phillips. O’Toole’s film debut came with Kidnapped in 1959. He appeared in two others before scoring his major international success as Lawrence of Arabia. Before Lean chose him, O’Toole fought hard to obtain the part, immersing himself in researching Lawrence’s life, studying photos of him, and reading his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Impressed with his audition (which took place in the midst of his stage performances of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice), Lean engaged him for the leading role. O’Toole’s studied portrayal of the enigmatic Lawrence won international audiences and earned him an Oscar. His success in Lawrence of Arabia ensured him a succession of film roles, but O’Toole continued to act on the stage as well. He appeared with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1960, and three years later he played Hamlet in SIR LAURENCE OLIVIER’s inaugural production at the National Theatre in London in 1963.
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Among his other later roles are appearances in Ride a Cock Horse (1965), SEAN O’CASEY’s Juno and the Paycock (1967), Shaw’s Man and Superman (1967), Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1973), and Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1973). O’Toole took a position as associate director of the Old Vic in 1980. In 1964 O’Toole appeared as Henry II in Becket (based on the play by JEAN ANOUILH), which also starred RICHARD BURTON and JOHN GIELGUD. The same year he played the title role in Richard Brooks’s film version of JOSEPH CONRAD’s Lord Jim. His other film roles include appearances in What’s New Pussycat? (1965), with Peter Sellers and WOODY ALLEN; The Lion in Winter (1968), with KATHARINE HEPBURN; Goodbye Mr. Chips (1969); Man of La Mancha (1972), as the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes; The Ruling Class (1972); The Stunt Man (1978); My Favorite Year (1982), as Alan Swann; and Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, as Reginald Johnston, tutor to Emperor Pu Yi. In 1996 O’Toole played the Emperor of Lilliput in the American television series version of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. His 1999 performance in the miniseries Joan of Arc earned him an Emmy nomination. In 2005 he portrayed an aged version of the eighteenth-century Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova. O’Toole won an Emmy Award for his role in the 1999 mini-series Joan of Arc. O’Toole’s latest film appearances include portrayals of King Priam in Troy (2004) and Maurice in Venice (2006), the latter of which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. O’Toole has been nominated eight times for Academy Awards, has received three Golden Globe Awards, and in 2003 won an honorary Oscar for his work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Freedland, Michael, Peter O’Toole: A Biography, 1982; O’Toole, Peter, Loitering With Intent, 1992; Wapshott, Nicholas, Peter O’Toole, 1983.
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Owen, Wilfred (March 18, 1893–November 4, 1918) Poet nly four of Wilfred Owen’s poems appeared in print during a lifetime cut short by World War I, yet he is widely considered the most promising of all the poets who lost their lives during that war. Written mostly while he recuperated from the stress of battle in 1917, the antiwar poetry for which he became famous after his death brings vividly alive the suffering and waste of war, taking the reader into the experience of the wounded, the dying, and the psychologically damaged victims of war in verse that expands the limits of traditional poetry. Owen was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, England. His father, a railway worker, struggled to make ends meet, and the family lived in poverty for most of Owen’s childhood. More directly influential in his life was his mother, a devoutly religious woman who favored Owen over his siblings. Growing up amidst the poor, he sympathized with them and identified with their hardships. Owen studied at the Birkenhead Institute and then the Shrewsbury Technical School, showing great academic potential that the family’s financial situation was to prevent him from ever realizing. His mother sought to steer him into a career in the Church, but Owen’s increasing disillusionment with orthodox theology rendered her expectations unrealistic. After recovering from an illness in 1913, he took a job teaching English in Bordeaux, France. He soon left the post to tutor. While in France, Owen started to write a book of poetry that was never published, Minor Poems—in Minor Keys—By A Minor Poet. His early poetry, heavily influenced by the Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821), was tinged with pathos and dealt with isolation, the search for love, and other conventional poetic themes. In spite of the staunch opposition to war he later developed, Owen enlisted in the Artists’
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Rifles in 1915, was commissioned in the Manchester regiment in 1916, and fought in World War I. He was disabled by shell shock, now known as post-traumatic stress disorder, in 1917. While recuperating at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, he edited the hospital magazine The Hydra, which published his first poem, “Song of Songs.” More importantly, he met the poet SIEGFRIED SASSOON there. Sassoon, who shared Owen’s antiwar sentiments, became a major influence on his poetry immediately, encouraging him to write out of his experience of trench warfare, and after Owen’s death he also helped to establish Owen’s reputation as a poet. Owen began to write antiwar poetry, declaring in a preface never published in his lifetime, “My subject is war, and the pity of war.” In technique, Owen used traditional forms and especially favored the sonnet, but his poetry also broke new ground. He is noted for his experiments with assonance and halfrhymes, or words that almost rhyme. Increasingly, he took great care crafting the rhythm, sound, and musicality of his verse. “War and the pity of war” is indeed the central theme of Owen’s later poetry, for which he is chiefly remembered. In his treatment of this subject matter, Owen also broke new ground. Poems such as “Insensibility” bring alive the desensitization of soldiers by the gruesome horrors of war: And some cease feeling Even themselves or for themselves. Dullness best solves The tease and doubt of shelling.
“Insensibility” also attacks those who, far from the battle, are just as desensitized: By choice they made themselves immune To pity and whatever moans in man Before the last sea and the hapless stars; Whatever mourns when many leave these
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shores; Whatever shares The eternal reciprocity of tears.
(These lines also illustrate Owen’s skilled use of half-rhyme.) Owen’s purpose is to make it harder for the generals and the politicians, indeed for all noncombatants, to make “themselves immune / To pity.” Those who chose to prolong the war so that England and her allies could win a more decisive victory should be forced to know the suffering they were causing, and Owen takes them into it in poems like “Conscious,” which re-creates the experience of a dying soldier as, bewildered, he fades in and out of consciousness, or the better-known “Dulce et Decorum Est,” which forces the reader to see the full horror of a death by poison gas. The title comes from the Roman poet Horace’s so often quoted line, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country,” and Owen’s poem ends by speaking to an imagined patriot in England, telling him that if he could see that horror as Owen still sees it in his dreams, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
“Mental Cases” forces the reader to feel the psychological impact war can have on soldiers, entering the experience of “men whose minds the Dead have ravished.” Other especially memorable poems include the sonnet “Anthem for a Doomed Youth” (“What passing-bells for those who die as cattle? / Only the monstrous anger of the guns . . .”), “Futility,” and “Spring Offensive.” An underlying current in the war poetry is Owen’s vision of Christianity, which he believed the established churches polluted and distorted. Owen identified the wounded casualties of the battlefield with the suffering of Christ, and attacked the churches for helping to cause those sufferings by supporting the continuation of the war rather than awakening everyone to its horrors. His own inner tor-
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ment about his participation in the war is reflected in one of his most famous poems, “Strange Meetings,” in which a sensitive soldier-poet imagines himself in hell face to face with a like soul whom he has killed in battle. It is one of the last poems Owen wrote, and it evokes the waste of war the more poignantly because of that; the man he killed is, like Owen himself, one who could have brought healing after the war. After his recovery, Owen refused the assistance offered him in obtaining a post away from the battlefield and returned to service in France in 1918. On one of his last days at home he repeated a passage he loved from RABINDRANATH TAGORE: “When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.” He had found an inner peace that he felt would make him able, as he said, in a letter to his mother, “to help these boys—directly by leading them as well as an officer can, indirectly by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can.” That year, he was awarded the Military Cross. He was shot dead a week before the war ended. Only four of his poems ever appeared in print during his lifetime, including “Miners,” published in The Nation in London. His mother, Sassoon, and Osbert and EDITH SITWELL were instrumental in publicizing his work after his death, and EDITH SITWELL edited the first collection of his poetry. In 1931 Edmund Blunden did another edition with a memoir full of excerpts from Owen’s letters from the front, and in 1963 a definitive edition by C. DAY-LEWIS appeared. The composer BENJAMIN BRITTEN used nine of his poems for his choral work War Requiem (1962).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hibberd, Dominic, Owen the Poet, 1986; Hibberd, Dominic, Wilfred Owen: The Last Year, 1917– 8, 1992; Kerr, Douglas, Wilfred Owen’s Voices: Language and Community, 1993; Stallworthy, Jon, Wilfred Owen, 1974; Welland, Dennis Sydney Reginald, Wilfred Owen: A Critical Study,
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rev. ed., 1978; White, Gertrude M., Wilfred Owen, 1969.
Oz, Amos (May 4, 1939– ) Novelist, Essayist, Short-Story Writer, Teacher he Hebrew-language novels of the Israeli-born writer Amos Oz spring from currents in Israeli society, particularly the manner in which the historical, political, and religious climates affect the psychological state of individual Israelis. Oz draws from his youth in Jerusalem and his experience living on a kibbutz, or agricultural commune, to construct a sometimes critical picture of the divergent forces in modern Israel. Oz was born Amos Klausner in Jerusalem, where he lived until he was a teenager. His family of ardent Zionists sent him to a religious school in Jerusalem. Following his mother’s suicide when he was 14, he moved to the Kibbutz Hulda, where another family took him in. He rejected his family’s values, changing his name to Oz, leaving Jerusalem, and studying at a secular school. Oz read extensively and excelled in his studies at the kibbutz, nursing an ambition to write. He studied literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and later earned a master of arts the University of Oxford. From 1957 to 1960, Oz served in the Israeli army. He would serve again during the SixDay War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. His first collection of short stories, Where the Jackals Howl, and Other Stories, was published in 1965 and contains nine stories written in the early 1960s. The novel My Michael appeared three years later and relates the mental decline of an Israeli woman, Hannah Gonen. Gonen suffers physically, psychologically, and emotionally from the forces of her environment. Another novel, Touch the Water, Touch the Wind, followed in 1973.
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A Perfect Peace (1982) takes place during the Six-Day War on a kibbutz. Each character reacts to his or her circumstances in a different manner. Yolek, the secretary of the kibbutz, is the father of Yonatan. Feeling restless, cut off, and disillusioned with life at the kibbutz, Yonatan does not stay. His wife Rimona is comparatively stable but suffers from a personal loss. Azariah, new to the kibbutz, represents the idealistic element. Yolek, representative of the older generation, experiences great anguish over the failure of once-held ideals to manifest themselves in a corrupted society. The protagonist and title character of Fima (1993) shares some similarity with Yolek in having to live with failed ideals. The middleaged Fima, however, is lazy and a bore to other people. He is brimming with ideas on the political climate. His job as a receptionist in a
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gynecologist’s office is a disappointment to himself and his family, who expected in his youth that he would succeed as an artist. Fima’s dealings with women, too, prove to be disastrous. In Don’t Call It Night (1996), Oz narrates his story from the alternating perspectives of two primary characters. The 60-year-old Theo, a mild-mannered engineer, has moved to the Negev desert town of Tel Kedar with his younger lover, Noa, a literature teacher. Their once-passionate relationship disintegrates among the events that unfold in the town. When one of Noa’s students dies of a drug overdose, the boy’s father builds a rehabilitation clinic in his honor. Noa is asked to lead the clinic, and her relationship with Theo deteriorates with ensuing conflicts. Oz’s novel Panther in the Basement, was published in 1997. The Same Sea (1999), a novel that fuses poetry and prose, the autobiographical A Tale of Love and Darkness (2003), and Rhyming and Death (2007) are among his latest novels. Other novels include Black Box (1987), The Third Space (1991), and Soumchi (1995). Oz’s work addresses social, political, and religious forces in Israel—
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Zionism, the ongoing peace negotiations, historical events, wars, Arab-Israeli relations, divergent ideologies, and generational conflicts between the founders of modern Israel and their offspring. His works demonstrate how these forces affect individuals in a language composed of symbols from many religious traditions. The psychological dimension in Oz’s work has also been shaped by his interest in the work of psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875–1961). Oz’s other works include the political essays in Israel, Palestine and Peace (1995) and How to Cure a Fanatic (2006), and the essays in Under This Blazing Light: Essays (1995). He currently teaches literature at Ben Gurion University in the Negev and has been a writerin-residence at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Colorado College. BIBLIOGRAPHY Balaban, Avraham, Between God and Beast: An Examination of Amos Oz’s Prose, 1993; WirthNesher, Hana, City Codes: Reading the Modern Urban Novel, 1996.
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Pagnol, Marcel (February 28, 1895–April 18, 1974) Director, Playwright, Teacher, Producer arcel Pagnol established his career in the theater with the dramas Jazz and Topaze. In 1931, he took his intricately woven stories and adaptations to the cinema, producing a series of films with his own company at the beginning of the sound film era. Pagnol also wrote novels and short stories. Pagnol was born in Aubagne, France, and entered the Chemin des Chartreux when he was 5. In 1905 he enrolled in the Lyce´e Thiers, where he studied for the next nine years. Pagnol did not always make full use of his natural scholastic talent by dedication to his studies. He began to write poetry and plays while still at the Lyce´e Thiers. In 1913, Pagnol helped found the literary journal Fortunio, to which he frequently contributed stories. In 1916 he graduated from the University of Montpellier and began a teaching career that lasted until 1927. Meanwhile, his plays began to gain recognition. The verse play Catullus (1918) tells the story of the famous Roman poet whose life and career suffer on account of Clodia, who loves Catullus less than he does her. In Pagnol’s version of Catullus’s life, the complex and unhappy affair drives Catullus to his death. In 1922, Pagnol moved to Paris, where he slowly gained critical and popular success in the theater. Tonton, the first of two plays coauthored with Paul Nivoix, ran at the The´aˆtre des Varie´te´s in 1924. The second play, The Merchants of Glory (1925), a critical satire on profiteers who capitalize on the patriotism and heroism of the troops, earned praise from critics but failed to win public popularity. In the story, Sergeant Henri Bachelet goes off to war and is presumed dead. His father slides into moral decay, building a political career and amassing profits from his son’s heroic death. Henri, who has suffered from amnesia, returns home to the spectacle, and in
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an ironic twist becomes part of his father’s empire of lies. Not until the production of Jazz did Pagnol win the public. The play opened at the Grand The´aˆtre of Monte Carlo in 1926; it tells the story of a professor who has devoted his heart and soul to what turns out to be an academic fraud. With his life and career in shambles, he seeks a new identity for himself, rejecting things of the mind to seek pleasure instead. The professor is unable to become the new, freer man and kills himself. A second popular play, Topaze, premiered in 1928. In the beginning of the play, Topaze is an honest but naive teacher at a boarding school. When the director fires him, ostensibly for proposing to his daughter, Topaze ends up in a position given to him by the corrupt Castel-Be´nac, who uses him as a puppet. Topaze, however, amazes everyone, evolving into an assertive self-assured man who attains the power to dismiss Castel-Be´nac. With Marius (1929), Pagnol offered the first in a trilogy set in Marseilles. Marius and its successor, Fanny, appeared in the theater before their adaptations to film. The story of Marius takes place in a bar run by Ce´sar, the father of Marius. Marius vacillates between his love for Fanny and his desire to go to sea. When Fanny learns of his torment, she distances herself from Marius to allow him to leave. In the sequels, Fanny and Ce´sar (made exclusively as a film in 1936), a pregnant Fanny marries Panisse, and Marius returns to the sea. When Fanny’s husband dies, however, her son looks for his real father (Marius), and Fanny and Marius finally marry. The actor Raimu, with whom Pagnol worked closely in many projects, played the role of Ce´sar. Pagnol abandoned the theater for films in 1931 and created his own company, Les Auteurs Associe´s, two years later. The company began to publish its journal, Le Cahiers du
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Film, the same year. Most of its films were adapted from existing works of literature, and Pagnol began his career in cinema at the beginning of the sound film era. The complex plots of his films often unfolded in the setting of rural Provence. From 1932 to 1938, he worked closely with Jean Giono, but their partnership ended bitterly, with Giono unsuccessfully taking Pagnol to court. Pagnol’s early film Jofroi (1934) was adapted from a Giono story, as was Ange`le (1934). In the latter, a peasant tries to win the love of Ange`le Barbaroux, whose father keeps her sheltered because she has disgraced the family with an affair and an illegitimate child. Regain (1937) featured music by Arthur Honegger. The Baker’s Wife (1938) was Pagnol’s biggest success in the United States and his last film with Giono. In another successful Pagnol film, The Well Digger’s Daughter (1940), Patricia, the daughter of a well-digger (played by Raimu), becomes pregnant by Jacques Mazel. When Mazel goes overseas and allegedly dies, Patricia has their son at her aunt’s house and returns
home with him to her father. The Mazels, who have previously ignored both Patricia and their grandson, suddenly become interested in the child when they learn of Jacques’s death. Jacques, however, returns home and marries Patricia, and the latter’s former suitor, Fe´lipe, asks to marry her sister. Pagnol sold his film company in 1942 but continued to make films, including Naı¨s (1945), taken from a short story by Emile Zola; Carnaval (1953); and Letters from My Windmill (1954). Among his television adaptations are La Dame aux Came´lias (1962) and Merlusse (1965). In 1955 he returned to the theater with Judas, and Fabien followed a year later. Pagnol also wrote novels, including Souvenirs d’Enfance, a trilogy of autobiographical works. His translation of Virgil’s Bucolics appeared in 1958. In 1946 Pagnol became the first filmmaker to be elected to the French Academy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Caldicott, C. E. J., Marcel Pagnol, 1977.
Pascin, Jules (March 31, 1885–June 1, 1930) Painter, Sculptor, Graphic Artist fter living in nearly all the capitals of Europe, Jules Pascin developed as an artist who drew from many different movements in modern art to create his own distinctive style. His fluid style at times resembles Expressionism, at times Cubism: he is particularly noted for his studies of women. After establishing himself as a graphic artist, he turned seriously to painting during the World War I era. Pascin was born Julius Mordecai Pincas to Sephardic Jewish parents in Vidin, Bulgaria. His father was a prosperous grain merchant
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and unsuccessfully tried to recruit Pascin for the business. He spent part of his childhood in the Bulgarian town of Vidin, and in 1892 the family settled in Bucharest. In 1896 Pascin went to study at the Academy in Vienna, where he also frequented the city’s art museums. He returned to Bucharest in 1901 and briefly worked for his father, but conflicts in their relationship soon ended Pascin’s association with the business. Pascin next drifted around the capitals of Eastern Europe for several years. Then in Munich he studied under Moritz Heyman, and in
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Drawing by Jules Pascin (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-50864)
Berlin he sold his work to the periodical Simplicissimus. At this time he began to use the name Pascin. In 1905 he settled permanently in Paris. There he became part of a circle of other artists, including the caricaturist De-metrios Galanis, who encouraged him to try woodcuts. Through another acquaintance, Henry Bing, he met Hermine Davis. Davis, a student at the E´cole Beaux Arts, soon moved in with him and later married him. She is the subject of his 1919 painting Hermine, a sensitive oil portrait. Pascin chose for his early subjects the prostitutes in the Paris brothels he frequented. Female figures, particularly nudes, dominate Pascin’s work from the period, as in the pen and ink drawing Two Girls (1907) and the works Standing Nude Woman (1908) and The Three Graces (1908). Pascin worked mainly as a graphic artist for several years before he found the confidence to exhibit his paintings.
From 1911 to 1913 he contributed to the Berlin Secession exhibitions, and his work was exhibited from time to time around Europe. Around the beginning of World War I, his work began to attract more attention. The American collector John Quinn developed an interest in his paintings and began to purchase them. Pascin sailed to the United States aboard the Lusitania in 1914 and settled first in New York, where he involved himself with the city’s artistic life. With Hermine, he then moved south to escape the cold, living in Florida, New Orleans, Texas, and South Carolina. Around the World War I era, some of his paintings evince a more serene character than his early works. Landscapes, still lifes (The Vase of Flowers, 1918), and strolls through the countryside were popular subjects. While in the United States and again in Paris (to which he returned in 1920), Pascin painted many oils that reflect his experimentation with Expressionism, Cubism, and other avantgarde movements in Europe. The fragmented, semiabstract figures in Woman in a Landscape (1916) and Portrait of a Woman (1918) reflect his interest in Cubism. In 1925–1926 he painted a series of girls and young women. Some works, such as Cuban Rider (1917), that employ brilliant colors were perhaps influenced by the Fauves. Pascin’s late paintings again include many studies of women, among which are Nude with a Green Hat (1925) and a series of girls and young women. His other works include Old Mexican Peasant in El Paso in 1919, The Prodigal Son (1921), and sculptures, which he carved from wood. Pascin constantly experimented with his technique, and he never attained a style that satisfied him. After struggling with recurring bouts of depression, he slit his wrists and hung himself on the night before a major exhibition of his work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Diehl, Gaston, Pascin, 1968; Werner, Alfred, Pascin, 1962.
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Pasolini, Pier Paolo (March 5, 1922–November 2, 1975) Director, Novelist, Poet, Short-Story Writer, Actor ier Paolo Pasolini began his career writing poetry and fiction, but he made an international name for himself as an avant-garde film director. Influenced early on by the informal, realistic style of Neorealists such as ROBERTO ROSSELLINI, he later used his films to explore eroticism, depravity, violence, economic oppression, and spirituality. Pasolini was born in Bologna, Italy. His father’s position as an officer in the Italian army forced the family to move frequently, and Pasolini received his early education in a succession of schools in northern Italy. In 1939 he entered the University of Bologna, where he studied literature and art history (under Robert Longhi). At the university he also met Giorgio Bassani, an acquaintanceship that was to prove important to his career. In 1942 Pasolini was evacuated to Casarsa, his mother’s native territory. There he wrote his first volume of verse, a collection of poems that reflect the dialect of the region’s Friulian peasantry. The following year he was drafted into the army and captured by the German occupiers. After the war Pasolini, already a Communist sympathizer for several years, joined the Communist Party and returned to the university. During the next decade Pasolini lived impoverished in the slums of Rome. In 1950 he accepted a teaching position that paid little, and he soon began to write fiction. His first novel, Ragazzi di vita (1955; The Ragazzi), graphically depicts Rome slum life and resulted in legal action against him for obscenity. Ironically, the charges attracted attention and led to advances in his career as both a writer and a filmmaker. Pasolini’s entrance into the cinema came in 1954, when Bassani helped him obtain work as a screenwriter for Mario Soldati’s film La Donna del Fiume. Two years later FEDERICO FELLINI enlisted Pasolini’s help on the screen-
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play for his Nights of Cabiria. Pasolini also continued to write, publishing the poetry collection The Ashes of Gramsci in 1957 and the novel Una vita violenta (1959; A Violent Life; film version 1962). After appearing in Carlo Lizzani’s Il Gobbo (1960), Pasolini directed his first film, Accattone (Beggar), in 1961. As in The Ragazzi and A Violent Life, he incorporated his experiences in the slums of Rome into the film’s depictions of pimps, prostitutes, and thieves. In 1962 he wrote the script for Bernardo Bertolucci’s La Commare Secca and directed his second film, Mamma Roma. Anna Magnani, who had been impressed by Accattone, starred in Mamma Roma as a prostitute trying to give up her street life and provide her 16-year-old son Ettore with a better life. The prostitute and her son are martyr figures, tragic victims of circumstances they cannot overcome. Magnani’s prostitute gets her chance to escape with the marriage of her pimp Carmine (Franco Citti, who starred in several of Pasolini’s films). She uses the opportunity to buy a market and sell produce as she retrieves Ettore, who has grown up illiterate in the country, and introduces him to the sophistication of the city. Circumstances degenerate from there—Carmine returns to blackmail her and forces her to return to prostitution, while Ettore turns to petty crime. A secondary strain in the film is the prostitute’s oedipal relationship with her son, a theme to which Pasolini would turn more fully in his Oedipus Rex (1967). His best-known film, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964; The Gospel According to Saint Matthew), is a Neorealist adaptation of Jesus’s life. Perhaps more than any other of his films, it exhibits his attempts to reconcile Marxism with religion. The Gospel According to Saint Matthew won five awards at the Ven-
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ice Film Festival as well as recognition from the International Catholic Film Office. Uccellacci e Uccellini (1966; The Hawks and the Sparrows), an allegorical film, was his most comical production and starred the Italian comic actor Toto. Ninetto Davoli, who appeared in many other Pasolini films, also starred. The Hawks and the Sparrows proved popular at the New York Film Festival. Two erotic films of the late 1960s rank among his most controversial works. In Teorema (1968; Theorem) Terence Stamp plays a man who revolutionizes the household of a Milan industrialist by seducing the entire family. Il Porcile (1969; Pigsty) consists of two stories about depravity. The first takes place in modern Germany and involves a perverse sexual obsession, while the latter has a historical setting and investigates cannibalism. Pasolini’s two Greek tragedies, Oedipus Rex (1967; his first color film) and Medea (1969), also belong to this period. Il Decamerone (1971; The Decameron), based on the classic collection of (often bawdy) tales from early Renaissance Italy by Boccaccio, won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and was the first film in Pasolini’s “trilogy of life,” all drawn from famous collections of stories. The Canterbury Tales (1972),
filmed in English, consists of eight stories from Chaucer and features Pasolini as Chaucer. The Arabian Nights (1974) won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival and completed his trilogy. Pasolini’s final film, Salo` o le centiventi giornate i Sodoma (1975; Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom), is a graphic, shocking picture based on the Marquis De Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom. Set just before the end of World War II, the story concerns four Fascist leaders who capture Italian youths of the peasant and working classes. Each of the leaders represents a strain in society which Pasolini saw as pernicious—the legal system, the Church, royalty, and capitalism. After taking them to an isolated villa, the leaders subject the boys to every form of sick torture imaginable. Pasolini was murdered in 1975 by the 17year-old Giuseppi Pelusi, who said Pasolini made sexual advances toward him.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Friedrich, Pia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1982; Rohdie, Sam, The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1995; Siciliano, Enzo, Pasolini: A Biography, 1982; Snyder, Stephen, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1980.
Pasternak, Boris (February 10, 1890–May 30, 1960) Poet, Novelist, Short-Story Writer lthough the Russian writer Boris Leonidovich Pasternak dedicated the bulk of his writing career to poetry, he is best known for his only novel, Dr. Zhivago, which chronicles the hardships of a sensitive Russian doctor and poet, especially the disruptions of his life under Soviet Communism. Pasternak was born in pre-Soviet Moscow into a Jewish family. His parents exposed him
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to the arts as a youth—his father was a portraitist and his mother, Rosa Kaufman, was a pianist. He received a full education, studying music and later philosophy at the University of Moscow and Marburg University in Germany. Poetry was his first inclination as a writer, and his first collection of poems, The Twin in the Clouds, appeared in 1914.
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Boris Pasternak (쑖 Lebrecht / The Image Works)
After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Pasternak began to find himself out of favor with Soviet critics. Although his poetry was not political, its philosophical, individualistic, and spiritual themes conflicted with the Socialist Realism government-sanctioned critics expected in Soviet literature. Collections of Pasternak’s poetry appeared sporadically—Over the Barriers (1917), My Sister, Life (1922), Second Birth (1932), On Early Trains (1942), and The Terrestrial Expanse (1945)—
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and won him a measure of fame in the Soviet Union. However, as he found himself more and more in conflict with Soviet critics, he began to fear for his life. Pasternak earned his living primarily from translations of German, English, and Georgian literature. Also among his works were two autobiographies, an unfinished play, and a book of short stories, Airy Paths (1925). Pasternak’s only novel, Dr. Zhivago (1956), describes the life and struggles of Yurii Zhivago, a Russian poet and doctor, his family, and his mistress, Lara, against a background of war and revolution. Soviet publishers refused to print the book, but clandestine copies reached the West, and eventually it appeared in eighteen different languages. Sharp criticism at home accompanied the praise Pasternak’s work received in the West, and he was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition,” but he chose to turn down the prize rather than go into exile. He died two years later in Moscow. A movie version of Dr. Zhivago (1965), directed by DAVID LEAN and starring Omar Sharif, achieved widespread popularity and won critical acclaim. The novel was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987, when Pasternak was posthumously reinstated in the writers’ union.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barnes, Christopher, Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, 1989; Dyck, J. W., Pasternak, 1972; Levi, Peter, Boris Pasternak, 1990; Mallac, Guy de, Boris Pasternak, His Life and Art, 1981.
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Paton, Alan (January 11, 1903–April 12, 1988) Novelist, Poet, Short-Story Writer, Essayist lan Stewart Paton’s lifelong efforts to promote racial reconciliation in his native South Africa are reflected in his popular novel Cry, the Beloved Country and other works of fiction. In 1953 he helped found the Liberal Party, a political party of mixed races that rejected the approaches of both the far right and the far left in South Africa’s government. Paton was born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa. His father, a strict, frugal, and often violent Scot, was a dominant influence on Paton as a child. Paton was inquisitive and earned high marks in school. At the age of 6, he enrolled in the Berg Street Girls’ School, which also accepted boys. A year later he transferred to the Havelock Road Boys’ School, and he subsequently won a scholarship to Maritzburg College. On a teaching scholarship, Paton attended the University of Natal and, upon his graduation, taught until 1935. He married Dorrie Lusted in 1928. By this time he had begun to write and had also developed an interest in South Africa’s political and social situation. A 1932 play, Louis Botha, addressed conflicts between English-speaking white South Africans and Dutch-speaking white South Africans, or Afrikaners. Before his active opposition to the policies of apartheid, Paton sought to heal differences between these two white minorities in South Africa. At this time he actively corresponded with the Afrikaner politician Jan Hofmeyr, whom he first met in 1927. Hofmeyr became a friend, patron, and the subject of Paton’s biography Hofmeyr (1964). In 1935, Paton became director of the Diepkloof Reformatory for delinquent African boys. Before he arrived, the boys lived under poor conditions and were subject to harsh discipline. Paton implemented a series of reforms that improved diets, education, and sanitation and relaxed the
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stringency of the discipline. He retained a lifelong interest in prison reform. Paton’s most famous novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, was published in 1948. The narrative is set against the backdrop of a society living under apartheid. In the story, the son of Zulu minister Stephen Kumalo, Absalom, murders an Afrikaner civil rights activist and is convicted of the crime. Paton succeeds in taking the reader into the life and mind of the father, as he tries to help his son and to understand what has happened. Opening the eyes of many readers to the suffering caused by apartheid, the book became a worldwide success and enabled Paton to give up his position at the reformatory and devote his time to writing. Cry, the Beloved Country later formed the basis of an opera, Lost in the Stars, by the composer KURT WEILL and of several films. Too Late the Phalarope (1953), Paton’s second novel, also examines the complexities of a society in which the laws prohibit mingling of the races. The tragic hero of the story is Pieter van Valaanderen, who has demonstrated his skill and achieved success in diverse fields. As an officer of the law, he is bound to enforce the Immorality Act, but he violates the law himself by having sexual relations with a black girl. Pieter’s offense destroys him and shames his family. Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful (1981), is Paton’s third and final novel and also treats issues stemming from South Africa’s complex racial makeup. Paton helped found the Liberal Party of South Africa in 1953. He and other members sought alternatives to apartheid and rejected what they considered the extremism of both the right and the left. The party was multiracial, and Paton served as its president until the government outlawed it in 1968. After its dissolution, Paton wrote for and served on
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the editorial board of the journal Reality: A Journal of Liberal Opinion, effectively a publication of the defunct party. During these years, he found himself subject to government strictures, including the revocation of his passport. Dorrie Patton died of emphysema in 1967, and Paton married his secretary and second wife, Anne Hopkins, in 1969. In 1955, Paton published The Land and People of South Africa, a textbook. His other works include the short-story collection Tales
from a Troubled Land (1961); his two autobiographies, Towards the Mountain (1964) and Journey Continued (1988); and his posthumously published collected poetry, Songs of Africa (1995).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, Peter F., Alan Paton: A Biography, 1994; Paton, Alan, Journey Continued: An Autobiography, 1988; Paton, Alan, Towards the Mountain: An Autobiography, 1964.
Pavarotti, Luciano (October 12, 1935–September 6, 2007) Singer
Luciano Pavarotti (쑖 Suzie Maeder/Lebrecht / The Image Works)
he popular Italian operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti earned the nickname “King of the High C’s” after his rendition of a difficult aria containing nine high C’s
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in Gaetono Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment in the 1960s. Many consider him the best tenor since ENRICO CARUSO.
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Pavarotti was born in Modena, Italy, into a family of little means. His mother worked in a cigar factory; and his father was a baker and had an excellent tenor voice. Pavarotti spent a happy childhood in the company of a large, extended family near Modena. As a boy he liked to sing but showed little promise of becoming a singer. Heavy bombing forced the family to flee during World War II. After the peace allowed them to return to Modena, Pavarotti and his father both sang in choirs at church. At the age of 12 he attended a performance given by the operatic tenor Beniamino Gigli, the experience that first gave him the idea of singing professionally. In 1955 Pavarotti’s father took him to the tenor and teacher Arrigo Pola, who began to give him strenuous lessons in his apartment. While he took lessons from Pola, he worked as a teacher and an insurance salesman to support himself. When Pola moved away, Pavarotti studied under Ettore Campogalliani. The year 1961 saw his first musical success, his operatic debut in Reggio Emilia, as well as his marriage to Adua Veroni. As the winner of the Achille Peri competition that year, he received the role of Rodolfo in a performance of GIACOMO PUCCINI’s La Bohe`me. Soon afterward Pavarotti was performing all over Europe. Pavarotti’s international success began after performances at the Covent Garden in London. His American debut followed in 1965, when he sang the part of Edgardo opposite the Australian soprano JOAN SUTHERLAND in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in Miami. His other well-known opera roles include the duke in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, Radame`s in Verdi’s Aı¨da, and Arturo in I Puritani.
Aside from opera performances, Pavarotti has also ventured into other arenas of music. He has performed with JOSE´ CARRERAS and the Spanish tenor PLA´ CIDO DOMINGO as The Three Tenors in a series of high-profile concerts all over the world. Pavarotti has recorded innumerable performances and live concerts as well as an album of Italian folk songs. In 1995 he recorded an album to benefit children in war-torn Bosnia with many wellknown popular music stars, including Dolores O’Riordon of The Cranberries, Brian Eno, the Chieftains, and members of U2. Pavarotti’s autobiographies, Pavarotti: My Own Story and Pavarotti: My World, were published in 1981 and 1995. In 1982 he appeared in the film Yes, Giorgio. He has won numerous awards, including several Grammys, and his performances continue to draw record crowds worldwide. Pavarotti was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006, just a few months after he performed at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics, and died of the disease on September 27, 2007. His last album, Ti Adoro, was released in 2003. He delivered his last performance at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in a production of GIACOMO PUCCINI’S Tosca on March 13, 2004 and received a twelve-minute standing ovation at the end. Pavarotti has received numerous awards, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001 and the Puccini Prize in 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Pavarotti, Luciano, Pavarotti: My Own Story, 1981; Pavarotti, Luciano, Pavarotti: My World, 1995; www.lucianopavarotti.com.
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Pavlova, Anna (February 12, 1881–January 23, 1931) Dancer, Choreographer, Teacher he Russian ballerina Anna Pav-lovna Pavlova was dainty and delicate, widely renowned all over the world for her grace and her superb classical dancing style. With her own dancing company she traveled across the globe and delivered popular performances, which often incorporated elements of ethnic dance. Pavlova was an only child, born in St. Petersburg in 1882. Her father died when she was two years old, and her mother, an impoverished and pious widow, took her to a performance of The Sleeping Beauty when she was eight. Pavlova was entranced, and she begged her mother to let her audition for the Imperial School of Ballet. Her mother reluc-
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Anna Pavlova (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-18544)
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tantly agreed, and she was accepted when she was 10. From that point on she studied under Russia’s top instructors, including Johansson and E. P. Sokolova. At the time of her acceptance, the Imperial School of Ballet trained and performed in the classical tradition shaped by Marius Petipa, master of the ballet from 1862 to 1903. Her first performance was a role in Petipa’s Daughter of the Pharaoh. Pavlova soon began to work her way up in the company. She danced her first solo the year she graduated, 1899. She also played lead roles in The Awakening of Flora, The Magic Flute, and La Bayade`re; her first major role was the lead in Giselle. In 1905 the Russian choreographer MICHEL FOKINE created The Dying Swan, a three-minute solo dance, specifically for Pavlova. The following year Pavlova became prima ballerina of the Imperial Ballet. In that position she danced in such productions as Corsaire, Don Quixote, Les Sylphides, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty. Pavlova and other dancers, including her frequent partner Adolph Bolm, toured Europe in 1907 and again in 1908. Her tours awakened a taste in her for going abroad, but she was not yet ready to sever her ties with the Imperial Ballet. In 1909 she danced with SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes in Paris. During a leave of absence in 1910–1911 she danced in New York and London opposite Mikhail Mordkin in Valse Caprice, Giselle, and Legend of Aziade. Their partnership ended in an argument, and in 1911 Pavlova performed once more with Diaghilev’s ballet in London, this time opposite VASLAV NIJINSKY. Meanwhile, Pavlova formed her own dance company, which she was to lead until her death in 1931. She bought a home near London, Ivy House, where she taught ballet lessons. Sometime around 1914 she married the manager of her dance company, Victor Dan-
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dre´, but they kept their marriage secret. The following year she appeared as Fenella in her first film, The Dumb Girl of Portici. Beginning in 1914, Pavlova’s dance company traveled around the world and sometimes performed in unusual or out-of-the-way locations, often introducing ballet to areas that had never been exposed to it. The musical and dance traditions of each area the company visited deeply interested Pavlova and were often incorporated into the performances. She was particularly intrigued by Japanese and Indian dance, and in India she worked with the dancer and choreographer Uday Shankar on two ballets. The company performed Don Quixote, The Girl Poorly Man-
aged, Giselle, and many other productions. In 1919 it staged Amarilla in a bullring in Mexico. Pavlova frequently performed for charities, and in 1920 she founded a home for Russian orphans in St. Cloud, near Paris. She died of an illness in The Hague in 1931. She is remembered for her generosity and for her willingness to go beyond her tradition as well as for her perfection within it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fonteyn, Margot, Pavlova: Portrait of a Dancer, 1984; Lazzarini, John and Roberta, Pavlova: Repertoire of a Legend, 1908; Money, Keith, Anna Pavlova, Her Life and Her Art, 1982.
Paz, Octavio (March 31, 1914–April 19, 1998) Poet, Essayist, Critic, Editor, Diplomat ctavio Paz wrote complex and often symbolic poetry rooted primarily in his experience as a Mexican and influenced by his diversity of interests, from politics to Eastern philosophy. Paz’s many volumes of essays and criticism were also influential in the Spanish-speaking world. He became the first Mexican writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990, “for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity.” Paz was born in Mexico City into a family that had lost nearly everything in Mexico’s civil war. His grandfather was a revolutionary and founder of the paper La Patria. Paz’s father, a lawyer, military man, and writer, represented the revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, who with Francisco Madero led a revolution against Porfirio Dı´az in 1910. As a boy Paz attended a Catholic school and loved to read books from his grandfather’s library. He
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later studied at the National University of Mexico (now the National Autonomous University of Mexico), became interested in Communism, and married Elena Garro. His first book of poetry, Forest Moon, was published in 1933. With the encouragement of PABLO NERUDA, Paz traveled to Valencia, Spain, for the Second International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers. Among the other literary figures he met there were the English poet STEPHEN SPENDER and the French writer ANDRE´ GIDE, the latter of whom was condemned by the congress. Paz’s Beneath Your Clear Shadow and Other Poems (1937) recounts his experiences in Spain, and They Shall Not Pass appeared the same year. He returned home via Paris, where he developed an interest in Surrealism and was particularly influenced by ANDRE´ BRETON. By 1939 Paz had grown disillusioned with Marxism, but he never lost interest in politics.
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Octavio Paz (The Granger Collection, New York)
Throughout his life he remained sharply critical of both left- and right-wing dictatorships in Latin America. From 1945 to 1968 Paz served as a Mexican diplomat in several European and Asian countries as well as the United States. His extensive foreign travels proved to be significant influences on his poetry: Paris introduced him to Surrealism and existentialism, and while in India and Japan he became interested in Hinduism and Buddhism. Paz married Marie Jose´ Tramini in India in 1966. In 1968 he resigned his diplomatic post to protest the killing of more than three hundred demonstrators at the Plaza of Three Cultures in Mexico City. Paz’s poetry flows from his native Mexican culture—from its history and myths as well as its contemporary problems. Paradoxes, attempts to reconcile opposites that seem to conflict, and struggles to come to terms with one’s surroundings all recur in his verse. In structure and style, his poetry is diverse. Of Paz’s earlier works, which include the volumes Liberty on Oath (1949) and Eagle or
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Sun (1951), his long poem The Sun Stone (1957) is the most famous. The work, circular in structure, was inspired by the stone Aztec calendar and speaks of the search for identity in symbolic language. The poem’s structure, too, is derived from Aztec myth and encapsulates many other themes, such as love and the passage and circularity of time. With the volume Salamander (1962), Paz used a new style marked by its lack of punctuation and irregular columns. Blanco (1966), another long poem, is one of Paz’s most complex works. It is a tightly woven whole composed of many interweaving subpoems about love, existence, language, and other themes. In Paris in 1969, Paz collaborated with the Italian poet Edoardo Sanguineti, the French Poet Jacques Roubaud, and the English poet Charles Tomlinson in the creation of Renga. The renga is a form of Japanese poetry in which four poets of four different languages contribute to the work. Many of the poems of Eastern Slope (1971) were written while Paz lived in India. Its verses are less tightly structured than some of his earlier poems and show the influence of Buddhist thought. Paz’s popular volumes of literary criticism and essays include The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico (1950), a widely acclaimed series of essays on Mexican culture; The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism, about the relationship between sex, love, and eroticism; and In Light of India (1997), a collection of essays about Indian culture. His other books of essays and criticism include The Bow and the Lyre (1956), The Pears of the Elm (1957), Doors to the Field (1966), Alternating Current (1967), Conjunctions and Disjunctions (1969), The Grammatical Monkey (1974), and One Earth, Four or Five Worlds (1985). Among his other volumes of poetry are Airborn (1981) and A Tree Within (1988). Paz also lectured in the United States and England. He received the Grand Prix International de Poe´sie in 1963, an honorary doctorate from Harvard in 1980, the Cervantes Prize
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in 1981, and the American Neustadt Prize in 1982. During his lifetime Paz founded and edited a number of influential literary journals, including Workshop, The Prodigal Son, Plural, and Return. He died of cancer in 1998.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fein, John M., Toward Octavio Paz: A Reading of His Major Poems, 1957–1976, 1986; Wilson, Jason, Octavio Paz, 1986.
Peck, Gregory (April 5, 1916–June 12, 2003) Actor, Producer he stately actor Gregory Peck, particularly noted for his Academy Awardwinning role as the upstanding Southern attorney Atticus Finch in the 1962 movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird, was an American icon on the Hollywood screen from his film debut in the 1940s for several decades onwards. Peck was born Eldred Gregory Peck to a Catholic family in La Jolla, California. His father was a druggist of both Armenian and Irish-English descent, and his mother was a Missouri native. After his parents divorced when he was six, Peck went to live with his grandmother. When he was ten, Peck entered a Catholic military school, and he later attended San Diego High School and San Diego State University. He then enrolled as a premed student at the University of California at Berkeley, from which he graduated with an English degree. At Berkeley, Peck, a tall and well-built figure who was a member of the crew team, caught the attention of an acting coach, and he played roles in five productions during his senior year. Peck’s physical stature later allowed him to perform many of his own fight scenes and stunt work, and he was rarely known to use a double. Following his graduation, Peck moved to New York City, where he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse for two years and lived in poverty while he tried to break into
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an acting career. In 1942, Peck debuted on Broadway in the lead role in Emlyn Williams’s The Morning Star. Peck suffered a back injury while taking dance training from noted choreographer and dancer MARTHA GRAHAM, who felt he wasn’t stretching far enough during an exercise and pushed his back forward with her knee. The injury was serious enough to exempt him from military service during World War II, helping pave the way for his popularity as a wartime actor. In 1942 he appeared in his second Broadway role in The Willow and I. The following year he married Greta Kukkonen, with whom he had three sons. In 1944, Peck starred in his first film role in RKO’s Days of Glory. Over the next several years, he appeared in a number of movies, including The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), ALFRED HITCHCOCK’s Spellbound (1945), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), and Twelve O’Clock High (1949). Peck played in several Westerns, such as Duel in the Sky (1946), Yellow Sky (1949), and The Gunfighter (1950). In 1947, Peck cofounded The La Jolla Playhouse, a community theater still in operation, with Mel Ferrer and Dorothy McGuire. Following a divorce from his first wife in 1955, Peck married Paris news reporter Veronique Passani, with whom he enjoyed a long, happy marriage and had two children.
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Peck continued to appear in popular films during the 1950s and 1960s, including Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951), Roman Holiday (1953), The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), Moby Dick (1956), and The Guns of Navarone (1961). Roman Holiday marked both the beginning of Audrey Hepburn’s film career and the start of a lifelong friendship with Peck. By the time of his 1962 portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, Peck had been nominated for Academy Awards four times. He was nominated a fifth time for his latest performance and finally won. His 1960s films include Cape Fear (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), Behold a Pale Horse (1964), Mirage (1965), Arabesque (1966), The Stalking Moon (1969), Mackenna’s Gold (1969), The Chairman (1969), and Marooned (1969). Peck produced a film version of Daniel Berrigan’s The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972), which depicts the prosecution of a group of Vietnam protesters, and the film The Dove (1974). He starred as Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen in 1976, played General Douglas MacArthur in MacArthur in 1977, and portrayed Dr. Josef Mengele in The Boys from Brazil (1978). During the 1980s, Peck appeared in numerous television roles, including that of Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War miniseries The Blue and the Gray (1982). He also starred in The Scarlet and the Black (1983), a television movie about a Catholic priest who protected refugees from the Nazis during World War II. After appearing in a remake of Cape Fear and Other People’s Money, both in 1991, Peck retired for the most part from film and en-
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gaged in a number of speaking tours. His last film appearance came in 1998, when he played Father Mapple in a remake of Moby Dick. Throughout his life, Peck actively supported the Democratic party, and his son Carey has twice run unsuccessfully for Congress in California. Peck was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, adamantly opposed the Vietnam War, and helped lead opposition to the conservative judge Robert Bork’s nomination for Supreme Court during the Reagan presidency. His other activities included chairing the American Cancer Society, serving as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (1967), and membership in the National Council on the Arts (1964–1966). Peck was the recipient of many honors, recognitions, and awards. In 1948 he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He won numerous Golden Globe awards. In 1969 he received both the Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon B. Johnson. Two years later, the Screen Actors Guild honored Peck with a lifetime achievement award. The National University of Ireland made him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2000. Peck died of heart and respiratory failure in his sleep in 2003 and was buried in the mausoleum of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Fishgall, Gary, Gregory Peck: A Biography, 2002; Freedland, Michael, Gregory Peck: A Biography, 1980; Griggs, John, The Films of Gregory Peck, 1984; Haney, Lynn, Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life, 2004.
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Perse, Saint-John (May 31, 1887–September 20, 1975) Poet, Diplomat aint-John Perse was the pseudonym of the French diplomat and poet Ale´xis Saint-Le´ger Le´ger. He wrote much of his modest output of poetry during his exile in the United States during and after World War II. Although he earned the admiration of other poets and critics, his poetry never gained widespread popularity among the general public. Citing the “soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time,” the Nobel Prize committee awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960. Saint-John Perse was born Marie-Rene´-Auguste-Ale´xis Saint-Le´ger Le´ger in Saint-Le´gerles-Feuilles, Guadeloupe. He lived with his family on their coffee and sugar plantations in the Antilles until he was 11. In 1896, his family sent him to school in Pionte-a`-Pitre. Three years later, they moved to France, and in 1894 he entered the University of Bordeaux. Perse later studied at the University of Paris. Perse began writing poetry in his teens. The early verse of “Images to Crusoe” impressed the German language poet RAINER MARIA RILKE, who translated them into German. In 1908, Perse composed a series of ´ loges that were published poems entitled E three years later in ANDRE´ GIDE’s Nouvelle revue franc¸aise. Gide, embarrassed by the inaccurate publication of the poems, financed a separate edition of them to correct the errors. The original series consisted of eighteen poems evoking childhood memories and addressing themes of longing for the home Perse left when his family moved to France and preference of nature to the town. Some critics have cited the influence of the priest and botanist Father Du¨ss, who documented plant species in the Antilles, in the im´ loges, rich agery of Perse’s early poetry. The E in imagery and metaphor drawn from the natural world of the Antilles, share with his later
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verse a tendency to use rare, often scientific or technical words. The poetry of the French Symbolists has also been cited as an influence, as have Paul Claudel, PAUL VALE´ RY, and other French poets. By 1911, Perse had decided to pursue a career in the diplomatic service. He passed his examination in 1914 and entered the service the same year. He adopted his pseudonym, which alternately appeared as St-J. Perse and Saint-John Perse, in order to separate his literary pursuits from his diplomatic career. In 1916, he was posted in China, first in Shanghai and then in Peking. In China, Perse enjoyed visiting a Taoist temple and traveling in the Gobi Desert. His years in China furnished the Asiatic flavor of one of his best known poems, Anabase (1924; Anabasis), translated in 1930 by T. S. ELIOT. The poem is narrated by a man of action, who, like Perse, finds himself in a position of leadership. As the action proceeds through the building of a city and a migration westward, he faces inner struggles and confusion over his relationship with those he leads. Amitie´ du Prince, first published in the review Commerce in 1924, also dates from this period. In 1921, Perse left China to attend the International Conference on the Limitation of Armaments in Washington, D.C. There, he made the acquaintance of the French statesman Aristide Briand (1862–1932) and served as his secretary from 1921 to 1932. In 1933, Perse was appointed Secretary-General of Foreign Affairs, a position he held until 1940. That year, his opposition to the appeasement of Germany resulted in his dismissal, and the Vichy government subsequently deprived him of his citizenship and confiscated his property. During the years leading up to World War II, Perse’s output of poetry was sparse. In
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1940, he moved to the United States and took a position at the Library of Congress. Deprived of his diplomatic duties and exiled from his home, he found more time and inspiration for poetry. Exile (1941; Exile, and Other Poems), written in seven cantos, is a personal poem about the trying nature of his exile from France and the rediscovery of his creativity. Washington forms the backdrop of Poe`me a` l’Etrange`re (1942), which takes the form of a poetic conversation between two foreigners in America. The rhythmic Pluies (1943; Rains) was inspired by Perse’s trip to Georgia. Perse dedicated Neiges (1944; Snows), written in New York, to his mother, and the poem reflects his feeling of distance from France in his exile. Vents (1945; Winds), a poetic-historic chronicle that reaches back to the era of the explorers of the New World, reflects Perse’s belief that the end of World War
II formed a benchmark in human history. Other later works include the long poem Amers (1957; Seamarks); Chronique (1960; Chronicle); and Oiseaux (1962; Birds), published with illustrations by GEORGES BRAQUE. Perse’s poetry is marked by meticulously designed rhythms and the use of assonance, alliteration, rhyme, and other poetic devices. Although he often employed religious imagery, his outlook was essentially secular, and his poetry reveals his contemplation of the impact of the divergent forces of the past and present on humanity and the future. His use of obscure words and complex language renders his poetry difficult to read, and it never gained widespread popularity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Knodel, Arthur, Saint-John Perse: A Study of His Poetry, 1966; Little, Roger, Saint-John Perse, 1973.
Petit, Roland (January 13, 1924– ) Dancer, Choreographer oland Petit was a leading choreographer in the French ballet scene in the second half of the twentieth century. His dramatic choreographic style fused realism, fantasy, modern dance, and elements of classical ballet. Although he worked primarily in France, Petit took his productions to international audiences. He also produced music hall reviews and contributed choreography to films. Petit was born in Villemomble, France. After studying at the Paris Opera Ballet’s school, he danced with the company until 1944. That year he moved to the The´aˆtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris, and the following year he helped found Les Ballets des Champs-Elyse´es,
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where he served as ballet master and principal dancer. In 1948 he founded the Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit, which brought his productions to international audiences in the United States and Europe. In 1954 he married one of the dancers in the company, Rene´e Jeanmaire, who appeared regularly in his ballets and music hall reviews. Among his choreographic creations are the ballets Les forains (1945; The Strolling Players), which examines the lives of circus performers; Le jeune homme et la mort (1946; The Young Man and Death); Les demoiselles de la nuit (1948; The Ladies of the Night); Carmen (1949), which ranks among his most popular works and featured Jean-
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maire in the lead role; L’oeuf a` la coque (1949; The Soft-Boiled Egg); La croqueuse de diamants (1950; The Diamond Cruncher); Le loup (The Wolf, 1953); Notre-Dame de Paris (1965); and Paradise Lost (1967). Petit produced a number of ballets for international companies such as the Royal Ballet in London and the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg. In addition to ballets he produced music hall reviews in the early 1970s, many of which featured Jeanmaire. He contributed choreography to many films, including Charles Vidor’s musical Hans Christian Andersen (1952), The Glass Slipper (1955), Daddy Long Legs (1955), and Anything Goes (1956). MAURICE CHEVALIER narrated the musical/ballet Black Tights (1962), which featured four pieces choreographed by Petit—La cro-
queuse de diamants; Cyrano de Bergerac; A Merry Mourning, A 24-Hour Mourning; and Carmen. In 1972 Petit took the post of artistic director at the Ballet de Marseilles, a position he held until 1998. Among Petit’s later ballets are versions of Coppe´lia (1975) and Phantom of the Opera (1980); Les amours de Frantz (1981; The Loves of Frantz); and a new version of the classic Swan Lake, Le lac des cygnes et ses male´fices (Swan Lake and Its Evil Spells, 1998). His memoirs, J’ai danse´ sur les flots (I Danced on the Waves), were published in 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Craig-Raymond, Peter, Roland Petit, 1953.
Picasso, Pablo (October 25, 1881–April 8, 1973) Painter, Sculptor, Ceramicist, Designer, Costume Designer, Graphic Artist ablo Ruiz y Picasso was perhaps the most prolific and influential artist of the twentieth century, producing tens of thousands of paintings, sculptures, lithographs, and drawings. With GEORGES BRAQUE he pioneered Cubism in the early twentieth century, resulting in revolutionary changes in the conception of space and form. Cubism was a forerunner of abstract art, the dominant trend in twentieth–century art. Picasso was born in Ma´laga, Spain. His father, Jose´ Ruiz Blasco, was an art teacher. The surname by which Picasso became known came from his mother, Marı´a Picasso y Lopez. He showed an interest in drawing and painting by the time he was seven, and by age 14 he was painting realistic pictures on a regular basis. As a teenager he earned high scores on the entrance exams for the Barcelona School of Fine Arts, where he enrolled in
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1895. Picasso won an honorable mention at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid at the age of 16. In 1897 Picasso held his first exhibition at the cafe´ Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona and studied briefly at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. Picasso preferred the circles of radical poets and painters to academic art study and spent much of his time in Barcelona’s cafe´s. With his father’s wholehearted support, he made his first trip to Paris in 1900. By 1902 he had returned twice, and in 1904 he settled permanently in the French capital. For the next decade Picasso lived in poverty as he tried to establish himself as a painter, returning on numerous occasions to Spain. In Paris Picasso gained the friendship of the poet Max Jacob, the writer Guillaume Apollinaire, and the American writers Ger-
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Pablo Picasso (쑖 Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
trude and Leo Stein. The Stein siblings became his earliest patrons and the subjects of a number of portraits, and his portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906) ranks among the most famous of his early works. Paintings such as Poor People on the Seashore and Woman in Blue (1902), finished between 1901 and 1904, constitute his “Blue Period.” Shades of blue dominate canvases strewn with the elongated bodies of alcoholics, beggars, prostitutes, and other down-and-outs. Picasso’s relationship with Fernande Olivier inaugurated his “Rose Period” from 1904 to 1906. Warm roses, pinks, and reds characterize this period, during which he often painted circus scenes and the figure of the harlequin. Influenced by Iberian, African, and Greek art, Picasso began in 1906 to paint a series of massive figures. His Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
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(1907) depicts five female figures. The three figures on the left show an affinity with Iberian sculpture and contrast with the savage, fractured depiction of the two women on the right. The seeds of Cubism are already apparent in the angular shapes of the women on the right in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Picasso worked with Georges Braque from 1908 to 1911 and during that time they developed the first phase of Cubism. The two painters created landscapes one critic described as being painted out of little cubes, giving birth to the name Cubism. The first Cubist phase was dubbed Analytic Cubism and was characterized by monochromatic color schemes, fragmented themes, and subjects that ranged from musical instruments to people. Cubism’s characteristic displaced forms enabled Picasso and Braque to show multiple sides of an ect. Picasso painted portraits (Portrait of Kahnweiler, 1910) in the Cubist style as well. He rendered human figures in flat forms with displaced limbs in disharmonious compositions. Synthetic Cubism, which infused flat, fragmented forms with more color, evolved from Analytic Cubism and Picasso’s new interest in collages. Cubism shattered traditional notions of space, form, and beauty. During World War I Picasso went to Rome to design sets for SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes. Picasso’s sets appeared in choreographer LE´ ONIDE MASSINE’s Parade (1917) and The Three-Cornered Hat (1919). In 1917 he married the dancer Olga Koklova, the subject of a number of Picasso’s portraits from that period. Many of his nudes and other paintings from the early 1920s, such as Mother and Child (1921), are rendered in a classical, realistic style. Mythological themes also began to appear in some of his paintings, such as The Pipes of Pan. Renewed violence soon began to characterize Picasso’s work, beginning with the 1925 painting The Three Dancers, inspired by a friend’s death. Around this time he also devel-
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oped associations with the Surrealists, including the poet PAUL E´LUARD and Surrealist founder ANDRE´ BRETON. His mistress during the early 1930s, Marie The´re`se Walter, posed for many of his paintings from that decade, such as Girl Before a Mirror (1932). Guernica, perhaps Picasso’s most famous painting, was displayed in the Spanish pavilion of the Paris World Exhibition in 1937. Intended as a protest against the German bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the painting depicts the casualties of the bombing in horrid, jagged forms. A grim tone of death permeated Picasso’s paintings of the World War II era, such as Still Life With Steer’s Skull (1942). He lived in Paris during the German occupation and joined the Communist Party in 1944. After the war ended the violence and grimness once more disappeared from his paintings. Although best known for his paintings, Picasso was also a prolific sculptor, ceramicist, and graphic artist. The Minotaur is the dominant theme in his series of etchings entitled The Sculptor’s Studio (1933). He devoted
much of 1947 to the production of thousands of ceramic pieces. His numerous sculptures include Man With Sheep (1944), She-Goat (1950), and Head of Woman (1967). By the time Picasso died in 1973, he had become the most influential painter of the twentieth century. He forged his own style from the modern artistic movements—Symbolism, Postimpressionism, and Fauvism—as well as traditional African and Iberian art. His early Cubist work heralded the explosion of abstract art in the later part of the twentieth century. Picasso’s work was widely exhibited around the world during his lifetime and continues to be shown in international galleries.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Daix, Pierre, Picasso: Life and Art, 1993; Heslewood, Juliet, Introducing Picasso, Painter and Sculptor, 1993; Jaffe´, Hans Ludwig C., Pablo Picasso, 1996; Leymarie, Jean, Picasso: The Artist of the Century, 1972; O’Brian, Patrick, Picasso, Pablo Ruiz Picasso: A Biography, 1976; Penrose, Sir Roland, Picasso: His Life and Work, 1981.
Pinter, Harold (October 10, 1930– ) Playwright, Director, Poet, Screenwriter he London-born playwright Harold Pinter’s “comedies of menace” leave his audiences with a sense of uncertainty, forcing them to read between the lines in order to discern underlying elements of the play. In many ways, his dramas resemble those of the Theater of the Absurd playwrights (see EUGE` NE IONESCO). Pinter’s characters speak in short sentences, and their relationships are plagued by wide communication gaps. His plays formed an important contribution to the dominant move in twentieth-
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century theater away from realistic drama and toward experimental techniques designed to force audiences to think. In addition to writing stage works, Pinter has directed and has written plays for the radio and screen. Pinter was the son of a tailor, born in Hackney, London. He attended the Hackney Downs Grammar School, where he acted in school productions, beginning in 1944. In 1948, Pinter entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His professional acting debut came in 1950, when he appeared on two pro-
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grams produced for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and the following year he briefly attended the Central School of Speech and Drama. Meanwhile, Pinter published poetry under the name Harold Pinta. Claiming conscientious objector status, he refused to serve in the military. Touring the British Isles with various acting companies, he used the stage name David Baron and worked in a series of odd jobs to support himself. He married Vivien Merchant in 1956, the same year he began to write his own plays. His first play to see production, The Room (1957), already evidences the style Pinter used throughout his career—terse speech, understatement, and a sense that the characters are aware of more than the audience understands. Rose and her husband Bert, who does not talk to his wife, are sitting in a room, which is for Rose a symbol of security. Mr. Kidd, the landlord, comes in and interrupts them, and he and Bert both leave. The next visitors, Clarissa and Toddy Sands, are a bickering couple looking for a place to stay. Mr. Kidd returns without Bert to give Rose an urgent message—a man wants to see her. The man, Riley, comes up to tell her that her father wants her to come home, a message Rose obviously does not want to hear. Bert returns, kills Riley, and Rose says she is blind. The audience is left to guess at the underlying secrets and motivations. The Room, a one-act play, was followed by a second one-act drama, The Dumbwaiter (1957). The premiere of Pinter’s first fulllength play, The Birthday Party (1958), was unsuccessful, but later productions met with popular approval, and a film version was produced in 1968. The Caretaker (1960) was Pinter’s greatest success up to that time; it opened at the Arts Theatre Club. The play concerns the relationships between the three main characters in the story—Mick, his brother Aston, and Davies, whom Aston has brought home from the bar. Mick is unpredictable, and Aston and Davies are opposites
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in every way—Aston is shy and disorganized, while Davies is opinionated and neat. An atmosphere of uncertainty permeates The Lover (1963). Sarah engages in a game with her husband, Richard, who in the afternoons comes to the house and plays her lover, Max. Richard-Max breaks their pattern of traditional games one afternoon, and Sarah is as confused by his new game as he is about her reaction. It becomes uncertain whether or not they are still playing a game, and, uncomfortable, they return to the old games. The Homecoming (1965) opened in London, was produced on Broadway two years later, and won the Tony Award for Best Play. Among Pinter’s other plays from this period are Le Gardien (1961), Silence (1969), Old Times (1971), and No Man’s Land (1975). The title of Betrayal (1978), which premiered at the National Theatre, conveys its main theme. The story, related in backward chronology, traces a series of betrayals among Jerry, his friend Robert, and Robert’s wife Emma, the first of which is Jerry’s affair with Emma. Pinter directed the premiere of The Hothouse (1980) at the Hampstead Theatre. The action unfolds in the dark atmosphere of a mental institution, where the patients are identified only by numbers. The patients are mistreated, and the staff, run by the incompetent Roote, is corrupt. When patient 6459 gives birth to a child on Christmas Day, a search commences to find its father, and Lamb is eventually accused. Higher up in the ranks of the staff, Miss Cutts asks Gibbs to murder Roote, who is her lover. Violence erupts, and most of the staff dies, though Pinter does not let the audience in on the details. The play ends with Gibbs in charge of the rest home and Lamb sitting dumbstruck and out of his senses. Outside of writing plays, Pinter has directed many stage works, including a production of Robert Shaw’s play The Man in the Booth in London in 1967, JAMES JOYCE’s Exiles at the Mermaid Theatre in 1970, and Simon Gray’s Butley at the Criterion Theatre 1971. In 1973, he took the position of associate director to
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Peter Hall at the National Theatre, where he also directed Gray’s Close of Play (1979). His other plays include One for the Road (1986; co-written with Ivan Kyncl), Ashes to Ashes (1996), Celebration (1999) and Remembrance of Things Past (2000). Among Pinter’s many radio, television, and film dramas are A Slight Ache (1958); Tea Party (1965); The Basement (1965), a BBC production in which Pinter acted the part of Stott; and Landscape (1968). His screenplays include The Servant (1963); The PumpkinEater (1964), adapted from a novel by Penelope Mortimer, directed by Jack Clayton, and winner of the British Film Academy’s best screenplay award; The Quiller Memorandum (1966); Accident (1967), based on a novel by Nicholas Mosley and one of his more successful screenplays; The Go-Between (1971); The Last Tycoon (1974); The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981); a screenplay version of his own play Betrayal (1982); and an adaptation of FRANZ KAFKA’s The Trial (1993). Pinter
wrote the screenplay for director Kenneth Branagh’s Sleuth, slated for release in 2007. Pinter’s Poems and Prose 1941–1977 was published in 1978. Since 2000, Pinter has devoted his energies to poetry and politics. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, who the committee said “in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Batty, Mark, About Pinter: The Playwright and the Work, 2005; Billington, Michael, The Life and Work of Harold Pinter, 1996; Esslin, Martin, Pinter, The Playwright, 1992; Hinchliffe, Arnold P., Harold Pinter, rev. ed., 1981; Jalote, S. R., The Plays of Harold Pinter: A Study in Neurotic Anxiety, 1996; Peacock, D. Keith, Harold Pinter and the New British Theatre, 1997; Regal, Martin S., Harold Pinter: A Question of Timing, 1995. www.haroldpinter.org.
Plath, Sylvia (October 27, 1932–February 11, 1963) Poet, Novelist, Short-Story Writer ylvia Plath’s tumultous emotional life provided a springboard for her frank, often haunting poetry laced with anger and the grotesque. Heavily influenced by the confessional verse of the American poets Robert Lowell (1917–1977) and W. D. Snodgrass (1926– ), Plath published relatively little poetry before her suicide in 1963, and her fame as a poet derives mostly from posthumously printed works. Plath was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, to a mother of Austrian descent and a German father. Her family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, in 1936. Her father, a zoology professor at Boston University who
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specialized in bees, died of complications from diabetes in 1940. Her mother supported the family through teaching jobs after his death and in 1942 moved the family to Wellesley. When she was just eight years old, Plath published her first poem in the children’s section of the Boston Herald. A bright student, Plath entered Smith College, where she seemed to ride a rollercoaster up to achievement and back down to depression. Around the time of her junior year, she suffered a severe mental breakdown. Doctors treated her with electric shock therapy, and she nearly died in her first suicide attempt. Plath took an
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overdose of sleeping pills and laid down in the crawlspace under her house, and only her brother’s discovery of her nearly lifeless body saved her. Details of Plath’s ordeals with depression form an important part of her only novel, The Bell Jar (1963), which she wrote under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas and features a suicidal protagonist. In 1955, after bouncing back, Plath graduated from Smith College with highest honors and earned a Fulbright Scholarship to Cambridge University in England. Her time in England marked an important turning point in her life, for there she met and fell in love with the British poet TED HUGHES. Although she had not yet published a commercial volume of poems, her verse often appeared in the school newspaper Varsity. Plath and Hughes married in 1956, thus entering the beginning of a difficult marriage. After returning to the United States with Hughes, Plath taught at Smith College and worked as a secretary between 1957 and 1959. It was during this time that she fell under Lowell’s poetic influence, attending his seminars and continuing to write her poetry. In 1959, the pair returned to England, where their daughter was born. After spending time in London, they settled in a small town in Devon. It was then that Plath’s first poetry collection, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), appeared. The BBC broadcast Plath’s Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices, about three women going through childbirth in a hospital, shortly after the birth of her son in 1962. Later that year, she and Hughes separated, partly due to his affair with Assia Wevill. On February 11, 1963, Plath committed suicide while her children slept by taking sleeping pills and sticking her head in an oven with the gas turned on. Ariel (1965), perhaps influenced by Lowell, was a more personal volume of verse than The Colossus and explored the depths of mental illness, anger toward restrictive societal
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conventions, and her difficulties in her relationship with Hughes. Poems like “Lady Lazarus” alluded to her morbid state of mind at the time of writing: Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die.
Hughes edited Ariel and published the volume posthumously, and he endured much criticism, whether deserved or not, for possibly censoring verse that painted him in an unfavorable light. Plath wrote journals from the time she was eleven until her death, and all but a few she kept since 1950 were published as The Journals of Sylvia Plath in 1980. Hughes succeeded in suppressing several volumes for a number of years, later relenting to allow publication of two of them. Although he initially took on the task of editing them, the project eventually ended up in the hands of Karen V. Kukil. Anchor Books published The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath in 2000. Among Plath’s other works, all published after her death, are Wreath for a Bridal (1970), Fiesta Melons (1971), Crossing the Water (1971), Winter Trees (1972), and Pursuit (1973). She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1982 for The Collected Poems (1981).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, Paul, Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath, 1999; Becker, Jillian, Giving Up: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath, 2002; Hardwick, Elizabeth, On Sylvia Plath, 1973; Kirk, Connie Ann, Sylvia Plath: A Biography, 2004; Krook, Dorothea, Recollections of Sylvia Plath, 1976; Rose, Jacqueline, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, 1991; Steinberg, Peter K., Sylvia Plath, 2004; Thomas, Trevor, Sylvia Plath: Last Encounters, 1989; Wagner-Martin, Linda, Sylvia Plath: A Literary Life, 2003.
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Poitier, Sidney (February 20, 1927– ) Actor, Director defining force for African-Americans in Hollywood, Sidney Poitier challenged and broke down racial stereotypes and taboos in film during his early career. In his later years, he has been a key force in popularizing African-American actors on the screen and has portrayed well-known international civil rights figures both in film and on television. For his performance in Lilies of the Field (1963), he became the first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Actor. Poitier was born in Miami, Florida, where his Bahamian parents traveled to sell produce they harvested from their Cat Island tomato farm in the Bahamas. Poitier spent his youth in abject poverty on the remote island, which had no electricity. When he was eleven, his father moved the family to Nassau, where he was first exposed to film. His tendency toward delinquency prompted his parents to send him to Miami to live with his brother when he was fifteen. Living in the United States gave Poitier his first exposure to racial prejudice, as he came from a predominantly black country, and his experiences on the Miami streets were a formative influence on his perspective and his career. Poitier soon moved to New York City, working in a series of odd jobs. One of these was as a janitor at the American Negro Theater, where he traded his labor for acting lessons. His first attempt at acting there failed miserably, and he worked hard for six months to hone his acting skills and shed his accent. Poitier soon began to attract notice, and he landed a role in the Broadway show Lysistrata (1946) for which he earned positive reviews. The following year, he performed in Anna Lucasta. Having attained a measure of success on Broadway, Poitier was offered a role in Jo-
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seph L. Mankiewicz’s (1909–1983) film No Way Out (1950). His performance as the black doctor Luther Brooks, who finds himself in the prison ward of a hospital facing the difficult situation of treating a highly prejudiced white man wounded in a gas station robbery, marked the beginning of a series of roles Poitier would play that challenged racial barriers in American society. Poitier’s interest in civil rights was not confined to the United States, and he appeared in Zolta´n Korda’s (1895–1961) Cry, the Beloved Country (1952), with a screenplay by ALAN PATON based on his novel of the same title. In the film, he played the young South African Reverend Msimangu, who helps a minister find his missing delinquent son and daughter in Johannesburg’s slums. Poitier played a defiant student in a class of delinquents in Blackboard Jungle (1955). For his role as Noah Cullen in Stanley Kramer’s (1913–2001) The Defiant Ones (1958), he became the first black actor to be nominated for a competitive Academy Award. His character is a black convict who escapes while shackled to a white man, and the two men on the run must learn to work together and develop a friendship. He became the first black man to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Homer Smith in Ralph Nelson’s (1916–1987) Lilies of the Field (1963). Poitier portrayed Homer Smith, a traveling, unemployed construction worker who encounters a group of nuns seeking to build a church in the desert. Poitier returned to the stage to play Walter Lee Younger in the first production of Lorraine Hansberry’s (1930–1965) A Raisin in the Sun (1959), which was the first play by a black playwright to be produced on Broadway. Back in Hollywood, Poitier played reporter Ben Munceford, who unwittingly finds himself caught up in a dangerous mission, in
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James B. Harris’s (1928– ) Cold War thriller The Bedford Incident (1965). In Guy Green’s (1913–2005) A Patch of Blue (1965), costarring Elizabeth Hartman (1943–1987) and Shelley Winters (1920–2006), Poitier starred as the kind-hearted, black office worker Gordon Ralfe who falls in love with a blind white woman who is unaware of his race. Interfering in their relationship is the woman’s mother, who does everything she can to prevent them from being together. British director James Clavell’s (1924–1994) To Sir, with Love (1967) cast Poitier as Mark Thackeray, a teacher who takes on the task of straightening out troubled students a tough, East End high school in London. The same year, Poitier played one of his most famous roles as Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs. Tibbs investigates a murder in a small town in the American South in Norman Jewison’s (1926– ) In the Heat of the Night (1967). Two sequels later followed—They Call Me Mister Tibbs (1970) and The Organization (1971). Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) with Spencer Tracy (1900–1967) and KATHARINE HEPBURN again treated the theme of interracial relationships. Poitier played Dr. John Wade Prentice, a well-to-do doctor who is engaged to Tracy and Hepburn’s daughter. During the 1970s, Poitier continued to act in films but also concentrated on directing. Actor-comedian Bill Cosby (1937– ) and singer-actor Harry Belafonte (1927– ) were frequent stars in his productions during this period. His first film as a director was the western Buck and the Preacher (1972), in which he costarred with Belafonte. Poitier’s Buck teams up with a con-artist preacher (Belafonte) to assist freed slaves with difficulties they encounter in the American West. Poitier starred in and directed Uptown Saturday Night (1974), in which he played Steve Jackson opposite Cosby’s Wardell Franklin. The pair sneak out to an illegal night club, only to lose Jackson’s wallet containing a winning lottery ticket in a robbery. Cosby and Poitier again teamed up in Let’s Do It Again
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(1975), in which Clyde Williams (Poitier) and Billy Foster (Cosby) concoct a shady scheme that comes back to haunt them to raise funds for their fraternal order. In A Piece of the Action (1977), James Earl Jones (1931– ) plays a retired detective who tries to put known criminals Manny Durrell (Poitier) and Dave Anderson (Cosby) to work at a center for troubled youths. In 1980, Poitier directed (but did not appear in) the highly successful comedy Stir Crazy, which featured Richard Pryor (1940–2005) and Gene Wilder (1933– ) as two men framed for a bank robbery who end up in a prison in the American West. Cosby again appeared in Poitier’s Ghost Dad (1990). Poitier played FBI agent Warren Stantin, who teams up with a local man to track down a blackmailer in the wilderness, in Roger Spottiswoode’s (1945– ) Shoot to Kill (1988). In recent years, he has appeared in several television movies, including Separate But Equal (1991), in which he portrayed the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993); Mandela and de Klerk (1997); in which he played South African civil rights leader Nelson Mandela (1918– ); David and Lisa (1998); Free of Eden (1999); The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn (1999); and The Last Brickmaker in America (2001). Poitier was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1974. Since 1997, he has served as a nonresident ambassador to Japan for the Bahamas and to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 2001, he received an Honorary Academy Award “in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being.” One of Poitier’s daughters, Sydney Tamiia Poitier (1973), is a successful actress. He has written two autobiographical books, This Life (1980) and The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Goudsouzian, Aram, Sidney Poitier, Man, Actor, Icon, 2004; Keyser, Lester J., The Cinema of Sidney Poitier: The Black Man’s Changing
Role on the American Screen, 1980; Marill, Alvin H., The Films of Sidney Poitier, 1978; www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ poitier_s.html.
Pollock, Paul Jackson (January 28, 1912–August 11, 1956) Painter erisively dubbed “Jack the Dripper” in 1956 by Time magazine for his unique methods of crafting canvases by pouring paint on them, Jackson Pollock was a major American painter who advanced the Abstract Expressionist movement in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Pollock was the youngest of five sons, born in Cody, Wyoming, to LeRoy Pollock and Stella May McClure. His father worked at various times in farming, as a stonemason, and as a surveyor. Jackson Pollock grew up in both Arizona and California, and attended Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. By 1930, he had begun to study under the painter Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) in New York City. Benton used fluid motion and rhythms to create paintings that lacked central figures, and he often portrayed rural American scenes. He was an important early influence on Pollock, who continued to study with him for a number of years. Having escaped the draft in 1941 after failing to meet the psychological criteria, Pollock worked for the easel division of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, thus providing himself with an income for painting. By this time, he had watched with keen interest demonstrations of Indian sandpainting at the Museum of Modern Art, and the art of Mexican muralists such as Jose´ Orozco (1883–1949) and DIEGO RIVERA
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also influenced him at this stage in his painting career. Pollock’s fortunes began to improve when he met and later married Lee Krasner, an art student, in 1945. Krasner boasted a strong knowledge of many aspects of the art world— specifically Cubism—and introduced Pollock to a number of other artists who would later come to be called Abstract Expressionists. Among these were Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) and William Baziotes (1912–1963). Krasner also introduced Pollock to the influential art critic Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), who enthusiastically promoted Pollock’s work. Art collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979) provided a venue for Pollock and his fellow artists to exhibit in her Art of This Century gallery, and she commissioned Pollock to paint a large work entitled Mural (1943). He held his first solo exhibition at Guggenheim’s gallery the same year. Guggenheim also lent Pollock and his wife the down payment for their wood-frame home and barn (which Pollock used as his studio) now known as the Pollock-Krasner House and Studio in Springs on Long Island, New York. During this time, Pollock honed his skills at spontaneous, liquid paint creations, which he had been exposed to as early as 1936. Paint pouring, a related technique, was the method he used for works from the early 1940s through the early 1950s, such as Male and Female (1942), Arabesque (Number 13A)
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(1948), and Lavender Mist (Number 1) (1950). Pollock, by then long since disillusioned with traditional easel painting, laid out his canvases on the studio floor and poured or dripped paint onto them, a method later termed his “drip technique.” His application tools, too, were unique, from sticks to trowels to basters. He used the movement of his entire body to paint, often in heavy impasto with foreign objects such as sand and glass blended in. “On the floor I am more at ease,” Pollock said in a famous quote. “I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around in it, work from the four sides and be literally ‘in’ the painting.” Life magazine was instrumental in exposing Pollock’s work to the general public in 1948 and 1949, when it ran an article entitled, “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” The article and others were not entirely complimentary of the painter’s technique, but they helped popularize Pollock’s name and work. In spite of the abstraction in his work, Pollock claimed to have envisioned the final product before he finished it. Thus, he worked the movements, textures, paints, and applicators into his vision. In 1951, however, Pollock turned toward new methods of painting. His canvases showcased dark colors and less abstract, more figurative elements.
In the 1950s, Pollock began a tragic plunge into severe alcoholism, which he had battled for most of his adult life. One night not far from his home in New York in 1956, he and one of his two passengers died when his car careened out of control and crashed in an alcohol-related accident. Although considered one of America’s major painters, Pollock’s period of influence was relatively short. He produced his most widely known paintings between 1947 and 1950 and helped elevate the American abstract art to the level of critical respect received by European counterparts. Actress Marcia Gay Harden (1959– ) won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her 2000 portrayal of Lee Krasner in Ed Harris’s film Pollock.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Frank, Elizabeth, Jackson Pollock, 1963; Naifeh, Steven, and Smith, Gregory White, Jackson Pollock: An American Genius, 1939; O’Connor, Francis V., Jackson Pollock, 1967; O’Hara, Frank, Jackson Pollock, 1959; Robertson, Bryan, Jackson Pollock, 1960; Solomon, Deborah, Jackson Pollock: A Biography, 1987; http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/CAS/pkhouse.nsf/ pages/pollock.
Ponnelle, Jean-Pierre (February 19, 1932–August 11, 1988) Impresario ften called “the father of the opera film,” Jean-Pierre Ponnelle mounted unconventional operas that accentuated the musical and dramatic aspects of the production, many of which he committed to film. One of the most influential opera di-
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rectors of the 1970s and 1980s, he involved himself in all aspects of his creations. He directed and designed productions in both the United States and Europe. Ponnelle was born in Paris and spent part of his childhood in Germany. He studied art
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history and philosophy at the Sorbonne and also took art lessons from the French abstract painter FERNAND LE´ GER. An introduction to the German composer HANS WERNER HENZE launched Ponnelle’s career as a stage designer. In 1952 Ponnelle designed sets and costumes for the world premiere of Henze’s opera Boulevard Solitude in Hannover, West Germany (now Germany). From 1959 to 1961 Ponnelle served in the French military in Algeria. A decade later he made his directing debut, designing and directing a production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in Du¨sseldorf (1962). A 1968 production of Gioacchino Rossini’s Barber of Seville at the Salzburg Festival established his international reputation. The following year he directed the first of his Mozart operas, Cosi fan tutte, again at Salzburg, and he also directed La Cenerentola for the San Francisco Opera. Ponnelle was known for lavish, unconventional productions that emphasized both musical and dramatic elements. He directed film
versions of many of his operas, including a series of Monteverdi productions with Nicholas Harnoncourt. Mirella Freni and PLA´ CIDO DOMINGO appeared in his version of GIACOMO PUCCINI’s Madame Butterfly, and LUCIANO PAVAROTTI and Edita Gruberova starred in his Rigoletto. Ponnelle’s other films include Tristan Und Isolde and a widely acclaimed version of Figaro. Particularly fond of American audiences, Ponnelle often worked in the United States, including Chicago, San Francisco, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His work took him to the world’s major centers of opera as well—Munich, Vienna, Milan, and London. Ponnelle also contributed to the Salzburg Festival and the Bayreuth Festival. Ponnelle’s son Pierre-Dominique is a conductor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Moritz, Chris, ed., Current Biography Yearbook, “Ponnelle, Jean-Pierre,” 1983.
Porter, Cole Albert (June 9, 1891–October 15, 1964) Composer, Songwriter major contributor to the Great American Songbook, the American composer and songwriter Cole Porter wrote numerous hits for the Broadway stage between the 1930s and the 1950s. His humor, wit, and knack for songwriting infused his Broadway musicals as well as his Hollywood film scores, which continue to charm audiences decades after his death. Many of Porter’s songs remain well-known standards. Porter was born in Peru, Indiana, into a well-off Protestant family who lived on a large farm. His mother sent him to Marion Conservatory, where he started studying the violin
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when he was six and two years later began piano lessons. By the age of ten, he had cowritten his own operetta, and at age eleven his song “The Bobolink Waltz” was published in Chicago. Porter’s maternal grandfather, having acquired considerable wealth in the lumber business, exercised a great deal of influence over his daughter’s family and sent the young Porter to Worcester Academy in Massachusetts in 1905 to study law. He excelled in his studies and graduated valedictorian in 1909 but still managed to take an active role in the school’s drama and arts while he was there.
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Upon his graduation from Worcester, he enrolled at Yale University. There he continued to write music, composing the school football fight songs “ Bulldog” and “Bingo Eli Yale,” writing songs for the University Glee Club, and penning hundreds of other tunes. His classmates voted him “Most Entertaining Man.” In 1913, Porter attended Harvard Law School before transferring into the university’s music department in 1915. The same year, his first song to hit Broadway, “Esmerelda,” appeared in the revue Hands Up, and “Two Big Eyes” from Miss Information quickly followed. His first full-fledged Broadway production, See America First, was produced in 1916. These and a series of other productions proved to be commercial and critical failures, prompting Porter to move to Paris in 1917 and continue his songwriting efforts abroad. While in Europe, Porter avoided the draft for World War I but worked for the Duryea Relief Fund and served in the French Foreign Legion. Upon his discharge in 1919, he married Linda Lee Thomas, who came from a wealthy family and helped afford Porter a more than comfortable lifestyle for which he had a strong taste. On his return trip from a journey home to announce his engagement and ask his grandfather for financial support—a request the latter refused—he met producer Raymond Hitchcock (1865–1929). Hitchcock hired Porter to write songs for the score for the revue Hitchy-Koo of 1919. The show, along with Porter’s song “An Old-Fashioned Garden,” enjoyed some success. Although Porter released little work to the public during most of the 1920s, he continued to write songs. Many of them he presented at private gatherings as he and his wife lived the high life touring around major European cities. In the midst of his active social schedule—bolstered by the million-dollar inheritance his grandfather left him upon his death in 1923—he found time to study with the French composer Vincent d’Indy (1851–1931).
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Before the decade ended, however, he had reemerged on Broadway with the musical Paris (1928). The production featured one of his most famous songs, “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” and kicked off a series of musicals and revues that followed in quick succession. The following year, he had a pair of hits with the London production of Wake Up and Dream and the New York production of Fifty Million Frenchman. The latter showcased a number of songs that became popular— “You’ve Got That Thing” and “You Do Something To Me” among them. His hit song “What Is This Thing Called Love?” made up part of the score for Wake Up and Dream. The New Yorkers (1930) popularized the controversial song “Love For Sale,” which for a time was banned from radio stations due to its explicit nature. Gay Divorce followed in 1932 and featured FRED ASTAIRE in his final appearance on stage. “Night and Day,” from that score, is one of Porter’s most successful songs. Anything Goes (1934) earned Porter some of the highest critical praise of his career and featured, among other songs, “You’re the Top.” It was also the first of five Porter shows in which Ethel Merman (1908–1984) appeared. Jubilee (1935), which Porter cowrote with the playwright and director Moss Hart (1904–1961), was less successful but featured the well-known songs “Begin the Beguine” and “Just One of Those Things.” Red Hot and Blue, starring Merman, Bob Hope (1903–2003), and Jimmy Durante (1893–1980), followed in 1936. The 1930s marked the height of Porter’s career. He savored his success, living a lavish lifestyle and purposely making a spectacle of himself attending the openings of his shows. His fortunes changed in 1937, however, when he was involved in a serious horse riding accident that crushed his legs, led to more than thirty corrective surgeries, rendered him a cripple, and left him in chronic pain for the remainder of his life. The accident did not curb his desire to write, however, and he finished out the dec-
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ade with the comedy Leave it to Me (1938) and DuBarry Was a Lady (1939). The former popularized the song “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” sung by Mary Martin (1913–1990). He continued writing into the 1940s, producing Panama Hattie (1940), Let’s Face It! (1941), Something for the Boys (1943), and Mexican Hayride (1944), all of which enjoyed popular success. Seven Lively Arts (1944) and Around the World (1946) were less successful. Kiss Me Kate (1948) turned the popular tide back in his favor, going on to become the biggest success of his career and earning a Tony Award for Best Musical. For that show, Porter also won a Tony for Best Composer and Lyricist. In 1950, he released Out of this World, and in 1952 and 1955 he scored major hits with Can-Can and Silk Stockings. Although most famous for his stage scores, Porter also composed for the Hollywood screen. Born to Dance (1936) and Rosalie (1937) were among his earlier film scores, which also include music for Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) and You’ll Never Get Rich
(1941), both starring Astaire. Later Hollywood scores include the music for The Pirate (1948), High Society (1956), and Les Girls (1957). The 1950s was a difficult decade for Porter in his personal life. He lost his mother in 1952 and his wife two years later. Still in severe pain from his riding accident, Porter suffered from ulcers and underwent an amputation of his right leg in 1958. After the amputation, Porter ceased writing music and made few public appearances. He died of kidney failure in Santa Monica, California, at the age of seventy-three.
BIBLIOGRAPHY McBrien, William, Cole Porter: A Biography, 1998; Schwartz, Charles, Cole Porter: A Biography, 1977. www.coleporter.org. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ porter_c.html.
Poulenc, Francis (January 7, 1899–January 30, 1963) Composer, Pianist member of a loose-knit group of Paris avant-garde composers labeled “Les Six,” Francis Poulenc composed in a light, playful, and melodic style. He is best known for his hundreds of French songs and his piano works. Poulenc also composed operas, religious music, sonatas, concertos, and choral works. Poulenc was born into a prosperous Catholic family in Paris. His family made its money in the pharmaceutical industry. In his youth he studied at the Lyce´e Condorcet, and at home he was exposed to his family’s wide interests in music, literature, and art. Poulenc
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also spent a significant amount of time at his grandparents’ country home at Nogent-surMarne, which inspired some of his early music. His mother, a talented pianist, encouraged him to pursue his musical interests. Neither she nor Poulenc cared much for the formal, academic approach to music. An admirer of the music of Mozart and Schumann, Poulenc studied under the Catalan pianist Ricardo Vin˜es, whose tastes leaned toward modern music. Through him Poulenc met the avant-garde composer ERIK SATIE, whose informal approach to composition was another influence on Poulenc’s early music.
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Francis Poulenc (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
Having taught himself composition, Poulenc began to compose in earnest during World War I (in which he served). He published his American jazz–flavored Rapsodie Ne`gre in 1917. The following year he composed a song cycle, Cocardes, using verse by JEAN COCTEAU. The year 1918 also saw the completion of two of his most popular early piano works, Trois Mouvements Perpe´tuels
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and the Sonata for Piano Duet. Le Bestaire (1919; The Zoo), another well-known early work, a setting of a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire, was scored for voice with flute, clarinet, bassoon, and string quartet. Poulenc’s early music has a light and often humorous tone. In 1920 the critic Henri Collet included Poulenc in a group of modern composers he dubbed “Les Six,” with DARIUS
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MILHAUD, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre, Louis Durey, and Arthur Honegger. The members of Les Six shared little more than a taste for experimentation and modern music and close association with Satie and Cocteau. Poulenc studied with composer Charles Koechlin from 1921 to 1924. At the end of that period, ballet impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV commissioned him to compose the music for the ballet Les biches (1924; The Houseparty), which featured designs by the painter Marie Laurencin. It premiered at the The´aˆtre de Monte Carlo in 1924. During the 1920s he also completed a number of song cycles, including Poe`mes de Ronsard (1924) and Chansons gaillardes (1926). In 1928 he composed his Concert champeˆtre for harpsichord and small orchestra under commission from Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, and he completed his Aubade for small keyboard and solo orchestra the following year. Over the next two decades, Poulenc devoted much of his energy to composing piano music such as his Me´lancolie (1940). From 1929 to 1938 he worked on a series of Huit Nocturnes, which evoke night scenes. “Les cloches de Malines,” for example, depicts a town market square. He arranged the Suite franc¸ais (1935)—which he particularly liked and performed often—from works by the sixteenth-century composer Claude Gervaise. Poulenc began his long association with baritone Pierre Bernac in 1934, when he first accompanied the singer on the piano in a recital. Soon afterward he was devastated by the death of his friend Pierre-Octave Ferroud in a car accident. Ferroud’s death sparked a renewed interest in the Catholicism of Poulenc’s upbringing and a more serious tone in his music. He had a mystical experience during a visit to a shrine and began writing reli-
gious works, among which are the choral work Litanies a` la Vierge Noire de Rocomadour (1936; Litanies to the Black Virgin of Rocomadour), Mass in G Major (1937), Stabat Mater (1951), and Motets de pe´nitence. During the World War II occupation of France by Germany, Poulenc participated in the Resistance. Figure humaine (performed 1945), a cantata based on poems by PAUL E´LUARD, dates from the war period and was printed underground during the occupation. He continued to write song cycles that vary widely in tone, intention, and emotion. Poulenc set poems by Max Jacob (Cinq poe`mes de Max Jacob, 1931), E´luard (Tel jour, telle nuit, 1937), Guillaume Apollinaire (Banalite´s, 1940), Louis Aragon, FEDERICO GARCı´A LORCA (Trois chansons de Lorca), and others. In his later career, he wrote several operas. Les dialogues des Carme´lites (1953–1956) features libretto by Georges Bernanos, adapted from Gertrud von le Fort’s novel Die Letzte am Schafott (The Last on the Scaffold), and depicts the execution of Carmelite nuns during the French Revolution. Poulenc’s comic opera Les Mamelles de Tire´sias (1947; The Breasts of Tiresias) is based on a play by Apollinaire. Among Poulenc’s other works are the Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet (1930–32); the Organ Concerto (1938); Sinfonietta (1947); Gloria for soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra (1959); the song cycle La Courte Paille (1960); the choral work Se´cheresses; the Oboe Sonata (1962); and film scores.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bernac, Pierre, Francis Poulenc: The Man and His Songs, 1977; Ivry, Benjamin, Francis Poulenc, 1996; Mellers, Wilfrid, Francis Poulenc, 1993.
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Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis (October 30, 1885–November 1, 1972) Poet, Essayist, Translator zra Pound was the twentieth century’s single most influential—and controversial—poet in the English-speaking world. The central impetus of the Modernist movement, he was the driving force behind its submovements of Imagism and Vorticism. At the height of his Imagist years as a poet, he combined sparse language with vivid imagery. Pound was also a prolific translator and critic, responsible for launching the careers of many well-known poets, authors, and artists as well as introducing oriental poetry to English readers. Pound’s influence as a poet, however, is colored by his overt anti-Semitism and support of Fascist regimes during World War II. Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, a mining town, to Homer Loomis Pound and Isabel Weston Pound. He was raised as a Presbyterian in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. His father worked as an assistant assayer at the United States Mint, perhaps giving Pound an early start toward his later controversial economic theories. At the age of twelve, Pound entered Cheltenham, a military school, where he studied Latin and Greek. He subsequently studied for two years at the University of Pennsylvania, where he befriended the poet William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) and the poet and novelist H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886–1961), to whom he was engaged for a time. He later attended Hamilton College, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1905. Pound returned to the University of Pennsylvania and earned his master’s degree in 1906. Pound taught at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiania, where he became involved in a scandal that forced him to leave after less than a year. In 1908, he went to Europe, where he spent several months in Venice and eventually settled in England. He printed his first volume of verse, A Lume
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Spento (1908; With Tapers Quenched) in Venice. He published his next to books of poetry, Personae and Exultations, in London in 1909. Much of his early verse was influenced by his love of Provenc¸al and early Italian poetry. After he settled in London, he was influenced by FORD MADOX FORD , T. E. Hulme (1883–1917), and especially W. B. YEATS. He began to publicly articulate the principles of Imagist poetry, which stressed direct presentation of an image (instead of description), sparse language that was confined to the purpose of presenting the image, and musical phrasing of the verse. In 1914, he edited Des Imagistes, considered the first anthology of Imagist poetry. Pound wrote profusely for various magazines while in London, including New Age and Little Review, and became the literary adviser for The Egoist. In the process of becoming an influential poet and writer himself, he was highly instrumental in getting the early poetry and novels of JAMES JOYCE, T.S. ELIOT (whose famous poem “The Waste Land” he later edited), and others published. He enthusiastically promoted the verse of other English-language poets, such as D. H. LAWRENCE and ROBERT FROST, as well. Not wishing to limit himself to English poetry and literature, Pound wrote about and was instrumental in promoting the works of the Vorticist artists. Notable among them were WYNDHAM LEWIS and the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891–1915). Pound gave the Vorticists their name, and he helped found and contributed to Blast—The Review of the Great English Vortex. (See WYNDHAM LEWIS for further information on Vorticism.) In 1914, he married the Vorticist artist Dorothy Shakespear (1886–1978). Pound eventually became Yeats’s secretary and developed an interest not only in the latter’s poetry, but in his mystical and occult be-
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liefs. The two poets lived together in Sussex during World War I, during which time they studied Japanese Noh plays and the works of the American orientalist Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908). Pound developed Fenollosa’s work on Chinese characters into the Ideogrammic Method—Fenollosa conceived of Chinese written characters as ideograms, or abstracted and compressed visual metaphors—and in 1915 he published Cathay, small volume of Fenollosa-inspired poems considered among the best of his Imagist poems. Pound’s approach to employing free-verse rather than literal translations of Chinese poetry attracted both criticism and praise. Around 1915, Pound embarked on what would become a fifty-year, unfinished poetic effort entitled Cantos. He published portions of the Cantos periodically over the years. Noted for both for their originality and obscurity, the poems contained no unifying elements or characters but were rather amalgamated bits and pieces of Pound’s interests at whatever times he wrote them—images, Confucian philosophy, economics, politics, Chinese characters, personal philosophy, and other subjects. Pound published Homage to Sextus Propertius and Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, his final two works of verse written before he moved to Paris, in 1919 and 1920, respectively. The latter, a bitter goodbye to both Britain’s literary culture and the overcommercialization of society, became one of the most controversial poems of the twentieth century. After settling in Paris in 1920, he befriended famous avant-garde artists, writers, and musicians such as the painter MARCEL DUCHAMP, the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara (1896–1963), the painter and sculptor FERNAND LE´ GER, and the American writer ERNEST HEMINGWAY. He also wrote the opera Le Testament, a setting of a Franc¸ois Villon (1431–1463) long poem written in 1461, wrote critical works, completed translations, and cowrote a number of pieces for violin with the American composer and pianist George Antheil (1900–1959). In 1922, Pound became
involved with the American violinist Olga Rudge (1895–1996), who was his mistress until the end of his life. In 1924, Pound moved to Rapallo, Italy, with his wife. His interest in the field of economics began to grow, and he pursued ideas associated with the Social Credit theory advanced by Major C. H. Douglas (1879–1952), a Scottish engineer whom he had met in 1918. Douglas and other proponents of Social Credit believed the aim of the monetary system was the betterment of society, and that a state credit system would increase buying power in the general populace, which would in turn promote creativity and strip bankers and financiers of their excessive power. They blamed international bankers for ineffective distribution of money, excessive usury, fostering economic depressions, and kindling and financing wars. Pound took these ideas to an extreme, leading him to support the Fascist powers during World War II. While in Rapallo, Pound also organized annual concerts that featured music from contemporary to classical. His efforts played a significant role in reviving interest in the work of the Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741). In 1939, Pound returned to the U.S. for the first time in many years, only to decide he preferred living in Rapallo. During World War II, he supported the Mussolini regime in any way he could—by writing articles for both newspapers and scholarly audiences, appearing on hundreds of broadcasts aimed at American troops on Rome Radio, and distributing pamphlets he wrote. To Pound, the central evil of the world and the catalysts for war were central banks (which he believed to be run by Jews—he made no secret of his anti-Semitism) that forced governments to pay interest to private banks for their own money. In a 1939 essay entitled “What is Money For?” Pound declared, “Usury is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon’s knife of Fascism can cut out of the life of the nations.” He also published a series of writings known as the “mon-
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ey pamphlets” prior to the war, asserting that Jews were responsible for the negative economic forces of usury, the gold standard, and economic depression. The United States government indicted Pound for treason in 1943, and two years later he was captured by Italian partisans and turned over to U.S. forces. After being held prisoner at a U.S. Army detention camp at Pisa (where he wrote the Pisan Cantos) for six months, he was returned to the United States a physically and mentally weakened man to face the treason charges. Having being declared insane and unfit to stand trial, Pound was sentenced to a mental institution and spent the years between 1946 and 1958 at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. Some debate exists over whether or not Pound was truly clinically insane. While institutionalized, he continued to write the Cantos, received visitors from all walks of artistic life, carried on extensive correspondences, and translated a number of Confucian classics. The American poets ROBERT FROST and Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), as well as others, ardently lobbied for Pound’s release, which was finally granted in 1958. Pound returned to Italy, where he lived and produced
very little until his death. Pound expressed remorse over his anti-Semitism and dismay over much of what he had written at the end of his life, and by all accounts he died an unhappy man.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackroyd, Peter, Ezra Pound, 1987; Ackroyd, Peter, Ezra Pound and His World, 1980; Brooke-Rose, Christine, A ZBC of Ezra Pound, 1971; Carpenter, Humphrey, A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound, 1988; Davie, Donald, Ezra Pound: Poet as Sculptor, 1964; Davie, Donald, Pound, 1975; Flory, Wendy Stallard, The American Ezra Pound, 1989; Furbank, Philip Nicholas, Pound, 1985; Kenner, Hugh, The Pound Era, 1971; Laughlin, James, Ezra, 1994; Levy, Alan, Ezra Pound: The Voice of Silence, 1983; Nadel, Ira Bruce, Ezra Pound: A Literary Life, 2004; Nadel, Ira Bruce, The Cambridge Introduction to Ezra Pound, 2007; Norman, Charles, Ezra Pound, 1960; Norman, Charles, The Case of Ezra Pound, 1968; Schneidau, Herbert N., Ezra Pound: The Image and the Real, 1969; Stock, Noel, The Life of Ezra Pound, 1970; Tytell, John, Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano, 1987; Wilhelm, James J., The American Roots of Ezra Pound, 1985; Wilson, Peter, A Preface to Ezra Pound, 1997.
Powell, Anthony (December 21, 1905–March 28, 2000) Novelist, Playwright, Essayist he British novelist Anthony Dymoke Powell dedicated nearly twenty-five years of his writing life to producing his best-known work, the twelve-volume series A Dance to the Music of Time. Powell also wrote five novels before World War II and several others in his later career. His book reviews and articles appeared regularly in major British papers during his lifetime.
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Powell was born in London. His father, a military officer of Welsh ancestry, moved around frequently. Powell attended a preparatory school in Kent and in 1919 entered Eton College. The following year, he joined the Eton Arts Society, and his first published writings appeared in the society’s Eton Candle. In 1923 Powell entered Balliol College, Oxford,
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where he also contributed to the school’s periodicals. Following his schooling, Powell went to work for the London publishing house Duckworth in 1926. Duckworth published his first novel, Afternoon Men, in 1931. The job enabled him to meet other literary figures, including the controversial poet EDITH SITWELL and her two brothers. Afternoon Men, the first of Powell’s satirical novels, took aim at the bohemians and artists of Chelsea. During the 1930s, Powell finished four more novels, Venusberg (1932), From a View to a Death (1933), Agents and Patients (1936), and What’s Become of Waring? (1939). The last of these is a comic story set around a mystery in a publishing house. Powell married Lady Violet Pakenham in 1934 and in 1936 went to work full time as a scriptwriter for Warner Bros. He traveled to the United States the following year, and during the trip he met the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Powell, no stranger to the military, was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Welch Regiment in 1939. During World War II, he served in army intelligence and was promoted to the rank of major in 1943. He was decorated with several military honors in 1945. After the war, Powell resumed his writing career, also working as a journalist and reviewer for the Spectator, the Times Literary Supplement, and later the Daily Telegraph. His biographical work John Aubrey and His Friends was published in 1948. A Question of Upbringing, the first of his twelve-volume series A Dance to the Music of Time (the title was derived from a Nicolas Poussin painting bearing the same name) ap-
peared in 1951. The story, tinged with subtlety and satire, is narrated in the first person by Nicholas Jenkins. The most important unifying element of the series is the ongoing development of a set of recurring characters over five decades, and Powell’s main objective was to provide insight into the behavioral nuances of Britain’s upper and middle classes. The remaining volumes were published over the next twenty-five years: A Buyer’s Market (1952), The Acceptance World (1955), At Lady Molly’s (1957), Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant (1960), The Kindly Ones (1962), The Valley of Bones (1964), The Soldier’s Art (1966), The Military Philosophers (1968), Books Do Furnish a Room (1971), Temporary Kings (1973), and Hearing Secret Harmonies (1975). Powell’s later novels include O, How the Wheel Becomes It! (1983) and The Fisher King (1986), the latter of which unfolds during an archaeological cruise along the British coast. Powell published two essay collections in 1990 and 1991, and his Journal 1982–1986 appeared in 1995. His other works include plays and four volumes of memoirs published between 1976 and 1983. He was made Companion of the Order of the British Empire in 1956, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for At Lady Molly’s in 1957, and received numerous honorary degrees.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Birns, Nicholas, Understanding Anthony Powell, 2004; Brennan, Neil, Anthony Powell, rev. ed., 1995; McEwan, Neil, Anthony Powell, 1991; Tucker, James, The Novels of Anthony Powell, 1976.
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Presley, Elvis Aaron (January 8, 1935–August 16, 1977) Singer, Actor erhaps the most celebrated and widely admired musician in American history, Elvis Presley began his recording career mixing country and blues in the rockabilly style and became an instant hit. By the mid-1950s, he was performing a consistent string of chart-topping rock and roll songs, earning him the nickname “The King of Rock and Roll,” or sometimes simply “The King.” His flamboyant stage presence complete with dashing good looks, flashy attire, wild leg movements, and aggressive pelvic thrusts both enchanted teenage audiences and outraged conservative-minded Americans. Although Presley did not write his own songs, he was known for his ability to uniquely interpret music from a wide variety of genres, including blues, country, pop, and gospel. Presley sold more than a billion records internationally during his lifetime, and fans continue to buy his music thirty years after his death. He also appeared in thirty-one films. Presley was born Elvis Aaron Presley in a two-room house his father, Vernon Presley, had built in Tupelo, Mississippi. His mother, Gladys Love Smith, was a sewing machine operator. Presley’s twin brother was stillborn, and Elvis grew up as an only child. Presley was particularly close to his mother and would remain so throughout her life. His father lent little support to the family either emotionally or financially. In 1938, he was convicted of check forgery and incarcerated for eight months—an event that contributed to his wife’s plunge into alcoholism. The family attended a Pentecostal church—the First Assembly of God—where Presley was first exposed to the gospel music he maintained a love for until his death. He debuted as a performer at a singing contest at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show. Donning a cowboy outfit, he sang the American country music singer Red Foley’s
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(1910–1968) “Old Shep,” and won second prize. His mother bought him a guitar for his birthday in 1946, and two years later the family moved to the musically rich town of Memphis. Presley attended L. C. Humes High school and sometimes worked after school to help out with the family’s finances. After high school, he worked at the Precision Tool Company and then drove a truck for Crown Electric. Aside from his exposure to his church’s music, he was influenced by the songs he heard on the radio. In Memphis, he hung around record stores that had jukeboxes and listening booths, and he attended all-night “gospel sings” in downtown Memphis. Presley also frequented the bustling blues scene on Beale Street, where he heard such legendary artists as B. B. KING, blues guitarist Furry Lewis (1893–1981), blues singer-songwriter Big Bill Broonzy (1893–1958), Delta blues musician Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (1905–1976), and R&B and soul singer Rufus Thomas (1917–2001) perform. Sun Record Company (later Sun Studios) founder Sam Phillips (1923–2003) had established the Memphis Recording Service, in which anyone could pay approximately four dollars to record a ten-inch acetate. On July 18, 1953, Presley visited Sun and paid to record “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.” He returned again to record “Casual Love Affair” and “I’ll Never Stand in Your Way” Having heard Presley on a demo, Phillips invited him to come into the studio. Unimpressed with what he heard at first, he asked Presley to perform other songs. As he listened, Phillips grew more and more intrigued with the possibility of Elvis being a perfect match for an idea that had been brewing in his mind—marketing a white singer who
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could sing the music of black boogie-woogie and blues artists. On July 5, 1954, Phillips auditioned Presley with guitarist Winfield “Scotty” Moore” (1931– ) and bassist Bill Black (1926–1965). The trio recorded “I Love You Because,” a rockabilly version of Crudup’s “That’s All Right,” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Phillips took recordings from the session to the Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips (1926–1968), who played “That’s All Right” on his Red Hot and Blue show on WHBQ just a couple of days later. The song, along with its B-side “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” was an instant local success. Both Black and Moore began playing regularly with Presley. They first performed in July 1954 as The Blue Moon Boys, and the DJ and promoter Bob Neal became their manager. Presley debuted at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 2, 1954. Ironically, it was to be his only performance there. Two weeks later, he made his first of dozens of appearances on the popular radio show the Louisiana Hayride. In 1955, he signed year-long contract with Hank Snow Attractions, a company owned by country music singer-songwriter Hank Snow (1914–1999) and impresario “Colonel” Tom Parker (1909–1997). Parker replaced Neal as Presley’s manager—an event that would later prove disastrous to his career preferences. Meanwhile, Sun continued to release successful singles by the trio, including “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” “Baby, Let’s Play House,” and “Mystery Train.” His final single for Sun was “I Forgot to Remember to Forget,” the B-side of “Mystery Train,” which peaked at the top of the country charts. Late in 1955, RCA Victor bought out Presley’s Sun contract. Early the following year, he made his network television debut on CBS’s The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show, on which he appeared seven consecutive times. In January 1956, RCA released “Heartbreak Hotel,” which became an instant hit and remains a classic today. His first album, Elvis Presley (1956), containing popular songs such as “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Money Honey,”
was released shortly thereafter. His next popular hit was Jerry Leiber’s (1933– ) and Mike Stoller’s (1933) “Hound Dog.” (Better known as Leiber and Stoller, the songwriting pair penned many hits for Presley and other singers.) Onstage, Presley’s frenetic leg shaking and forceful hip thrusts earned him the nickname “Elvis the Pelvis” and both shocked and angered many in the public. He soon found, however, that his expressiveness drove teenaged girls crazy. Popular television entertainment shows could not deny his appeal or his moneymaking potential and signed Presley for performances in spite of objections to his alleged “obscenity.” Presley resented such accusations and maintained that the up-tempo music naturally called for the unrestrained expression he displayed. He subsequently appeared on the Steve Allen Show, the Milton Berle Show, and the Ed Sullivan Show (see ED SULLIVAN). By his third performance on Sullivan’s show, Sullivan had caved in to public objections to Presley’s “vulgarity” and ordered his camera crew to shoot him above the waist only. His first movie appearance came in 1956 in director Robert D. Webb’s (1903–1990) Love Me Tender, a musical in which he played Clint Reno. By the spring of 1956, Presley had gained tremendous popularity with teenagers across the United States. The high-energy shows and emotionally charged crowds that became associated with his concerts often required extra security. Some local authorities tried to prevent him from displaying his trademark gyrations when he performed. Meanwhile, his string of hits continued— “Hound Dog,” “I Was the One,” “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” and “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold” were among them. Presley’s fame spread to Europe and paved the way for later rock and roll artists to perform across the Atlantic (although Presley himself toured outside the United States only once— in Canada). In 1957, Presley bought the famed Graceland in Memphis, which consisted of a former church that had been converted into a twenty-
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three room mansion on several acres of land. He lived there until his death. Throughout the remainder of the decade, his popularity continued to rise with hits such as “All Shook Up”, “(Let me Be Your) Teddy Bear,” “Poor Boy,” “Treat Me Nice,” “I Need Your Love Tonight,” and the gospel song “(There’ll Be) Peace in the Valley (for Me).” He expanded his presence on the big screen, too, appearing in Loving You (1957), Jailhouse Rock (1957), and King Creole (1958). These first four of his thirty-one films are often considered his best. His hits were a mix of studio recordings and songs from his movie soundtracks. After the military granted him a delay on his draft notice to complete King Creole, Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army for two years. He underwent basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, and was stationed in Friedberg, Germany. Although he asked for no special treatment, the media widely covered his military service. In his absence, both RCA and Parker ensured he did not lose his popularity by releasing a steady stream of previously recorded music. In the army (and some argue before then), Presley picked up an amphetamine habit that marked the beginning of a long downfall into addiction to prescription drugs. Meanwhile, his mother began to drink more heavily and gain weight, and Presley was granted emergency leave due to her rapidly deteriorating health. He arrived home the day before she died in 1958. By all accounts, Presley was overwhelmed with grief. He was honorably discharged on March 5, 1960, with the rank of sergeant (E-5). He immediately returned to recording, and among his hits from the period were “Stuck on You” and “It’s Now or Never.” Many hits appeared on the acclaimed album Elvis Is Back! (1960). It was in the 1960s that Parker convinced Presley to stop touring and devote more time to making movies in Hollywood. Presley, who nurtured ambitions to become a serious actor, went along with Parker and signed a seven-year, multi-film contract. He appeared in a long string of films, most of which critics der-
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ided. Presley himself was unimpressed with the lighthearted musicals and later deduced that neither Parker nor anyone else took his acting ambitions seriously. The films, however, made him a continued popular presence throughout the decade, as did the accompanying soundtracks, which produced such hits as “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Return to Sender,” and “Viva Las Vegas.” Although he did not tour during his Hollywood years, he continued to make studio recordings including “Suspicion,” “(You’re The) Devil in Disguise,” “It Hurts Me,” and “Guitar Man.” He also released two gospel albums: His Hand in Mine (1960) and How Great Thou Art (1967). The latter won Presley his first Grammy award. On May 1, 1967, he married Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas. Their daughter, Lisa Marie Presley (1968– ), is a singer-songwriter and is Presley’s sole heir. After the film Change of Habit (1969), Presley returned to touring and focused more on recording. On December 3, 1968, he appeared on a television special that was later dubbed the “’68 Comeback Special.” The highly successful show included elaborate performances and segments from live sessions in which he performed in a manner reminiscent of his old days. The success of the show spurred him to record From Elvis in Memphis (1969) and the double LP From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis (1969). In 1969, Presley performed in Las Vegas, and he later toured the U.S., performing a string of sold-out shows. That year also saw his first number one hit, “Suspicious Minds,” in seven years, and others followed—“In the Ghetto,” “The Wonder of You,” and “Don’t Cry Daddy” among them. In spite of his worsening drug addiction, he performed nearly 1,100 shows between 1969 and 1977 and during that time had many hits. In December 1970, Presley met U.S. President Richard Nixon at the White House. The same year, MGM filmed him in Las Vegas for the documentary Elvis: That’s The Way It Is. He continued to tour and earn gold records.
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The studio filmed other shows for Elvis On Tour, which won a Golden Globe for Best Documentary in 1972. The same year he released the single “Burning Love,” which was to be his final top-ten hit on the U.S. pop charts. In 1973, he filmed his “Aloha from Hawaii” concert, and an album from the show went to number one. Despite his ostensible success, his personal life began to seriously unravel by the mid1970s. He and Priscilla divorced in 1973, and Presley began to gain weight to the point of obesity. His drug habit included a potent mix of amphetamines, barbiturates, tranquilizers, and other prescription medications that he greatly abused. (Ironically, Presley detested the drug-laden hippie-counterculture movement that arose in the 1960s and did not use either alcohol or illegal recreational drugs.) He appeared confused on stage and barely lasted through performances. His final performance was in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena, on June 25, 1977. Presley’s fiance´e, the actress and model Ginger Alden (1956– ), found him dead on his bathroom floor at Graceland on August 16, 1977. Although some controversy over the exact cause of his death remains, it was generally considered to be a combination of his chronic enlarged heart and drug abuse. His private physician, George Nichopoulos (1927– ), was later charged with prescribing Presley thousands of pills in the months before his death but was acquitted and maintained that he had actively tried to curb the singer’s drug dependency. Presley was buried next to his mother at Forest Hills Cemetery in Memphis. When vandals tried to steal his remains, his and his mother’s bodies were reburied at Graceland. Presley was a true pioneer in music who paved the way to success for many 1960s rock and roll artists who followed him. Ironically, he disliked the work of many of the performers who admired and were inspired by his rebellious spirit. He broke almost every record in the book for sales and popularity during his
lifetime and still stands as a musical legend thirty years after his death. Presley’s career, however successful it was, was also plagued with numerous difficulties. His distaste for dealing with the business side of his work made him vulnerable to the machinations of promoters and managers who took advantage of his popularity. As his career progressed, he was surrounded by a circle of “friends,” managers, and others dubbed the “Memphis Mafia,” many of whom took advantage of him. His manager, Parker, is widely viewed as having taken grossly unfair advantage of Presley. His 1957 contract with the singer awarded him twenty-five percent of his earnings (ten percent was the industry norm), and the contract would last beyond Presley’s death. In 1973, Parker negotiated a deal with RCA in which Presley sold back the rights for many of his masters to RCA and received a pittance of what they were worth. By the end of Presley’s career, Parker is believed to have been taking half of Presley’s commissions. Presley won three Grammy awards, all of them for gospel performances. He was inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (1997), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001). In 1993, the United States Postal Service issued a twenty-nine cent stamp featuring Presley’s face. In the years after his death, the “Elvis” legend has given rise to innumerable impersonations as well as conspiracy theories, claims that he is still alive, and other gossip that has yet to disappear from the tabloid pages. Graceland was opened to the public in 1982 and is an enormously popular tourist attraction.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Carr, Roy, Elvis Presley: The Complete Illustrated Record, 1980; Doll, Susan, The Best of Elvis, 1996; Dowling, Paul, Elvis: The Ultimate Album Cover Book, 1996; Gibson, Robert, Elvis: A
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King Forever, 1987; Frew, Tim, Elvis: His Life and Music, 1994; Guralnick, Peter, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, 1994; Guralnick, Peter, Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, 1999; Marsh, Dave, Elvis, 1992; Mason, Bobbie Ann, Elvis Presley, 2003; Presley, Priscilla Beaulieu, Elvis and Me, 1985; Ro-
bertson, John, Elvis Presley: The Complete Guide to His Music, 2004; Stern, Jane, Elvis World, 1987; Tracy, Kathleen, Elvis Presley: A Biography, 2007; Whisler, John A., Elvis Presley: Reference Guide and Discography, 1981; www.elvis.com.
Priestley, J. B. (September 13, 1894–August 15, 1984) Novelist, Playwright, Short-Story Writer, Critic, Journalist, Essayist he author of the novels The Good Companions and Bright Day, John Boynton Priestley wrote more than 150 novels, plays, essays, travel books, and other works in varied styles. He rendered his earlier works in naturalistic style; his later work, which sometimes incorporates fantastic elements and expressionistic style, was influenced by his prolonged interest in time theory. Priestley was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. His mother died soon after his birth, and a kind and considerate stepmother later took on much of the responsibility of raising him. Priestley’s father taught school. As a young boy, Priestley enjoyed going to the theater. An English teacher at his school, Richard Pendlebury, was instrumental in encouraging him to pursue his writing talents. From 1910 until the beginning of World War I, Priestley worked in the wool trade, a primary industry in his town. In 1915 he enlisted in the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment, was wounded in France, and returned to England. Commissioned as a lieutenant in the Devon Regiment in 1917, he again fought in France and was gassed. After the war, Priestley studied English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, finishing in 1922. He married Pat Tempest in 1919 and, following the completion of his
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studies, went to work as a journalist. His wife died in 1925, and he married Mary Holland Wyndham Lewis the following year. Priestley’s first major published works were books of essays and criticism such as Figures in Modern Literature (1924), The English Comic Characters (1925), and The English Novel (1927). His individual studies of George Meredith and Thomas Love Peacock appeared in 1926 and 1927. Priestley’s first novel, Adam in Moonshine, was published in 1927. Two years later he coauthored Farthing Hall with HUGH WALPOLE. Literary critics had recognized his early essays, but Priestley found commercial success with his novel The Good Companions (1929). The story takes place in the 1920s, during the last days when traveling entertainers and other forms of diversion began to give way to the cinema. Elizabeth Trant and her associate, Mr. Oakroyd, mold a diverse group of players, the Dinky Doos, into the successful Good Companions. The Good Companions enjoy a measure of popularity before the group disbands and the members go their own ways. With the assistance of Edward Knoblock, Priestley adapted The Good Companions for the stage, and it was performed in London in 1931. The novel Angel Pavement, published in 1930, addresses a group of office workers.
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The employees at the London office of veneer dealers Twigg and Dershingham have no idea how much their lives will change with the arrival of Golspie. Golspie, a smooth-talking con-man, aims to take over Twigg and Dersingham. The office workers hold varying opinions of him at first, and Golspie eventually brings the company to financial ruin. With his daughter, Lena, he leaves London and heads for South America, leaving the company destroyed and employees without jobs. In his early works, Priestley wrote with guarded optimism, sometimes allowing hope for the ideal but tempering his optimism with realism. His literary endeavors spanned many types of fiction, including satires, adventures, and more serious contemplations of individuals and contemporary problems. Priestley’s stories were further shaped by his advocacy of a socialistic society in which he envisioned the government providing universal basic necessities and individuals working for extras. In style, his narratives are generally straightforward, and he frequently used counterpoint to contrast opposing concepts. In The Doomsday Men, An Adventure (1938), set in the Mojave desert in California, the London architect Malcolm Darbyshire, the American physicist George Glenway Hooker, and Jimmy Edlin, investigating the murder of his brother, team up against the three evil and wealthy MacMichael brothers. The MacMichaels, architects of a doomsday machine, symbolize what Priestley opposed—wealth in the wrong hands, religious fanaticism, and science advancing out of control. Bright Day (1946), one of Priestley’s most critically acclaimed works, is an examination of an individual’s life and self. The screenwriter Gregory Dawson, disillusioned, unmotivated, and unable to earn a living at his craft, reaches back into his past to analyze the events that have brought him to the present. In doing so, Dawson comes to terms with who he is in the present and adopts a new, more positive course in his film career. Later novels include Lost Empires (1965), Salt Is
Leaving (1966), and the two-volume The Image Men (1968). A major influence on Priestley’s novels and plays was John William Dunne’s An Experiment with Time (1927). Through Dunne’s ideas and those of the Russian journalist P. D. Ouspensky, author of A New Model of the Universe, Priestley began to see time not as a chronological series of events, but as a collective. He believed events repeated themselves and that a moment in time formed only a small part of a person’s whole self. Priestley outlined his own ideas in Man and Time (1964), and they figure prominently in the novels Jenny Villiers, A Story of the Theatre (1947), The Magicians (1954), and others. In The Magicians, the successful businessman Charles Ravenstreet almost falls under the spell of Lord Mervil, leader of a group of powerful businessmen. Lord Mervil, with sinister objectives, plans to market a new tranquilizer and invites Ravenstreet to join him in his scheme. Three mysterious travelers from the past, Perperek, Marot, and Wayland, warn Ravenstreet of Lord Mervil’s intentions and succeed in exposing them to him, but they fail to stop the plot altogether. Priestley’s exploration of time forms the main theme of his play Time and the Conways (1937), in which the first and third acts take place in 1919 and the second act takes place in 1937. The relatively prosperous Conway family has suffered from the drowning death of Mr. Conway, but in 1919 most of them are optimistic about their futures. The events of the third act foreshadow those of the second, which provides a glimpse into a future that promises little of what the Conways hope for. The play I Have Been Here Before (1937) also explores Priestley’s ideas on time. As a dramatist, Priestley first gained fame with the three-act play Dangerous Corner (1932), which, after initial unfavorable reaction, grew into a popular success. A series of comedies followed, including The Roundabout (1933), Laburnum Grove (1933), and When We Are Married (1938). In The Rounda-
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bout (1933), Pamela Kettlewell, an insincere Communist and daughter of Lord Kettlewell, tries to reunite her divorced parents. Priestley also wrote more serious plays, including Eden End (1934) and Johnson over Jordan (1939), in which the naturalistic style of his earlier drama gives way to an expressionistic manner. The latter follows the recently deceased Robert Johnson after his death and finds him in a state in which he confronts the people and events of his earthly life. When he has successfully come to terms with his earthly life, he is permitted to move on to the next stage. The production of the play featured music by BENJAMIN BRITTEN. Priestley’s other plays include They Came to a City (1942), An Inspector Calls (1946), The Linden Tree (1947), and Try It Again (1953). During World War II, Priestley worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), delivering many broadcasts amidst the hostilities. After the war, he was an ardent advocate
of nuclear disarmament and a delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). After refusing a knighthood and a peerage, he received the Order of Merit in 1977. Among his other works are the travel books English Journey (1934) and Midnight on the Desert (1937); three volumes of short stories, Going Up (1950), The Other Place and Other Stories of the Same Sort (1953), and The Carfitt Crisis and Two Other Stories (1974); Journey Down a Rainbow (1955), coauthored with his third wife, the anthropologist Jacquetta Hawkes, whom he married in 1953; and several autobiographical works.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Braine, John, J. B. Priestley, 1978; Brome, Vincent, J. B. Priestley, 1988; DeVitis, A. A., and Kalson, Albert E., J. B. Priestley, 1980; Young, Kenneth, J. B. Priestley, 1977.
Prokofiev, Sergei (April 23, 1891–March 5, 1953) Composer he Soviet composer Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev wrote for a wide variety of forms—operas, ballets, film scores, symphonies, concertos, and many other forms—and is considered one of the primary influences on twentieth-century music. His most famous works include his Piano Concerto No. 3 and Peter and the Wolf, a children’s fairy tale symphony. Prokofiev was born into a prosperous farming family in Sontsovka, Ukraine. He received his first piano lessons from his mother, a talented amateur pianist, who supported his budding career from the time he showed a gift for music. His father was the successful manager of a nearby landowner’s estate. Proko-
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fiev attended no formal school and was instead tutored by his parents. By the time he was seven he had already composed several pieces, including a waltz and two marches. Inspired by a visit to the opera in Moscow, he composed an opera, The Giant, when he was nine. In Moscow he was recognized by the composer Sergei Taneyev, who recommended a tutor. The Russian composer Reinhold Glie`re began to give Prokofiev lessons in the summer. Before Prokofiev entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1904, he had already composed a symphony, four operas, and a number of other pieces. Although his musical training at the conservatory was traditional
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Sergei Prokofiev (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
and academic, Prokofiev always displayed a bent toward musical innovation. Early in his career he disliked the Romantic and classical composers, a preference that was not popular with his teachers (who included Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov) at the conservatory. In 1908 he joined the Evenings of Modern Music, a society where new European music was played. The same year he delivered his first public performance, playing several piano pieces. The performance of Prokofiev’s vigorous Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Flat Major (1911) in St. Petersburg established his popular reputation as a composer and provoked a heated debate among critics. He completed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor in 1913. Over the objections of some of his teachers, he received the Anton Rubinstein Prize in piano for a performance of the first concerto upon his graduation from the conservatory in 1914. During a visit to London the same year he met the ballet impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV, with whom he later worked extensively in the future. Diaghilev commissioned him to write
a ballet but rejected the resulting Ala and Lolli (1914), taken from Scythian mythology and co-written with the poet Sergei Gorodetsky. Proko-fiev reworked its music into the symphonic Scythian Suite (1916), which some critics describe as barbaric and savage. Diaghilev asked him to write a second ballet, and Prokofiev complied with the six-scene The Tale of the Buffoon Who Outjested Seven Buffoons (1916). Prokofiev’s early operas include the oneact Magdalene (1913) and The Gambler (1916), adapted from Fyodor Dostoevesky’s story of the same title. He wrote many pieces as revolution raged around him in 1917, including his Third Sonata, marked by intense extremes in emotion; a Fourth Sonata; a violin concerto; a string quartet; the Classical Symphony; and the dark, gloomy cantata Seven, They Are Seven. He conceived of the popular Classical Symphony as a modernized eighteenth century symphony, having had the music of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) specifically in mind as he wrote. Although Prokofiev sympathized with the 1917 revolution, he took little active interest in politics. He left the Soviet Union in 1918 and moved to the United States. After performing in New York, he began working on a light, comedic opera for the Chicago Opera Company, The Love for Three Oranges (1919), based on a story by the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi. His Overture on Hebrew Themes (1919) was composed for clarinet, piano, and string quartet on the request of a RussianJewish chamber ensemble in New York. In 1920 Prokofiev moved to France. Between 1921 and 1924 he worked again with Diaghilev, who staged The Buffoon, and composed the popular Piano Concerto No. 3 (1921). In 1922 and 1923 Prokofiev lived in Germany, where he began The Flaming Angel, a brooding opera that remained unfinished until 1927. He returned to Paris in 1923 and wrote the First Violin Concerto (1923), the Symphony No. 2 in D Minor, and the Symphony No. 3 in C Minor (1928), a four-movement symphony for large orchestra. Working
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again with Diaghilev he completed the one-act ballets The Age of Steel (1927) and The Prodigal Son (1929). His Symphony No. 4 in C Major (1930) was composed for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Another notable piece from this era is Prokofiev’s Fourth Piano Concerto (1931), written for the left hand to meet the needs of the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I. In the later 1920s Prokofiev toured the United States and Europe extensively. In 1936 he returned permanently to the Soviet Union. Prokofiev continued to compose in many styles and began to work in the realm of film scores. He became a friend of the Soviet director SERGEI EISENSTEIN and composed scores for his Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible, parts I and II (1944 and 1948). His other film scores include suites for Lieutenant Kije (1934) and Egyptian Nights (1934). Prokofiev’s ballets from his later years include Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Cinderella (1944). His opera Semyon Kotko (1939) is based on the civil war in his native Ukraine; Betrothal in a Convent (1940) is a lighter comic opera. His popular children’s symphony, Peter and the Wolf, was completed in 1936. Having returned to the Soviet Union during the height of Stalinism, Prokofiev found himself in and out of favor with Soviet critics. He composed a cycle of Russian choral songs for Stalin’s sixtieth birthday entitled Zdravista (1939). Prokofiev met his first wife, Lina Llubera, in the United States; he married his second
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wife, the poet Mira Mendelssohn, after his return to the Soviet Union. During World War II he worked on his complex opera War and Peace (1942), based on Tolstoy’s epic novel. He completed Symphony No. 5 in B Flat Major in 1944 and Symphony No. 6 in E Flat Minor in 1947. Although Prokofiev’s vast body of work spans many styles and categories, several characteristics apply to all of his compositions. From his youth he shied away from the traditional styles imposed on the students at the conservatory. Whether in music or other art forms, he sided with modernists and progressivists, which influenced him to experiment with new styles. Strong, bold melodies, unusual tonality, and harmonies that Soviet critics condemned as “dissonant” in 1948 also characterized much of his work. Among Prokofiev’s other works are the opera The Story of a Real Man (1948), the ballet The Stone Flower (1950), the oratorio On Guard for Peace (1950), Symphony No. 7 in C Sharp Minor (1951–52), Sonata for Two Violins in C Major (1932), Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor (1935), and Sinfonia Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in E Minor (1952). Prokofiev died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1953, on the same day Joseph Stalin died.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gutman, David, Prokofiev, 1988; Nestyev, Israel B., Sergei Prokofiev: His Musical Life, 1946; Robinson, Harlow, Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography, 1987.
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Proust, Marcel (July 10, 1871–November 18, 1922) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Critic he French author Marcel Proust is generally considered the greatest of all the French novelists. His reputation ` la recherche rests on his seven-part novel, A du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past, or, literally, In Search of Lost Times), a semiautobiographical story that explores an artist’s long-term quest to understand reality, criticizes French bourgeois society, and investigates the often unpleasant nuances and jealousies of love. It explores reality so deeply and in a way so different from the great novels of the nineteenth century that it is seen as not only one of the greatest novels in any language but a new beginning for the genre. Proust was born into a wealthy family. His mother, Jeanne Weil, was of Jewish descent, and his father, Adrien Proust, of a French Catholic background. Proust attended the Lyce´e Condorcet as a youth and was influ-
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enced by his philosophy teacher, Alphonse Darlu. In 1889 and 1890, he served in the French military at Orle´ans. Beginning in 1891, Proust studied law at the School of Political Sciences. He received his law degree in 1893. Two French philosophers, Henri Bergson and Paul Desjardins, influenced his thought as a young man. In addition to his education, Proust began to frequent French bourgeois salons. His short stories, such as “Violante” (1893), appeared in French in literary magazines in 1892–1893 and were collected as Les plaisirs et les jours (1896; Pleasures and Regrets). Many of the stories owe their subject matter to Proust’s experiences with French society in the salons, about which he grew increasingly cynical. Another influential experience in Proust’s life was his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair. Dreyfus was a Jewish-French army officer wrongly convicted of divulging military secrets to the Germans in 1894. A victim of the anti-Semitism so prevalent at the time, in fact convicted on the basis of documents forged by anti-Semites, he was defended by some of the most important writers in France and only vindicated twelve years later, after a struggle that almost brought down the French Republic. Proust wrote profusely in defense of Dreyfus and attended the trial of the writer E´mile Zola, charged with libel against Dreyfus’s prosecutors after his letter revealing the forgery on which Dreyfus’s conviction had been based, a letter known by its famous opening words, “J’accuse” (I accuse). In addition to his short stories and articles, Proust translated two works by Ruskin, the Bible of Amiens (1900) and Sesame and Lilies (1906). A series of his critical essays on art and literature, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1910; Against Sainte-Beuve, the leading critic in nineteenthcentury France), was published as a collection.
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Chronic asthma attacks, his increasing distaste for French society, and the deaths of his parents began to take a toll on Proust in his thirties. He withdrew for the most part into his room and spent the long nights working on the semiautobiographical A` la recherche du temps perdu. Proust was meticulous in the construction of his masterpiece, repeatedly revising and rewriting drafts before they were published. The cyclical story is set in French bourgeois society and unfolds through the eyes of the narrator, an artist named Marcel. After growing to maturity and experiencing all the difficulties of his life, Marcel comes to believe that his unconscious harbors retrievable memories of his experiences that reveal the essence of reality. In the most famous scene in the novel, he eats a madeleine (a small rich cake shaped like a shell) that has been dipped in tea, and the memory of his childhood suddenly unfolds in his mind in all its richness. The delicacy and precision of Proust’s prose, as Marcel goes on to describe that childhood and what follows, are an essential part of what make the book great. The characters in Proust’s novel often turn out to be different from the way they appear on the surface. The ills of French society, the machinations and jealousies of people, love, and the beauty of nature all appear as prominent themes in Proust’s novel, as does homo-
sexuality. Although Proust was himself homosexual, he hid this fact and generally portrayed the several homosexual men and women in his novel as base and untrustworthy. The ultimate vision of the book, however, is of the beauty and value of life, which art helps us to experience purely. Proust paid to have the first volume, Du coˆte´ du chez Swann (Swann’s Way; literally, In the Direction of Swann’s House), published in 1913, and he gained little recognition until its successor, A` l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Within a Budding Grove; literally, In the Shade of Young Girls in Flower), appeared in 1919. Then Proust’s greatness was recognized, and he was awarded the coveted Prix Goncourt. Pneumonia cut his life short after the publication of the next two parts, Le coˆte´ de Guermantes (1921; The Guermantes Way; literally, In the Direction of Guermantes (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe (1922; Cities of the Plain). La Prisonnie`re (1923; The Captive), Albertine disparue (1925; The Sweet Cheat Gone; literally, Albertine Vanished), and Le temps retrouve´ (1927; Time Regained; literally Time Found Again) were published posthumously.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bre´e, Germaine, The World of Marcel Proust, 1966; Hayman, Ronald, Proust: A Biography, 1990; Sansom, William, Proust and His World, 1973.
Puccini, Giacomo (December 22, 1858–November 29, 1924) Composer iacomo Puccini is widely considered the heir to Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Italy’s foremost opera composer of the late nineteenth century. Many Puccini operas—most famous among
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them is Madame Butterfly—have become part of the standard twentieth century repertory. Puccini was born Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini in the
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Tuscan town of Lucca. For generations Puccini’s ancestors directed music at the town’s Cathedral of San Martino. As the eldest of two sons among eight children, Giacomo Puccini was brought up to continue the family tradition. He was a poor student in school and at first showed little promise as a musician. He took his first music lessons from a stern, uninspiring uncle and later studied at the Pacini Institute in Lucca. He played the organ in smaller churches as an adolescent. In 1876, Puccini and two friends secretly slipped into a performance of Verdi’s Aı¨da in Pisa, and from then on he wanted to compose operas. After graduating from the Pacini Institute in 1880, he enrolled in the Milan Conservatory, where he studied under the violinist Antonio Bazzini and Amilcare Ponchielli. The latter wrote the popular opera La Gioconda (The Ballad Singer) and was an important source of inspiration and encouragement to Puccini. He graduated with high honors in 1883, and his graduation composition, Ca-
Giacomo Puccini (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-65802)
priccio Sinfonico, attracted a measure of attention in Milan. Puccini’s first successful opera, Le Villi (The Witches), with libretto by Ferdinando Fontana, was performed at the Verme Theatre in Milan in 1884. As in many of Puccini’s subsequent operas, the protagonist is a tragic female figure. The opera, originally written for a contest in which it failed to win a prize, was received enthusiastically by the Milan critics and the public alike. Its warm reception attracted the attention of the powerful music publisher Giulio Ricordi, who bought the rights to the opera; he maintained a long and close working relationship with Puccini. In 1884, Puccini met Elvira Bonturi Gemignani, who was then married to a merchant. Elvira became pregnant with their son, Antonio, in 1886 and moved to a town near Milan with Puccini. Puccini’s relationship with Elvira proved to be difficult, as he was unfaithful and she was temperamental. Years later, Elvira’s jealous and unfounded persecution of a servant, Doria Manfredi, drove the latter to illness and suicide. Manfredi’s family brought charges against her, and the affair ended when Puccini settled for a sum of money. Working again with Fontana, Puccini completed his second opera, Edgar, in 1887. The opera’s unenthusiastic reception was one of many setbacks Puccini endured during the late 1880s and early 1890s. However, the success of his next opera, Manon Lescaut (first performed in 1893 and widely staged thereafter), rejuvenated his spirits. Although initially premiered to a lukewarm reception, the production of La Bohe`me (1897; The Bohemian), a tragic love story that takes place in a circle of Paris bohemians, made Puccini world famous. His next opera, Tosca, another tragedy, was equally successful. Serious injuries from a car accident in 1902 delayed Puccini’s progress on his next opera, Madame Butterfly. It was completed at the end of 1903 and premiered in a disastrous opening the following year. However, Puccini reworked the opera, and it drew enormous crowds thereafter.
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The Girl of the Golden West, set in the American West, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1910. Puccini’s later operas include The Swallow (1917) and Turandot, which he was still working on at the time of his death. Franco Alfano completed Turandot, and it opened in 1926, conducted by ARTURO TOSCANINI. In addition, Puccini completed a trilogy of one-act operas in 1918 entitled The Cloak, Sister Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi. In 1924, Puccini died of heart failure while undergoing surgery for throat cancer. With his particular flair for orchestration and dramatic presentation, Puccini is considered one of the great masters of Italian real-
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ism, or verisimo, and his work followed in the tradition of his Italian predecessors. Verisimo was a reaction to the unrealities of romantic opera; it typically uses characters who suffer great emotional strain. Puccini also took an interest in the work of twentieth century composers such as France’s CLAUDE DEBUSSY and Russia’s IGOR STRAVINSKY, and his own compositions were not unaffected by modern developments in music. BIBLIOGRAPHY Greenfeld, Howard, Puccini, 1980; Ramsden, Timothy, Puccini, 1996; Southwell-Sander, Peter, Puccini, 1996; Wilson, Conrad, Giacomo Puccini, 1997.
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Rachmaninoff, Sergei (April 1, 1873–March 28, 1943) Composer, Conductor, Pianist he Russian composer Sergei Vasi-lievich Rachmaninoff was one of the most celebrated piano virtuosos during his lifetime. He composed his body of work in a conservative tradition for its time and is best known for his difficult, complex piano compositions. Rachmaninoff was born in the Novgorod district in Russia into a family of considerable wealth and steeped in military tradition. His father was a retired army officer, and his mother came from a military family. The family’s prosperity evaporated, however, when his father lost its entire fortune and left. Rachmaninoff got his start as a composer through a cousin, Aleksander Siloti, a conduc-
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tor and pianist. Siloti recommended he study under Nikolay Zverev, widely known among musicians for strict discipline, and Rachmaninoff left for Moscow to do so in 1885. He later studied at the St. Petersburg and Moscow conservatories and under other prominent Russian composers. When Rachmaninoff was 19 he won a Grand Gold Medal for his one-act opera and graduation work, Aleko, based on Aleksandr Pushkin’s poem “The Gypsies.” In 1891 he completed his First Piano Concerto. Following the death of his musical mentor, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff composed Elegaic Trio (1893) in his honor. Rachmaninoff’s most noteworthy early compositions are the widely performed Prelude in C Sharp Minor (1892) and Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor (1900). The latter was premiered at the Philharmonic Society in Moscow in 1901 with Rachmaninoff playing the piano. He dedicated the piece to the psychiatrist, Nikolai Dahl, who treated him after poor reviews of his Symphony No. 1 in D Minor (1897) plunged him into depression and rendered him unable to compose. The years between 1900 and 1917 were Rachmaninoff’s most productive in composing. His works were conservative, in the tradition of Tchaikovsky and other nineteenth-century composers, and generally noted more for skilful construction than for originality. He completed a Sonata for Cello and Piano (1901), a cantata entitled The Spring (1902), and two one-act operas, The Miserly Knight (1903) and Francesca da Rimini (1903). After the unsuccessful revolution of 1905 he moved to Dresden, where he spent winters until 1909 and composed Symphony No. 2 in E Minor (1907), the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead (1909), and the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (1909), performed during his first tour in the United States. In 1910 he returned
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to Moscow, where he composed the choral work Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1910) and The Bells (1913), a choral symphony based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Rachmaninoff married Natalie Satin, a cousin, in 1902. During these years he also kept a full touring schedule. From 1904 to 1906 he conducted at the Bolshoi Theatre. In 1909 he first performed in the United States, giving concerts and conducting in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Rachmaninoff fled the Russian Revolution in 1917 and settled in the United States. The move away from his homeland seemed to sap his creativity, and he devoted most of his time to performing and conducting rather than composing. The works he wrote during his
later years include his Fourth Piano Concerto (1926), Variations on a Theme of Corelli (1931), Symphony No. 3 in A Minor (1936), and Symphonic Dances for orchestra (1940). The most famous of his later compositions is Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934) for piano and orchestra, a series of twenty-four variations on Nicolo` Paganini’s Caprice No. 24. Rachmaninoff died in Beverly Hills in 1943 and is buried next to his wife in New York.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bazhanov, Nikolai, Rachmaninov, 1983; Culshaw, John, Rachmaninov: The Man and His Music, 1950; Martin, Barrie, Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor, 1990.
Rampal, Jean-Pierre (January 7, 1922–May 20, 2000) Flutist, Conductor he most important part of any concert is to take possession of the hall and make contact with the audience,” wrote Jean-Pierre Rampal in his autobiography. As one of the world’s most renowned and extensively recorded flute players, Rampal popularized the use of the flute in concert in the latter half of the twentieth century and was the first major flutist to attract international concertgoers. He is best known for his authentic interpretations of the Baroque works for the flute. Rampal was born in Marseilles. His father, Joseph Rampal, was a World War I veteran and talented flutist who studied at the Paris Conservatory and won top honors for his playing. As a child Rampal enjoyed listening to the radio, excelled in his studies at school, and enjoyed Voltairian philosophical instruction from his godfather, but hearing his father play the flute gave him the greatest pleasure.
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When he was 6 he found an old wooden flute and tried to play it, but his father, who could not tolerate the impure sound from the instrument, took it away from the child. Six more years passed before he allowed Rampal to play the flute, and he began to study under his father at the Marseilles Conservatory. There he studied according to the Alte`s Method, a step-by-step method devised by the nineteenth-century flutist Henri Alte`s. Rampal gave his first professional recital at the age of 16, with Pierre Barbizet. Rampal’s mother opposed his intention to play the flute professionally and steered him into medicine. The German occupation of France, however, interrupted his medical study and provided him the opportunity he needed to realize his ambition during World War II. After being drafted for forced labor by Nazi authorities, he went underground and moved to Paris, where he studied at the Paris
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Jean-Pierre Rampal (쑖 Andre LeCoz/Lebrecht / The Image Works)
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Conservatory. His talent as a flutist quickly emerged, and he won first prize upon his graduation. In 1947 he joined the Vichy Opera orchestra and remained there until 1951, and he soon gained the position of first flute at the Paris Opera. In 1945 he founded the French Wind Quintet. Rampal quickly gained fame as a concert flutist, particularly for his interpretations of Baroque works. In 1953 he founded the Baroque Ensemble of Paris. After the 1940s Rampal traveled around the world as a concert flutist, appearing regularly at the major international concert venues. While best known for his eighteenth-century interpretations, he also played modern music (created specifically for him by such compos-
ers as FRANCIS POULENC), English folk song, Japanese music, and other forms. Rampal also taught at the Paris Conservatory beginning in 1968, and in his later years he established himself as a conductor. Rampal’s extensive body of recordings spans the range of his concert performances. His autobiography, Music, My Love, was published in 1989. He won numerous awards for both his recordings and his performances, including the Grand Prix du Disque, and he was made a Commandeur de la Le´gion d’Honneur and Commandeur de l’Ordre National de Me´rite.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Rampal, Jean-Pierre, Music, My Love, 1989.
Ransome, Arthur (January 18, 1884–June 3, 1967) Writer of Children’s Books, Novelist, Journalist, Illustrator, Essayist rthur Mitchell Ransome is best known for his twelve adventure books about the Walker, Blackett, and Callum children, which began with Swallows and Amazons in 1931. Ransome also wrote essays on literature, fishing, and Russia, where he spent several years around the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. Ransome was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. His father, a history professor, died when he was 13. Ransome spent much of his childhood in England’s Lake District, the setting for many of his popular children’s stories. As a child he enthusiastically devoured books and began to write his own, completing his first story at the age of 9. His formal education began with his entrance into the Windermere Old College in 1893. After several years at the Rugby School, he entered Yorkshire College, later the University of Leeds, in 1901.
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Ransome abandoned the university the following year to move to London and pursue a career as a writer, working briefly for the Grant Richards publishing house. His first book of essays, The ABC of Physical Culture, appeared in 1904 and was followed by two other volumes. Bohemia in London (1907) was the first of his books to achieve some recognition and offered commentary on the London artistic and intellectual circles. Ransome finished a number of other works before World War I, the most notable of which was A History of Storytelling (1909). Studies of Edgar Allan Poe (1910) and Oscar Wilde (1912) followed Ransome’s 1909 marriage to Ivy Walker, an unhappy union that ended in divorce in 1924. He first traveled to Russia in 1913 and two years later went to work as Russian correspondent for the London Daily News. There he gathered the mate-
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rial for his Old Peter’s Russian Tales (1917), drawn from traditional Russian fairy tales. While in Russia Ransome met his future second wife, Evgenia Shelepina, who later worked as secretary for the Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky. Ransome’s association with Bolshevik leaders aroused suspicion in the British government, and he did not return to England between 1919 and 1924. Several works about Russia—The Truth about Russia (1918), Six Weeks in Russia (1919), and The Crisis in Russia (1921)—resulted from Ransome’s time there. Ransome took a position as foreign correspondent for the Manchester Guardian, taking him to Moscow again in 1928. The Elixir of Life (1915) was Ransome’s first major novel. Set in 1716, the narrative follows the protagonist Richard Stanborough as he struggles against the wicked John Killigrew, who has discovered the elixir of life. Resisting the temptation to drink the elixir, Stanborough defeats Killigrew and marries Rose, who has helped him through the ordeal. Aladdin, a romance in verse, followed in 1919. Ransome owned several boats, and his lifelong love of sailing manifests itself in much of his work. On the first voyage of his Racundra he kept a log that led to Racundra’s First Cruise (1923). Between 1931 and 1947 Ransome occupied himself with the writing of his best-known works, a dozen children’s adventure stories that began with Swallows and Amazons (1931). The Walker children, who sail in the Swallow, dominate the narrative and come into contact with the Blacketts (who sail on
the Amazon) and the Callums. Ransome’s children have unique personalities and temperaments, from the bookish Dick Callum to the tomboy Nancy Blackett to the leader-figure John Walker, the eldest of the Walker children. Swallows and Amazons was followed by Swallowdale (1931), Peter Duck (1932), Winter Holiday (1933), Coot Club (1934), Pigeon Post (1935), We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea (1937), Secret Water (1939), The Big Six (1940), Missee Lee (1941), The Picts and the Martyrs (1943), and Great Northern? (1947). Ransome illustrated most of the books himself, and for Pigeon Post he was awarded the first Library Association Carnegie Medal in 1937. Among Ransome’s other works are The Chinese Puzzle (1927), published with a foreword by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George; the works on fishing Rod and Line (1929) and Mainly About Fishing (1959); his autobiography (1976); the anthologies The Book of Friendship (1909) and The Book of Love (1911); The Hoofmarks of the Faun (1911); Portraits and Speculations (1913); The Soldier and Death (1920). Beginning in 1948, Ransome wrote a series of introductions for Rupert Hart-Davis’s Mariner’s Library. He received an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Leeds and was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1953.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brogan, Hugh, The Life of Arthur Ransome, 1984; Hunt, Peter, Arthur Ransome, 1991.
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Rattigan, Terence (June 10, 1911–November 30, 1977) Playwright, Screenwriter ritics of Terence Rattigan’s day described his dramas as “well-made plays,” lamenting the playwright’s focus on smooth dramatic craftsmanship rather than the attempt to convey ideas. Rattigan’s numerous plays were highly successful in Britain and the United States from the 1930s to the 1960s. Also to his credit are a series of screenplays, many adapted from his own plays, and television adaptations for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Rattigan was born to a diplomat and antiques collector in Kensington, London. Defying the wishes of his parents, who sought to steer him into the diplomatic service, he developed an interest in the theater at an early age and attended plays whenever he could. In 1920 he entered W. M. Hornbye’s School in Sandroyd. At his next school, Harrow, he first became involved in the theater. Rattigan finished his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, where he contributed drama criticism to the publication Cherwell and religiously watched the school’s plays. A brief role in an Oxford production of Romeo and Juliet (starring EDITH EVANS and directed by JOHN GIELGUD) convinced Rattigan he was not intended for acting, an experience he humorously revisited in Harlequinade (1948). Rattigan’s earliest plays—First Episode (1933; with Philip Heimann) and A Tale of Two Cities (1935; with Gielgud)— were collaborative efforts. His first success came with his first produced solo effort, French without Tears (1936), a romantic comedy staged at the Criterion Theatre. The play’s story combines a variety of characters on the French Riviera, some of whom are studying for the diplomatic service at the home of their instructor, and examines the complications and disasters of love. Strained relationships between men and women, colored by Rattigan’s own homosexuality, recur
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frequently in his work. Central to the misery of this story is Diana, who manages to seduce Kit, Commander Rogers, and the student Alan, who ultimately decides to become a writer instead of a diplomat. When Diana’s deceptions break out into the open, she declares her love for Alan, who disastrously and against his better judgment falls for her. French without Tears was followed by Follow My Leader (1938), Grey Farm (1938; with Hector Bolitho), and After the Dance (1939). Rattigan served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and many of his works from the 1940s incorporate elements of the war. Popular among these was While the Sun Shines (1943), a comic farce produced at the Globe Theatre that ran for more than 1,100 shows. Flare Path, a more serious World War II drama, was produced a year earlier. Several of Rattigan’s screenplays from the era also treat themes connected with the war, including The Day Will Dawn (1942; with Anatole de Grunwald, titled The Avengers in the United States) and Uncensored (1942; with Rodney Ackland). The RAF commissioned the war films The Way to the Stars (American title Johnny in the Clouds) and Journey Together, both produced in 1945. From the mid-1940s to the 1960s, Rattigan churned out plays of all types—tragedies, romances, comedies, and fantasies. In the 1950s, he involved himself in a heated and protracted debate over the place of ideas in theater. Arguing with other noted playwrights of his day such as GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, SEAN O’CASEY, and CHRISTOPHER FRY in the New Statesman, Rattigan maintained that the theater should tell stories about people rather than concepts. His approach to the theater led many critics to dismiss his work as conventional entertainment. Separate Tables (1945) ranks among Rattigan’s best-known works, particularly in the
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United States. A depiction of English middleclass life consisting of two separate short plays, Table By the Window and Table Number Seven, it was first produced in London starring MARGARET LEIGHTON and Eric Portman. A New York production in 1956 also met with success. The Winslow Boy (1946), taken from a real-life story about a young man falsely accused of stealing, won a New York Critics Award. The Browning Version (1948) won the Ellen Terry Award and presented one of Rattigan’s few in-depth character portraits—that of the classics teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris (whom Rattigan based on a former teacher of his own). Known derisively to his students as “the Crock” and “the Himmler of the fifth form,” Crocker-Harris is a cold, seemingly unfeeling figure who is nevertheless aware of his own failures. In contrast to his past experience at the school, he develops two important bonds during his final days as a teacher— with the student Taplow and his fellow teacher Hunter, who has been having an affair with his wife. Taplow’s gift to him of Browning’s version of Agamemnon moves him to tears, and Crocker-Harris leaves the school as a renewed man. Rattigan’s adaptation of the play in 1951 won the Cannes award for best screenplay. Among Rattigan’s many other plays are Adventure Story (1949), about Alexander the Great, which was adapted for television and produced for the BBC in 1961, starring Sean
Connery; the fantasies Who Is Sylvia? (1950) and The Sleeping Prince (1953); the tragedies The Deep Blue Sea (1952) and Variation on a Theme (1958); the romance Love in Idleness (1944; American title O Mistress Mine), produced at the Globe Theatre; The Prince and the Showgirl (1953), which starred LAURENCE OLIVIER and Marilyn Monroe; Ross (1960), about the life of T. E. Lawrence; and Cause Ce´le`bre (1977). Quiet Wedding (1940) marked Rattigan’s first effort in film and was adapted from a play by Esther McCracken. For years he worked with the producer Anatole de Grunwald and director Anthony Asquith. Rattigan adapted many of his own plays for the screen, and among his other works for the cinema are Brighton Rock (1947; with GRAHAM GREENE), Bond Street (1948), The Sound Barrier (1952), The Final Test (1953), The V.I.P.s (1963), The Yellow Rolls Royce (1965), and Goodbye Mr. Chips (1968). Rattigan was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1958 and knighted in 1971.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Darlow, Michael, Terence Rattigan: The Man and His Work, 1979; O’Connor, Sean, Popular Gay Drama from Wilde to Rattigan, 1998; Rusinko, Susan, Terence Rattigan, 1983; Wansell, Geoffrey, Terence Rattigan, 1995; Young, B. A., The Rattigan Version: Sir Terence Rattigan and the Theatre of Character, 1986.
Ravel, Maurice (March 7, 1875–December 28, 1937) Composer, Pianist he French-born composer Joseph Maurice Ravel is often called a musical Impressionist; he is best known for the ballets Daphnis et Chloe (Daphnis and
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Chloe) and Bole´ro, as well as the popular piano suites Mirrors and Gaspard de la nuit,
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Maurice Ravel (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
marked by their fine craftsmanship and harmonic sophistication. Ravel was also a renowned pianist. Ravel was born into a Catholic family in Ciboure, a small village in southern France. His mother was of Basque ancestry, and his father was a civil engineer of Swiss origin. Ravel’s musical talent surfaced as a boy, and both parents encouraged him to pursue his interest. The folk songs his mother sang instilled in him a lifelong love for Spanish and Basque music. Although an engineer, his father loved music and approved of the same love in his son. In 1882 Ravel took his first piano lesson. At the end of 1889 Ravel began studying at the Paris Conservatory, with which he was associated off and on for the rest of his life. In spite of his talent, Ravel frequently found himself in conflict with the more conservative teachers. In 1898 he began studying with the French composer Gabriel Faure´, who admired Ravel’s harmonies and served as a great source of encouragement to the young composer. At the same time, he received instruction from Andre´ Ge´dalge, whom he
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would later credit as the most important influence on his technique. When Ravel failed in his quest to win the Grand Prix de Rome several years in a row and was denied the chance to compete in 1905, a storm of protests from his supporters eventually led to the resignation of the conservative director of the Conservatory. Ravel’s composing style essentially reached its maturity early in his career. While he used classical structure and crafted his compositions with great technical precision, he succeeded in forging unique harmonies and a personal style that is sometimes compared to the work of CLAUDE DEBUSSY. Like Debussy, Ravel is often called a musical Impressionist; unlike Debussy, however, his work is more deeply rooted in the classical style with strong melody and tonality. Ravel also experimented with bitonality, the use of two keys. Among his early compositions is Pavane pour une infante de´funte (1899; Pavane for a Dead Princess), later rescored for orchestra. Something of a scandal erupted after the performance of Histoires Naturelles for voice and piano (1906). Based on Jules Renard’s work of the same title, it was composed of five “animal sketches” entitled “The Peacock,” “The Cricket,” “The Swan,” “The Kingfisher,” and “The Guinea Fowl.” Critics accused Ravel of plagiarizing Debussy’s work, but the accusations eventually proved groundless. Ravel’s piano works in the first decade of the twentieth century rank among his most popular compositions. They include Jeux d’eau (1901; Fountains) for piano and string quartet and the Sonatine for Piano (1903–1905). The piano suite Miroirs (1905; Mirrors) is composed of five pieces, each dedicated to a member of the Apaches, a group of unconventional artists with which Ravel became involved. Another popular piano suite, Gaspard de la nuit (1908), was based on the poetry of Aloysius Bertrand and has an air of the dark, the sinister, and the mysterious. Spanish themes figured prominently in a number of Ravel’s compositions. His first op-
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era, L’heure espagnole (1907; The Spanish Hour), laden with an ironic sense of humor, is a comedy adapted from a play by Franc-Nohain. His major orchestral work Rapsodie espagnole (1907; Spanish Rhapsody) consists of four movements and incorporates Spanish folk rhythms. His orchestral work, Bole´ro (1928), was originally written as a ballet commissioned by Ida Rubenstein and employs Spanish dance themes. Its musical highlight is the continuous rendering of the same theme using different instruments. For SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes Ravel composed Daphnis and Chloe (1912), an impressionistic ballet score that many critics consider his best work. The ballet’s production in Paris was accompanied with a set designed by MARC CHAGALL. Ravel served briefly in World War I driving a truck at the front, but he was discharged for medical reasons in 1917. In 1928 he embarked on a highly successful tour of the United States and Canada. He received an honorary doctorate in music
the same year from Oxford. His last major compositions were two concertos for piano and orchestra (1930– 1), noteworthy for his incorporation of American jazz harmonies. The first of the two, written for the left hand, was commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I. Late in his life Ravel suffered from aphasia, a brain disorder that deprived him of the ability to speak or write. He died following brain surgery in 1937. His other works include the opera L’enfant et les sortile`ges (1925; The Child and the Enchantments), the vocal work She´he´razade (1903), String Quartet in F (1903), Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917), and Sonata for Violin and Cello (1922).
BIBLIOGRAPHY James, Burnett, Ravel: His Life and Times, 1983; Myers, Rollo H., Ravel: Life and Works, 1960; Orenstein, Arbie, Ravel: Man and Musician, 1975.
Redgrave, Michael (March 20, 1908–March 21, 1985) Actor, Director, Producer ichael Scudamore Redgrave began his professional career as an actor on the English stage in 1934 and in the cinema four years later. Throughout his life he divided his time between the two, gaining fame for his portrayals of strong, introspective, and intellectual personalities. On stage he played many major Shakespearean roles, and among his best-known screen performances is his 1952 Orin Mannon in EUGENE O’NEILL’s Mourning Becomes Electra. Redgrave was born to parents who were both actors in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England. Their wandering life rendered his early
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childhood unstable, and he entered the first of a series of schools when he was 6. When his parents divorced, he went to live with his mother and her new husband, entering Clifton College in 1922. At Clifton Redgrave earned a reputation for his singing and was active in the school’s theatrical productions. His acting roles there included several female parts, notably that of Lady Macbeth. By this time Redgrave was also writing his own plays—while at Clifton he wrote, directed, and played the lead in the farce Pigs In Straw. In 1927 Redgrave entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he cultivated his first
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ambition—writing. He contributed poetry and prose to school publications such as The Granta and The Venture, co-edited Cambridge Poetry in 1930, and edited The Cambridge Review for a term. As at Clifton he was active in Cambridge’s theatrical life. Redgrave graduated from Cambridge with honors in modern languages and English literature. Redgrave, discouraged at first from pursuing a professional acting career by his height (he was 6’3”) and a voice that was somewhat weak, sought first to go into journalism but later accepted a teaching job at the Cranleigh School. He again immersed himself in the school’s theater and earned a reputation for his bold and innovative productions. After three years of teaching, Redgrave determined to make a living as an actor. His professional debut came in 1934 with the Liverpool Repertory Company, and he acted his first lead role in Libel. The company produced some of Redgrave’s own plays, such as The Seventh Man (1934). Flowers of the Forest (1935) marked the first time he appeared with his future wife, the actress Rachel Kempson. The director TYRONE GUTHRIE lured Redgrave to the Old Vic in 1936–1937. At the Old Vic he acted a number of Shakespearean roles, working with his wife, EDITH EVANS, and LAURENCE OLIVIER. By this time Redgrave was well known on the English stage, and he began to receive a variety of acting engagements. The year 1938 saw Redgrave’s first major film role as Gilbert in ALFRED HITCHCOCK’s The Lady Vanishes. The following year, he appeared as an American playboy in Sir CAROL REED’s Climbing High, and several other film roles followed before he enlisted in the Royal Navy during World War II. He continued to act in film during the war, portraying such characters as Gribaud in The Duke in Darkness (1942) and Rakitin in a film version of Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. The Duke in Darkness was the first of many films Redgrave was to produce.
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Redgrave continued to divide his time between the stage and the screen. On stage, his 1944 performance as Harry in the thriller Uncle Harry at the Garrick was well received, as was his Colonel in FRANZ WERFEL’s Jacobowsky and the Colonel the following year. Appearing in both London and New York, Redgrave played many leading Shakespearean roles, including Macbeth (1947), Hamlet (1950), Richard II (1951), and King Lear (1953). He also starred in many plays by modern dramatists such as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg as well as CHRISTOPHER FRY’s Tiger at the Gates (adapted from a play by JEAN GIRAUDOUX) in 1955. On screen Redgrave starred in a succession of films—as Maxwell Frere in Dead of Night (1945); as the teacher Andrew Crocker-Harris in TERENCE RATTIGAN’s The Browning Version (1951); as John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952); as Orin Mannon in Mourning Becomes Electra (1952), one of his most famous roles; and as the General in the 1956 version of GEORGE ORWELL’s 1984. He also starred in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1963); Goodbye Mr. Chips (1969); and Nicholas and Alexandra (1971). Redgrave was best known for his ability to capture the psychological dimension in his portrayals of introverts, leaders, and intellectuals of both sympathetic and sinister types. His style as an actor and director was influenced by the Russian director KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY. Redgrave’s writings include The Actor’s Ways and Means (1953; rev. 1979), Mask or Face (1958), the autobiography In My Mind’s I (1983), and The Mountebank’s Tale (1959). Redgrave was knighted in 1959. He was the father of the actresses Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Findlater, Richard, Michael Redgrave: Actor, 1956; Redgrave, Corin, Michael Redgrave, My Father, 1995; Redgrave, Michael, In My Mind’s I: An Actor’s Autobiography, 1983.
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Reed, Carol (December 30, 1906–April 25, 1976) Director, Actor ne of Britain’s preeminent film directors in the post–World War II era, Sir Carol Reed got his start in film directing for the detective writer Edgar Wallace. In the 1940s, Reed’s release of a series of suspense thrillers marked the high point of his career. His later successes include the musical Oliver! Reed was the illegitimate son of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, a well-known stage actor in his day whose acquaintances included GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. Tree’s lifestyle involved many mistresses and was a perpetual source of scandal. Reed was the son of his mistress May Reed, with whom Tree set up a second family. Reed, an introverted child, was sent to the Greycoat School, St. John’s Road, Putney, and in 1917 entered King’s School, Canterbury. His years at school were unremarkable. Upon the completion of his studies he lived briefly in the United States and tried his hand at farming, but after several months he returned to England to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. The year 1924 brought his first acting role, as Constantine in Heraclius. Over the next several years, Reed continued to act and began to direct as well. He acted in SYBIL THORNDIKE’s company and appeared with both her and LAURENCE OLIVIER in Shaw’s St. Joan. In 1926 Reed met the most important association of his early career, the writer and playwright Edgar Wallace. Reed acted in and directed a number of Wallace’s detective thrillers before Wallace became involved with the British Lion Film Corporation, leading both into the cinema. Reed helped Wallace in the production of a number of films before the latter’s death in 1932. That year, Reed got a break from an old associate of his father’s, Basil Dean, who founded Associated Talking Pictures. He worked as
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a dialogue director for Dean’s company and by 1934 had worked his way up to assistant director. Reed directed scenes in Dean’s Autumn Crows and the following year codirected It Happened in Paris. Midshipman Easy (1935), on which he received advisory assistance from TYRONE GUTHRIE, was his first effort as full director. Encouraged by the modest success of Midshipman Easy, Reed directed a stream of films in the late 1930s, during which time he developed his working style and his hallmark mastery of the element of suspense. His meticulously ordered productions involved a detailed shooting script to which he adhered precisely, a direct contrast to the spontaneous, sometimes scriptless working styles of French New Wave and Italian Neorealist directors of the same era. The Stars Look Down (1939), based on a novel by A. J. Cronin, ranks among Reed’s early successes. MICHAEL REDGRAVE stars as a miner’s son in a tragic story about Welsh coal miners of the 1930s and capitalist exploitation of the community. Among Reed’s other early films are Laburnum Grove (1936), based on a play by J. B. PRIESTLEY; the mystery Night Train (1939); The Girl in the News (1940); The Young Mr. Pitt (1941); and The True Glory (1944), a documentary-style film made when Reed worked for the British Army’s wartime documentary unit during World War II. By the early 1940s, Reed had established himself as a director in Britain and the United States. Odd Man Out (1946), derived from a novel by F. L. Green, was the first of a trio of films usually considered his masterpieces; it marked the beginning of his association with producer ALEXANDER KORDA. JAMES MASON plays the IRA leader Johnny, who mistakenly kills a man during a robbery he commits to finance IRA operations. Johnny himself is seri-
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ously injured, and the rest of the film concerns his slow and painful demise. The Fallen Idol (1948; released in the United States as The Lost Illusion) and The Third Man (1949), both adapted from GRAHAM GREENE novels, completed Reed’s series of masterpieces. Set and shot in devastated postwar Vienna with a screenplay written by Greene, the latter concerns the unraveling of mysterious circumstances leading to the death of Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins, an American author and alcoholic who has come to Vienna to visit Lime, who as it turns out has sunk into corruption. Reed’s cinematographer, Robert Krasker, infused the film with a sense of devastation, corruption, and paranoia using tilted camera angles and eerie lighting effects. The composer Alexander Karas contributed a score of zither music. Among Reed’s later films are An Outcast of the Islands (1951), based on JOSEPH CONRAD’s novel; The Man Between (1952); and The Key
(1958). Our Man in Havana (1959), a satire for which Greene wrote the screenplay based on his own novel, tells the story of British vacuum cleaner salesman Jim Wormold in pre-Communist Cuba. Played by ALEC GUINNESS, Wormold finds himself working for British Intelligence, inventing information to report when he has in reality failed to find any. The family musical Oliver! (1968) was the biggest success of Reed’s later career. Based on Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, the film tells the story of a London orphan trying to survive in a series of homes and orphanages. Oliver! won numerous Academy Awards, including the Best Picture award and the Best Director honor for Reed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Moss, Robert F., The Films of Carol Reed, 1987; Wapshott, Nicholas, Carol Reed: A Biography, 1994.
Remarque, Erich Maria (June 22, 1898–September 25, 1970) Novelist, Poet, Playwright rich Maria Remarque published his famous antiwar novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, just before Hitler rose to power in Germany. Most of his subsequent novels, many of which became Hollywood film classics, were written during his exile in Switzerland and the United States. Remarque was born Erich Paul Remark into an impoverished family in Osnabru¨ck, Germany, a setting that figures prominently in his fiction. He later adopted the French version of his mother’s name. His father was a bookbinder, and financial difficulties forced the family to move around frequently. As a child, Remarque was interested in music and
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painting. His parents sent him to Catholic schools, first the Domschule and then the Johannischule. With the aim of becoming a teacher, he studied at the Catholic Pra¨parande from 1912 to 1915. Remarque was drafted into the army and fought in World War I, suffering wounds in the Battle of Flanders. After the war ended, he held various teaching posts and a number of odd jobs ranging from playing the organ to automobile racing. Remarque also wrote promotional copy for Die Scho¨nheit, and became the assistant editor of the sports magazine Sportbild. He began to associate himself with Traumbude (Dream-Den), a progressive
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group that admired the Jugendstil artists. The group gave the title to his first novel, Die Traumbude, published in 1920. Im Westen nichts Neues (1929; All Quiet on the Western Front), an antiwar story set during World War I, was an instant international success and remains his most famous work. In the story, Paul Baumer and a group of friends enlist enthusiastically in the army to fight in World War I. Remarque relates their physical and psychological deterioration as they face the horrors of trench warfare and a seemingly endless war. Lewis Milestone directed the highly successful American film version in 1930. Remarque later published a sequel, Der Weg zuru¨ck (1931; The Road Back). Despite his slight interest in politics and his non-Jewish background, Remarque early on found himself under attack from the Nazis. He fled Germany for Porto Ronco, Switzerland, in the early 1930s and was deprived of his German citizenship in 1938. The following year, he moved to the United States, where he was assisted by the actress MARLENE DIETRICH and Joseph Kennedy, father of the future American president, among others. Nazi authorities, meanwhile, beheaded Remarque’s sister in Germany for subversive political activity. Until 1942, Remarque spent much of his time in Hollywood, which was to add popularity to his fiction with many films of his novels. When the war ended, Remarque divided his time between Switzerland and the United States, particularly New York. He married the American actress Paulette Goddard in 1958. Remarque’s novels often evoke the German atmosphere in which he spent his youth and young adulthood, and most of his stories unfold against a backdrop of war in Europe. His
works are characterized by their straightforward, understated narrative style. Flotsam (1941), a not altogether tragic story, unfolds in the war-torn atmosphere of Europe. Among the wandering war refugees are Steiner and Kern, who have been forced to leave Czechoslovakia and have no place to go. Arc de Triomphe (1946; Arch of Triumph 1946), a story about a German doctor and exile in Paris who illegally treats upper-class patients, ranks among his popular novels and was filmed in 1948. While he performs medical duties, the doctor, Ravic, also hunts for the Nazi official who subjected him to torture. Ravic’s love of Calvados significantly boosted the sales of the liquor in the United States. Spark of Life (1952) depicts prisoners’ struggle to survive in a concentration camp. A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1954), also among Remarque’s popular stories, portrays the plight of soldier Ernst Graeber, who obtains three weeks leave from his military duties and returns home to find his house bombed and his family gone. Set in New York, Shadows in Paradise (1971) depicts the postwar life of concentration camp survivor Ross. Ross falls in love with Natasha, who brings him a measure of happiness, but cannot forget the horrors he has endured. Remarque also wrote plays, and among his other novels are Three Comrades (1937), The Black Obelisk (1957), Heaven Has No Favorites (1961), and The Night in Lisbon (1964).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Barker, Christine R., and Last, R. W., Erich Maria Remarque, 1979; Taylor, Harley U., Erich Maria Remarque: A Literary and Film Biography, 1989; Wagener, Hans, Understanding Erich Maria Remarque, 1991.
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Renoir, Jean (September 15, 1894–February 12, 1979) Director, Novelist, Essayist he filmmaker Jean Renoir was one of the principal technical innovators in French film during his lifetime and is best known for films such as The Rules of the Game (1939) and India (1951). His career spanned from the era of silent film through the advent of color film. Renoir was born in Paris and spent most of his childhood in Provence, immersed in both a natural, country setting and an artistic environment that strongly influenced his later work in film. His father was the famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir graduated from the University of Aix-enProvence in 1913 and served in several positions in World War I. His first artistic interest after the war was ceramics, but he soon developed an interest in film. In 1920 he married Andre´e Heurschling, who posed for his father; she later starred in several of his productions using the name Catherine Hessling. Renoir’s first productions, including The Girl of the Water (1925), Charleston (1926), La P’tite Lili (1927), and Le Bled (1929), were silent films. Nana (1926) starred Hessling as Nana, a failed actress-turned-prostitute who dies of smallpox. He first used sound in On Purge Be´be´ and Le Chienne, both released in 1931. In Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932), a bookstore owner saves a Paris down- and-out, Boudu, who has jumped in the Seine to drown himself. Boudu behaves scandalously, even seducing his rescuer’s wife, until he finally rejects society and jumps into the Seine a second time. Renoir’s other films of this period include Madame Bovary (1932), based on Gustave Flaubert’s novel, Toni (1935), and Lower Depths (1936), from MAXIM GORKY’s play of the same title. In The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), a corrupt president of a publishing company, Batala, fakes his own death. The company soon becomes a successful cooperative with a
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pleasant working environment. However, Batala returns to the company and plans to restore the old order. M. Lange, a company employee and the idealistic author of one of the cooperative’s new books, murders Batala to allow the cooperative to continue. He soon becomes a refugee, likely to be helped across the border to Belgium by a group of people who recognize him and become convinced of the nobility of his crime. Many critics consider the films Renoir made in the late 1930s his best work. Grand Illusion (1937) is set in a series of prisoner-ofwar camps in Germany during World War I. When two prisoners, Mare´chal and Rosenthal, finally escape from one of the many camps in which they have been held captive, they determine they cannot stay in the comfortable but unreal atmosphere they find living with a widow and her daughter. The two men flee to Switzerland, narrowly escaping the rifle of a German soldier who spots them. The Rules of the Game (1939), depicting a tangled web of love affairs, tragedy, and decadence in prewar France, was a commercial failure upon its release but later became one of Renoir’s most highly acclaimed movies. Among the many areas in which Renoir experimented with filming technique was his use of montage, or editing of film to create unusual visual associations, also embraced by Soviet directors such as SERGEI EISENSTEIN. Renoir readily embraced the advents of both sound and color in filmmaking and quickly adapted to the new innovations when they emerged. Long film sequences and deep focus photography were two other trademarks of his productions. From 1941 to 1947 Renoir worked in Hollywood, having fled from the Germans in France. He married his second wife, Dido Freire, who was the daughter of the Brazilian filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti, in 1944. His
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American films include Swamp Water (1941), This Land is Mine (1943), The Southerner (1945), The Diary of a Chambermaid (1947), and Woman on the Beach (1947). Most successful among these films was The Southerner, which depicts the hardships of a southern cotton farmer’s family in the United States. In 1951 Renoir traveled to India and filmed The River (1950), which depicts wealthy English families living in Bengal. The River, Renoir’s first film in color, is based on a novel by Rumer Godden. Subsequent films include The Golden Coach (1952), filmed in Italy; French CanCan (1954); The Elusive Corporal (1961); and Picnic on the Grass (1960), a modernistic story about a wealthy biologist who runs for the presidency of a united Europe. The biolo-
gist, Professor Alexis, campaigns for artificial insemination, which, through genetic selection, he and others hope will improve humanity’s lot. The professor becomes torn between a political marriage to his cousin and his love for a lower-class woman and chooses to marry the latter in the end. Renoir’s last film was The Little Theater of Jean Renoir (1971), first made for French television. In addition to film, Renoir wrote several works of fiction and nonfiction. They include the play Orvet (1955), the novel The Notebooks of Captain George (1966), My Father (1961), and My Life and My Films (1974).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bazin, Andre´, Jean Renoir, 1973.
Richardson, Henry Handel (January 3, 1870–March 20, 1946) Novelist, Short-Story Writer enry Handel Richardson is best known for her trilogy of novels, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, which depicts the struggles of an immigrant in nineteenth-century Australia. Although her literary output was sparse, Richardson also wrote several other novels and a number of short stories. Richardson was born Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson in Melbourne, Australia. Her father, a doctor, immigrated to Australia from Dublin. He was interested in spiritualism, for which Richardson also later developed an interest. During her childhood her father began to suffer from progressive dementia and was finally confined in 1878. When he died the following year, her mother took to supporting the family with a postal job. From 1883 to 1887 Richardson studied at the Presbyterian
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Ladies’ College, the setting of her second novel The Getting of Wisdom (1910). When she had finished school, Richardson taught briefly before her mother moved the family to Leipzig. She returned to Australia only once afterward, in 1912. In Leipzig Richardson studied music, intending at first to make music her career. There she also met J. G. Robertson, whose interest in German literature was to influence her own work. They married in Dublin in 1895. Richardson had by then begun to translate works from Danish and German, and her first two translations appeared in 1896. In 1904 the Richardsons settled in London. She had begun her first novel Maurice Guest (1908) in Germany, and in it she drew from her experiences in Leipzig. The novel’s protagonist is an English music student in Leipzig whose life is marred by a failed love affair. A
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significant portion of the work was cut due to Richardson’s references to homosexuality. Neither Maurice Guest nor The Getting of Wisdom attracted much initial notice. The latter was made into a film in 1980. From her move to London onward, Richardson was an intensely private person. Her masculine pen name seems to have served two purposes: to protect her privacy and to prove that the writing of men and women is indistinguishable. She once said that her pen name was a “man of straw I have set up for the critics to tilt at while I sit safe and obscure behind.” “Death,” a short piece inspired by the death of her mother, appeared in 1911, was later retitled “Mary Christina,” and was published in Two Studies (1931). Richardson’s success, however, came with the publication of the first volume in her trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930), which consists of Australia Felix (1917), The Way Home (1925), and Ultima Thule (1929). The story depicts the life of an Australian immigrant whose character Richardson based largely on her father.
The first volume of the series sold fairly well, but the second was less commercially successful. Unable to find a publisher for Ultima Thule, Richardson’s husband financed its publication. Sizeable sales of the work rekindled publishers’ interest, and all three volumes of the trilogy soon appeared in international markets. Ultima Thule won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal in 1929. Richardson’s final work, The Young Cosima, depicts the lives of the composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and his wife and was published in 1939. Her short stories were published as The End of a Childhood and Other Stories (1934), and her unfinished autobiography Myself When Young appeared posthumously in 1948. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackland, Michael, Henry Handel Richardson, 1996; Buckley, Vincent, Henry Handel Richardson, 1970; Elliot, William D., Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson), 1975; Green, Dorothy, Ulysses Bound: Henry Handel Richardson and Her Fiction, 1973; McLeod, Karen, Henry Handel Richardson: A Critical Study, 1985.
Richardson, Ralph (December 19, 1902–October 10, 1983) Actor, Director n stage and on the screen, Sir Ralph David Richardson was a polished actor with great versatility and ability to capture the nuances in a variety of characters. With Sir LAURENCE OLIVIER, Sir JOHN GIELGUD, and Sir ALEC GUINNESS, Richardson was one of England’s most accomplished actors during his lifetime. His best-known stage roles include Peer Gynt and Falstaff, as well as many other Shakespearean characters.
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Richardson was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. His father was a Quaker as well as a landscape painter and art teacher, but it was his mother who had the greater influence on him. When he was four, she took her children and left her husband, raising them as Catholics and sending Richardson to a Catholic school. Structured study did not agree with his constitution, although he enjoyed reading on his own, particularly the plays of William Shakespeare and the writings
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Ralph Richardson (쑖 Lebrecht / The Image Works)
of H. G. WELLS. Around 1917 he took a job with an insurance company. Intending to study painting, Richardson entered the Brighton School of Art in 1920. After determining that his talents did not lie in painting and unsuccessfully considering several other career choices, he chanced upon an acting company and was taken on to do menial tasks. It did not take long for him to move into acting, and his debut role came with the Nicholas Players in a production of Balzac’s The Bishop’s Candle. Later that year he appeared in The Merchant of Venice, one of many Shakespeare plays he would perform in the early 1920s. He made several tours with Charles Doran’s company, appearing primarily in Shakespearean
roles. In 1923 he joined the Earle Grey company, giving him an opportunity to act roles in more modern plays. Richardson joined the Birmingham Repertory Company in 1925 and the same year made his London debut as Vicentio in The Taming of the Shrew. Over the next several years Richardson appeared primarily in non-Shakespearean roles, but he returned to them in 1930 when he joined the Old Vic and the Sadler’s Wells. In spite of his subsequent success in film, he continued to act on stage for the rest of his life. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt were two of his best-known characters, and he often appeared in twentieth-century works by SOMERSET MAUGHAM, GRAHAM GREENE, GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, J. B. PRIESTLEY, and
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others. After World War II, during which he served in the Fleet Air Arm, he returned to the Old Vic, acting and codirecting with Olivier. In the 1950s he formed the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company. His final stage role was Don Alberto in Eduardo de Filippo at Lyttelton Theatre in 1983. In 1933 Richardson made his film debut, as Nigel Hartley in The Ghoul. From that time on he appeared in many films. His notable roles include Alexis Karenin in a film version of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1948), David Preston in his own Home at Seven (1952), the Duke of Buckingham in Olivier’s Richard III (1955), James Tyrone in Sidney Lumet’s film version of EUGENE O’NEILL’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962), and The Supreme Being in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1980). Richardson was something of a regular in the films of British directors Sir CAROL REED and Sir DAVID LEAN. His roles in Reed’s films include Baines in The Fallen Idol (1948), Captain Lingard in An Outcast of the Islands
(1952), and C in Our Man in Havana (1960). John Richfield in The Sound Barrier (1952) and Alexander Gromeko in Doctor Zhivago (1965) are among his roles in Lean’s films. His other noteworthy performances include the caterpillar in a 1972 television production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland directed by Jonathan Miller, and his Simeon in FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI’s Jesus of Nazareth. Richardson’s final two film roles were that of Jim in ex-Beatle Paul McCartney’s Give My Regards to Broad Street (1983), and the sixth earl of Greystoke in Hugh Hudson’s Greystoke, or The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1983). Richardson was knighted in 1947.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Miller, John, Ralph Richardson: The Authorized Biography, 1995; O’Connor, Garry, Ralph Richardson: An Actor’s Life, rev. ed., 1997; Tanitch, Robert, Ralph Richardson: A Tribute, 1982.
Richter, Sviatoslav (March 20, 1915–August 1, 1997) Pianist, Conductor ne of the foremost concert pianists of the twentieth century, the Ukrainianborn Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter approached the keyboard with massive hands and an imposing presence. His reclusive personality and brooding manner lent an introspective quality to his performances. Richter performed primarily in Europe and the Soviet Union, specializing in Russian composers such as SERGEI PROKOFIEV and Modest Mussorgsky, but his vast repertoire included the works of many others. Richter was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine. His father, an organist and composer, gave him the only musical training he had in his child-
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hood and was later arrested and executed by Soviet police for having a German-sounding name. When he was a teenager his mother took him to the Odessa Opera, where he became a coach and accompanist. Richter’s early aspirations were to compose and conduct, but after his 1934 concert debut in Odessa he devoted himself to the piano. In 1937 Richter began several years of study under Heinrich Neuhaus, who became his mentor, at the Moscow Conservatory. There he met and formed a friendship with Prokofiev. Richter later premiered three of his works—the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Sonatas—and performed many others as well. In
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1945 he won the U.S.S.R. Music Competition, and four years later he was awarded the Stalin Prize. Richter quickly gained fame in the Soviet Union for his performances of Russian composers as well as others, and he repeatedly performed in provincial areas. During the 1950s he often performed in Eastern Europe and China as well, but he was forbidden to give concerts in the West until 1959. That year he was granted a visa to play in Finland, and the following year he debuted at Carnegie Hall in New York. Richter also played at the
funerals of Joseph Stalin and of the novelist and poet BORIS PASTERNAK. Although immensely successful in the United States, Richter disliked extensive travel and large venues and did not often perform in North America. In 1964 he began his long collaboration with the French Feˆtes Musicales, and he was also associated with the Aldeburgh Festival in England and the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Preferring the spontaneity of live performances to the contrivances of the studio, Richter made many recordings of his concerts.
Rietveld, Gerrit (June 24, 1888–June 25, 1964) Architect, Designer n architect who emphasized functionality and utility in his work, Gerrit Thomas Rietveld applied the theories of the Dutch De Stijl movement (see PIET MONDRIAN) to architecture. He designed private homes (notably the Schro¨der House), store interiors, mass housing, and public buildings. Rietveld was also an accomplished furniture designer, producing models of chairs, cabinets, and other pieces for mass production. Rietveld was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He attended school until he was 11, at which time he went to work as an apprentice in his father’s cabinetmaking business (1899–1906). From 1906 to 1911 he worked as a draftsman in the jewelry studio of C. J. Begeer, a leading jewelry firm in Holland. At the same time he took drawing classes at the Municipal Evening School in Utrecht as well as studying architecture under P. Houtzagers. From 1911 to 1919 Rietveld worked independently as a cabinetmaker. His famous redand-blue chair dates from 1918. Composed of rectangles and planes, it features a long, thin,
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flat board painted red on its back, and a similar blue board for a seat that joins it at an angle. During this time he met members of De Stijl (though he apparently never met Mondrian), including Theo van Doesburg, and he joined the group in 1919. That same year he established his own architectural practice. Rietveld continued his association with De Stijl until its dissolution in 1931. De Stijl rejected decorative elements in architecture. Van Doesburg argued that color should serve not a decorative purpose, but an organic and expressive end. Asymmetry in design as well as an emphasis on the functional, economical, and elementary in structures were also primary focal points of De Stijl. In 1920 Rietveld began to design a series of store interiors, including the G. & Z.C. jewelry shop in Amsterdam, one of the first examples of De Stijl tenets applied to architecture. By far his most famous work was the Schro¨der House in Utrecht (1924), one of his collaborative efforts with Mrs. Truus Schro¨derSchra¨der. A white structure composed of angles, planes, and lines of the primary colors—
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red, blue, and yellow—the house established his reputation as an architect abroad. Furniture design continued to occupy his time as well. Rietveld designed a baby buggy (1918), buffets, end tables, lamps, cabinets, a military chair, a zigzag chair (1934), and many other pieces intended for mass production. One of his chairs was included in the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition organized by WALTER GROPIUS. In the late 1920s Rietveld added mild curvilinear elements to his furniture designs, but for the most part these were kept to a minimum. Like his buildings, his furniture pieces were dominated by flat planes, angles, and lines. During the World War II years he concentrated almost exclusively on furniture design, such as his aluminum chair that could be stamped from a single piece of material (1942). At about the same time he turned his thoughts toward mass housing, and he designed several row-housing projects in
Utrecht and Vienna. He began to conceive designs that relegated stairways, utilities, and halls to vertical columns to maximize interior spaciousness. Although his conceptions were not in fact applied to mass housing, they do appear in the private dwellings he designed afterward. These houses of the 1930s are generally characterized by their white exteriors and heavy emphasis on rectangular elements. Rietveld’s later architectural works include a cinema at Utrecht, a showroom for the Driessen Tile Agency in Arnhem (1954), the De Ploeg Textile Works (1956), housing, and the art academy at Arnhem (1962). He also taught industrial and architectural design in the Netherlands.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baroni, Daniele, The Furniture of Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, 1977; Brown, Theodore M., The Work of G. Rietveld, Architect, 1958; Overy, Paul, et al., The Rietveld Schro¨der House, 1988.
Rilke, Rainer Maria (December 4, 1875–December 29, 1926) Poet, Novelist, Translator ainer Maria Rilke is generally considered the best-known and most influential poet who wrote in German in the twentieth century. He is noted for the highly refined poetic style and sensitivity with which he went deep into the inner life and the mystery of the human place in the cosmos, writing of life, death, spirituality, nature, and sexuality in poems that continue to have great power for today’s readers. He is also known for his novel The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910). Rilke was an only child, born Rene´ Karl Johann Joseph Maria Rilke in Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic. His childhood was an unhappy one for many reasons. Before his
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parents separated in 1884 they fought frequently. His father was an unsuccessful and often ill railway worker, and Rilke frequently fell ill himself. His mother, who came from an upper-middle-class family and was often gone, dressed him like a girl in his early childhood, which he deeply resented as an adult. Rilke attended various schools as a child— first a Catholic school, and later military schools in Austria and Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). He detested the military schools and withdrew early from the second on account of poor health. The perpetual quarrels of his parents trapped him between their conflicting expectations; his mother encouraged him to write poetry, whereas his fa-
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ther pushed him to pursue a more socially respectable career. In 1891 and 1892 Rilke attended the Academy of Business Administration, and afterward he studied at the German Gymnasium near Prague. He began to write poetry when he was in school. His first major volume, a series of love ballads, narrative poems, and satires entitled Life and Songs, was published in 1894. The following year he entered Charles University in Prague, where he studied art history and literature for the short time he remained there. In 1896 he moved to Munich, and in 1897 he met Lou Andreas-Salome´, a German writer who had been closely associated with the iconoclastic thinker Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). She became at once a mother figure, lover, and spiritual guide to him. Andreas-Salome´ took him to her native Russia in 1899, an experience that was to have a profound impact on Rilke and his poetry. His travels in Russia made a deeply favorable impression on him and inspired The Book of Monkish Life, a collection of religious poems told from the perspective of a Russian monk. Rilke’s fascination with Russian culture, myths, literature, and spiritual tradition initiated a new search for God. He began to conceive of God as a universal presence that can be sensed above all in nature. The prose of the three-part The Stories of God (1900) also borrowed heavily from Russian culture. Rilke’s other early poetry includes The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), The Book of Pictures (1902), and the mystical The Book of Hours (1905). The thirty poems of The Book of Pilgrimage, written in only a few days, reflect Rilke’s continuing pursuit of spirituality, which he associated with the power and beauty of nature. These are poems in the Symbolist tradition, lyrical and melancholy and entirely subjective. Around the same time Rilke joined an artists’ colony. He married a sculptor, Clara Westhoff, and the couple moved to Westerwede. However, they had difficulty remaining dedicated to their work and maintaining their fam-
Rainer Maria Rilke (쑖 Henri Martinie / Roger-Voillet / The Image Works)
ily, which included a daughter, Ruth, and separated. In 1902 Rilke moved to Paris to write a book (published in 1903) about the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), for whom he served as secretary in 1905 and 1906. Rodin proved to be a significant influence on Rilke’s poetry before their break in 1907. He urged Rilke to treat his poems with the same dedication and careful observation of his subject that a sculptor would use in creating a sculpture. Rilke began to write what he called “object poems” while he was in Paris and collected his efforts into two volumes of New Poems (1907; all translations are by Stephen Mitchell, 1980). With the object poems he shifted his focus from his own inner state and tried to capture deeper-than-apparent aspects of single objects, such as a panther in a cage, in “The Panther”:
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As he paces in cramped circles, over and over, the movement of his powerful soft strides is like a ritual dance around a center in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
In 1910 Rilke published The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, a semiautobiographical novel depicting the anguished spiritual quest of a poet-writer in Paris. He spent the years of World War I for the most part in Munich. In 1915 he was called into the Austrian army, and he served until 1916. The most significant works of his later life and, many would argue, his greatest works, are the Duino Elegies (1922) and the fifty-five carefully structured sonnets of Sonnets to Orpheus (1922). Ten elegies comprise the Duino Elegies, which Rilke began during his residence in the Duino Castle in 1912 and did not finish until ten years later. With their strange juxtapositions of powerful images they go far beyond anything Rilke had yet written in revealing the depths of the inner life and the challenge involved when one seeks to experience the outer world fully. Although both collec-
tions show keen awareness of struggle and death, Rilke’s view of life was in its own way an optimistic one, and he wrote powerfully of the way poetry can rise from and create a taking of experience into oneself that allows pure experience to be complete and fulfilling. Rilke’s other works include translations of European literary works, French-language poetry, and other collections of German-language poetry such as Requiem (1909) and The Life of the Virgin Mary (1913). He died of leukemia in 1925. Robert Bly, poet and leader of the Men’s Movement, and Stephen Mitchell, acclaimed translator of works from many spiritual traditions, have both done effective, accessible translations of Rilke in late twentieth-century America.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Freedman, Ralph, Life of a Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, 1996; Leppman, Wolfgang, Rilke: A Life, 1984; Prater, Donald A., A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1986.
Rivera, Diego (December 8, 1886–November 25, 1957) Painter he prolific Mexican painter Diego Rivera decorated the walls of many public buildings in Mexico and the United States with enormous frescoes glorifying revolutionary themes and Mexico’s indigenous population. Rivera was born Diego Marı´a Concepcio´n Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao De La Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodrı´guez in Guanajuato, Mexico. As a child he developed an obsession with drawing and sometimes incurred the wrath of his parents when he drew on the walls with crayons and pencils. His father gave him a room covered with blackboard so
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he could draw, and he spent many hours in his room, creating his first murals on his own walls. After his father discovered the young Rivera’s cardboard arsenal with thousands of cut-out soldiers and detailed war schemes, he decided to groom him for a military career. In 1894 he enrolled in a Catholic school, where he earned high marks and engaged in doctrinal disputes with the priests. At age 10 he entered a military school, where he stayed for only a week and refused to return, thus ending his father’s hopes. The same year he began taking night classes at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts.
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Aside from Rivera’s teachers at the academy, the broadsheet illustrator Jose´ Guadalupe Posada became one of his primary influences. At age 16 Rivera abandoned school and continued to paint, mostly portraits and landscapes. Using the money he earned from selling his paintings and a scholarship, he traveled to Madrid to study painting in 1907. After moving to Paris in 1909, Rivera gained the friendship of the leading painters in France, such as PABLO PICASSO. His paintings between 1914 and 1917, such as Two Women (1914) and Portrait of Angelina (1917), followed the Cubist style mainly developed by Picasso. After 1917, however, Rivera abandoned Cubism and began to paint in a more impressionistic style. Rivera is most famous, however, for the massive murals he began to paint upon his return to Mexico in 1921. He became an active and vocal member of Mexico’s Communist Party and, with other Mexican artists, he joined a union dedicated to bringing revolu-
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LCUSZ62-42516)
tionary art to public buildings. Many walls in Mexico were soon painted with Rivera murals; his first, entitled Creation, decorated the National Preparatory School. In 1923 he began a massive series of 124 paintings for the Ministry of Public Education depicting peasants, workers immersed in various labors, children benefitting from the government, and other similar themes. In general, Rivera used bold color schemes and simple forms. In 1927 Rivera traveled to the Soviet Union for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution and started a fresco for the Red Army building that he was unable to finish. Back in Mexico in 1929 he married FRIDA KAHLO, who was also an accomplished Mexican painter. Their relationship suffered from Rivera’s numerous affairs but lasted until the end of her life in 1954. He painted his next series of frescoes at what is now the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo (1926–1927). These include The Fecund Earth (1926) and Distribution of the Land among the Peons (1926), a depiction of the peasant classes receiving a share of redistributed land. Rivera completed murals for the Corte´s Palace in Cuernavaca (1930) and the National Palace in Mexico City (1930–1935). From 1930 to 1933 he also painted murals at the California School of Fine Arts (1931); the Detroit Institute of Arts (1932), and Rockefeller Center in New York (1933); a mural at the latter, Man at the Crossroads, contained a portrait of Lenin and was destroyed by the Rockefeller Center administration. After its destruction he painted a series of twenty-one murals for the New Workers’ School in New York. The series consists mainly of revolutionary scenes and figures and negative portrayals of American capitalists, such as J. P. Morgan. Among them is Imperialism (1933), which features large cannon and masses of workers throwing off the shackles of capitalism and Western imperialism. The commanding faces of Lenin and Marx dominate another painting in the series, Communist Unity Panel (1933). For several years after 1935 Rivera found himself with fewer walls to paint and began to
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paint smaller individual works. In 1936 he secured asylum in Mexico for the exiled Soviet revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, who settled into Frida’s family house a mile from their own residence. In 1947 he began a series of pictorial representations of Mexican history for the National Palace, including Mexico before the Conquest (1947), which depicted the figures and culture of native Indians before the Spanish conquests. Also among the
murals of his later years was a controversial work for the Hotel del Prado in 1948, which was hidden from public view after its completion because of its slogan “God Does Not Exist.” Rivera died of heart failure in 1957.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Wolfe, Bertram D., The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, 1963.
Robbins, Jerome (October 11, 1918–July 29, 1998) Dancer, Choreographer, Director famously demanding choreographer/director of Broadway and Hollywood, Jerome Robbins earned five Tony Awards, two Academy Awards and the eternal enmity of many of his contemporaries. Despite his professional achievements, he is best known for providing the House Committee on Un-American Activities with the names of eight party members of his acquaintance in 1953—a decision prompted by fear that the bisexual choreographer’s many sexual affairs with men would be revealed to the public. Born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz on October 11, 1918, in New York City, Robbins tried all his life to overcome the scars inflicted by a childhood with a sarcastic, unloving father who, one Christmas, famously dressed as Santa Claus, demanded that the young boy return his Christmas toys due to misbehavior. Robbins’s sister, Sonia, started dancing professionally at age four. And it was through her that the young Robbins learned to love dance at an early age, although he also struggled many years with a protracted and bitter sibling rivalry. Robbins hid his dancing from his father through most of high school. He learned steps and technique watching his sis-
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ter, as she studied under the best teachers available at the time. At 18, Robbins took the ferry to Manhattan and presented himself at the Dance Center, where famous choreographer Gluck Sandor worked with the best dancers of the time. Sandor was impressed enough by Robbins’s improvised dance steps to offer an invitation to join the company. Robbins began to study ballet, paying for his classes by mopping floors and dusting. This is also when he began to be known professionally by the surname, “Robbins,” which he adopted because he feared anti-Jewish sentiment would hobble his career. Robbins continued to live with his parents and dance at every opportunity for the next few years. In 1940, he joined Ballet Theatre, and eventually increased the company’s profile with his first smash hit, Fancy Free, in 1944. Having realized his dream of becoming a famous choreographer, Robbins continued his selfimposed mandate to make dance his “religion,” and tirelessly sought ever more professional success. He achieved lasting fame with the effervescent On the Town, produced the next year.
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By 1950, Robbins’s work on Broadway had made him famous enough to be booked on the Ed Sullivan Show (see ED SULLIVAN), but his appearance was canceled because of suspected Communist ties. This devastated Robbins, and he promptly scheduled a meeting with Sullivan, where he was asked for, and provided, the names of guests at charity events which the government believed had
Jerome Robbins (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62103684)
been sponsored by the Communists. Robbins felt justified in his decision, as well as his later testimony before Congress, but many of his peers were very angry. And the Sullivan appearance, although rescheduled, never happened. Robbins had achieved unprecedented fame for a choreographer, but remained personally unpopular. According to a widely repeated story from this time, his dancers once watched, impassively, as the choreographer, demonstrating a step, edged closer and closer to the stage’s end. No one spoke a word of warning until Robbins finally took the last step and fell. By the late 1960s, Robbins focused much of his work on Hollywood and ballet, fleeing the personalities and constant compromises of Broadway. His most famous film work included The King and I, West Side Story, and Fiddler on the Roof. He collaborated with the most famous artists and composers of the time, including LEONARD BERNSTEIN, as well as the New York City Ballet, where he became Ballet Master in 1969. By his death on July 29, 1998, he was credited with reinvigorating the world of dance, and will always be known as one of the grand masters of the art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bibliography Jowitt, Deborah, Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, 2004; Lawrence, Greg, Dance with Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins, 2001.
Rockwell, Norman Percevel (February 3, 1894–November 8, 1978) Painter, Illustrator orman Rockwell’s iconic portraits of twentieth-century American life were sentimental, nostalgia-filled paintings carried broad appeal middle-class
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Rockwell was born to Jarvis Waring and Nancy Hill Rockwell in New York City. He had one brother, Jarvis. When he was fourteen, he began taking art classes at the Chase Art School (now The New York School of Art). In 1910, he dropped out of high school to attend the National Academy of Design. Before long, he decided to transfer to the Art Students League, where he was taught by Thomas Fogarty and painter George Bridgman (1864–1943). While Fogarty taught him principles of illustration, Bridgman instructed him on painting technique. Rockwell would come to rely on both during his career. By the age of sixteen, he had received his first commission, to paint four Christmas cards. Rockwell’s early illustrations were for magazines such as St. Nicholas, the Boy Scouts of America’s Boys’ Life, and other publications aimed at young audiences. He got his first big break in 1912 with his book illustration for Carl H. Claudy’s Tell Me Why: Stories About Mother Nature. The following year, he be-
Norman Rockwell (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-93595)
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came art editor for Boys’ Life, a position he held for several years that enabled him to paint several covers for them. His first published magazine cover was Scout at Ship’s Wheel, which appeared in the magazine’s September 1913 edition. At the advent of World War I, Rockwell was rejected for being underweight at his first attempt to enlist. After gorging on food and barely passing the weight test, he was allowed to enlist but was relegated to serving as a military artist and never saw combat. Rockwell and his family moved to New Rochelle, New York, when he was twenty-one. There, he and cartoonist Clyde Forsythe shared a studio. Rockwell freelanced for Life, The Country Gentleman, The Literary Digest, and other magazines while setting his sights on working for The Saturday Evening Post. The Post, originally founded by the American statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and still in print today, had increased its circulation dramatically since its inception to become the most popular magazine in American history. Rockwell’s style blended perfectly with the Post’s emphasis on middle-class values. His dream became a reality with his first cover for them, Boy With Baby Carriage (1916). Over the next year, he published a number of covers for The Saturday Evening Post, including Circus Barker and Strongman, Gramps at the Plate, Redhead Loves Hatty Perkins, People in a Theatre Balcony, and Man Playing Santa. During the course of forty-seven years, Rockwell published more than three hundred original covers for the magazine. His success in painting for The Saturday Evening Post led to assignments to create covers for other magazines, including Leslie’s Weekly, Judge, and Peoples Popular Monthly. Rockwell married his first wife, Irene O’Connor, in 1916, and she was his model in Mother Tucking Children into Bed, published on the cover of The Literary Digest in 1921. The couple divorced in 1930, and Rockwell married his second wife, schoolteacher Mary
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Barstow. In 1939, the family moved to Arlington, Vermont. In his work, Rockwell focused on life in his contemporary America in subjects that included serene family settings, peaceful rural scenes, and everyday depictions of contented children and adults. He was not oblivious to the harsh realities of the world but chose instead to paint but the ideal elements he wished for. Although sometimes criticized for overidealization and depictions of what some considered the banal, Rockwell was meticulous and methodical in his approach to painting and thoroughly researched his subjects when quality and circumstances called for it. Aside from his magazine covers, Rockwell is also known for his 1943 Four Freedoms series, which was inspired by a speech that President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered to the U.S. Congress. Roosevelt asserted that there were four principles for universal rights: Freedom from Want, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, and Freedom from Fear, and each of these principles became a subject for one of Rockwell’s paintings in the series. The U.S. Treasury Department promoted war bonds by exhibiting Rockwell’s originals. Along with the success of the Four Freedoms series in 1943 came a great tragedy. A fire destroyed many of Rockwell’s original paintings, as well as his personal collection of historical costumes and memorabilia. He spent the winter months of the late 1940s as an artist-in-residence at Otis College of Art and Design and sometimes used his students as models for his Saturday Evening Post covers. In 1953, the family moved from their home in Vermont to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. His wife died unexpectedly the same year. He and his son Thomas wrote his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator (1960), parts of which appeared in eight installments in The Saturday Evening Post. The first was accompanied by Rockwell’s cover Triple Self-Portrait. The following year, he married his third wife, Molly Punderson, a retired schoolteacher.
Rockwell published his last painting for The Saturday Evening Post in 1963 and spent the next decade painting covers for Look magazine. During that time, he broadened his subject matter to include more controversial subjects such as poverty, space exploration, and civil rights. His prolific output included more than four thousand original works. Aside from painting magazine covers, he illustrated many books, the most famous of which were 1936 editions of Mark Twain’s (1835–1910) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures Huckleberry Finn. Rockwell also illustrated catalogs, calendars, playing cards, and numerous other media. Rockwell was commissioned to paint portraits for four American Presidents— Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon—as well for foreign leaders. One of his final paintings was a portrait singer JUDY GARLAND in 1969. In 1973, Rockwell established a trust to preserve his work and donated much of it to the Old Corner House Stockbridge Historical Society, which became the Norman Rockwell Museum. In 1993 a new Museum/gallery, designed by architect Robert A. M. Stern, was built several miles from the original Museum. In 1977, Rockwell was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom with the remarks, “Artist, illustrator and author, Norman Rockwell has portrayed the American scene with unrivaled freshness and clarity. Insight, optimism and good humor are the hallmarks of his artistic style. His vivid and affectionate portraits of our country and ourselves have become a beloved part of the American tradition.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Claridge, Laura P., Norman Rockwell: A Life, 2001; Gherman, Beverly, Norman Rockwell, Storyteller With a Brush, 2000; Guptill, Arthur Leighton, Norman Rockwell: Illustrator, 1970; Marling, Karal Ann, Norman Rockwell, 1997; Rockwell, Margaret T., Norman Rockwell’s Chronicles of America, 1996; Rockwell, Norman, My Adven-
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tures as an Illustrator, 1960; Stoltz, Donald Robert, The Advertising World of Norman Rockwell, 1985; Walton, Donald, A Rockwell Portrait: An Intimate Biography, 1978.
www.nrm.org.
Rodgers, Richard Charles (June 28, 1902–December 30, 1979) Composer prolific composer whose Broadway and Hollywood career spanned sixty years and produced more than nine hundred published songs, Richard Rodgers was one-half of two major partnerships that allowed him to change the American musical. The first was with lyricist LORENZ HART, and the second—which produced the then-revolutionary Oklahoma! —was with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Rodgers was born the second of two boys on June 28, 1902, at Hammels Station, Long Island, New York. His parents were Russian Jewish e´migre´s: his mother, Mamie Levy, was a good pianist and his father, a doctor named William A. Rodgers, happened to be a good singer. Rodgers, who was mostly self-taught as a composer, took up piano when he was young. He attended public schools, including P.S. 166, which was renamed for him in 2003. In addition, Rodgers studied at Columbia University and what was then called the Manhat-
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Richard Rodgers (left) and Lorenz Hart (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-122089)
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tan School of Music, now the Juilliard School. By 1917, he’d completed music and some lyrics for the first of 14 amateur shows he did over the coming years. Late in 1918 or early in 1919, Rodgers was introduced to lyricist Lorenz Hart while the former was still a student at Columbia (which Hart had also attended) and the duo immediately hit it off. They saw their first song make it to Broadway during the 1918-1919 season in producer Lew Fields’s A Lonely Romeo. Then came Poor Little Ritz Girl, followed by The Garrick Gaieties in 1925 and their success with their song, “Manhattan.” Thus launched their Broadway career, which included librettist Herbert Fields, as well as success on the London stage. In 1930, Rodgers married writer and inventor Dorothy Feiner, and the pair had two daughters, Mary and Linda. They remained married until his death, and his daughter, Mary, composed Once Upon a Mattress (1959). Rodgers and Hart spent the worst of the Depression, from 1931-1935, in Hollywood writing scores for feature films including Love Me Tonight starring MAURICE CHEVALIER, and even the occasional song that did not find success with a film, such as “Blue Moon.” Rodgers and Hart then returned to New York and saw their collaboration’s greatest successes, with musical comedies such as Jumbo (1935), On Your Toes (1936), Babes in Arms (1937) and Pal Joey in 1940—all in all, a total
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of nine musicals and most of them hits. Big names joined them, such as director Joshua Logan and choreographer GEORGE BALANCHINE. Prior to Rodgers and Hart, musical theater was essentially a song and dance revue. That all changed when the two young New Yorkers started weaving their songs into the story narrative. Unfortunately, Hart, suffering from alcoholism and other problems, died in 1943 at age forty-eight. Perhaps anticipating the loss of his partner, Rodgers had earlier that year arranged to work with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, whom he had known for some years, and the two unveiled their first collaboration, Oklahoma! Widely viewed as a landmark—even a turning point—in the American musical, Oklahoma! displayed the marriage of Rodgers’ musical comedy background and Hammerstein’s skill with operetta. It was a fully formed musical play. In 1944, Rodgers and Hammerstein were awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for their achievement. Spectacular as it was, this was just the beginning of a long and successful collaboration. The new duo followed Oklahoma! on Broadway with major pieces immediately recognizable in American musical canon: Carousel (1945), Allegro (1947), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951) and the Sound of Music in 1959. South Pacific drew Rodgers and Hammerstein’s second Pulitzer, for drama. In total, the pair’s musicals also
won thirty-five Tonys, fifteen Oscars, two Grammys, and two Emmys. Rodgers lost his second professional partner in 1960, when Hammerstein died. However, he continued working until his death nearly twenty years later. In 1965 he collaborated with STEPHEN SONDHEIM for Do I Hear a Waltz?. The year that also saw the release of the film The Sound of Music. In 1979, with Martin Charnin, came Richard Rodgers’ final play, I Remember Mama. By this time a legend after more than a half-century, Rodgers died fewer than eight months after the opening of his fortieth Broadway play. As if a final curtain call, however, a revival of Oklahoma! began three weeks before Rodgers died. In 1990, the 46th Street Theatre was renamed The Richard Rodgers Theatre, leaving him a permanent place on the Great White Way. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bordman, Gerald, American Musical Theatre, 1992; New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 2001; Rodgers, Richard, Musical Stages: An Autobiography, Da Capo Press, 2002; Secrest, Meryle, Somewhere for Me, A Biography of Richard Rodgers, 2001. www.pulitzer.org. www.pbs.org. www.jwa.org/archive/jsp/perInfo.jsp?personID= 513. www.rnh.com. songwritershalloffame.org.
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Rolling Stones, The Musicians
Jagger, Mick
Watts, Charlie
(July 26, 1943– )
(June 2, 1941– )
Jones, Brian
Wood, Ron
(February 28, 1942–July 3, 1969)
(June 1, 1947– )
Richards, Keith
Wyman, Bill
(December 18, 1943– )
(October 24, 1936– )
Taylor, Mick (January 17, 1948– )
The Rolling Stones (쑖 Marilyn Kingwill/ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
orld-famous for their raw, blues-infused rock and roll, high living, and rowdy concerts, the British rock band The Rolling Stones have sold millions of albums over their career, which into the twenty-first century, has lasted more than forty years. The group of players who came to be called The Rolling Stones began to form in the early 1960s. Guitarist Keith Richards joined singer
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Mick Jagger’s band, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Both were the same age, born in Dartford, Kent, and had known one another since childhood. Soon guitarist Brian Jones had joined the group, and in December 1962 the three accepted bassist Bill Wyman into the band. They began calling themselves The Rolling Stones, taken from American bluesman Muddy Waters’s song “Rolling Stone.”
ROLLING STONES, THE
The following year, drummer Charlie Watts joined the band. The Stones started out playing American rhythm and blues songs by Chuck Berry, MUDDY WATERS, and many others, but Jagger and Richards (later dubbed the Glimmer Twins) soon emerged as the band’s chief songwriters. The Rolling Stones recorded their first songs in 1963, and Decca released their first single, “Come On” by Chuck Berry. Their debut single reached number twenty on the British charts, and the Stones’ popularity grew steadily as they toured England in the mid-1960s. The year 1964 saw the release of their first full-length album, The Rolling Stones, which quickly climbed to the top position in the British charts. It was followed by the equally successful Rolling Stones No. 2 in Britain (1965) and The Rolling Stones Now (1965) in the United States. Meanwhile, the Stones were beginning to gain popularity in the United States. In June 1964 they embarked on their first American tour, playing their first show in California. The popular Jagger/Richards single “Satisfaction” topped charts in 1965, as did “Get Off of My Cloud.” The year closed with the release of December’s Children and the single “As Tears Go By” in the United States. The Jagger/Richards single “19th Nervous Breakdown” was released in 1966, as was the album Aftermath and the single “Paint It Black.” The release of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” in 1967 caused an uproar in the United States. Radio stations banned the song, and the Stones performed it as “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” on the Ed Sullivan Show. The popular song “Ruby Tuesday” was released as the B-side and fared better on the American charts. The albums Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request were both released the same year. Also in 1967, the Stones broke with their longtime producer/manager Andrew Oldham and began producing their own records. In 1968 the Stones released Beggar’s Banquet and the popular Jagger/Richards singles “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man.”
The same year, they participated in a film project directed by the French filmmaker JEAN-LUC GODARD, One Plus One. Later, Jagger also starred in Ned Kelly (1970), and other Stones-related films include the documentary Gimme Shelter (1971) and Ladies and Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones (1974). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Rolling Stones released a number of successful albums, including Let It Bleed (1969), Get Yer Ya Yas Out! (1970), Sticky Fingers (1971), Exile on Main Street (1972), Goat’s Head Soup (1973), and It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (1974). Their most popular singles from these years include the classics “Brown Sugar” (1971), “Wild Horses” (1971), “Tumbling Dice” (1972), “Happy” (1972), “Angie” (1973), and “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)” (1974). Over these years and into the late 1970s the band also endured several shakeups. Less than a month after Jones quit the band in 1969, he died in a drug-related drowning. Mick Taylor replaced him on guitars. Guitarist Ron Wood joined the band in 1975, replacing Taylor. Richards, who has always epitomized the band’s “bad boy” image, sank into a mire of drug problems in the late 1970s. In addition to his addiction, he faced serious criminal charges in Canada. After he convinced the court he had overcome his addiction, a judge ordered him to perform benefit concerts. Later Stones singles include “Beast of Burden” (1978) and “Start Me Up” (1981). Their other albums include Out of Our Heads (1965); Flowers (1967); Made in the Shade (1975); Black and Blue (1976); Some Girls (1978); Time Waits for No One (1979); Emotional Rescue (1980); Tattoo You (1981); Still Life (1982); Undercover (1983); Dirty Work (1986); Steel Wheels (1989); Voodoo Lounge (1994); Bridges to Babylon (1997); the greatest hits album Forty Licks (2002), A Bigger Bang (2005), and several live albums and other greatest hits collections. The individual band members have also pursued side projects: Wyman, Watts, Wood, Jagger, and Richards have all recorded albums under
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their own names and produced other artists’ records. The Stones’ music has changed little stylistically over the years. The pervasive rhythm and blues influence characteristic of their early music is less pronounced, but not absent, in their later work. A unique Jagger/Richards sound—notable in part for Richards’s raucous guitars—evolved early in their career and continues into their most recent releases. The
Rolling Stones still perform widely and continue to draw enormous crowds and produce huge ticket sales around the world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bonanno, Massimo, The Rolling Stones Chronicle: The First Thirty Years, 1990; Norman, Phillip, The Life and Good Times of the Rolling Stones, 1989; Oldham, Andrew Loog, 2Stoned, 2003.
Rorem, Ned (October 23, 1923– ) Composer, Writer nown as one of America’s best—if not the best—composers of art songs, Ned Rorem is also a writer and diarist. He has prolifically devoted himself to his two worlds, musically attuned to tonality and lyricism, and wittily recording his thoughts in prose critics describe as elegant. Rorem was born in Richmond, Indiana, to Quaker parents. His father, Rufus, was the noted medical economist whose work led to the creation of Blue Cross. His mother, Gladys Miller, was a civil rights activist whose younger brother was killed in World War I, which led the couple to their pacifist religion. When Rorem was a child, the family moved to Chicago where, at seventeen, he entered the music school at Northwestern University. Two years later, he was in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute where he studied with Rosario Scalero. Two years after that, Rorem arrived in New York to a unique education: he became composer Virgil Thomson’s copyist, paid in orchestration lessons and $20 per week. He also entered the Julliard School, where he received his B.A. in 1946 and an M.A. two years after that. This important period also saw Rorem at Tanglewood during the sum-
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mers, at the Berkshire Music Center where he studied with AARON COPLAND. In 1948, Rorem’s song, “The Lordly Hudson,” was voted the year’s best published song by the Music Library Association. Rorem then headed overseas to Paris (with a long detour to Morocco from 1949-1951) until returning to the United States in 1957. He received a Fulbright scholarship while abroad, and began the gossipy diary about that era’s artistic milieu that put him on the literary map when The Paris Diaries was published in 1966. In residence in New York and on Nantucket in the decades since, Rorem has also established himself on campuses. He was composer-in-residence at the University of Buffalo from 1959 to 1961, professor of composition and composer-in residence at the University of Utah during the 1960s, and a composition teacher at Curtis. Rorem’s songs have drawn from poems by writers such as Walt Whitman, Theodore Roethke, and W. H. AUDEN. As a composer, he has done much more than art songs alone. He has also produced symphonies, piano concertos, two full-length operas, and ballets. Major conductors such as Andre´ Previn, LEONARD
ROREM, NED
BERNSTEIN, Zubin Mehta, Eugene Ormandy and Leonard Slatikin have conducted his works. Later years saw Rorem in summer residence composing for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for several years during the 1980s, and maintaining a schedule of commissions. In 1998, his seventy-fifth birthday was marked by a range of performances. At the New York Festival of Song that year, Rorem’s Evidence of Things Not Seen premiered. In an interview with Playback Magazine, Rorem talked about how the festival commission provided the opportunity write an evening of songs, which includes four solo voices, piano, and is based on thirty-six texts: “. . . it builds through a sort of birth, life and death to an end,” he told the magazine. “The phrase, ‘Evidence of Things Not Seen’ comes from William Penn, a Quaker thinker. I’m a Quaker, by the way, philosophically, though not religiously.” The texts range across the work of 24 authors, such as Walt Whitman and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, and Quaker thinker John Waldman. More recently, Rorem created the first operatic adaptation of THORTON WILDER’s Our Town with a libretto by poet, writer, and Wilder scholar J. D. McClatchy. The fulllength opera, Rorem’s second, marked the first time Wilder or his estate has allowed such an effort. Even Aaron Copland, who wrote the music for the 1940 film adaptation, was declined. Our Town premiered at Indiana University Opera Theater in February 2006, and was performed elsewhere through the summer of 2007. As quoted in the IU Music Magazine, Rorem called Our Town “. . . the
ultimate American play and theatrically very successful. It is also singable, unlike some literature. The danger, of course, is (that) it’s terribly famous.” Rorem’s numerous books include essays on music in addition to his six diaries, which include The Paris Diary, The New York Diary, and, more recently, Lies: A Diary, which ranges from 1986 to 1999. The last, while providing his thoughts on new music, also covers the deaths of his parents in a nursing home, and the decline of his long-time partner, Jim Holmes. Rorem has also published Dear Paul Dear Ned: The Correspondence of Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem, which covers their 50-plus year exchange of letters. A Ned Rorem Reader was the co-winner of the 2002 ASCAPDeems Taylor Award in the category of Symphonic Books. Rorem is an active member of the Corporation of Yaddo, the well-known arts colony. In addition, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. His String Symphony, Sunday Morning, and Eagles, as recorded by the Atlanta Symphony, received a Grammy Award.
BIBLIOGRAPHY The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition, 2001 Scene4 Magazine, June 2005, interview by Karren Alenier. www.ascap.com/playback/1998/october/rorem. html. www.nedrorem.com. www.naxos.com/composerinfo/2843.htm. www.yaddo.org. www.yalepress.yale.edu.
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Rossellini, Roberto (May 8, 1906–June 3, 1977) Director oberto Rossellini was the leading figure in the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema after World War-II as well as the noted director of a number of large-scale historical documentaries at the end of his career. Rossellini and other Neorealist directors had a significant influence on the directors of the French New Wave in the 1950s. Rossellini was born into a prosperous family in Rome. His father was a successful architect and helped design the city’s Cinema Corso. After Rossellini’s graduation from the Collegio Nazareno, he began working for the cinema industry. He quickly climbed the ranks to director and worked on a series of short films, including Daphne (1936) and A Fantasy of the Deep (1939). His first major effort in directing was White Ship (1941), which won the Cup of the National Fascist Party. Rossellini worked for the government making propaganda films during World War II, including A Pilot Returns (1942), with which Vittorio Mussolini (son of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini) was directly involved. Rossellini’s political outlook began to take on a different tone in his films toward the end of the war. With the war still raging, the Mussolini dictatorship fallen, and Italy occupied by the Nazis, he began making the first of three films dealing with World War II, Open City (1945). His portrayal of the occupying Nazis was unsympathetic. Major Bergmann and his agent, Ingrid, are cold, evil agents of the Nazi regime. Through Ingrid’s intrigue Bergmann finally succeeds in capturing the Marxist Giorgio Manfredi as well as the priest who has helped him hide. Both die at the hands of the Nazis; Manfredi from brutal torture and the priest in front of a firing squad. Open City, along with the other two films in the war trilogy, Paisan (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1947), introduced Neorealism
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to world cinema. Rossellini’s bare-bones production style had a significant influence on French New Wave directors such as JEAN-LUC GODARD as well as future Italian directors like FEDERICO FELLINI. He frequently used amateur actors and improvised dialogue rather than a carefully worked out script. Natural settings and landscape also played an important role in Neorealist cinema. Rossellini tried to capture episodes and scenery so they appeared in as real a light as possible. The next major period in Rossellini’s film career is often dubbed the “Bergman period.” His famous affair with the Swedish actress INGRID BERGMAN led to marriage in 1950, and she starred in a series of his films from 1949 to 1958. Her first role was that of Karin in Stromboli, Land of God (1949). Karin, a European woman being held in a refugee camp, marries a Sicilian to get out of the camp. The new culture she is immersed in proves to be completely foreign to her nature, devoid of the moral values she is used to. As her environment begins to crush her and she decides to escape, she breaks down and turns to God for help and mercy. Bergman also starred in Europa ’51 (1952), which depicts the decaying moral climate in Europe; We, the Women (1953); Voyage in Italy (1953); Joan of Arc at the Stake (1954); and Fear (1954), adapted from a novel by the Austrian pacifist Stefan Zweig. After making his first television documentary, India (1956), Rossellini began work on a series of four historical films. The first, General Della Rovere (1960), starring VITTORIO DE SICA, was the most successful of the four. Set during World War II, it portrays an Italian con man who takes money and goods from desperate people, promising to secure the release of their loved ones being held prisoner by the Germans. When the con man falls into the hands of German authorities, one of them,
ROSSELLINI, ROBERTO
Mu¨ller, enlists him to impersonate an Italian general in exchange for his life. Mu¨ller hopes the charade will lead him to Fabrizio, a leader in the Italian Resistance who is desperately wanted by German authorities. The con man succeeds in finding Fabrizio, but he refuses to betray him to Mu¨ller and instead chooses to die at the hands of a firing squad. Long Live Italy (1960), It Was Night at Rome (1960), and The Betrayer (1961) finished Rossellini’s series of historical films. After a series of critical and commercial disappointments, Rossellini turned to making television films, most of which are historical
documentaries. They include The Iron Age (1964), The Rise of Louis XIV (1966), The Acts of the Apostles (1968), the twelve-part Man’s Struggle for Survival (1967–1969), Socrates (1970), and Blaise Pascal (1974). During the 1950s and 1960s he also directed works for the theater, including Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello (1952) and Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge (1961).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bondanella, Peter, The Films of Roberto Rossellini, 1993; Guarner, Jose´ Luis, Roberto Rossellini, 1970.
Rostropovich, Mstislav (March 27, 1927–April 27, 2007) Cellist, Conductor, Pianist nown as “Slava” to his friends, Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich was one of the twentieth century’s leading cellists. After being forced out of the Soviet Union in 1974, he took a position as conductor of Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra. Rostropovich also performed as a pianist for more than three decades, accompanying his wife, the soprano Galina P. Vishnevskaya (1926– ). Rostropovich was born in Baku, Azerbeijan, in the Soviet Union. Under his mother’s instruction, he began to study the piano at the age of 4. His father, a pianist and cellist who had studied under the renowned cellist PABLO CASALS, taught him to play the instrument for which he is best known. Rostropovich studied at the Moscow Conservatory, earning the Stalin Prize in 1951 and highest honors when he graduated. At the conservatory, he studied composition under the composer DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH. In 1955 Rostropovich married Vishnevskaya, then star of the Bolshoi Theatre. For more
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than thirty years he accompanied her on the piano around the world. Rostropovich began performing abroad in the 1950s. In 1956 he took a post as cello professor at the conservatory. When Shostakovich fell under suspicion of the Soviet authorities and was forced to leave the conservatory, Rostropovich left too. After years of performing, Rostropovich made his conducting debut at the Bolshoi Theater in 1967. When writer ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN came under the attack of Soviet censors, Rostropovich took him into his family’s dacha and wrote a letter denouncing the censors, which meant certain artistic suicide. Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya found their traveling privileges sharply curtailed and were forbidden to leave the Soviet Union. With the intervention of LEONARD BERNSTEIN—Rostropovich’s longtime close friend—and Senator Edward Kennedy, they were allowed to go to the United States in 1974. Soviet authorities revoked their citizenship four years later. In 1977 Rostropovich be-
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came director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. By this time, he had established himself as one of the world’s finest cellists. As both a conductor and a performer, Rostropovich is known for his exuberant personality. His conducting style was influenced by SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY, also an exile from the Soviet Union. Rostropovich pours his entire being into his cello performances, becoming completely absorbed in the instrument, and he brings the same power to modern works as he does to the standard cello repertory. In fact, many composers have written works exclusively for him, including Aram Khachaturian, SERGEI PROKOFIEV, Shostakovich, BENJAMIN BRITTEN, Bernstein, Lukas Foss, Witold Lutoslawski, Henri Dutilleux, and Alfred Schnittke. Among Rostropovich’s numerous recordings are Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concertos with
Mstislav Rostropovich (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-115062)
the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Britten’s Cello Symphony; Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo; Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto with the Orchestre National de France, conducted by Bernstein; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, recorded in a French church; Shostakovich’s Cello Sonata, which was written specifically for him; Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata; and EDWARD ELGAR’s Cello Concerto. Rostropovich long spoke out against Communist repression and tried to assist its victims. He performed at the Berlin Wall when it fell in 1989 and also tried to promote the work of lesser-known Russian musicians such as Sofia Bubaidulina. He returned to Russia for the first time in 1990, following the restoration of his citizenship, with the National Symphony Orchestra. He gave an emotionally charged concert at the Moscow Conservatory that was attended by Raisa Gorbachev, YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO, and other noted figures. Rostropovich’s health began to decline in 2006, and he died in 2007 of intestinal cancer. He received numerous awards and honors during his lifetime, including the Sonning Award and a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Samuel, Claude, Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya: Russia, Music, and Liberty, 1983.
Roth, Philip Milton (March 19, 1933– ) Novelist, Short Story Writer
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he American novelist Philip Roth is most famous early in his career for his 1959 work Goodbye Columbus and
Five Short Stories and his novel Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), and later in his career for the Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy American
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Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000). Roth’s novels treat themes of religion, sexuality, American values, societal norms, and political corruption. Roth was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey. He grew up in the city’s Weequahic neighborhood, which at the time was largely middle class and Jewish. He attended Weequahic High School, graduating in 1950. Following high school, he enrolled in the Newark College of Rutgers University. He later transferred to Bucknell University, from which he graduated with an English degree in 1954. In 1955, he earned an M.A. in English literature from the University of Chicago. While in Chicago, Roth met novelist SAUL BELLOW. There, he also met and married his first wife, Margaret Martinson. Their troubled marriage had failed by 1963, and Martinson died in a car accident five years later. She was, however, an important influence on Roth’s work and was the inspiration for the character of Maureen Tarnopol in My Life As a Man (1974). In 1957, Roth began two years of service in the U.S. Army and wrote a number of short stories and critical pieces for magazines. Among these were film reviews for the political magazine The Nation. Roth’s first book, Goodbye Columbus and Five Short Stories, was published in 1959 to much critical acclaim. Consisting of a novella and five short stories, it won the National Book Award in 1960. The protagonist of the title novella is Neil Klugman, a young Newark man coming into his own who falls in love with Brenda Patimkin. The latter, unlike Klugman, comes from an upper-middle class New Jersey, and the story takes a critical look at the values of then-modern suburbia. The novels Letting Go (1962) and When She Was Good (1967) followed but met with less success. The protagonist of the former is the noncommital graduate student Gabriel Wallach, who engages in a series of love affairs but finds himself unable to grasp the emotional satisfaction he seeks. In When She Was
Good, Roth examines religious hypocrisy through the character of the ultra self-righteous Catholic Lucy Nelson. With the publication of Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), Roth gained his first commercial success as well as more critical acclaim. The main character, Alexander Portnoy, engages in a string of destructive sexual behaviors as he unsuccessfully tries to break free from the psychological bonds imposed upon him by the upbringing of a domineering mother. In the 1970s, Roth continued to write, though with a more experimental approach than in his earlier fiction. Among his works from this period is the bizarre political satire Our Gang (1971), a scathing attack on the American president Richard Nixon (1913–1994). The protagonist of the story is Trick E. Dixon (a play on Nixon’s real-life nickname of “Tricky Dick”), who is not only disgraced in his lifetime but tries to stage a political comeback beyond the grave in hell by running against the devil himself. The Breast (1972) is a spoof on FRANZ KAFKA’S “The Metamorphosis,” in which the main character awakes to find himself transformed into a giant bug. Roth’s protagonist, David Kepesh, wakes up in a hospital to find himself transformed into a giant female breast. Kepesh reappears in The Professor of Desire (1977) and The Dying Animal (2001). The Great American Novel (1973), narrated by Word “Smitty” Smith, also belongs to Roth’s “experimental” period and satirizes the nostalgia of stereotypical American pastimes. The particular pastime of this story is baseball, which Roth ruthlessly lampoons in a decaying league infiltrated by communists and a team dominated by athletic misfits. Between 1979 and 1987, Roth wrote a series of novels featuring his alter ego character of Nathan Zuckerman: The Ghost Writer (1979), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), The Prague Orgy (1985), and The Counterlife (1987). Roth had previously introduced Zuckerman in My Life As a Man.
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In 1990, Roth married Claire Bloom (1931– ), an English actress who had been his longtime companion. They separated four years later, after which Bloom published a memoir of their marriage that painted Roth in a highly negative light entitled Leaving a Doll’s House (1996). The trilogy that began with American Pastoral (1997) again featured Zuckerman and concerns the story of Seymour “the Swede” Levov, a Newark sports star. Levov is a man of model character but undergoes severe distress when his daughter turns into a homegrown terrorist in the 1960s. I Married a Communist, set in the McCarthy era, followed in 1998. The final volume of the trilogy, The Human Stain, was published in 2000 and examines the societal effects of 1990s American identity politics. Among Roth’s other works are The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography (1988); Deception: A Novel (1990); Patrimony: A Memoir (1991); Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993); In Sabbath’s Theater (1995); the award-winning The Plot Against America (2004); and the collections Reading Myself and Others (1976), A Philip Roth Reader (1980), and Shop Talk (2001). His latest novel, Everyman (2006), concerns a sickly young man who spends his life—which lasts the length of a normal lifespan—obsessed with worry about his health
and mortality. Along with Operation Shylock and The Human Stain, Everyman won a PEN/Faulkner Award. Roth’s next novel, Exit Ghost, again features Zuckerman and is scheduled for publication in October 2007. Aside from writing, Roth taught in universities until his retirement in 1992. At various times, he taught writing at the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa, and Princeton University. In his later teaching career, he taught comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Roth has received numerous awards and honors during his writing career. In 1992, he was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2007, Roth became the first recipient of the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baumgarten, Murray, Understanding Philip Roth, 1990; Cambridge University Press, The Cambridge Companion to Philip Roth, 2007; Halio, Jay L., Philip Roth Revisited, 1992; Lee, Hermione, Philip Roth, 1982; McDaniel, John N., The Fiction of Philip Roth, 1974; Paterson, Judith Hillman, Philip Roth, 1981; Rodgers, Bernard, Philip Roth, 1978; Wade, Stephen, The Imagination in Transit: The Fiction of Philip Roth, 1996.
Rothko, Mark (September 25, 1903-February 25, 1970) Painter n the post-World War II era of abstract art, Mark Rothko stood out with passionate expressionistic paintings focusing on form, color, and composition. As his style developed from surrealist figures and landscapes in his early years, toward abstrac-
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tion in his later years, Rothko was best known for his paintings of two or three large rectangular blocks covering large canvases. Mark Rothko was born Marcus Rothkowitz in Dvinsk, Russia, in 1903. He was the fourth child of his pharmacist father, Jacob, and
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mother, Anna, and attended an orthodox Jewish school, where he became fluent in Hebrew, as well as his native Russian. When he was ten years old Rothko immigrated to the United States with his mother and older sister to join his father and older brothers who had settled in Portland, Oregon. He attended a school for immigrant children, where he learned English and excelled academically. Upon graduating from high school he was awarded an academic scholarship to Yale University. He attended Yale from 1921 until 1923 with plans of becoming an engineer or a lawyer. He decided instead to leave Yale after two years to relocate to New York City. Shortly after arriving in New York he took his first formal art classes at the Art Students League, and also returned to Portland, briefly, to study acting. Returning to New York in 1925, he continued his studies at the Art Students League under Max Weber, and enrolled at the New School of Design. During this time Rothko painted mostly figures and landscapes. In 1928 he was included in an exhibition at the Opportunity Gallery. The next year, he accepted a position at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he would teach art to children for the next 20 years. He was married to Edith Sachar, a jewelry designer, in 1932. The following year the couple hitchhiked from New York to Oregon to meet her family. Inspired by the natural beauty of the area, Rothko created many landscape drawings and watercolors and was granted his first solo show at the Portland Museum of Art. Shortly after his Portland showing, the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York hosted another solo show of Rothko’s work that included fifteen paintings and ten sketches. In the 1930s and 1940s Rothko continued to explore figures and city scenes. In 1935 he cofounded an independent artists’ group referred to as “The Ten.” The group served as a support network for abstract artists and exhibited together eight times between 1935 and 1939. In 1940 Rothko changed his name to Mark Rothko to avoid being identified by his
Jewish ancestry. In the early 1940s his work became increasingly symbolic, as his style developed from surrealism toward abstraction in the years following WWII. Toward the end the 1940s, Rothko had developed his signature style, sometimes referred to as “multiforms,” depicting two or three large-scale rectangular blocks using colors to represent a span of human emotions. Rothko and Sachar were divorced in 1943, and he was remarried to Mary Beistle, a children’s book illustrator in 1945. He taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco in 1947 and 1949. Around this time he stopped naming his paintings, referring to them by color or number. Orange and Tan (1954), for example, covers a large canvas with two rectangular blocks of color, fading into each other with soft edges. In the late 1950s Rothko’s wife gave birth to their first child, Kate. It was also around this time that he began to gain more recognition and experience significant financial success from painting sales and commissions. He was commissioned to paint murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York in 1958. Using dark shades of red and brown, Rothko began the project but did not complete it, deciding that this restaurant setting was not an appropriate venue for his art. He was granted a solo retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1961. From 1964 through 1967 he created 14 large-scale murals for a nondenominational chapel commissioned by the de Menils, a French couple in Texas. He suffered from depression in the last years of his life and committed suicide in his New York studio in 1970. The Rothko chapel, located in the heart of Houston’s museum district, was dedicated in 1971. Four years following his death, Rothko’s daughter Kate filed and eventually won a highly publicized lawsuit against Marlborough Gallery, Inc., Rothko’s dealer and manager of his estate. Referred to in mainstream media as the “Rothko Case,” directors of Marlborough were found to be guilty of defrauding the Rothko family.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Breslin, James, Mark Rothko: A Biography 1998; Clearwater, Bonnie, How Rothko Came Into His Own: The Rothko Book, 2007; Otttmann, Klaus The Essential Mark Rothko, 2003; Weiss, Jefferery, Cohn, Marjorie, Meyer, Franz, and Rathbone, Eliza, Mark Rothko, 2001. www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/ july-dec98/rothko_8-5.html. www.rothkochapel.org/history.htm.
www.artcritical.com/DavidCohen/SUN39.htm www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/rothko_mark.html. www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artists_detail.asp?G=& gid=1108&which=&aid=14602&ViewArtistBy= online&rta=http://www.artnet.com; www.markrothko.info/about.html. www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/intro1.shtm. www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/ july-dec98/rothko_8-5.html. www.rothkochapel.org/history.htm.
Rouault, Georges (May 27, 1871–February 13, 1958) Painter, Graphic Artist, Ceramicist devout Catholic from his young adulthood, Georges-Henri Rouault applied elements of Expressionism, Fauvism, and other secular painting modes to subjects that reflect his religious outlook. Although he painted many biblical scenes, he did not limit his subjects to strictly religious imagery or work under commission from the Church. Rouault also illustrated books and designed scenery for ballets. Rouault was born in a Paris cellar while his neighborhood was under bombardment from government troops. His father was a cabinetmaker who worked as a wood finisher at a piano factory. As his family was relatively poor, he only attended school until he was 14. He drew inspiration from his grandfather’s art collection, and in particular some lithographs by the nineteenth-century French painter Honore´ Daumier. From 1880 to 1885 Rouault worked as an apprentice in a glazier’s workshop. In this capacity he helped restore medieval stained glass windows (including the windows at Chartres cathedral), the style of which would influence his later paintings. During this period he also took a night class at the E´cole des Arts De´coratifs. In 1891 he entered the E´cole
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des Beaux-Arts, where he studied under the Symbolist painter Gustav Moreau and was a classmate of Fauvist leader HENRI MATISSE. Moreau was to remain a major influence on his work, and after Moreau died in 1898 Rouault became curator of a museum of his works. Moreau bequeathed his paintings to the French government, and Rouault oversaw them at the museum for the rest of his life. The other major influence on Rouault was the Catholicism he turned to around 1895. He remained a devout Catholic until he died, and his paintings are primarily concerned with man’s moral state, sin, and redemption. He spent part of 1901 at a religious community at the Benedictine Abbey at Liguge´, where he met the Catholic novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans. More influential on his outlook was his subsequent friendship with the Catholic novelist Le´on Bloy. Rouault’s early paintings reflect an academic style. Works such as the watercolor (a medium he often used) The Plain (1900) use muted, earthy colors. He spent a lot of time in courtrooms, observing prostitutes, judges, and other figures who became the subjects of his paintings. Paintings such as Three Prostitutes (1903) and Drunken Woman (1905)
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show his new subject matter as well as his new development of thick, black brush strokes to outline his figures. By this time he had begun to exhibit in the Paris avant-garde galleries. Whatever affinity his style had with Matisse and other avantgarde artists, Rouault approached his subjects—most of which were human—from a religious and moral perspective that few of his secular-minded contemporaries shared. In 1910 he met Paris art dealer Ambrose Vollard, who began to purchase his work and in 1917 became his exclusive dealer. For many years Rouault worked in relative seclusion in a studio on the top floor of Vollard’s home. During the World War I era, Rouault began to work more in oil, applying thick paint with expressive lines and heavy color. The Three Judges (1924) depicts three judges with serious or indifferent expressions on their faces against a bright green background. International recognition came slowly—his first international exhibitions did not take place until 1930. His subjects were often biblical, as in Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1945). In The Trial of Christ (1935), the Savior’s head stands out in the center of a group of reddish faces massed together.
Rouault also illustrated many books: Vollard’s Les re´incarnations du Pe`re Ubu (1932; The Reincarnation of Father Ubu); his own Le cirque de l’e´toile filante (1983; Circus of the Shooting Star); Charles Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil); The Passion (1939); and Miserere. In 1929 he designed sets and costumes for SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s production of SERGEI PROKOFIEV’s The Prodigal Son. Among Rouault’s other subjects were landscapes, clowns, and self-portraits. After World War II he sued Vollard’s heirs to recover approximately 700 of his unfinished works that they claimed. Because they were not signed, dated, or finished, the court awarded them to Rouault. In 1948 he publicly burned 315 of them, alleging that he did not have time to finish them. He was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1924 and became Commander of the Legion of Honor in the 1950s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Courthion, Pierre, Georges Rouault, 1962; Kind, Joshua, Rouault, 1969; Waldemar, George, Rouault’s Universe, 1971.
Rowling, J. K. (July 31, 1965– ) Writer K. Rowling needs little introduction. Her literary output encircles the globe. The final installment of her fantasy saga, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, sold in excess of 11 million copies in its first twenty-four hours, making it the fastestselling book in history. Total copies sold to date in the seven-book series equal 325 million, translated into sixty-five languages
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spread over two hundred countries. Revenues from the movies based on the novel, which have toppled the twenty-two-franchise James Bond series, reach nearly $4.5 billion. Rowling’s Hogwarts School wizardly phenomenon now stands to outpace sales of the Holy Bible. No novels have sold faster or wider. The author of that staggering tower of 4,000-plus printed pages was born on July 31,
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1965, in suburban Gloucestershire, England. The young Rowling attended the Wyedean School, a private boarding school, and has stated that many of the characters and settings from her novels were based on her experiences there and at St. Michael’s Primary School. For the remainder of her education, she attended the University of Exeter, studying Classics and French. Rowling has said her years at Wyedean and Exeter were sometimes unhappy and confused, and those experiences contributed to the darker side of the Potter novels. After university, she began working for Amnesty International. Rowling has been asked many times about the original conception of her famous saga. The answer is more mundane than one might expect. Rowling, stuck on a delayed train for four hours and with nothing better to do, came up with the basic premise of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She then populated the academy with variations on students and professors whom she had met during her own education. Included in these is Hermione, the female heroine of the septology, which Rowling says is based heavily on herself, age 11. Having come up with a premise, Rowling began to write the first book. However, Rowling’s life was thrown into disarray when her mother passed away later that year. Quitting her job at Amnesty International, Rowling moved to Edinburgh. While writing the first book of the series, Rowling was an unemployed single mother, surviving on welfare checks from the government. After finishing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Rowling was rejected for publication by twelve firms, finally being accepted by
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Bloomsbury Publishing after the fervent urging of an editor’s eight-year-old daughter. Over the course of the next year, Rowling received several prestigious literary prizes, including the British Book Award for Best Children’s Book of the Year. Sorcerer’s Stone eventually went on to become the bestselling non-religious, non-political book of all time. The enormous profits from book sales have taken Rowling far away from her trials as a single mother, but it seems she has not forgotten those days. She contributes millions to charities for single parents, multiple sclerosis, and literacy programs. Rowling’s impact on the publishing world is unprecedented. Young-adult novel sales have risen 25 percent in the ten years since Rowling released her first book. In a world where digital media is growing exponentially—most young readers face distractions from multimedia entertainment—the fanaticism surrounding the Harry Potter series has spurred growth in a formerly flagging market. Now that Rowling is finished with the Harry Potter series, she has said that she plans to put together a “Magical Encyclopedia” of the Harry Potter universe, and is also working on two new undisclosed projects.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jeremy Paxman Interview with J. K. Rowling (BBC transcript); Dunn, Elisabeth, ‘From the Dole to Hollywood,‘ Daily Telegraph, June 3, 2007; Sean, Smith, J.K. Rowling: A Biography, 2003; Rich, Motoko, ‘Record First-Day Sales for Last Harry Potter Book,‘ The New York Times, July 22, 2007.
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Rubinstein, Arthur (January 28, 1887–December 20, 1982) Pianist, Chamber Musician, Lecturer, Teacher ne of the twentieth century’s most renowned piano virtuosos, Arthur Rubinstein employed unique harmonization of modern and Romantic styles, his large and dexterous hands could reach a twelfth, and his magnetic stage presence dazzled international audiences for a career that spanned more than eighty years. Although best known for his charismatic piano concerts, he is also noted for his work as a chamber musician, as an enthusiastic proponent of Spanish and Latin American music, for his performances of the works of Fre´de´ric Chopin (1810–1849), and for his warm and radiant stage presence. Rubinstein was born Artur Rubinstein to Jewish parents in o´d, Poland, then controlled by Russia. By all accounts a child prodigy, he started studying the piano at the age of three. His mother took him to Berlin as a young child to play for the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim (1831–1907). The impressed Joachim agreed to oversee Rubinstein’s education, which included studying theory with Max Bruch (1838–1920) and Robert Kahn (1865–1951). More importantly, Joachim arranged for Rubinstein to study piano with Karl Heinrich Barth, a friend and colleague of the German Romantic composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). Barth’s highly technical and disciplined approach to training clashed with Rubinstein’s early inclination toward heartfelt, open musical interpretation, and the two endured a lessthan-amiable student-teacher relationship. At age eight, Rubinstein performed for the first time in public. The year 1900 saw his debut at the Great Hall of the Berlin Hochschule (Beethoven Saal) with the Berlin Philharmonic, playing Mozart’s Concerto No. 23 in A Major, piano solos by Chopin and Robert Schumann, and Camille Saint-Sae¨ns’s Piano Con-
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certo No. 2 in G Minor. He would continue to play the last throughout his career. After a series of concerts in Germany, Rubinstein left Berlin and returned to Poland, where he studied with the great piano virtuoso Ignacy Paderewski (1860–1941). In 1903, at the young age of sixteen, he moved to Paris. His debut in that city as well as a series of concerts there came the following year. While in Paris, Rubinstein met such notable French composers as Paul Dukas (1865–1935) and MAURICE RAVEL. His debut at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1906 marked the beginning of a 75-concert American tour. If the New York audience was less than impressed, other American audiences received him more warmly. American critics, however, would not warm up to Rubinstein until later in his career. Prior to World War I, Rubinstein toured in Austria, Italy, and Russia. He enjoyed a successful appearance in Berlin in 1910 and played in Moscow and Saint Petersburg under the famed conductor SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY. In 1912, he made his London debut. While in London, he frequently accompanied the Belgian violinist Eugene Ysay¨e (1858–1931). Rubinstein remained in England’s capital during the first part of World War I, where, fluent in eight languages, he served as a military interpreter. However, he soon left for Paris, where he joined the Polish Legion. By 1914 the Polish Legion had dissolved, and Rubinstein moved to Spain after securing a series of concerts. That year, when his love for Spanish music took root, marked a turning point in his career. Audiences enthusiastically welcomed his performances, which incorporated the works of noted Spanish composers like MANUEL DE FALLA, Enrique Granados (1867–1916), and Isaac Albe´niz (1860–1909) as he toured Spain. Although Rubinstein’s style had never been highly technical or methodi-
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cal, his performances revealed an even more passionate, heartfelt manner than his earlier concerts imparted. Following the successful tour of Spain, Rubinstein and his manager Ernesto de Quesada set sail for South America aboard the Infanta Isabel for a new series of concerts. His critically acclaimed Latin American debut came on July 2, 1917, in the Teatro Odeo´n in Buenos Aires with the collaboration of the impresario Faustino da Rosa, and concerts in Montevideo (Uruguay), Santiago, and Valparaı´so followed. Among the works of other Latin American composers, Rubinstein championed the music of the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887–1959), who wrote the piano solo Rudepoeˆma for him between 1921 and 1926. VillaLobos hoped Rubinstein’s interpretation of the music would polish what he considered his “rough poem” (rudepoeˆma), and Rubinstein performed it for many years to come. Following World War I, Rubinstein returned to Paris. Among his many friends of the Parisian cultural avant-garde were the artist PABLO PICASSO, and the multitalented JEAN COCTEAU. By the 1920s, Rubinstein had established himself internationally, and he began to add to his accomplishments a number of recordings. Chopin’s Barcarole was the first of his more than two hundred recordings. During his lifetime, Rubinstein recorded almost all of Chopin’s works, as well as the complete Beethoven concertos. In 1932, Rubinstein married Aniela Mlynarska, daughter of the Polish conductor Emil Mlynarski, in London. Around the time of his marriage, Rubinstein absented himself from performing and plunged into feverish practice. Although the marriage lasted for many years, Rubinstein carried on a number of extramarital affairs. At the age of 90, Rubinstein left his wife for the much younger Annabelle Whitestone. Thirty-one years after his U.S. debut, Rubinstein returned to Carnegie Hall to a warm and enthusiastic reception. In sharp contrast
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to the negative reviews he received from his 1906 performance in New York, critics hailed his interpretive rendition of Chopin’s works as ingenious. The rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany was to have a profound and devastating impact on Rubinstein’s family. In 1940, with the German threat looming in Paris, Rubinstein moved his family to Los Angeles. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1946. His family in o´d perished under the Nazi regime, and in protest, Rubinstein never played in postwar Germany. After the war ended, he frequently dedicated performances to the establishment of the new state of Israel. By then, he had become one of the most popular pianists performing in public. In spite of his international successes, Rubinstein never forgot his Polish roots. He returned to perform in Poland in 1958 and moved his Warsaw audience to tears. In addition, Rubinstein was an early promoter of the music of the Polish composer and pianist Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937). Although best known as a recitalist and concerto soloist, Rubinstein also distinguished himself as a chamber musician, playing with the likes of the Guarneri Quartet, the Lithuanian-American violinist Jascha Heifetz (1901–1987), and the Ukrainian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (1903–1976). Although poor health and deteriorating eyesight hampered Rubinstein’s later career, he maintained a fairly vigorous schedule as a performer and lecturer. He continued to perform until 1976, when partial blindness forced him to retire. He gave his final performance at Wigmore Hall in London in May of that year. Rubinstein died at the age of 95 in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote two autobiographies: My Young Years (1973) and My Many Years (1980). On December 20, 1983, exactly one year after his death, an urn with his ashes was buried in Israel in a plot of land now called the Rubinstein Forest. Rubinstein’s involvement in furthering the work of young musicians includes financial support for an endowment for the Arthur Ru-
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binstein Chair of Music at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (established in 1964) and for the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, established in 1974. In 1976, Rubinstein was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom, and the following year he was made an honorary Knight of the British Empire. Among his numerous oth-
er honors are several Grammy awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award (1994).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Rubinstein, Arthur, My Many Years, 1980; Rubinstein, Arthur, My Young Years, 1973; Sachs, Harvey, Rubinstein: A Life, 1995.
Rulfo, Juan Perez (May 16, 1918–January 7, 1986) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Photographer he Mexican author Juan Rulfo helped develop “magical realism,” a movement in Latin American literature advanced by the Colombian novelist GABRIEL GARCı´A MA´ RQUEZ. Rulfo is known chiefly for two works, his short-story collection The Burning Plain and his novel Pedro Pa´ramo. Rulfo was born in Apulco, Sayula, Jalisco, Mexico. As the son of wealthy landowners, he spent most of his childhood in a rural atmosphere in San Gabriel (now Venustiano Carranza), the setting for some of his fiction. As a boy he listened to local stories and folk tales and read novels from his grandmother’s small library. The Cristero revolts between 1926 and 1929, Catholic revolts against the government in protest of secularization, stripped Rulfo’s family of its land and money. His father was assassinated in 1925, and a heart attack took his mother’s life two years later. Rulfo went to live in an orphanage in Guadalajara and subsequently moved to Mexico City to live with his uncle in 1934. After briefly studying law at the National University, Rulfo dropped out to find work. He worked as an immigration officer from 1935 to 1945 and during this time began writing. At the immigration department he met Efre´n Herna´ndez, who taught him writing skills and used his connections to get Rulfo’s
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short stories published. Ame´rica published his first short story, “Life Is Not Very Serious about Things” (1945), about the emotional turmoil of a pregnant woman who loses her husband and then her newborn son. The same year, Rulfo began publishing the literary review Pan (Bread) with two others. He married in 1948. Many of the short stories published in these two and other periodicals later appeared in The Burning Plain (1953). Rulfo utilized the literary techniques characteristic of magical realism—flashback, interior monologue, stream of consciousness, and alternating perspectives. In tone and theme his stories are generally pessimistic. Death, ruin, despair, and loss all figure prominently in his work. The Burning Plain’s stories include “Tell Them Not to Kill Me!” concerning a man awaiting his execution. The reader learns of his crime—the murder of his neighbor after a series of arguments—through the man’s thoughts just before his execution. Among the collection’s many stories set around the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) is “They Gave Us the Land,” which describes the attempts of the revolutionary government to distribute barren, worthless land to angry Mexican peasants.
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The action of “At Daybreak” unfolds in the form of different perspectives of the same incident. A farmhand, Esteban, who has killed the brutal owner of the farm, Justo Brambila, is in prison awaiting trial. Though he remembers the events leading up to the crime, he maintains that he cannot remember committing the murder. The details of Justo Brambila’s death only emerge in an unnamed narrator’s description of the incident. The dark landscape of Rulfo’s only published novel, Pedro Pa´ramo (1955), is a “purgatory on earth,” Comala, where tormented souls live in sorrow and shame for their sins of the past. All of the people in Comala, including its central figure, the brutal boss Pedro Pa´ramo, are dead. The novel was made into a film in 1967, with a script adapted by CARLOS FUENTES and Carlos Velo. For the most part, Rulfo lived in Mexico City from 1934 until his death. In 1962 he ob-
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tained a position at the National Institute for Indigenous Studies, where he worked on the publication Me´xico Indigena and became director of the editorial department. Rulfo also worked at the Center for Mexican Authors. In 1970 he received the Premio Nacional de Letras from the Mexican government. Rulfo’s narrative The Cockfighter was never published but formed the basis of the film script The Golden Cock (1964), adapted by Fuentes and Garcı´a Ma´rquez. His book The Golden Cock (1980) collected his film scripts, including The Plunder. His other works include essays, articles, and a book of his photographs published in 1980. BIBLIOGRAPHY Leal, Luis, Juan Rulfo, 1983.
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Sandburg, Carl (January 6, 1878–July 22, 1967) Poet, Journalist, Historian, Folklorist, Novelist arl Sandburg was an American poet and author, best known for his free verse poems celebrating the industry, agriculture, geography, landscape, and common people of America. He found beauty in the ordinary language of the people and used it to understand the nation’s frontier past and place it in the context of an industrial present. Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on January 6, 1878. His parents were Swedish immigrants and his father worked as a blacksmith’s helper for the nearby railroad. Carl quit school in 1891 following his graduation from eighth grade. He worked in a variety of jobs, delivering milk, harvesting ice, laying bricks, threshing wheat in Kansas, and shining shoes in Galesburg’s Union Hotel. In 1897, he traveled as a hobo and then enlisted when
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Carl Sandburg (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-115064)
the Spanish-American War broke out. His autobiography, Always the Young Strangers (1953), describes these early years. Sandburg was an organizer for the Social Democratic Party and secretary to the mayor of Milwaukee from 1910 to 1912. He moved to Chicago in 1913, became an editor of System, a business magazine, and later joined the staff of the Chicago Daily News. The next year, a group of his Chicago Poems were published in Poetry magazine. They were issued as a book of the same name in 1916. His free verse, Whitman-like style became instantly popular. Sandburg published another volume of poems, Cornhuskers, in 1918, and wrote a trenchant investigation of the 1919 Chicago race riots. The folk songs he had learned in his hobo days and later performed at speaking engagements were issued in two collections, The American Songbag (1927) and New American Songbag (1950). He published four books for children—Rootabaga Stories (1922), Rootabaga Pigeons (1923), Rootabaga Country (1929), and Potato Face (1930). He wrote two biographies of Abraham Lincoln and one of his photographer brother-in-law, Edward Steichen. He won a Pulitzer Prize in history in 1940 for Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 4 vol. (1939). He published a long novel, Remembrance Rock (1948), which encompasses the American experience from colonialism to World War II. Complete Poems (1950) won him a second Pulitzer Prize in 1951.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Callahan, North, Carl Sandburg: His Life and Works, 1987; Golden, Harry, Carl Sandburg, 1988; Hacker, Jeffrey H., Carl Sandburg, 1984; Meltzer, Milton, Carl Sandburg : A Biography, 1999; Niven, Penelope, Carl Sandburg: A Biog-
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raphy, 1991; Sandburg, Carl, Ever the Winds of Chance, 1983. http://library.eb.com/eb/article-9065458. http://carl-sandburg.com/biography.htm. www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/28.
www.nps.gov/carl/; www.sandburg.org/sandbio. html. www.npg.si.edu/exh/brush/sand.htm. http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/ RefArticle.aspx?refid=761575961.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (June 21, 1905–April 15, 1980) Novelist, Playwright, Essayist, Philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
ean-Paul Sartre led the twentieth–century French existentialists. The idea that life is senseless and absurd, that the individual must forge a meaningful life, that one must create for oneself the essence of one’s own being, is the primary theme of his most widely read works, such as the novel Nausea and the philosophical treatise Being and Nothingness.
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Sartre was born in Paris and raised primarily by his grandfather, a relation of the German theologian Albert Schweitzer. He attended lyce´es in Paris and La Rochelle and the E´coˆle Normale Supe´riere in Paris. Sartre taught philosophy in a number of lyce´es between his graduation and the outbreak of World War II, when he was forced to serve in the French military. In 1933 and 1934, he studied in Berlin with the German philosophers Edmund Hus-
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serl and Martin Heidegger, who were to significantly influence his thought. Nausea (1938), Sartre’s first successful novel, reflects his early interest in existentialism and the individual. Feelings of nausea and revulsion toward his surroundings begin to plague the main character, Antoine Roquentin. Roquentin, writing his thoughts in a diary, struggles with a sense that the world and life are meaningless and absurd. After being captured, imprisoned, and released during the war in 1940–1941, Sartre resumed teaching in Neuilly and then in Paris. He met ALBERT CAMUS and became active in the French Resistance. While the Germans occupied France (1940–1945), he published his play The Flies (1943) and his Being and Nothingness (1943). With SIMONE DE BEAUVIOR, whom he had met many years earlier, he founded and edited the monthly periodical Les Temps Modernes in 1945. From Husserl Sartre took elements of phenomenology, a method of defining consciousness without using established ideas and theories, and incorporated them into his own philosophy. Being and Nothingness was Sartre’s most elaborate exposition of his philosophy. The “being-in-itself” of objects, he argued, contrasts with the “being-for-itself” of human consciousness. Sartre believed that individuals use consciousness to create and shape their own realities and identities. He rejected the certainties of traditional religion and morality and argued that existence is absurd. In order to live an authentic life, not simply one dictated by convention, an individual needs to recognize the absurdity of life and use his or her freedom to make choices that will define individual essence. Imagination: A Psychological Critique (1936) and other philosophical writings also drew their influence from Sartre’s studies in Germany. After the war, Sartre expanded the scope of his writings from the individual to the individual’s responsibility in society. During World War II, he and other members of the Resistance had said no to Nazism, even under torture, and had acted in a way that aimed at
creating an authentic morality rather than accepting any traditional one. He came to believe that one must choose for oneself as though one were choosing for all. He showed vividly in the play No Exit (1945) that a purely self-centered, self-absorbed life is revealed as hell when other people will not feed one’s narcissistic fantasies. One of his most famous lines comes from that play: “Hell is other people.” What the play makes clear is that that is only so if one wills it to be so. For Sartre, the logical next step was to become involved in left-wing political activity that seemed to offer some hope of a world where people would learn to live for others, not just for themselves. In works such as Existentialism and Humanism (1948), he applied the existentialist ideas of freedom and rebellion to the social realm. He supported Soviet Communism until the Soviet Union brutally suppressed anti-Soviet demonstrations in Hungary in 1956. In Critique of Dialectical Reason (1964), Sartre sought to incorporate existentialism into Marxism. Sartre further developed the ideas presented in his philosophical writings in his novels and plays. His three-part novel, The Age of Reason (1943), The Reprieve (1945), and Troubled Sleep (1949), is collectively known as The Roads of Freedom. His plays include In Camera (1944), No Exit (1945), The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), Nekrassov (1955), Loser Wins (1959), and The Condemned of Altona (1960). The French writers Charles Baudelaire, JEAN GENET, and Gustave Flaubert were all subjects of Sartre’s biographies, and the detailed analysis of Flaubert’s life occupied much of his time in the 1960s. Sartre received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, “for his work, which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far–reaching influence on our age.” He refused to accept it, citing his personal dislike of being tied to institutions and his desire to foster interchange among cultures and the East and West without the interference of institutions.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Caws, Peter, Sartre, 1979; McCall, Dorothy, The
Theatre of Jean-Paul Sartre, 1969; Richter, Lisolette, Jean-Paul Sartre, 1970.
Sassoon, Siegfried (September 8, 1886–September 1, 1967) Poet, Novelist, Editor, Journalist iegfried Sassoon gained his audience in World War I England with a series of antiwar poems inspired by the experience of his own military service. In his later years, his inward turn to introspective poetry accompanied a decline in popularity. Sassoon is also noted for his series of fictional and nonfictional autobiographies. Sassoon was born in Matfield, Kent, England, and through his father’s family was a descendant of a long, historically wealthy line of Sephardic Jews that traced its origins to Baghdad. Sassoon’s father broke with his family when he married a Protestant wife of the Cheshire gentry. Although he maintained an interest in his Jewish ancestry, Sassoon was raised as an Anglican following the separation of his parents in 1891 and the subsequent death of his father from tuberculosis in 1895. He was tutored privately until 1900, when he entered the New Beacon School. From his mother’s traditionally artistic side of the family, Sassoon derived an appreciation for the arts. He studied at Marlborough College from 1902 to 1905 and involved himself in music, sports, and the Rifle Corps. By this time, he had already determined to become a poet. His first volume of poetry, Poems, was published privately in 1906. He entered Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied halfheartedly until 1908 and never earned a degree. Sassoon’s comfortable financial situation enabled him to devote himself entirely to writing poetry, and until 1916 he produced a series of privately printed volumes. Edmund
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Gosse, a poet and family friend, assisted Sassoon in his early endeavors as a poet. Sassoon’s verse of this period follows the Romantic style, consisting of sentimental idylls and celebrations of his beloved Kent countryside in traditional forms such as the sonnet. Among his early collections are Sonnets and Verses (1909), Sonnets (1909), Twelve Sonnets (1911), Melodies (1912), An Ode for Music (1912), The Daffodil Murderer (1913), and Amyntas (1913). The anthologist of Georgian poetry Edwin Marsh further encouraged Sassoon, introducing him to literary figures such as RUPERT BROOKE and including his poetry in his anthologies Georgian Poetry 1916–1917 and Georgian Poetry 1918–1919. The Redeemer, among the first of Sassoon’s commercially printed works, appeared in 1916. Sassoon’s decision to enlist in the cavalry in 1914 changed his entire outlook. In the works Discoveries (1915) and Morning Glory (1916), he continued to hold an idealized, heroic version of warfare but used colloquialisms and more realistic language. Still using traditional forms, he modernized his subject matter. The twin influences of the war-related death of a friend and the horror of trench warfare, which he first experienced in 1917, shattered Sassoon’s idealism. Having fallen ill in France that year, he was sent to England to recover. He was subsequently shot in the shoulder at the Battle of Arras. Later that year he published the war protest “A Soldier’s Declaration” (1917), in which he called on political leaders to end the
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pointless war and cease the practice of leading soldiers to their slaughter. With the assistance of ROBERT GRAVES, with whom he served in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, the official view was adopted that shell shock was to blame for his pacifist views, a view that prevented him from facing a court-martial. Sassoon was sent to the Craiglockhart hospital near Edinburgh, where he formed a friendship with the antiwar poet WILFRED OWEN, also invalided out for shell shock. Sassoon’s encouragement played a key role in the development of Owen’s poetry. Sassoon developed a pointed and impassioned manner in his poetry of this period. The verse of The Old Huntsman (1917) depicts in graphic reality the horrors soldiers faced on the battlefield and takes aim at politicians, the church, and people he viewed as ignorant patriots who blindly supported the war with no knowledge of its grim battlefield realities. These sentiments are reflected in poems such as “A Mystic As Soldier,” “Blighters,” “They,” and “Arms and the Man” and continue even more pointedly in Counter–Attack (1918), one of his most popular works. His other war poetry includes PictureShow (1918) and The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon (1919). In spite of his sentiments, Sassoon continued to serve in the war after his recovery. He was shot in the head in 1918 and discharged as a captain in 1919. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1916 and a bar for the Military Cross in 1918. Having learned of Owen’s death, he took it upon himself to publish an edition of his friend’s poetry. After the war, Sassoon took a position as literary editor of the Socialist Daily Herald and contributed satirical pieces. Satire of postwar British society marked the volume Recreations, published in 1923. With The Heart’s Journey (1927), the melancholy Vigils (1934), and Rhymed Ruminations (1939), Sassoon turned once again to introspective and meditative lyrics with themes of love, religious longing, and search for meaning. His unhappy marriage to Hester Gatty be-
gan in 1933, ended a decade later, and was also an influence on his poetry of this period. Sassoon returned briefly to political themes with The Road to Ruin (1933), written the year of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Sassoon recognized in Hitler an international menace and despite his knowledge of the horrors of war saw the necessity of fighting. His popularity declined dramatically after the war, although he continued to publish volumes of the introspective lyrics that began in the late 1920s. Among them are Common Chords (1950), Emblems of Experience (1951), and The Tasking (1954). The Path to Peace (1960) celebrates his lifelong religious search, which culminated in his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1957. His last work, An Octave, was published in 1966. Sassoon’s series of fictional autobiographies began with Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (1928), winner of both the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The series, continued in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and Sherston’s Progress (1936) and collected as The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (1937), follows George Sherston through his youth and war service. The Old Century and Seven More Years (1938) inaugurated his nonfiction autobiographies, followed by The Weald of Youth (1942) and Siegfried’s Journey 1916–1920 (1945). Among Sassoon’s other works are his biography of George Meredith (1948), On Poetry (1939), and his diaries, published posthumously between 1981 and 1985. He received honorary doctorates from Liverpool University (1931) and Oxford University (1965), was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1951, was named Honorary Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge (1953), and received the Queen’s Gold Medal in poetry in 1957.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lane, Arthur E., An Adequate Response: The War Poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon,
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1972; Moeyes, Paul, Siegfried Sassoon, Scorched Glory: A Critical Study, 1997; Quinn, Patrick J., The Great War and The Missing Muse: The Early Writings of Robert Graves and
Siegfried Sassoon, 1994; Sternlicht, Sanford, Siegfried Sassoon, 1993; Thorpe, Michael, Siegfried Sassoon: A Critical Study, 1967.
Satie, Erik (May 17, 1866–July 1, 1925) Composer rik-Alfred-Leslie Satie’s unconventional approach to music and eccentric lifestyle attracted much criticism during his lifetime. His experiments with unusual harmonies and tonal structures began in the 1880s and contributed significantly to the development of modern French music. Satie was a major influence on many composers, such as MAURICE RAVEL, CLAUDE DEBUSSY, and DARIUS MILHAUD. Satie was born in Honfleur, Calvados, France. His mother was of Scottish–Anglican background, and his father was French Catholic. When his mother died in 1872, Satie went to live with his grandparents and spent most of his early childhood in Honfleur. At the age of 6 he began attending the Colle`ge d’Hornfleur. The organist at St. Catherine’s, one Vinot, gave Satie his first piano lessons and sparked his interest in music. The other formative influence on his life was his uncle Adrien, an eccentric and wildly imaginative man who called himself “Sea-Bird.” In 1876 Satie left Hornfleur’s country setting and went to Paris to live with his father. His father had remarried a musician, and both tried to encourage his interest in music. Their formal approach to music bored Satie, however. He studied for a time at the Paris Conservatoire but later dropped out. Around 1885, Satie composed his first piano pieces to eventually see publication, the Valse-Ballet and Fantaisie-Valse, both of which appeared in print in 1887. Between these two years he did his military service.
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Several piano works appeared between 1887 and 1890, including Trois Sarabandes (1887), Trois Gymnope´dies (1888), and Trois Gnossiennes (1890). Debussy, Satie’s lifelong friend, orchestrated portions of Trois Gymnope´dies. Satie had an admirer in Ravel as well. In these works, Satie began to employ the experimental harmonies often credited with having anticipated the styles of both Debussy and Ravel. His friendships with Debussy and Ravel aside, the work of other composers generally influenced Satie’s work very little. The literary and spiritual influences he absorbed contributed much more to the outcome of his creations. He began to study Gothic art (the influence of which is apparent in four piano pieces collectively published as Ogives in 1886) as well as Gregorian Plainsong. The mystical bent of the latter would shape his music into the mid-1890s. Satie began to read the writings of the mystic Joseph Pe´ladan and met him in 1890. Over the next several years he involved himself in numerous Rosicrucian groups and other sects, for which he composed music. His Messe des pauvres (1895; Mass of the Poor) was written under Rosicrucian influences, as were pieces such as Le Fils des Etoiles (1891) and Trois Sonneries de la Rose Croix (1892). In 1905 Satie entered the Schola Cantorum, where he studied counterpoint and theory under Vincent d’Indy and Albert Roussel. He had by then shed the mystical influence from his
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works, which bore such titles as Limp Preludes for a Dog (1913) and Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear. The piano work Sports et Divertissements (1914) consists of twenty sketches for piano accompanied with Satie’s witty commentary. At this time Satie was also composing works for the stage, such as Le Pie`ge de Me´duse (1913; first staged 1921). Satie’s highly informal approach to composition and rejection of traditional tonal structure alienated musical purists. He eschewed traditional musical terminology and inserted instructions in his scores such as “light as an egg.” He was the first French composer to break definitively with the Romanticism of the nineteenth century. Satie always claimed that painters influenced his work more than did other musicians, and he befriended many of them. He absorbed the influences then dominating the art world—Dadaism, Surrealism, and other avant-garde movements. Satie’s music for the ballet Parade (1917) has been described as “Cubist music.” Although the odd sounds were found to be impractical in staging the work, Satie scored the music for typewriters, ticker tape, sirens, and a host of other strange noises. Staged by
SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes, Parade was choreographed by LE´ ONIDE MASSINE, employed a scenario by JEAN COCTEAU, and featured stage design and costumes by PABLO PICASSO. Picasso and Satie also contributed their respective talents to the ballet Mercure (1924). Socrate (1918), for four sopranos and chamber orchestra, is based on the dialogues of Plato and is often considered Satie’s masterpiece. In 1919 he composed his last major piano work, Five Nocturnes, after which he wrote little for the piano. The ballet Relaˆche (1924), which features a film sequence by RENE´ CLAIR, was Satie’s final work. In the 1920s, Satie was associated with a group of composers who called themselves “Les Six.” His work heavily influenced the development of modern French music and helped shape the work of younger composers such as DARIUS MILHAUD.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gillmor, Alan M., Erik Satie, 1988; Harding, James, Erik Satie, 1975; Myers, Rollo H., Erik Satie, 1968.
Schiele, Egon (June 12, 1890–October 31, 1918) Painter, Graphic Artist gon Schiele absorbed the influences of the Jugendstil movement and the German Expressionists in the early twentieth century and developed his own expressive painting style. His controversial body of paintings includes landscapes, psychologically disturbing portraits, and sexually explicit nudes. Schiele was born in Tulln, Austria, near Vienna. His father was stationmaster at Tulln, and the family lived over the train station in
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Schiele’s early childhood. Schiele loved to draw from an early age and often sketched the trains he saw. When the family’s fortunes improved around 1902, they moved to Klosterneuberg, where Schiele attended an abbey school. He soon attracted attention with his ability to draw. His home life grew increasingly tumultuous as both parents suffered from syphilis. In his father’s case, the disease led to bouts of insanity and violence, and in one fit he burned his son’s train drawings.
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From 1907 to 1909 Schiele studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Art. There his rebellious outlook and inclination toward modern art put him at odds with his more conservative professors, among whom was Christian Griepenkerl (1839–1916). Schiele looked outside of his formal instruction for help and inspiration. In a bold move, he brought a series of drawings to GUSTAV KLIMT and bluntly asked him if he had talent. Klimt reportedly replied, “Much too much!” From then on Klimt enthusiastically promoted Schiele’s work, helping him obtain commissions from the arts and crafts organization Wiener Werksta¨tte. The curvilinear forms of the Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) movement and Klimt’s decorative style were early influences on Schiele’s work, but he quickly developed a more expressive style through which he explored the psychological aspects of his subjects. These include many portraits and self-portraits that depict disturbed or suffering forms with heavy brushstrokes. In 1909 Schiele helped found the Neukunstgruppe (New Art Group) in Vienna. His first major works were exhibited the same year at Vienna’s International Kuntschau. In 1912 Schiele’s provocative and often erotic paintings (including many nude self portraits) led to his arrest on charges of immorality. During his incarceration of nearly a month before his trial, he kept a diary, painted prison scenes,
and painted a series of pessimistic self-portraits using materials brought to him by his friend Heinrich Benesch. At his trial the judge denounced him and burned one of his drawings over a candle flame. In the period between his release from jail and his marriage, Schiele, stung by his public censure, sunk into depression and lived a somewhat isolated existence. In 1915 he married Edith Harms (on his parents’ wedding anniversary) and was shortly thereafter drafted into the army. Over the next several years, Schiele’s works were exhibited often in Europe. His work was given a whole room at the 1918 Secession exhibition in Vienna. Although best known for his portraits, Schiele painted a number of landscapes and city scenes, among which is The City Hall at Krumau (1911). His best known paintings include The Cardinal and the Nun (1912), Death and Maiden (Self-Portrait with Walli) (1915), and the sexually provocative Embrace (1915). Just a few days after his wife succumbed to the Spanish flu, Schiele died of the same ailment in 1918.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Comini, Alessandra, Egon Schiele, 1976; Kallir, Jane, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, Including a Biography and a Catalogue Raisonne´, 1990; Whitford, Frank, Egon Schiele, 1981.
Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl (December 1, 1884–August 9, 1976) Painter, Graphic Artist arl Schmidt-Rottluff named and helped found the influential group of German Expressionist painters Die Bru¨cke (The Bridge), which rebelled against the academic tradition in painting in the early
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twentieth century. His mature style is marked by bold, contrasting colors and angular forms influenced by Cubism. Schmidt-Rottluff was born in Rottluff, near Chemnitz, Germany. From 1897 to 1905 he
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studied at the gymnasium in Chemnitz, and he subsequently studied architecture in Dresden. There he met ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER and Erich Heckel, both of whom were also studying architecture at the time. With them he founded Die Bru¨cke (The Bridge, drawn from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s image of man as a bridge), which later included EMIL NOLDE, Max Pechstein, and others. Influenced by the Art Nouveau movement, the various strains of painting emerging in early twentieth-century Paris, and a shared dislike of academic realism, the painters of Die Bru¨cke used vivid colors and distorted forms. Schmidt-Rottluff shared Nolde’s preference for violent colors and harsh contrasts, evident in such paintings as Self-Portrait with Monocle (1910). Schmidt-Rottluff settled in Berlin in 1911, and his works from this period show the influ-
ence of Cubism (see PABLO PICASSO and GEORGES BRAQUE) in increasingly angular forms, as in Girl Before the Mirror (1915). Portrait of Emy (1919) depicts the forlorn face of his wife rendered in contrasting colors against a bright, orange background. His later works were also influenced by his interest in African sculpture. Nazi authorities declared Schmidt-Rottluff’s work “degenerate,” and he was unable to paint during the World War II era. He resumed painting after the war and also taught. Schmidt-Rottluff was also well known for his woodcuts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Thiem, Gunther, Prints by Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff: A Centenary Celebration, 1985.
Schnabel, Artur (April 17, 1882–August 15, 1951) Pianist, Composer ith his interpretations of Bee-thoven, Brahms, and other German composers, the pianist Artur Schnabel earned popular and critical acclaim as a performer in Europe and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. His lesserknown symphonies and chamber music were atonal in style and influenced by the composer Arnold Schoenberg, whom he met in Berlin in 1911. Schnabel was born into a Jewish family in Lipnik, Austria, now part of the Czech Republic. His father, the son of a wine merchant and himself in the textile business, was a religious man who devoted much of his time to studying the Hebrew scriptures. Schnabel’s mother, who had some interest in music, took responsibility for nourishing his talents. When his
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parents purchased a piano for his older sister, he began to play himself. Schnabel was soon improvising his own compositions. By the time he was 6, his family had moved to Vienna. His mother took him to Hans Schmitt, a professor at the Vienna Conservatory, who gave him lessons for the next two years. At the age of 9, he began taking lessons from the Polish composer, teacher, and pianist Theodor Leschetizky, who proved to be the most important influence on Schnabel’s early development as a musician. While he studied music, he was tutored privately and did not attend school. Leschetizky was a demanding and temperamental teacher, and Schnabel, not always disciplined in his practicing, sometimes provoked his teacher with imprecise perfor-
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mances. Leschetizky once advised Schnabel that he would become a musician but never a pianist, a comment that stayed with him for the rest of his life. His indefatigable mother, meanwhile, took him to see the composer Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) in search of a composition teacher. When Bru¨ckner refused to teach him, they went to Eusebius Mandyszewski, who not only taught him but introduced him to the works of other composers. Schnabel gave his first public performance at age 11. In the final years of the life of Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), he met the composer, whose works he was frequently to perform. When his family left Vienna, Schnabel stayed to continue his music studies. At the age of 14, he made his professional debut at the Bo¨sendorfer Hall, and in 1892 he took the top prize for three compositions he entered in a contest sponsored (but not judged) by Leschetizky. The winning pieces were later published. In 1899 Schnabel settled in Berlin. He now played concerts and recitals regularly, usually works by Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. In his later career he frequently performed Mozart sonatas. Schnabel met and began performing with the acclaimed singer Therese Behr, to whom he was happily married from 1905 until the end of his life. In the early 1900s, he also formed a trio with the Dutch cellist Anton Hekking and the violinist Alfred Wittenberg. The group, the first of a number of trios with which Schnabel performed, gave a series of successful chamber music concerts. In 1902 the conductor Arthur Nikisch asked Schnabel to perform Brahms’s B-flat concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The performance in Hamburg was a major success for Schnabel. He soon began to gain fame abroad, notably in London, a city he grew to love. Back in Berlin, Schnabel met the composer and conductor RICHARD STRAUSS. With Strauss conducting the Berlin Philharmonic,
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he performed Beethoven’s Emperor concerto. Schnabel was most famous for his interpretations of Beethoven. He delivered a successful concert of five Beethoven sonatas in Hamburg in 1911, and published an annotated edition of them. Although admired primarily as a performer, Schnabel also composed his own music. In this area he was most influenced in his later years by ARNOLD SCHOENBERG. Schoenberg, who had not yet developed his twelve-tone system, moved to Berlin in 1911 and spurred Schnabel to experiment with atonality. His influence is evident in Schnabel’s Notturno (1914), a setting of a Richard Dehmel poem for voice and piano. Over the next decade, he composed a number of other experimental works in atonal style, including String Quartet in D Minor (1918), Sonata for Violin Solo (1919), string quartets, and a string trio (1925). With the rise of Hitler in Germany, Schnabel and his family left in 1933 and went to Switzerland. Over the next several years, he toured Europe and the United States. In Switzerland he composed the first of his three symphonies, also in atonal style. The Schnabels settled in the United States in 1939, and he subsequently performed all over the world. Schnabel also recorded his music beginning in the early 1930s and taught piano at the State Academy of Music in Berlin. His performances were characterized by their depth of feeling and interpretation rather than absolute technical precision. As a performer, he chose material according to his own preferences, did not cater to audiences, and rarely gave encores. His writings include Reflections on Music (1933) and Music and the Line of Most Resistance (1942).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Saerchinger, Ce´sar, Artur Schnabel: A Biography, 1957; Schnabel, Artur, My Life and Music, 1988.
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Schnitzler, Arthur (May 15, 1862–October 21, 1931) Playwright, Novelist, Short-Story Writer rthur Schnitzler was a novelist, medical doctor, and dramatist, best known for his work in the theater. Schnitzler’s dramatic works are marked by the psychological depth of his characters, his frequent use of the one-act format, and his critical evaluation of Viennese society during the final years of the Habsburg empire. Schnitzler was born into a Jewish family in Vienna. His father was a successful larynologist and treated many actors, exposing the young Schnitzler to the world of theater at an early age. Schnitzler attended the Akademisches Gymnasium in Vienna and upon his graduation pursued medicine at Vienna University. After graduating with a medical degree, Schnitzler practiced in various capacities until 1894. His interests in psychiatry, the theories of Sigmund Freud (with whom he corresponded), and hypnosis contributed a strong psychological dimension to his writings. By the mid-1880s, Schnitzler was contributing poetry and prose to literary journals. His first play, A Farewell Supper (1891), was performed in 1893. The Fairy Tale (1891) premiered at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna. The three-act play concerns the fates of the actress Fanny Theren and the poet Fedor Denner. Denner loves Theren but has difficulty looking past her active sexual history, and her reputation causes problems in her career and her private life. One of Schnitzler’s most famous works, Anatol (1893), consists of seven one-act plays about a Viennese bachelor and his love affairs. In another popular work, Light-O-Love (1895), Fritz loves a married woman and at the same time pursues a relationship with Christine. Christine only becomes aware of Fritz’s affair when the husband kills him in a duel. Like many characters in Schnitzler’s
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plays, Fritz is only playing a game with Christine. Schnitzler’s dramas enjoyed widespread acclaim in German-speaking countries during his lifetime. Many premiered or ran at the Burgtheater in Vienna and several other theaters in Berlin and Leipzig. Otto Brahm, director of both the Deutsches Theater and the Lessing-theater in Berlin, was Schnitzler’s close friend and was instrumental in producing his plays at those theaters until his death in 1912. Schnitzler carefully portrayed the psychological aspects of his characters. Most of the dramas take place in a shallow and hypocritical Vienna society, as does Hands Around (1900). The play consists of a series of dialogues in which a spectrum of unsympathetic characters—a prostitute, a poet, a soldier, an actress, and others—meet, have sexual intercourse, and depart. Hands Around generated a storm of controversy when it was first performed at the Kleines Schauspielhaus in Berlin in 1920. Max Ophu¨ls based his film La Ronde (1950) on the play. Casts of manipulators, shallow bourgeois men and women, and people trapped in illusions continue through dozens of Schnitzler’s plays. In The Legacy (1898), a bourgeois family learns from their son on his deathbed that he has a mistress and a child. The hypocritical family fulfills his request to take care of the woman and child but treats them with disdain. The three-act comedy Intermezzo (1908) concerns the strange relationship between Amadeus Adams, a conductor, and his wife, singer Ca¨cilie Ortenburg. The couple finds it difficult to adhere to their agreement to base their relationship on truth. The Austrian actor Josef Kainz earned widespread acclaim for his performance of Amadeus. Schnitzler liked the format of the one-act play and often grouped them into cycles, as in
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Anatol and Living Hours (1902), a series of four one-act plays. The subject of the one-act The Eccentric (1894) is an affair between two characters, He and She, the latter of whom is married. When He learns She is pregnant with their child, He wants nothing to do with it. The main character of The Puppeteer (1903), another single-act drama, is the manipulative Georg Merklin. Merklin lives to interfere with peoples’ lives and “create” relationships and children. Reality versus illusion is the main theme of The Green Cockatoo (1898), one of Schnitzler’s major works. The one-act play takes place not in Vienna, but among the doomed aristocracy during the time of the French Revolution. Members of the aristocracy have gathered at The Green Cockatoo, a tavern, and watch players act out things that are unfolding outside in reality. Two of Schnitzler’s works in particular deal with anti-Jewish sentiment in Austria. The first, The Road to the Open, was published in 1908. In the play Professor Bernhardi (1912), a Jewish doctor refuses to allow a priest to see a patient on the grounds that the patient’s final hours will be less traumatic if she does not know she will die. The public interprets the doctor’s refusal (which Sister Ludmilla disobeys) as religious interference. The doctor subsequently loses his career and lands in prison, only to have his reputation restored. The actor Ernst Deutsch became a popular Professor Bernhardi.
Aside from his dramatic works, Schnitzler wrote a number of novels and shorter pieces of fiction. His most successful novel was None but the Brave (1901), an interior monologue; other prose works include Twilight Souls (1907), Beatrice (1913), Dr. Graesler (1917), Casanova’s Homecoming (1918), Fra¨ulein Else (1924), The Judge’s Wife (1925), Rhapsody: A Dream Novel (1925), Daybreak (1927), Theresa: The Chronicle of a Woman’s Life (1928), and Flight Into Darkness (1951), which treats the theme of developing insanity. Schnitzler’s other plays include The Veil of Beatrice (1900); the puppet play Gallant Cassian (1904); The Call of Life (1906); Countess Mizi, or the Family Reunion (1909); the pantomime The Veil of Pierette (1910); The Vast Domain (1911); The Young Mardarus (1914); Comedies of Words (1915), three one-act plays; Fink and Fliederbusch (1917); The Sisters, or Casanova at Spa (1920); A Comedy of Seduction (1924); In the Play of Summer Breezes (1929); and The Walk to the Pond (1931).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Swales, Martin, Arthur Schnitzler: A Critical Study, 1971; Tax, Petrus W., and Lawson, Richard H., eds., Arthur Schnitzler and His Age: Intellectual and Artistic Currents, 1984; Urbach, Reinhard, Arthur Schnitzler, 1973; Yates, W. E., Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, and the Austrian Theatre, 1992.
Schoenberg, Arnold (September 12, 1874–July 13, 1951) Composer, Theorist, Teacher, Essayist rnold Schoenberg developed twelvetone music, which made him a major force in modern music. After having explored the chromatic textures of the late
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Romantics, Schoenberg rejected traditional tonality altogether. Seeking a structural unity to replace tonality, he developed the twelvetone system, an atonal method of composing
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based on rows, or series, of twelve tones, which influenced generations of composers— including his pupils ANTON VON WEBERN and ALBAN BERG. Schoenberg was born in Vienna, where his father operated a small shoe shop in the city’s predominantly Jewish Second District. Although his mother was a very religious woman, his father came from a family of freethinkers and skeptics. His parents enjoyed music, but their interest in it was little more than casual. They were destined to have two musicians as sons—Schoenberg’s brother became a professional singer. Schoenberg’s talent emerged when he was young, and at the age of eight he began to study the violin. Not long afterward he was composing duets for violins. When he was 11, Schoenberg met his lifelong friend and future astrologer Oskar Adler. With Adler and a cousin, he formed a trio with two violins and a viola. Schoenberg composed polkas, marches, and other pieces for the group to play. After he learned to play the cello and read in an encyclopedia how to structure sonatas, the young musicians played string quartets as well. Schoenberg’s father passed away in an influenza epidemic in 1890, after which Schoenberg went to work as a bank clerk to help support his family. The young composer despised the job and spent all of his free time studying, playing, and composing. During these years he met the young Alexander von Zemlinsky, who was then conducting the amateur orchestra Polyhymnia. Schoenberg played the cello for his orchestra and from him received his only real musical training. After leaving the bank in 1895, Schoenberg began conducting small choirs and scoring operettas for money. The strongest influences on his early work as a composer were the lush harmonies and chromaticism (the use of tones from outside the scale on which the work is based) of the late-Romantic composers Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner (1813–1883). His first work to be performed in public was the String Quartet in D Major (1897), which was well received at its pre-
Arnold Schoenberg (쑖 Lebrecht Music & Arts / The Image Works)
miere. The following year he converted to Christianity; he was to formally reconvert to Judaism in 1933. In 1902 he met the composer RICHARD STRAUSS, who secured for him a teaching position at the Stern Conservatory and helped him obtain the Liszt stipend. The following year he returned to Vienna and met the already wellknown composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), who, with the conductor Hermann Scherchen, became one of his staunchest supporters. In spite of the mixed successes of his early compositions, Schoenberg found in teaching a second vocation that he enjoyed. Berg and Webern, whom he took on in 1904, were among his first pupils. In works such as the string sextet Verkla¨rte Nacht (1899; Transfigured Night), based on verse by Richard Dehmel, Schoenberg extended the limits of chromaticism beyond what audiences were prepared to accept. Transfigured Night met with a chilly reception, as did his First String Quartet (1904) and the Second String Quartet (1908). In the first quartet, Schoenberg combined the traditional four movements into one large movement that incorporates elements of each of the traditional four.
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Aside from his work in music, Schoenberg began to paint in the early 1900s. He met the German artists WASSILY KANDINSKY and FRANZ MARC, and in 1911 he exhibited three of his expressionistic paintings at the first exhibition of their group of artists, Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). The Second String Quartet, bitterly dedicated “to my wife,” was written after Mathilde left him for the painting teacher under whom they had both studied, Richard Gerstl. (She later returned to Schoenberg, after which Gerstl committed suicide.) Rejected by a rioting audience, it was a decisive move toward atonality, or the lack of a fixed key within the composition. Schoenberg disliked the term “atonal” and preferred “pantonal” or “purely chromatic.” He completed his First Chamber Symphony for fifteen instruments in 1906, and Five Orchestral Pieces, rife with unresolved dissonances, in 1909. Op. 11 No. 1, Piano Piece, eliminated a key signature altogether. Schoenberg continued to evolve a purely atonal style in Pierrot Lunaire (1912), a setting of a translation of poetry by Albert Giraud. He conducted the first performance of the work himself, this time successfully, and it subsequently became one of his best-known works. The following year saw the performance of his massive cantata Gurrelieder, a post–Romantic work he had begun in 1900. Franz Schreker conducted the first performance, with Schoenberg’s cousin Hans Nochod performing the part of Waldemar. Other atonal works include Herzgewa¨sche (1911); an unfinished oratorio, begun 1917, Die Jakobsleiter; Erwartung (1924; Expectation), for soprano and orchestra; and Die glu¨ckliche Hand (1924; The Hand of Fate), for which Schoenberg wrote the libretto as well. In 1915 Schoenberg returned to Vienna, after which he was called up for military service. He served in the Austrian Army for brief periods of time in 1916 and 1917 before being discharged for physical unfitness. Looking for a structural unity to replace the tonal center he had abandoned, Schoenberg set to work developing what would become his twelve-
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tone method. In 1921 he is reported to have declared, “Today I have discovered something which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years.” In the twelve-tone method, compositions are formed from a row or series of the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, each of which is thought of in terms of its relationship with the others. These rows can be played forward, upside down (inversion), backward (retrograde), or backward and upside down (retrograde inversion), allowing for forty-eight transformations. Each tone is used in succession to the end of the row, after which the work returns to the first tone. The tones can be used as both melody and harmony. Schoenberg first used the twelve-tone method in the Five Piano Pieces (1923), and the first piece to use the twelve-tone method solely was the Suite for Piano (1924). Schoenberg only completed two of three projected acts of his major opera Moses und Aron (1930–1932), often considered his greatest work. Following his wife’s death from an illness in 1923, he married Gertrud Kolisch, sister of the violinist Rudolf Kolisch, two years later. The same year he took a position at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. During his final years in Germany he composed a number of works: Third String Quartet (1927), Variations for Orchestra (1928), the opera Von Heute auf Morgen (1928–1929; From Today to Tomorrow), Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene (1929–1930; Accompaniment to a Film Scene), and the Cello Concerto (1933). Forced from his post when the Nazis rose to power in 1933, Schoenberg and his wife fled first to France and then to the United States. After teaching briefly at Malkin Conservatory in Boston, he settled in the warmer climate of California, where he taught at the University of Southern California (1935–1936) and UCLA (1936–1944). When he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70, he continued to teach privately. In the United States he continued to compose twelve-tone works—the Violin Concerto (1934–36); the Fourth String Quartet (1936);
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the Piano Concerto (1942); and the Fantasia for violin with piano accompaniment (1949). Schoenberg occasionally composed tonal works, including Suite for String Orchestra (1934). His other works include Kol Nidre (1938) for mixed chorus, speaker, and orchestra, Suite in G for strings (1934); Second Chamber Symphony (1939); the Ode to Napoleon (1942); the Prelude to the Genesis Suite for orchestra and mixed chorus (1945); A Survivor from Warsaw (1947); and the unfinished work Israel Exists Again (1949); Schoenberg wrote a number of textbooks, including Models for Beginners in Composition (1942), Structural Functions of Harmony (1954), Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint (1963), and Fundamentals of Musical Composition (1967). He published a collection of essays entitled Style and Idea in 1950. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1947 and was elected honorary president of the Israel Academy
of Music in Jerusalem in 1951. The Arnold Schoenberg Institute was founded in 1974. Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system had a major impact on the development of twentieth century music. Berg, Webern, and a number of others studied directly under Schoenberg, and countless composers have used, modified, or extended his twelve-tone system. Whereas Schoenberg applied his system to melody and harmony, serialists such as PIERRE BOULEZ extended the twelve-tone method to other elements of the composition.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bailey, Walter B., ed., The Arnold Schoenberg Companion, 1998; Haimo, Ethan, Schoenberg’s Serial Odyssey: The Evolution of His TwelveTone Method, 1914–1928, 1990; MacDonald, Malcolm, Schoenberg, 1976; Rosen, Charles, Arnold Schoenberg, 1975; Stuckenschmidt, Hans Heinz, Schoenberg: His Life, World, and Work, 1977.
Schulz, Charles Monroe (November 26, 1922–February 12, 2000) Cartoonist est known for his immensely popular comic strip Peanuts, the American cartoonist Charles Schulz created a memorable cast of characters including Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, and Linus who entertained millions of readers young and old for nearly half a century. Schulz was an only child born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in its twin city of St. Paul. His father, Carl Schulz, was of German descent, and his mother was of Norwegian ancestry. The young Schulz’s uncle nicknamed his nephew “Sparky” when he was just two days old, after the horse Spark Plug in the comic strip Barney Google. From his youth, Schulz and his father maintained a Sunday
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routine of reading the funnies. His interest in becoming a cartoonist blossomed at a young age, and his picture of the family dog was published in Ripley’s Believe It or Not in 1937. As a youth, Schulz attended Richard Gordon Elementary School, where he proved to be an excellent student and skipped two half grades. He was known as a shy loner type during his teenage years at Central High School. Following the death of his mother in 1943, Schulz was drafted into the U.S. Army and fought as machine gun squad leader with the U.S. 20th Armored Division during World War II. During that time, he kept a sketchbook.
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After the war, he returned to Minneapolis and began teaching art classes and doing lettering work for the Catholic comic magazine Timeless Topix. By 1947, Schulz had his own regular cartoon entitled Li’l Folks in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The following year, he sold a cartoon to the Saturday Evening Post, which would publish a number of his cartoons in the future. Although the St. Paul paper discontinued Schulz’s work in 1949, he had by the next year found a new vehicle for publishing his cartoons after approaching the United Feature Syndicate with his creations. The first Peanuts cartoon was published on October 2, 1950, making its debut in seven different papers. Peanuts was to become one of the most widely read and successful comic strips of all time, and it spawned numerous popular television specials. From 1957 to 1959, he also published the less-successful comic strip It’s Only a Game. Central to the Peanuts cast of characters is Charlie Brown, an underachiever and constant worrier who inevitably finds himself down, out, and unlucky. Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy, is an outgoing and intelligent beagle who communicates to the reader through ambitious thoughts and distinct facial expressions. Boisterous, bold, and bossy, Lucy is full of advice for Charlie Brown. Lucy’s little brother Linus is both deeply intelligent and childlike at the same time. Although he loves to philosophize, Linus clings relentlessly to his security blanket. The Peanuts gang includes other memorable characters introduced at various stages in the cartoon’s lifetime—Snoopy’s bird companion Woodstock, Charlie Brown’s little sister Sally, the classical music enthusiast Schroeder, the bold and often senseless Peppermint Patty, Peppermint Patty’s best friend Marcie, Lucy’s and Linus’s little brother Rerun, the dirty and sloppy Pigpen, and Franklin, a later character who maintains a strong friendship with Charlie Brown. Schulz eventually moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and later back to Minneap-
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olis. In 1958, he and his family settled in Sebastopol, California, where Schulz built his first studio. In 1966, Schulz’s father passed away while he was visiting him. A second tragedy befell him in the same year when a fire destroyed his studio. In 1969, Schulz moved to Santa Rosa, California, where he remained until his death. Peanuts ran for nearly fifty years, appearing in thousands of newspapers internationally. Schulz suffered a stroke near the end of 1999, after which doctors discovered that he had colon cancer that had spread to his stomach. His health forced him to retire against his wishes in December of that year. He died of a heart attack two months later. The final Peanuts cartoon was published the day after he died. Outside of Peanuts, Schulz maintained an assortment of other interests. He was a lifelong ice hockey and figure skating fan and owned the Redwood Empire Ice Arena in Santa Rosa. He participated in senior ice hockey tournaments, organized Snoopy’s Senior Hockey Tournament, and received recognitions for his contributions to ice hockey. He was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1993. At various times in his life, Schulz was active in the Lutheran faith, the Church of God, and the United Methodist Church. His Protestant beliefs infused his cartoons, notably the popular classic television cartoon special A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965). In the program, the character of Linus explains his belief of the true meaning of Christmas. Among Schulz’s many awards are Yale University’s Cartoonist of the Year in 1958, the National Cartoonist Society’s Best Humor Comic Strip Award in 1962, the Society’s Elzie Segar Award in 1980, their Reuben Award for 1955 and 1964, and their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Schulz received the Congressional Gold Medal from the U.S. Congress posthumously in 2001. The Charles M. SchulzSonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa has borne his name since 2000, and the Charles M. Schulz Museum opened to the public on Au-
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gust 17, 2002 in Santa Rosa. The city of St. Paul bears several statues associated with the Peanuts cartoon. The first full posthumous biography of Schulz, called Peanuts and Schulz: A Biography, authored by David Michaelis, is scheduled for publication in October 2007.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Johnson, Rheta Grimsley, Good Grief!: The Story of Charles M. Schulz, 1989; www.schulzmuseum.org/. www.snoopy.com.
Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth (December 9, 1915–August 3, 2006) Singer, Teacher
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (쑖 Lipnitzki / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
lga Maria Elisabeth Friederike Schwarzkopf established herself as one of Germany’s leading sopranos during World War II. Most famous for her recitals of lieder, or German art songs, she also
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performed at leading opera houses in the United States, Germany, Austria, Italy, and England. Schwarzkopf appeared in movies and recorded many of her songs.
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Schwarzkopf was born to Prussian parents in Jarocin, near Pozna´n, Poland. Her father, a classics teacher with relatively little money, moved the family around several times. Schwarzkopf’s mother took charge of educating her daughter, sending her to numerous schools and enrolling her in music lessons (notably under Lula Mysz-Gmeiner, who had performed with the composer Johannes Brahms). She sang her first opera role in a Magdeburg School production of Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice. When the family moved to Berlin in 1933, Schwarzkopf enrolled in the Berlin High School for Music. Having received a scholarship from the League of National Socialist Students, she also studied at Leicester in England. She debuted on stage as second flower maiden in Wagner’s Parsifal at the Berlin Municipal Opera (1938). She remained there for several years, singing Marie in the opera Der Waffenschmied (The Armourer), Esmerelda in The Bartered Bride (1938), Susanna in Figaro (1942), and many other roles. The Hungarian soprano Maria Ivogu¨n took Schwarzkopf in as a student, instructing her in the German lieder for which she became most famous. Among her most popular lieder was the song “Seligkeit.” She made her professional debut singing lieder in Berlin in 1942. With Ivogun’s husband Michael Raucheisen, Schwarzkopf recorded many songs for radio broadcast. During the World War II years she appeared in a number of German films, including Nacht ohne Abschied (1943) and Der Verleidiger hat das Vort (1943). In 1943–1944 she fell ill with tuberculosis and went to a sanatorium in the Tatra mountains to recover. Schwarzkopf’s loose association with the National Socialists before and during the war led to much criticism of her after Germany’s
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defeat and probably prevented her from obtaining engagements in the United States. From 1944 to 1950 she sang coloratura soprano at the Vienna State Opera. Schwarzkopf also sang at London’s Covent Garden and Milan’s La Scala, appearing at the latter in such roles as Me´lisande (1953) in CLAUDE DEBUSSY’s Pelle´as et Me´lisande. In 1951 Schwarzkopf created Anne Trulove in IGOR STRAVINSKY’s The Rake’s Progress. She sang at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals and in 1953 made her American debut singing lieder at Town Hall, New York City. The same year she married Walter Legge, a recording executive and founder of the London Philharmonic. With Legge she made many recordings, including lieder and the works of many German composers. She often performed under the direction of HERBERT VON KARAJAN. Schwarzkopf joined the San Francisco Opera Company in 1955, debuting in what would become one of her trademark roles as Marschallin in RICHARD STRAUSS’s Der Rosenkavalier. She appeared in the same part for her 1964 debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Among the other roles for which she became known are Mimi in PUCCINI’s La Bohe`me, Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, the title role in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, and Zerbinetta in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Schwarzkopf officially retired in 1971 but toured the United States in 1975. After her retirement she taught, earning a reputation as a strict and demanding instructor. She was made Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1991.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jefferson, Alan, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, 1996; Sanders, Alan, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf: A Career on Record, 1995.
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Schwitters, Kurt (June 20, 1887–January 8, 1948) Painter, Poet urt Schwitters was a leader in European abstract art in the first half of the twentieth century. An active member of the Dadaist movement, Schwitters was most famous for his abstract collages that integrate brightly colored paint with bits of refuse. He also wrote poetry and essays. Schwitters was born into a well-off family in Hanover, Germany. An introverted child who suffered from epilepsy and other ailments, he entered the School of Arts and Crafts in Hanover in 1908. The following year he enrolled at the Academy of Dresden, and he subsequently studied at the Academy in Berlin. As a student Schwitters painted in an academic style. His work, however, grew more abstract following his service in World War I. He married Helma Fischer in 1915 and in his early years of professional painting was influenced by the Expressionists and the Cubists. Around this time the artist JEAN ARP encouraged Schwitters to try collage, the medium for which he became famous. His first works were exhibited in Berlin in 1918, and the same year he entered the Technical College in Hanover to study architecture. In 1919 Schwitters produced his first Merz collages (a term he borrowed from the German kommerz, or commerce). Attracted to the nihilistic, chaotic art of the Dadaists, he formed a Dadaist group in Hanover. Schwitters began to assemble collages from odd pieces of lace, newspaper, cigarettes, paint, and other bits of rubbish, as in his brightly colored Picture with Light Center (1919). In 1922 he participated in the Dada Congress in Weimar, and the following year he began publishing his MERZ, which he used to disseminate his and others’—LA´ SZLO´ MOHOLY-NAGY
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and Theo van Doesberg among them—ideas on art. Schwitters approached his poetry in a similar manner, piecing together cliche´s, slogans, and newspaper headlines. “Anna Blume,” his most famous poem, was published in 1921. That same year he heard Raoul Hausmann’s phonetic poem “fmsbw,” which inspired from Schwitters a series of lectures and his own poem “Ursonata” (“Archetypal Sonata”). The other major projects of Schwitters’s lifetime were his Merzbau, or Merz buildings. His first began in 1920, when he started to assemble a structure from everyday objects. The Merzbau grew steadily over a period of sixteen years, eventually occupying eight rooms of Schwitters’s home at Waldhausenstrasse 5 in Hanover. Under National Socialism, his work was declared “decadent,” and he fled to Norway. The war forced him from Norway, too, in 1940, when he escaped to Scotland and was interned for several months. Upon his release he settled in England. The Merzbau he built in Germany was destroyed during the war, and a second one begun in Norway burned to the ground as a result of children playing. In England Schwitters embarked on a third Merzbau, financed by a monetary award from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. However, Schwitters was unable to finish it before his death. Among his other works is the collage For Kate (1945), a forerunner of Pop art.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Dietrich, Dorothea, The Collages of Kurt Schwitters: Tradition and Innovation, 1993; Elderfield, John, Kurt Schwitters, 1985.
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Scorsese, Martin (November 17, 1942– ) Director, Producer, Screenplay Writer n the early 1970s, Martin Scorsese established himself as one of the most respected and influential directors in American cinema. In his work, he has consistently returned to a number of themes that include pyschologically unstable protagonists, his Sicilian heritage, rock and roll artists who gained fame during the 1960s, and the mafia. Although Scorsese has been nominated eight times for Academy Awards, he did not win his first—for Best Director—until 2007 for The Departed. Scorsese was born Martin Marcantonio Luciano Scorsese to an Italian Catholic family in Flushing, New York. His parents both worked in the garment industry. The family moved to Little Italy in Manhattan, where Scorsese attended Old St. Patrick’s School. In 1956, he attended Cathedral College with the intent of becoming a priest, but he abandoned his clerical pursuits and transferred to Cardinal Hayes High School, from which he graduated with honors. He developed a love for film at a young age. Asthma prevented him from playing sports, and he spent a long hours watching movies and absorbing the history of cinema. He was particularly interested in the work of the Italian neorealists and cited Italian director VITTORIO DE SICA’s (1902–1974) The Bicycle Thief as both an early inspiration and an influence on how he portrayed his Sicilian heritage. Scorsese attended New York University, from which he earned a B.A. in 1963 and an MFA in film in 1966. While still a student there, he made the short films What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963) and It’s Not Just You, Murray! (1964). Scorsese followed with The Big Shave (1967), in which an unnamed man shaves himself until he bleeds profusely in a spotless bathroom,
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as a critical metaphor of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The same year, he made his first featurelength film, a black and white work entitled Who’s That Knocking at My Door? with fellow student and future famous actor Harvey Keitel (1939– ) and editor Thelma Schoonmaker (1940– ). Scorsese has worked with Schoonmaker for forty years, and Keitel has also appeared frequently in Scorsese’s films. In 1971, Scorsese moved to Hollywood, where he directed Boxcar Bertha (1972) for Roger Corman (1926– ). The film, considered one of his minor works, tells the story of labor organizer “Boxcar” Bertha Thompson, who teams up with union man “Big” Bill Shelly to fight a corrupt railroad establishment while themselves getting caught up in criminal activity. In Hollywood, Scorsese befriended other major directors of his generation, including STEVEN SPIELBERG, FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA, GEORGE LUCAS, and Brian De Palma (1940– ). De Palma introduced Scorsese to actor Robert De Niro (1943– ), who has starred in many of his films over the years. Mean Streets (1973), set in the streets of New York City’s Little Italy, was Scorsese’s first major work. It premiered to warm critical reception at the New York Film Festival in 1973 and established his name as a director. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, a film about the travels and tribulations of a woman who has been recently widowed, followed in 1974. Taxi Driver (1976), in which De Niro played a psychotic Vietnam vet turned nighttime taxi driver, won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and brought both Scorsese and De Niro international fame. Scorsese released the musical New York, New York, starring De Niro and singer Liza Minelli (1946– ), in 1977. Set in the post-World War II
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era, the story is about two singers who fall in love as they struggle to further their careers. Over the years, Scorsese has returned several times to documenting influential rock and roll bands from the 1960s. The Last Waltz (1978), a documentary about the musical group The Band showcasing their final performance in 1976, was his first effort in this vein. The film intersperses live performances with interviews and other material, and its all-star musical cast includes JONI MITCHELL, BOB DYLAN, Eric Clapton (1945– ), Emmylou Harris (1947– ), Van Morrison (1945– ), MUDDY WATERS, NEIL YOUNG, and Ron Wood (of THE ROLLING STONES). De Niro again starred in Raging Bull (1980), the story of the tormented boxer Jake LaMotta. LaMotta is a huge success in his profession, but he carries the violence that drives him to win his fights outside of the ring and leads a self-destructive life. De Niro continued his string of performances for Scorsese as mentally unstable characters in The King of Comedy (1983), this time as the aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin, who will go to any lengths (including kidnapping) to secure an appearance in his idol’s show. Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) recounts a surreal and bizarre night in the life of an ordinary word processor. The Color of Money (1986) failed to get the critical acclaim Scorsese had by then grown used to, but PAUL NEWMAN’S portrayal of the pool hustler Fast Eddie Felson won him an Academy Award for Best Actor. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), based on Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis’s (1883–1957) novel, has been Scorsese’s most controversial film. Actor Willem Dafoe (1955– ) portrayed Jesus as a man embattled over matters of the spirit and the flesh to the point of weakness over human desires. Scorsese’s depiction of a weak Christ angered many religious groups and led to boycotts of the film. The year 1990 brought two films for Scorsese. The first, Made in Milan (1990), was a documentary about the Italian fashion design-
er Giorgio Armani (1934– ). The gangster film Goodfellas, adapted into a screenplay by Nicholas Pileggi (1933– ) from his own book Wiseguys, followed soon thereafter. In Cape Fear (1991), a remake of J. Lee Thompson’s (1914–2002) 1962 film of the same title, De Niro plays convicted rapist Max Cady. Upon his release from prison, Cady terrorizes the entire family of a lawyer whose poor defense of his crime years earlier helped put him behind bars. Scorsese switched gears entirely with The Age of Innocence (1993), based on the novel by Edith Wharton (1862–1937) and set in nineteenth-century New York high society. He again returned to the mafia theme with Casino (1995), which, like Goodfellas, was made from a Pileggi novel and screenplay. The violent portrayal of mob involvement in Las Vegas casinos during the 1970s and 1980s starred De Niro, Sharon Stone (1958– ), and Joe Pesci (1943– ). In 1997, Scorsese released Kundun (1997), a film about the Dalai Lama in Tibet. Bringing Out the Dead (1999), another of Scorsese’s “tormented hero” films, stars Nicholas Cage (1964– ) as a burned-out New York paramedic who sees ghosts of people he has tried to save. Gangs of New York (2002) relates the story of a man who returns to 1860s New York seeking revenge for the murder of his father. The Aviator (2004) portrays the life of aviator and producer HOWARD HUGHES. Again returning to his rock and roll theme, Scorsese directed No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005), a biographical documentary that focuses on the early career of BOB DYLAN. Shine a Light, a documentary about THE ROLLING STONES, is slated for release in 2008. Scorsese won an Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), about two informants, one a turncoat mobster and the other a corrupt police officer. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Silence are scheduled for release in 2008.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Dougan, Andy, Martin Scorsese, 1998; Ehrenstein, David, The Scorsese Picture: The Art and life of Martin Scorsese, 1992; Friedman, Lawrence S.. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese, 1997; Kelly, Mary Pat, Martin Scorsese: A Journey, 1991;
Keyser, Lester J., Martin Scorsese, 1992; Lobrutto, Vincent, Martin Scorsese: A Biography, 2007; Scorsese, Martin, Scorsese on Scorsese, 1989. www.martin-scorsese.net www.scorsesefilms.com.
Seferis, George (February 29, 1900–September 20, 1971) Poet, Essayist, Critic, Translator, Diplomat eorge Seferis led a movement in Greek poetry later dubbed the “generation of the ’30s.” Influenced in part by the French Symbolists, he forged a style marked by its free-verse forms, use of symbolism, and contemplation of the Greek cultural and historical climate. Seferis received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963 “for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture.” Seferis was born Giorgios Stylianou Seferiades to Greek parents in Smyrna, Anatolia, Ottoman Empire, now Izmir, Turkey. His father was a prominent citizen of the area as well as a poet, translator, and law professor. Seferis spent his early childhood in Smyrna and in the fishing village of Skala tou Vourla. When he was 14, regional hostilities forced his family to move, and they settled in Athens. Having begun his schooling in Smyrna, Seferis continued his studies in Athens. Around this time Seferis wrote his first poems. From 1918 to 1924 he studied law at the University of Paris, absorbing both English and French literature. Seferis visited England in 1924 and began to learn the English language. He was later to translate several English-language poets, most notably T. S. ELIOT. In 1926 Seferis joined Greece’s diplomatic service, beginning a lifelong career that took him to London (1931–1934), Albania (1936–1938), and South Africa (1941–1942).
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While the Nazis occupied Greece during World War II, he lived in exile in Egypt with the rest of Greece’s government. After the war, Seferis was posted to several countries in the Middle East and represented Greece at the United Nations in 1956–1957. In his capacity as ambassador to London (1957–1962), he was instrumental in negotiating the independence of Cyprus (1960). Seferis printed his first collection of poetry, I strofı´ (1931; The Turning Point), and many of his subsequent volumes at his own expense. The collection consists of thirteen poems rendered in traditional Greek rhyme and meter and includes the love poem “Erotikos Logos.” I ste´rna (1932; The Cistern), a long poem, uses the cistern as a symbol of tranquility amidst a tumultuous outer world. Influenced by Eliot’s work and by the French poets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Seferis began to write in free-verse with the twenty-poem sequence Mithisto´rima (1935; Myth-History), which REX WARNER translated, and the two poems of Gymnopaidia (1936). His Tetra´dhio yimnasma´ton (1940; Exercise Book) consisted of many poems previously published in periodicals. Imerolo´yion katastro´matos I (1940; Log Book I), with Imerolo´yion katastro´matos II (1945; Log Book II) and Imerolo´yion katastro´matos III (1955; Logbook III), are considered some of his finest works and were all
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translated by Warner. Seferis’s other poetic works include Poiı´mata (1940; Poems), the long poem Kı´khli (1947; Thrush), The King of Asine (1948), Poiı´mata 1924–46 (1950), and Tria kryta´ poiemata (1966; Three Secret Poems). Seferis’s poetry is noted for its clear style and heavy use of symbolism. Much of its imagery derives from Greek history and landscape. Love, a sense of alienation in the modern world, and the modern and historical political climates all recur as themes in his work. Seferis wrote in demotic Greek, or the modern vernacular. Although he did not hold to the Orthodox beliefs of his upbringing, he incorporated more religious imagery into his later poetry. Philip Sherrard’s English translation of his work, George Seferis: Collected Poems 1924–1955, appeared in 1969. In 1967, a military coup in Greece established the Colonel’s Regime and initiated a wave of censorship. Seferis publicly condemned the regime in 1969 and the following year contributed, with other writers, to the protest volume Eighteen Texts (Seferis con-
tributed the poem “The Cats of St. Nicholas”). Among his other works are the essay collections Dhokime´s (1944), which critics often regard as one of the finest works of modern Greek literary criticism, and Eroto´kritos (1946); a translation of Eliot’s The Waste Land; translations of the works of other English and French poets, many of which appeared in Copies; and translations of the Book of Revelation and the Song of Songs. Seferis helped found the literary periodical Ta Nea Grammata, which published between 1935 and 1944. His unfinished novel, Six Nights on the Acropolis, was published posthumously in 1974.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Beaton, Roderick, George Seferis, 1991; KapreKarka, K., Love and the Symbolic Journey in the Poetry of Cavafy, Eliot, and Seferis: an Interpretation with Detailed Poem-by-Poem Analysis, 1982; Kapre-Karka, K., War in the Poetry of George Seferis: A Poem-by-Poem Analysis, 1985.
Selznick, David O. (May 10, 1902–June 22, 1965) Producer avid O. Selznick was a leading independent producer from Hollywood’s Golden Age. He was the force behind many of the blockbuster successes of the era, most notably the classic Civil War epic Gone with the Wind (1939), and launched the careers of several well-known directors and actors. Selznick was born into a Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, Lewis J. Selznick, was a silent film director and distributor. Selznick’s brother, Myron, became a highly influential Hollywood talent agent.
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Selznick worked as an apprentice at his father’s film distribution company while he studied at Columbia University, but the company went into bankruptcy in 1923 and forced him to abandon his studies. In 1926, he moved to Hollywood, where he took a job as a story editor and then an associate producer at MGM. There he met the young and successful film producer Irving Thalberg (1899–1936). Two years later, Selznick went to work for Paramount Pictures, where he attained the position of executive assistant to producer and head of Paramount B. P. Schulberg
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David. O. Selznick (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-121489)
(1892–1957). Selznick also worked with producer and aviator Merian C. Cooper (1893–1973), with whom he would later coproduce the classic film King Kong (1933). While at Paramount, he served as associate producer for a handful of films, including Lewis Milestone’s (1895–1980) Betrayal (1929) and The Four Feathers (1929), directed by Cooper and Lothar Mendes (1894–1974). In 1930, he married Irene Gladys Mayer (1907–1990), daughter of Metro-GoldwynMayer magnate Louis B. Mayer (1882–1957). They had two children and divorced in 1949. In 1931, Selznick signed on with RKO Pictures as head of production. While at RKO, Selznick produced many well-known films, such as George Cukor’s (1899–1983) What Price Hollywood? (1932), about a waitress who tastes the big-time after meeting an alcoholic director; Cukor’s A Bill of Divorcement (1932), the tale of a man who returns home from a long stay at a mental institution to find his home situation completely different from the way he left it; and Cooper’s and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s (1893–1979) King Kong (1933), featuring the famed oversized monster gorilla. During his time at RKO and after his return to MGM, Selznick was largely responsible for making Cukor’s directorial career. He produced several films that Cukor either directed or co-directed, including Dinner at Eight (1933) and David Copperfield (1935). Selznick continued successful collaborations
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with other directors, such as Clarence Brown’s (1890–1987) film version of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s (1828–1919) Anna Karenina (1935) and Jack Conway’s (1887–1952) screen version of American novelist Charles Dickens’s (1812–1870) A Tale of Two Cities (1935). Despite his successes with the major Hollywood companies, Selznick’s underlying aim was always to be an independent producer. As Mayer’s son-in-law, he enjoyed a large degree of creative autonomy at MGM. But in 1935, he left to form Selznick International Pictures. His past connections with Cooper and Thalberg, as well as his own reputation, were instrumental in the company’s success. As an independent producer, Selznick began to distribute his films through United Artists. He achieved successes with such films as The Garden of Allah (1936), noted for its innovative use of the three-strip Technicolor process; William A. Wellman’s (1896–1975) A Star Is Born (1937); John Cromwell’s (1887–1979) adventure-drama The Prisoner of Zenda (1937); Wellman’s Nothing Sacred (1937), Cromwell’s Made For Each Other (1939), and Gregory Ratoff’s (1897–1960) Intermezzo (1939). The year 1939 brought not only Selznick’s most famous production, but a film that has remained an American classic for nearly seventy years. The American Civil War epic Gone with the Wind (1939), directed by Victor Fleming (1889–1949) with a $4 million budget, starred CLARK GABLE as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh (1913–1967) as Scarlett O’Hara. The roguish Butler, an out-of-town visitor, and the self-centered O’Hara, born into a wealthy Southern family, engage in a tumultuous romance amidst the backdrop of the wartorn American South. Gone with the Wind won an Oscar for Best Picture. The year 1940 brought Selznick’s first production for British director ALFRED HITCHCOCK, Rebecca, for which he again won an Oscar for Best Picture. Following the release of Rebecca, Selznick shut down his com-
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pany and took a sabbatical. He had many prominent stars—Hitchcock and actresses INGRID BERGMAN, Leigh, and Joan Fontaine (1917– )—under contract and made large profits loaning them out to other studios. Selznick returned to production in 1944 with Since You Went Away, for which he wrote the screenplay. Other noteworthy films from Selznick’s late 1940s career are Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945); director King Vidor’s (1894–1982) massively budgeted, successful, and controversial Duel in the Sun (1946); director William Dieterle’s (1893–1972) Portrait of Jennie (1948), in which Selznick reverted from Technicolor to shooting mostly in black-and-white; and The Third Man (1949), directed by CAROL REED with a screenplay by GRAHAM GREENE. Disillusioned with United Artists, Selznick formed his own film distribution company, the Selznick Releasing Organization, in 1946. In 1949, he married his second wife, actress Jennifer Jones (1919– ), with whom he would remain until his death. During the early 1950s, he invested a significant amount of time trying to bolster Jones’s acting career. Jones acted in Gone to Earth (1950), The Wild Heart (1952), and Stazione Termini (1953). In 1954, Selznick produced a two-hour television documentary entitled Light’s Diamond
Jubilee. Selznick’s final film, director Charles Vidor’s (1900–1959) screen version of novelist ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S A Farewell to Arms (1957), starred Jones and Rock Hudson (1925–1985) and failed to attract the commercial success of many of his earlier efforts. Though Selznick’s enormous success was a significant influence on Hollywood, his harsh nature made it difficult for others to work with him. He was well- known for interfering with the creative process and was heavyhanded when he edited films, infuriating the directors with whom he worked. His relationship with Hitchcock was particularly and notoriously difficult. Toward the end of his life, Selznick suffered from addiction to stimulants and a series of heart attacks. His final one took his life in 1965. ABC acquired the rights to most of his post-1935 films, with the exception of Gone with the Wind, for which MGM retained the rights. BIBLIOGRAPHY Haver, Ronald, David O. Selznick’s Hollywood, 1980; Thomas, Bob, Selznick, 1970; Thomson, David, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, 1992; www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ selznick_d.html.
Sendak, Maurice (June 10, 1928– ) Writer, Illustrator aurice Sendak is an American writer and illustrator of children’s literature who is best known for his books Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. His unique drawings are often grotesque and nightmarish in character, contrasting sharply with the popular Disney-in-
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spired animations that have dominated children’s literature. Sendak has also written, designed costumes, and designed sets for operas and ballets for television and the stage. Sendak was the youngest of three children, born Maurice Bernard Sendak to Polish-Jew-
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ish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. His parents emigrated from Warsaw to the United States before World War I, and during World War II, the family lost many of its relatives in Poland to the Holocaust. As a child, he was frail and often sick, forcing him to spend a great deal of time indoors. It was during these early years of his life that he developed a love for books and drawing. He decided on a career as an illustrator after seeing Walt Disney’s (1901–1966) film Fantasia when he was twelve. Sendak continued to draw throughout his high school years. His first published illustrations appeared just after his graduation in a textbook entitled Atomics for the Millions. In 1945, he went to work for All-American Comics, where he contributed to the illustrations in the Mutt and Jeff comic strip. In 1948, he took a job with the specialty toy store FAO Schwarz as a window dresser while he attended night classes at the New York Art Students League. During much of the 1950s, Sendak worked as an illustrator for children’s books, including Marcel Ayme´’s (1902–1967) The Wonderful Farm (1951) and Ruth Krauss’s (1901–1993) A Hole Is to Dig (1952), consisting of black-and-white pen and ink drawings to complement her text. By the end of the decade, Sendak had illustrated almost fifty children’s books, including many more for Krauss; several books by the Dutch-American children’s author Meindert De Jong (1906–1991); the first volumes of the DanishAmerican children’s author Else Holmelun Minarik’s (1920– ) Little Bear series, which were also made into a successful television series; and stories by the Danish fairly tale writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). Sendak also began to write his own children’s stories, continuing to illustrate them, in the 1950s. The first of these was Kenny’s Window (1956). He gained international acclaim for writing and illustrating the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are (1963), and the work won the Caldecott Medal the following year. The story’s protagonist
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is a young boy named Max, who, banished to his room, retreats into a new world in his imagination inhabited by wild, grotesque creatures. The unconventional semi-gruesome nature of his illustrations disturbed many parents, but his work nonetheless proved extremely popular. The success of Where the Wild Things Are led to many other children’s works that he both wrote and illustrated, including Higglety Pigglety Pop! (1967), In the Night Kitchen (1970), and Outside Over There (1985). In 1970, Sendak won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration—he was the first American to win that prize. Sendak directed an animated television production based on his work, Really Rosie (1975), that featured the American singersongwriter Carole King (1942– ) voicing the character of Rosie. He adapted Where the Wild Things Are for the stage in 1979 and has designed sets and written for many operas and ballets, including Peter Tchaikovsky’s (1840–1893) The Nutcracker; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756–1791) The Magic Flute, Idomeneo, and The Goose from Cairo; German composer Engelbert Humperdinck’s (1854–1921) Hansel and Gretel; Czech composer Leosˇ Jana´c˛k’s (1854–1928) The Cunning Little Vixen; and SERGEI PROKOFIEV’S Love for Three Oranges. In the 1990s, Sendak and playwright TONY KUSHNER collaborated on a new English version of the Czech composer Hans Kra´sa’s (1899–1944) children’s opera Brundibar. Kushner wrote the text for Sendak’s popular illustrated book of the same name, published in 2003. Sendak is currently producing a feature-length film of Where the Wild Things Are. The film is planned for release in 2008 and is directed by Spike Jonze (1969– ) with a screenplay by Jonze and Dave Eggers (1970– ).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kushner, Tony, The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present, 2003; Lanes, Selma G., The Art of
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Maurice Sendak, 1980; Sonheim, Amy, Maurice Sendak, 1991;
www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ sendak_m.html.
Senghor, Le ´ opold Se ´ dar (October 9, 1906–December 20, 2001) Poet, Statesman, Theorist e´opold Se´dar Senghor achieved successes as both a poet and a politician, becoming one of the principal spokesmen for the literary and artistic movement known as Negritude in the 1950s and serving as Senegal’s president from 1960 to 1980. His poetry reflects his dual experiences as both an African and a Frenchman. Senghor was born in the coastal town of Joal, Senegal, in what was then French West Africa. His father was a wealthy peanut trader of the Serer, a minority people in a predominantly Wolof country, and he had a large family with children by numerous wives. Although Senghor’s family was Roman Catholic, another minority in a predominantly Muslim country, they maintained close ties to African traditions and beliefs. Senghor did not follow in the footsteps of many of his brothers who also became traders. His father sent him to the local Catholic mission school, where he excelled in his studies. When he was older, he decided to become a priest and studied at the Libermann Seminary in Dakar. However, he was discouraged from continuing and transferred to a lyce´e in Dakar. In spite of his rejection from the priesthood, he maintained his Catholic faith. In 1928, Senghor traveled to Paris and studied at both the Lyce´e Louis-le-Grand and the Sorbonne. After finishing his studies, he taught French until 1939. He was drafted that year and fought in World War II until his capture by the Germans. His first two volumes of poetry, written before and during the war, appeared in 1945 and 1948.
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A sense of conflict between the African and French cultures in which Senghor was raised dominates the verse of his first collection, Shadow Songs (1945). The poetry of Black Offerings, much of which he wrote while he was imprisoned during the war, are less personal and address the war experience on individual and social levels. One of its poems, “Tyaroye,” laments a massacre of Senegalese troops at Thiaroye by French soldiers. Like many other Africans, Senghor resented the destruction of African culture wrought by the French and other Europeans who held colonies in Africa. On the other hand, he never expressed a dislike for all French individuals, and he saw good elements in French culture. Senghor’s political career began to take shape after the war. He was elected to the French Constituent Assembly and later, on the Socialist ticket, to the National Assembly in Paris. In 1951, he was reelected as a member of the newly founded Senegalese Democratic Bloc. Senghor was actively involved in founding political parties and structuring alliances. In 1959 he urged France to grant independence to Senegal, and the nation became independent the following year. Senghor served as Senegal’s first president and ruled the country until he retired in 1980. Along with his prime minister, Mamadou Dia, he governed according to his idea of “African socialism,” focusing on the formation of rural agricultural cooperatives and shunning revolutionary Marxism. Dia attempted a coup in 1962, and the affair eventually ended with his imprisonment.
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After the war, Senghor also became one of the principal theorists of Negritude, a literary and artistic movement that emphasized the black experience. He and other proponents of Negritude believed that blacks, whether they lived in Africa or elsewhere, share a common experience that differs fundamentally from the European experience. He outlined his theories at two congresses of black artists and writers in the 1950s and edited an anthology of French Black African poetry that became one of the primary works of the Negritude movement. The poetry of Ethiopiques (1956) reflects Senghor’s successes in both the political and literary realms. He still treats the dichotomy of his African and French backgrounds but
also addresses conflicts he feels between his two successful careers as a poet and a politician. His later volumes of poetry include Nocturnes (1961), Major Elegies (1979), and Poetical Work (1990). Senghor became the first black member of the French Academy in 1984. Among his other works are On African Socialism (1964) and Ne´gritude and Humanism (1975).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Nespoulous-Neuville, Josiane, Listen to Africa: A Call from L.S. Senghor, 1999; Spleth, Janice, Le´opold Se´dar Senghor, 1985; Vaillant, Janet G., Black, French, and African: A Life of Le´opold Se´dar Senghor, 1990.
Serling, Rod (December 25, 1924-June 28, 1975) Television Writer, Producer odman Edward Serling was one of the most productive and successful television writers of the twentieth century. He is best known for his series The Twilight Zone, which explored themes of human nature such as identity, prejudice, and conformity. Throughout his career Serling wrote over 200 scripts for a variety of television series, as well as for movies and radio. Serling was born in Syracuse, New York, on Christmas day in 1924. The second of two sons, he was raised in Binghamton, New York, where his father worked in the wholesale meat industry. On the day of his graduation from high school in 1943, Serling joined the 11th Airborne Division paratroopers in the United States Army. He took up boxing in the army and won 17 out of 18 matches. After being wounded in combat in the Philippines, Serling received a Purple Heart and was discharged in 1946. Under the G.I. Bill he en-
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rolled at Antioch College in Ohio. Originally interested in studying physical education, Serling was inspired to write and changed his major to Language and Literature. He met Carolyn Louise Kramer in college, and the two were married in 1948. The following year, while still an undergraduate, Serling won second prize in a nationwide script-writing contest and also sold two scripts to the radio anthology show, Grand Central Station. After earning his bachelor’s degree in 1950, Sterling was employed as a writer for a Cincinnati radio station. He sold his first television script, entitled “Grady Everett for the People” that same year to the show Stars Over Hollywood. In 1952 Serling decided to focus his efforts on freelance writing and sold several scripts to network series such as Hallmark Hall of Fame and Studio One. In 1955 his powerful television drama Patterns, written for Kraft Television Theater, earned Serling his first of
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six Emmy Awards for Best Original Teleplay Writing. The following year he wrote Requiem for a Heavyweight, which focused on the character of a has-been fighter, and earned several prestigious awards including a second Emmy and a Writers Guild of America Award. In 1957 he signed on as a chief writer for Playhouse 90, a series on the CBS network. A year later, frustrated by constant censorship and editing by corporate sponsors, Serling left Playhouse 90 to create his own science fiction series for CBS. He presented the network with “The Time Element,” a script that he had created several years earlier, that would later be used as a framework for The Twilight Zone. Serling created, produced, hosted, and wrote the television series The Twilight Zone from 1959 through 1964. In half-hour episodes, the show invited the audience to enter “the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.” With eerie music and suspenseful, twisting plots that evoked political and moral questions, The Twilight Zone was an instant success in American popular culture. CBS aired 156 episodes in the five seasons it was on the air, 92 of them written by Serling. He was awarded with two more Emmy awards for The Twilight Zone and another in 1963 for “It’s Mental Work,” written for the Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater. After The Twilight Zone he
wrote several movie screenplays including the science fiction fantasy Planet of the Apes (1968) and The Man (1972). In the early 1970s Serling served as president of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and created the NBC series Night Gallery, which first aired in 1969. Night Gallery received lukewarm reviews from critics and was cancelled in 1972. In his later years, Sterling became a professor of writing at Ithaca College in upstate New York. He died in 1975 from complications of a heart attack.
BIBLIOGRAPHY In the Zone: The Twilight World of Rod Serling by Peter Wolfe (Paperback - Jun 1, 1997); Rod Serling: The Dreams and Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone/a Biography by Joel Engel (Hardcover - Oct 1989); Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television’s Last Angry Man by Gordon F. Sander (Paperback - Jan 1, 1994). http://www.rodserling.com http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/ serlingrod/serlingrod.htm http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/ rodserling.html http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ database/serling_r.html http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/ serling.html
Shaw, George Bernard (July 26, 1856–November 2, 1950) Playwright, Novelist, Critic, Essayist eorge Bernard Shaw was most famous for his more than fifty plays, many of them characterized by the dazzling wit and comic vitality that are often described by the adjective that has been coined from his name, Shavian. He led the in-
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tellectual revival of the English theater in the early twentieth century, and his best plays are still often revived. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during his lifetime, lending his outspoken manner and brilliance in controversy to philosophy, religion, litera-
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George Bernard Shaw (Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin)
ture, music, theater, and politics in the form of novels, essays, articles, letters, pamphlets, and the long prefaces that introduce his plays. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland. His father, a corn merchant, was unsuccessful at his work and steadily lost the family’s money. Through his mother, a singer, Shaw was introduced to music and the arts at a young age. He attended school until he was 16 but disliked formal study. When his parents divorced, his mother moved to London with his sisters, and Shaw joined them four years later. London provided the cultural climate Shaw needed to launch his writing career. He spent days reading, sometimes at the British Museum, and later began to write reviews for peri-
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odicals. During the 1880s and 1890s he finished five novels (three of them never published) and had already begun to write plays, but the only real fame he gained came from his incisive reviews of music, books, and theater. These appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, the World, the Star, and the Saturday Review; it was his biting and sarcastic criticism of the conventions of Victorian theater in the Saturday Review that led to his rise as a playwright. He became interested in the work of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and in 1891 wrote a well-known essay, The Quintessence of Ibsenism, suggesting Ibsen’s realistic and intellectually lively theater as an alternative to the sterile conventionality of English theater. This essay, along with his other criticism, led to the suggestion that he should try his hand at writing the kind of play he advocated. During this time Shaw also developed an interest in socialism. In 1884, with Beatrice and Sidney Webb, he founded the Fabian Society, which rejected the violent revolutionary tactics of Marxism and sought to bring socialism to England through persuasion and legislation. Its other members included H. G. WELLS and Annie Besant, English theosophist and Indian political leader. Sharp irony, dark comedy, and social themes characterized many of his early plays. In Widowers’ Houses, a young Englishman is dismayed to find out that the father of the woman he loves has made his money by exploiting his tenants in a London slum. In Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Mrs. Warren’s respectable daughter discovers that her mother has made her living as a prostitute and brothel owner. Other early plays, such as Arms and the Man and You Never Can Tell, were dazzling light comedies. Equally pleasant, though more serious, was Candida, in which a woman chooses a clergyman as her husband, instead of a young, exuberant poet. Along with The Philanderer and The Man of Destiny, these plays were collected as Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant in 1898. Shaw’s next plays appeared as Three Plays for Puritans (The
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Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion). Man and Superman (1903) marked the beginning of a new phase in Shaw’s philosophy and drama, which reached beyond social criticism and reflected more spiritual interests, with strong influence from the iconoclastic thinker Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). The story of Man and Superman centers around the socialist intellectual Jack Tanner, who seeks to harness the “life force,” embodied in Ann Whitefield. The famous third act of the play, “Don Juan in Hell,” consists of a series of philosophical discussions about the life force and is often staged on its own. Shaw became an international success after Man and Superman and its successor, John Bull’s Other Island (1904). HARLEY GRANVILLE-BARKER, an actor, playwright, and manager of the Court Theatre in London from 1904–1907, staged and acted in many of Shaw’s plays. In Major Barbara (1905), Shaw tried to demonstrate that one’s beliefs may be fundamentally religious, whether they conform to any established religious orthodoxy or not. In the story, the daughter of a munitions manufacturer, who has been horrified by her father’s work, discovers that his approach to his work is religious, even though he deals in weapons of destruction. At the same time, she realizes that she has been blind to the hypocrisy of her own work at the Salvation Army, which accepts donations from the very people it purports to work against. The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906) was a stinging comedy satirizing the medical profession. Misalliance (1910) explores broken and mismatched relationships. Shaw’s other plays of this period include Getting Married (1908), The ShewingUp of Blanco Posnet (1909), and Fanny’s First Play (1911). With Androcles and the Lion (1913), a delightfully entertaining comedy set against the background of the Roman persecution of the early Christians, Shaw examined what he considered true and false spirituality. In the comedy Pygmalion (1913), a phonetics instructor, Henry Higgins, teaches a simple flower girl
the proper pronunciations of words as a way of proving that mastery of pronunciation is all that is needed to fit into high society. After she has mastered the pronunciations, however, she mingles with high society without any inkling of what is considered appropriate conversation. Pygmalion, Shaw’s greatest commercial success and frequently revived, was the basis of the popular musical My Fair Lady. During World War I, Shaw was an outspoken pacifist. In speeches and writings such as “Common Sense about the War,” he blamed both England and Germany for the bloodshed. His tragic play Heartbreak House (1919), a wartime commentary, portrays a series of upper-class British characters who lack the strength and will to live in reality. Back to Methusaleh (1921), begun during the war, consisted of five plays based on Shaw’s belief in creative evolution. The plays, prefaced with one of Shaw’s characteristic lengthy introductions, examine man’s progress from the Garden of Eden to the year 31,920 A.D. Saint Joan (1923), often considered Shaw’s best play, was a heroic portrayal of Joan of Arc for which Shaw received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The two-act play The Apple Cart (1929) paints a negative picture of politics and poses the question of whether or not human beings can govern themselves. Shaw continued to write plays until his death at age 94, but his later plays met with less success. They include Too Good to Be True (1932), On the Rocks (1933), The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (1935), Geneva (1938), In Good King Charles’ Golden Days (1939), Farfetched Fables (1950), and Why She Would Not (1956). His other works include the novella The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (1932) and The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928).
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Henderson, Archibald, George Bernard Shaw: His
Life and Works, 1911; Holroyd, Michael, Bernard Shaw, 1988; O’Donovan, John, Bernard Shaw, 1983.
Shostakovich, Dmitry (September 25, 1906–August 9, 1975) Composer he prolific Soviet composer Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich wrote fifteen symphonies and countless other musical works, many characterized by dark atmosphere and forceful melody. His compositions were highly favored in the Soviet Union and performed all over the world during his lifetime. Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, to Sophia and Dmitry Shostakovich. He first took a serious interest in music when his mother gave him piano lessons as a boy and was impressed with her son’s talent. As an adolescent he studied under Leonid Nikolayev in the Piano Department at the Petrograd Conservatory. He pursued further music study under Aleksandr Glazunov and Maksimilian Steinberg. Shostakovich’s First Symphony, completed as a project for his diploma in 1925, was first performed at the Leningrad Philharmonia in 1926 and won worldwide acclaim. The music reflected the influence of Tchaikovsky (1840– 3), PAUL HINDEMITH, ALBAN BERG, and SERGEI PROKOFIEV. Shostakovich also began to perform his original piano compositions for the public, including his First Piano Sonata. In 1927, he received a diploma of merit at the Chopin International Competition for Pianists. His Second Symphony, The Dedication to October (1927), marked the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and in 1929 he wrote Third May Day Symphony. Along with symphonies, Shostakovich also began composing operas. His first, The Nose
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(1928), was based on Nikolay Gogol’s satire on tsarist bureaucracy of the same title. The Nose and its successor, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1932), used somewhat more experimental styles than his later work. The latter earned official condemnations from Soviet critics; it was, however, later reworked and presented as Katerina Izmailova. Altough the condemnations hurt Shostakovich, he accepted the criticism (at least outwardly) and began to rework his music using more officially acceptable styles. His compositions followed traditional forms, used bold melodies, and sometimes drew from Eastern European folk songs. In the meantime, however, he had composed his Fourth Symphony (1936) during his time out of favor, and it was not performed until 1961. The dark, somber Fifth Symphony, completed in 1937, restored his favor with Soviet critics and was the first symphony to reflect the tightly constructed melodies of his mature style. Shostakovich subtitled it “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism.” The Seventh Symphony (1941), known as the Leningrad Symphony, was composed as the Germans laid siege to Leningrad. After World War II Shostakovich again fell from official favor for a short time. Along with other Soviet composers, he was denounced at a Soviet music conference (1948). His second fall was short-lived, however. Joseph Stalin died in 1953, the year Shostakovich wrote his Tenth Symphony, and after the dictator’s death he became freer to compose
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what he wished. The Eleventh (1957) and Twelfth (1961) symphonies were written in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and of Lenin, respectively. Shostakovich based his Thirteenth Symphony (1962) on poetry written by YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO. The Fourteenth Symphony, written for a chamber orchestra, explores the subject of death and uses the poetry of FEDERICO GARCı´A LORCA, RAINER MARIA RILKE, the French avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire, and others. In 1971, Shostakovich composed his Fifteenth (and final) Symphony. Among Shostakovich’s other works are three ballets, The Golden Age (1930), Bolt (1931), and The Limpid Stream (1935); Twenty-Four Piano Preludes (1933); Sonata for Cello and Piano, his first chamber composition (1934); First String Quartet (1938); Piano Quintet (1940); the oratorio The Song of the Woods (1949); Second Piano Concerto (1957);
a symphonic poem, The Execution of Stepan Razin (1964); October (1967), a symphonic poem commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution; Fidelity (1970), a series of choral ballads written in honor of the one hundredth anniversary of Lenin’s birth (1970); and many musical scores for motion pictures. During his lifetime, Shostakovich amassed awards too numerous to list in full. They include an honorary doctorate of music from Oxford University, a Gold Medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society, several Stalin Prizes, the Order of Lenin, recognition as a Hero of Socialist Labor 1966, and membership in many international societies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Shostakovich, Dmitry, Dmitry Shostakovich: About Himself and His Times, 1981; Wilson, Elizabeth, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, 1994.
Sibelius, Jean (December 8, 1865–September 20, 1957) Composer ean Sibelius was the twentieth century’s foremost Finnish composer, noted chiefly for his seven symphonies and symphonic poems for orchestra. His work was intensely patriotic, initially influenced by the Romantic tradition, later in his own distinctive style, but always incorporating elements of Finnish landscape, folklore, history, and music. Sibelius was born Johan Julius Christian Sibelius, the middle child of three, in Ha¨meenlinna, south-central Finland, then controlled by Russia. His mother came from a middle-class family, and his father, a surgeon, died during Sibelius’s childhood. Sibelius was an imaginative, introverted, and inquisitive
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child, deeply interested in the natural surroundings in which he grew up. Music also interested him in his youth, and he was known to put on miniature concerts and plays with friends. He attended the Finnish Normal School, one of the first Finnish-language schools. At age 15, Sibelius began taking violin lessons from Gustaf Levander, and his first musical ambition was to become a violinist. After five years of lessons with Levander, Sibelius moved to Helsinki to study law at the Imperial Alexander University. Law quickly proved disagreeable to him, and he turned to studying music at the Helsinki Conservatory, continuing with the violin under Mitrofan Wassiljeff. He soon began performing public-
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ly, and the song “Serenade,” Sibelius’s first published work, appeared in 1888. After his graduation in 1889, he traveled to Berlin to continue his studies. There he discovered the work of Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and RICHARD STRAUSS. Following a brief return to Finland, he next went to Vienna to study under Karl Goldmark and Robert Fuchs. Before his return to Finland in 1892, Sibelius chiefly composed chamber music. His major surviving chamber work is String Quartet in D Minor, Voces Intimae (1909). After his return, he began teaching theory at the Conservatory and married Aino Ja¨rnefelt. His Kullervo Symphony, begun in Vienna, was performed and well received in Finland in 1892. Kullervo and many of Sibelius’s other works draw from the Finnish national epic Kalevala. Sibelius composed his major works of the late nineteenth century, including the symphonic poem Four Legends (1893), the tone poem Lemminka¨inen Suite (1896), Symphony No. 1 in E Minor (1899), and the ambitious tone poem Finlandia (1899), in a nationalistic Romantic style. He frequently borrowed
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rhythm and melody from Finnish poetry and folk songs. Russian authorities deemed Finlandia too nationalistic and banned it; it has since become Sibelius’s most enduring work. In 1897, the Senate granted Sibelius a life pension, enabling him to devote more of his time to composing. Around the turn of the century, Sibelius began to gain fame outside of Finland and to pursue greater independence in style, abandoning the Romantic tradition. He was known to call his composing style, which includes fragmented themes, “my way.” In 1901 Feruccio Busoni conducted his four-movement Symphony No. 2 in D Major in Berlin. His Violin Concerto in D Minor appeared in 1903, as did Valse Triste. The symphonic poem Pohjola’s Daughter (1906) again drew from the Kalevala. Sibelius used tritone in the ill-received Symphony No. 4 in A Minor (1911), one of his most difficult works. Sibelius’s mature works belong to the years immediately after World War I. They include the heroic Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, which features an unusual scherzo in the first movement; Symphony No. 6 in D Minor; and his final symphony, Symphony No. 7 in C Major. Tapiola (1925) was Sibelius’s last major composition. He spent the last twenty-five years of his life in musical silence, and after his death no compositions were found among his papers. If there is any truth to the abundant rumors that Sibelius had written two more symphonies, no evidence has been found to support them. His other works include Symphony No. 3 in C Major (1907); the tone poem Night Ride and Sunrise (1909); Luonnotar (1913), which again drew from the Kalevala; and the impressionistic tone poem The Oceansides (1914).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Johnson, Harold E., Jean Sibelius, 1959; Layton, Robert, Sibelius, 1993; Rickards, Guy, Jean Sibelius, 1997.
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Sickert, Walter (May 31, 1860–January 22, 1942) Painter ne of Britain’s leading modern painters in the first half of the twentieth century, Walter Richard Sickert combined subdued, subtle tones and dimly lit atmosphere in his impressionistic depictions of music hall interiors, nudes, domestic scenes, landscapes, and portraits. Sickert was born in Munich, Bavaria (now Germany). His father was a draftsman, amateur painter, illustrator, and musician. He moved the family to England in 1868, after which Sickert attended several schools. In 1875 he entered King’s College School. Acting occupied his attention before he decided to devote his life to painting, and he even obtained a part as Demetrius in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Sadler’s Wells in 1880. Sickert’s love of the stage manifested itself in his many paintings of theaters, music halls, and cabarets. In 1881 Sickert entered the Slade School of Fine Art in London. The following year he left to study under the American painter and etcher James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), who used subtle tones and colors and was influenced by Japanese art. Eventually, however, Sickert’s enthusiasm for the French Impressionist Edgar Degas (1834–1917), whom he met in 1883, led to a rift with Whistler. Two years later he married his first wife, Ellen Melicent Cobden. Like Whistler, Sickert used low-key colors—earthy browns, oranges, and yellows. In 1886 he showed the first of his music hall interiors with the New English Art Club, a group that formed in opposition to the conservative Royal Academy. A member of the group until 1897, he continued to exhibit with them for many years afterward.
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From 1885 to 1905, and after World War I, Sickert spent a lot of time at Dieppe in northern France, the region that inspired such paintings as Dieppe Races (1924–1926). He returned to London in 1905 and began his association with the French painter Lucien Pissarro, son of the Impressionist Camille Pissarro (1830–1903). In 1911 he founded the Camden Town group, and two years later he founded the London group. For his subjects he chose many music hall interiors and domestic interiors with human figures. Ennui (1914), in muted oranges and yellows, depicts a man sitting pensively at a table while a tired woman leans on a dresser. Impressionistic nudes in dark interiors appear in La Hollandaise (1906), Nude Reclining on a Bed (1904–1905), and Nude Seated on a Couch (1914). During World War I Sickert painted some war scenes, such as The Soldiers of King Albert the Ready (1914). Starting in the 1920s Sickert painted a number of self-portraits, including Lazarus Breaks his Fast: Self-Portrait (1927). Portraits of famous literary and political figures were not uncommon in his later work either. The novelist HUGH WALPOLE (1929), King Edward VIII (1936), actress GWEN FFRANGCONDAVIES (1932–1934), and conductor Sir THOMAS BEECHAM (1935) were all subjects of Sickert’s paintings.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baron, Wendy, Sickert, 1973; Connett, Maureen, Walter Sickert and the Camden Town Group, 1992; Lilly, Marjorie, Sickert: The Painter and His Circle, 1973; Shone, Richard, Walter Sickert, 1988; Sutton, Denys, Walter Sickert: A Biography, 1976.
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Sillitoe, Alan (March 4, 1928– ) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Poet ne of the writers labeled “Angry Young Men” in Britain in the 1950s, Alan Sillitoe created a series of rebellious, working-class heroes in his novels, the most well-known of which is Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He is also the author of numerous volumes of poems and short stories. Sillitoe was born into a working class family in Nottingham, England. He enrolled in school when he was five and left to go to work in a bicycle factory when he was 14. The family’s financial struggles and the drudgery of day-to-day factory work furnished the material for his early works. Sillitoe enlisted in the air force after World War II, serving as a radio operator in Malaya. Upon his return to England, Sillitoe was hospitalized with tuberculosis. During his recuperation, he read and wrote extensively. In 1950, he met his future wife, the American poet Ruth Fainlight. The couple lived in France and Mallorca, Spain. While living in Mallorca (1953–1958), Sillitoe sent some of his poetry to ROBERT GRAVES, who also lived on the island. Graves invited him to his home and commented on his work. Sillitoe’s first volume of poetry, Without Beer or Bread (1957), was published in 1957. The Rats and Other Poems (1960) contained all of these poems with some new additions. “The Rats” exemplifies the political tone of Sillitoe’s early poetry, attacking Britain’s complacency about the existing social order and advocating a revolutionary spirit. The same tone continues in the poems of A Falling Out of Love and Other Poems (1964) and softens somewhat in Love in the Environs of Voronezh (1968). Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) was Sillitoe’s first published novel, and it remains his most widely read work. Its hero is the angry and amoral bicycle factory work-
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er Arthur Seaton. Seaton endures the drudgery of endless and monotonous hours in the factory, and on his Saturdays off engages in affairs and bouts of drunkenness. The novel won an Author’s Club prize the same year. Sillitoe adapted the story into a screenplay, and the resulting film in 1960 won international recognition. Sillitoe’s most famous short story, the title piece of the collection The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, was published in 1959 and received the Hawthornden Prize the following year. The narrator and protagonist, Colin Smith, is a typical Sillitoe character rebelling against established authority. Colin has been sentenced to the Essex Borstal for stealing and finds himself at odds with the administration of the reformatory. The governor of the Borstal chooses him to run a long distance race, but Colin, who feels the administration is using him to suit their own purposes, intentionally lets his competitors cross the finish line before him. As for Sillitoe’s other short fiction, The Ragman’s Daughter (1963) consists of seven stories originally published in various periodicals. His other volumes of short stories include Guzman, Go Home (1968); Men, Women, and Children (1974); The Second Chance (1980); The Far Side of the Street (1988); and Alligator Playground (1997). The central character of the autobiographical novel Key to the Door (1961) is Brian Seaton, older brother of Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’s Arthur. Like Sillitoe, Brian grew up in Nottingham and served with the military in Malaya. The novel traces Brian’s development from his youth to his service in Malaya, drawing heavily from Sillitoe’s own youth. Brian is rebellious, angry at his circumstances, but stifled by his lack of willpower. With The Death of William Posters (1965) and A Tree on Fire (1967), Sillitoe combined
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the rebellious, working-class figure with political action. The novels’ hero is Frank Dawley, a working-class man approaching thirty. Finding his family traps him in circumstances he can no longer tolerate, he leaves his wife and family and ends up living with Pat. Frank keeps an image of an ideal rebel who is not afraid to act, Bill Posters, in the back of his mind. His subsequent affair with Pat leads him to new discoveries about himself, and he leaves her to pursue a life of action. He meets a sympathetic painter, Handley, who introduces him to Myra. The pair travel to Spain and Tangiers, and Dawley takes off with the American radical Shelley Jones to fight with the Algerians against the French. In participating in the revolution, Dawley is able to realize his ideal and rid himself of Bill Posters. Sillitoe has written many other novels, including The General (1960); Road to Volgo-
grad (1964); The Widower’s Son (1977); The Storyteller (1979), about a man’s insanity; The Lost Flying Boat (1983); Last Loves (1990); Leonard’s War (1993); The German Numbers Woman (2000), the story of a blind World War II veteran who monitors short-wave radio communications and breaks up a heroin ring; and A Man of His Time (2004). Among his other works are Life Without Armour (1996), his memoirs; and Collected Poems (1993).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Atherton, Stanley S., Alan Sillitoe: A Critical Assessment, 1979; Hanson, Gillian Mary, Understanding Alan Sillitoe, 1999; Hitchcock, Peter, Working Class Fiction in Theory and Practice: A Reading of Alan Sillitoe, 1989; Penner, Allen R., Alan Sillitoe, 1972; Sillitoe, Alan, Life Without Armour, 1995.
Simon, Marvin Neil (July 4, 1927– ) Playwright, Screenwriter he prolific, award-winning American playwright Neil Simon is widely known for his consistent ability to produce Broadway hits. He is perhaps most famous for his penchant for creating comedy that derives from his upbringing in workingclass New York but has also written more serious plays, notably his autobiographical Eugene trilogy. Simon’s stage works are widely performed around the world, and he has also written numerous adaptations and original screenplays for Hollywood films. Simon holds the record for having the most hits in American theaters, has had more of his plays adapted into films than any other playwright, and is the only playwright who has had four Broadway productions all running at the same time.
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Simon was born into a Jewish family in the Bronx in New York City, where he grew up. His childhood was not particularly happy, as
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his parents’ marriage was somewhat turbulent. His father was a traveling garment salesman. Simon attended Woolside High School, where he was an excellent baseball player and star hitter, and upon his graduation enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces. He was stationed at Lowry Field, Colorado, where he was the sports editor for the campus base paper Rev-Meter in 1945 and 1946. After briefly attending New York University in 1946, he took a short-lived job as a mailroom clerk in the Warner Brothers East Coast office in Manhattan. He soon quit the position to write comedy revues and radio and television scripts with his older brother Danny, whose influence lured him into show business. In the early 1950s, the brothers wrote revues for Camp Tamiment in Pennsylvania. Before long, the pair garnered success writing material for such noted stars as Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968), Jackie Gleason (1916–1987), Phil Silvers (1911–1985), Jerry Lewis (1926– ), and Garry Moore (1915–1993), many of whom had their own television shows. The American comic actor Sid Caesar (1922– ) hired them for his popular television comedy series Your Show of Shows,;here they worked alongside budding young talents such as WOODY ALLEN, Mel Brooks (1926– ), Carl Reiner (1922– ), and Larry Gelbart (1928– ). Simon had dabbled in Broadway as early as the mid-1950s, when he and his brother contributed sketches to the musicals Catch a Star (1955) and New Faces of 1956 (1956). After a time, the two brothers parted ways professionally. Danny went out on his own to pursue writing and directing, and Simon started writing seriously for Broadway. His first Broadway play, Come Blow Your Horn (1961), was about two brothers trying to avoid taking over their father’s fruit business. The show opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in 1961 and ran for 677 performances. His next production, the musical Little Me (1962), starred Caesar, garnered mixed reviews, and was less successful.
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The autobiographical comic romance Barefoot in the Park (1963), however, proved to be another major success for Simon. A story about the marital difficulties of a newlywed couple starring Robert Redford (1936– ) and Elizabeth Ashley (1939– ), the show ran for four years and more than 1,500 performances. Simon’s success as a playwright has not wavered since the 1960s. The Odd Couple (1965), a play originally started by his brother Danny and later given to him to finish, became one of his most famous hits not only on Broadway but as the 1968 film version starring Jack Lemmon (1925–2001) and Walter Matthau (1920–2000). Its success did not end on the big screen, and it was adapted into a popular television series. Star-Spangled Girl (1966) was a satirical play about two radical political activists who pursue the hand of a conservative Southern woman, and Plaza Suite (1968) consisted of a trilogy of one-act sketches set in a hotel suite. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Simon produced a number of plays in a more serious vein (though not devoid of comic elements) than his earlier comedies. A man suffering from a midlife crisis forms the basis of The Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1969), and in The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971), an advertising executive who has recently lost his job suffers a nervous breakdown. The Sunshine Boys (1972) is a story about two former vaudeville partners who reunite. After Simon’s wife died from cancer in 1973, he moved to California. He subsequently married actress Marsha Mason, and his play Chapter Two (1977) followed these turbulent events in his personal life. In 1980, he finished I Ought to Be in Pictures (1980), about a screenwriter who rekindles his relationship with his daughter whom he has not seen in many years. The comedy Fools (1981) is about a teacher who tries to educate the foolish inhabitants of a Ukrainian village. In 1986, Simon completed the last play in his autobiographical Eugene trilogy. Through the character of Eugene Morris Jerome, he chronicled his childhood, military service,
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and early years in show business in Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1985), and Broadway Bound (1986). For the comedy Lost in Yonkers (1991), Simon won a Pulitzer Prize, and it was followed by the comedies Jake’s Women (1992), The Goodbye Girl (1993), Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993), Proposals (1997), The Dinner Party (2000), and 45 Seconds from Broadway (2001). Simon’s other plays include the comedies There’s a Girl in My Soup (1967) and The Gingerbread Lady (1970); the farcical comedy Rumors (1988); the musical comedy They’re Playing Our Song (1979); and London Suite, adapted into a television movie in 1996. He has also written books for the musical comedies Sweet Charity (1966) and Promises, Promises (1968). Aside from his successful career as a Broadway playwright, Simon has written numerous adaptations of his own plays and the works of others for the big screen, as well as original screenplays. Among his originals are The Out of Towners (1970), about an Ohio couple whose dream trip to New York, where husband George is about to take a new job, turns into a nightmare; Murder by Death (1976), about a millionaire who invites five world-famous detectives to his home to eat dinner and solve a murder; The Cheap Detective (1978), a parody of the Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) films The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942); Seems Like Old Times (1980), about a writer who is kid-
napped and forced to rob a bank, thus rendering him a fugitive who is reduced to seeking help from his public-defender ex-wife; Max Dugan Returns (1983), about a man dying from a terminal heart ailment who unexpectedly returns to the wife and daughter he left years earlier; the baseball comedy The Slugger’s Wife (1985); The Marrying Man (1991), the story of a playboy and a nightclub singer who are forced to marry against their wishes by mobster Bugsy Siegel, who finds them in bed together; and the sequel The Odd Couple II (1998). To date, Simon has won four Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Screen Writers Guild Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. He holds honorary degrees from Hofstra University and Williams College, owns the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on Broadway, and is the namesake of the Neil Simon Theater in New York. Simon is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Writers Guild of America. His Rewrites: A Memoir was published in 1996, and The Play Goes On: A Memoir, was published in 1999.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bloom, Harold, ed., Neil Simon, 2002; Johnson, Robert K., Neil Simon, 1983; Konas, Gary, ed., Neil Simon: A Casebook, 1997; Koprince, Susan Fehrenbacher, Understanding Neil Simon, 2002; McGovern, Edythe M., Neil Simon: A Critical Study, 1979; Simon, Neil, Rewrites: A Memoir, 1996; Simon, Neil, The Play Goes On: A Memoir, 1999.
Sinatra, Francis Albert (December 12, 1915–May 14, 1998) Singer, Actor
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rank Sinatra was indisputably the most popular and influential American singer in the mid-twentieth century.
Known at various times by the nicknames “The Voice,” “Chairman of the Board,” and “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” he wowed international audi-
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ences with his warm, soulful, and intimate vocal renditions of music that spanned from the Big Band era to the advent of rock and roll. Sinatra was also a popular and prolific actor in Hollywood films. Sinatra was an only child, born Francis Albert Sinatra in Hoboken, New Jersey. His father was a fireman of Sicilian ancestry. His mother was Genoan, and both parents were immigrants to the United States. Sinatra’s family was fairly well off for people living in his neighborhood, and they moved to the German-Irish quarter when he was twelve. Although he attended school, he did not graduate. He worked in a series of different jobs, including a stint at the Jersey Observer newspaper (one of his earliest ambitions was to become a journalist) and as a riveter at the Tietjan and Lang shipyard. When he was just fourteen, he met the woman who would later become his first wife in 1939, Nancy Barbato. In the early 1930s, Sinatra began singing at family parties, saloons, and local clubs. After watching a performance by BING CROSBY, Sinatra decided that he wanted to become a singer. His determination to make it in show business upset his parents—at least at first— and he left home when he was seventeen. Sinatra delivered one of his earliest professional performances at the Hoboken Union Club. In 1935, he joined the local singing group The Three Flashes. The group soon changed its name to the Hoboken Four and earned an appearance on radio personality Edward Bowes’s (1874–1976) popular Major Bowes Amateur Hour. The Hoboken Four
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won the competition with a rendition of “Shine,” and with the victory came a Major Bowes road show that led to performances on radio shows and in public venues around the country. The band’s success was short-lived, however, as Sinatra’s differences with other group members sparked him to leave before the end of the year. His next job was as a singing waiter and emcee at the Rustic Cabin, a roadhouse near Englewood, New Jersey. This position offered him more exposure than it would seem, as radio station WNEW broadcast his songs throughout New York City. In March of 1939, Sinatra recorded his first song, “Our Love,” with the Frank Mane Band. A few months later, bandleader and trumpeter Harry James (1916–1983), who had recently left BENNY GOODMAN’S band to form his own entourage, heard Sinatra perform at the Rustic Cabin. James signed him to a year-long contract, and Sinatra recorded a handful of songs for him. Among these was “All Or Nothing at All,” which became a hit several years later. Later that year, Sinatra parted ways with James and joined Big Band musician and bandleader Tommy Dorsey’s (1905–1956) group. From that point on, Sinatra was an enormous success. His performances at the Astor Hotel’s nightclub in Manhattan drew large crowds. Before he parted ways with Dorsey, the number of songs he recorded had surpassed ninety. “I’ll Never Smile Again” from the Dorsey era stayed at the top of the music charts for twelve weeks, and “There Are Such Things” was another popular tune from the 1940s. Sinatra also made two movies with Dorsey, Las Vegas Nights (1941) and Ship Ahoy (1942). By early 1942, Sinatra once again found himself at odds with the group he was working with and left Dorsey’s band to record on his own. Musical arranger Axel Stordahl (1913–1963) took on the role of his main musical architect, a position he retained for the
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next ten years. Working with Stordahl, Sinatra recorded four records as a solo artist in 1942. In 1943, Sinatra signed with Columbia as a solo artist, and his recording efforts brought immediate success. Among his hits from this period is “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week.” He appeared regularly in radio programs, sang at large venues across America, and soon overtook his idol Crosby as the most popular singer in America. Between 1940 and 1943, Sinatra had more than twenty top-ten singles to his credit. It was during this time period that he earned the nickname “The Voice” and the constant screeching praises of a generation of teenage girls known as the “bobbysoxers.” Though Sinatra had already appeared in several films by 1944, it was not until then that he began to attract much notice on the big screen. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Louis B. Mayer (1882–1957) purchased a contract Sinatra had signed earlier with RKO. Sinatra costarred with actor Gene Kelly (1912–1996) in the major screen success Anchors Aweigh (1945), marking the first in a number of films in which the two would appear together. Others, such as director Busby Berkeley’s (1895–1976) Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) and On the Town (1949) also proved popular. Sinatra worked briefly again with RKO for the short film The House I Live In (1945), directed by Mervin LeRoy (1900–1987), which won an honorary Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award. He sang “Ol’ Man River” in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), a film about the American composer JEROME KERN, and starred as Danny Webson Miller in director Richard Whorf’s (1906–1966) It Happened in Brooklyn (1947). Sinatra also appeared in The Miracle of the Bells and The Kissing Bandit, both in 1948. While making films, Sinatra picked up an extremely hectic touring schedule, though he took a sabbatical from the stage between 1948 and 1950. In 1946, he recorded his first concept album, Voice of Frank Sinatra. The same year, he began hosting his own radio
show. Following his brief absence from public performances, Sinatra again resumed a vigorous touring schedule. In 1950, his vocal cords hemorrhaged from severe strain, threatening to end his singing career. Sinatra recuperated, however, and resumed performing in major venues both in the United States and Europe. The year 1950 also marked the premiere of the weekly Saturday night The Frank Sinatra Show on CBS television. Soon thereafter, Sinatra had another regular radio series on CBS entitled Meet Frank Sinatra. The show was short-lived, however, as it held a competing time slot with the popular The Milton Berle Show. Although Sinatra’s attractiveness to young audiences waned, he continued to tour and record popular hits such as “Goodnight Irene,” “Castle Rock,” and “Bim Bam Baby.” In 1951, Sinatra married his second wife, actress Ava Gardner (1922–1990). Their shortlived and stormy marriage ended in divorce in 1957, though the two had been separated since 1953. All aspects of his career—film, recording, and performing—seemed to decline at this time, and both Columbia and MCA dropped him from their rosters in 1952. Sinatra’s public slump was a short one, however, and he once again garnered success with his portrayal of Private Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). The performance earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The same year, Capitol Records picked him up, and he recorded a number of albums over the next few years, including In the Wee Small Hours (1954), his first collaboration with bandleader Nelson Riddle (1921–1985); Swing Easy! (1955); Songs For Swingin’ Lovers (1955), also with Riddle and featuring the song “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”; Come Fly With Me (1957), featuring such Sinatra classics as “Moonlight in Vermont” and “Autumn in New York”; Where Are You? (1957); Come Dance With Me (1958), the title track of which won Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 1960 Grammy Awards; and Only The Lonely (1958), one of his most somber and highly acclaimed albums
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featuring his longtime staple “Angel Eyes.” Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color (1956) was the first album recorded at the Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles. His albums and songs from this period broke records for success, spending weeks in the top ten on the Billboard charts. On screen, Sinatra delivered a string of successes as well. Among them was Suddenly (1954), in which he played the assassin John Baron, who is trying to kill the president of the United States as he passes through a small town. The following year, he played Alfred Boone in Not As a Stranger. His costarring role with MARLON BRANDO in Guys and Dolls (1955) and the romantic musical The Tender Trap (1955), in which he starred with Debbie Reynolds (1932– ), were also noteworthy films from that period. Perhaps most remembered of all of his 1955 films, however, is his portrayal of recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine in the Austrian director Otto Preminger’s (1906–1986) The Man with the Golden Arm, in which he delivered one of his most acclaimed performances and for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Still in 1955, he played a stage manager in Our Town, a television drama based on T HORNTON WILDER’S play. Sinatra disliked the length of time involved in television production (his impatience with filming multiple takes for the big screen had long before earned him the nickname “One-Take Charlie”) and did not accept a starring dramatic role on television until Contract on Cherry Street (1977). In 1959, ABC aired the first of four Frank Sinatra Timex specials, which featured appearances by prominent public figures of the day. In 1956, Sinatra costarred with Crosby and Grace Kelly (1929–1982) in the film version of Philip Barry’s (1896–1949) High Society. In 1957, Sinatra appeared as comedian Joe E. Lewis in The Joker Is Wild. For his performance as Joey Evans in Pal Joey (1957), Sina-
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tra won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy. The following year, he starred in Kings Go Forth (1958) and as Dave Hirsh in Vincente Minnelli’s (1903–1986) Some Came Running (1958) with Dean Martin (1917–1955) and Shirley MacLaine (1934– ). These performances were followed by roles in FRANK CAPRA’S A Hole In the Head (1959), the World War II film Never So Few (1959), and LeRoy’s The Devil at Four O’Clock (1961). In 1960, Sinatra released the successful album Nice ’n’ Easy. He left Capitol and formed his own record label, Reprise Records, and its first recording was Ring-A-Ding-Ding (1960). I Remember Tommy (1961) was a tribute album to Dorsey, and the following year, Sinatra and COUNT BASIE teamed up to record Sinatra-Basie. This popular and successful release would prompt them to rejoin two years later for a follow-up It Might As Well Be Swing (1964), arranged by Quincy Jones (1933– ). One of Sinatra’s more daring albums from the mid-1960s was The Concert Sinatra (1963). Other notable albums from this period are Sinatra’s Sinatra (1963), an album of remakes; Moonlight Sinatra (1965); September of My Years (1965); and Sinatra at the Sands (1966). The last of these was recorded at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas with Jones’s arrangements and Basie’s musical backing, and it was Sinatra’s first commercial live album. He recorded Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim (1967) with Brazilian artist Antonio Carlos Jobim (1927–1994). “Somethin’ Stupid,” a chart-topping duet with his daughter Nancy, was another product of 1967, as was his collaboration with DUKE ELLINGTON on the album Francis A. Sinatra & Edward K. Ellington. Cycles (1968) was a folk-inspired record that featured songs by JONI MITCHELL and others, and The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas followed the same year. Man Alone & Other Songs of Rod McKuen (1969) featured Rod McKuen’s (1933– ) songs. Sinatra & Company and Watertown were both released in 1969. Also in
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the 1960s, Sinatra founded The Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre, for which he produced scores for Broadway musicals. Sinatra’s films of the early 1960s include Can-Can (1960); Ocean’s Eleven (1960); most notably director John Frankenheimer’s (1930–2002) classic thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962); and Come Blow Your Horn (1963), Norman Lear’s (1922– ) film adaptation of a NEIL SIMON play. In 1965, Sinatra made his directorial debut with the anti-war film None But The Brave. Von Ryan’s Express (1965), Tony Rome (1967) and its sequel Lady in Cement (1968), and The Detective (1968) finished out the decade for Sinatra’s films. After Dirty Dingus Magee (1970), Sinatra took a seven-year sabbatical from the big screen. Sinatra announced his retirement from show business in 1971. Two years later, however, he emerged from retirement to record Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back and appeared in a television special of the same title. Sinatra continued to make international appearances on the stage and on television in spite of his alleged retirement. Later albums include Some Nice Things I’ve Missed (1973); Main Event - Live (1974), recorded from a 1974 appearance at Madison Square Garden; Trilogy: Past Present Future (1979), a three-album recording that was Sinatra’s first in six years; She Shot Me Down (1981); L.A. Is My Lady (1984), in which he again worked with Jones; Duets (1993), featuring “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” recorded with lead singer Bono of the popular Irish rock band U2; and Duets II (1994), his last studio recording. In 1980, Sinatra resumed his film appearances, including The First Deadly Sin (1980), which was to be his last starring role. In the 1950s and 1960s, Sinatra was part of a lineup dubbed the “Rat Pack” that included Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925–1990), Peter Lawford (1923–1984), and Joey Bishop (1918– ). The “Rat Pack” appeared together in films and on stage, and Cannonball Run II (1984) marked Sinatra’s final appearance with some of its members. Sinatra’s final acting role came in
1987 when he guest-starred in a television episode of Magnum, P.I. The last years of Sinatra’s life were marked by celebratory tours, highly publicized birthday bashes, and television and musical tributes. He gave his last public concerts in Japan’s Fukuoka Dome in 1994. In 1996 and 1997, Sinatra had two heart attacks and a stroke. After suffering a third heart attack, he died on May 14, 1998. Attendees of his funeral in Beverly Hills read like an all-star cast, though a private ceremony was held later that day at St. Theresa’s Catholic Church in Palm Springs. His tombstone bears the words “The Best Is Yet to Come.” Off stage and off the screen, Sinatra led a colorful life. He was married four times—to childhood sweetheart Nancy Barbato, to Gardner, to actress Mia Farrow (1945– ), and to Barbara Blakeley Marx (1927– ). His marriage to Marx proved to be the happiest and lasted until his death. Sinatra also had relationships with several other actresses, none of which led to marriage. In 1963, Sinatra’s son Frank, Jr., was kidnapped but returned when his father paid the ransom money. His friendships with mafia figures were well-known, but, though FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972) kept a file on him, he was never charged with criminal activity. Although he initially supported the Democratic Party, he turned his allegiance to the Republican Party later in his life. He was an ardent supporter of President Ronald Reagan and donated considerable sums of money to his presidential campaign. As is inevitable with widespread fame, Sinatra was the center of more than one public controversy during his lifetime. At times, the press portrayed him as a womanizer and a hot-tempered thug, and his associations with mafia figures were always the subject of gossip. He was also noted, however, for his early involvement in civil rights issues and his frequent benefit performances for charities. He played a benefit for civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) in 1961, per-
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formed in events to raise money for children’s charities, and raised money for a medical center following his father’s death in 1969. In April 1971, Sinatra was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his humanitarian and charitable efforts. The following year, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild. In 1983, Sinatra won the Kennedy Center Honors. Two years later, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and an honorary doctorate from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. Sinatra was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1994 Grammy Awards, and in 1997 he received the United States Congressional Gold Medal.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ackelson, Richard W., Frank Sinatra: A Complete Recording History of Techniques, Songs, Com-
posers, Lyricists, Arrangers, Sessions, and First-Issue Albums, 1939-1984, 1992; Britt, Stan, Frank Sinatra: A Celebration, 1995; Friedwald, Will, Sinatra! The Song is You: A Singer’s Art, 1995; Havers, Richard, Sinatra, 2004; Ingham, Chris, The Rough Guide to Frank Sinatra, 2005; Irwin, Lew, Sinatra: The Pictorial Biography, 1995; Lahr, John, Sinatra: The Artist and the Man, 1997; Lonstein, Albert I., Sinatra, 1983; Oxford University Press, The Frank Sinatra Reader, 1995; Rojeck, Chris, Frank Sinatra, 2004; Silva, Luiz Carlos do Nascimento, Put Your Dreams Away: A Frank Sinatra Discography, 2000; Sinatra, Nancy, Frank Sinatra: My Father, 1985; Summers, Anthony, Sinatra: The Life, 2005; www.franksinatra.com. www.franksinatrafoundation.com. www.nancysinatra.com. www.sinatrafamily.com.
Sitwell, Edith (September 7, 1887–December 9, 1964) Poet, Novelist, Critic, Editor dith Louisa Sitwell, known during her time for her eccentric behavior, Elizabethan dress, sharp pen, and rhythmic poetry, was the most talented member of a distinguished family of poets and writers. Her best-known poems include “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Still Falls the Rain.” Sitwell was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, the eldest of three children. She was a lonely, shy, and temperamental child, more attached to her family’s servants than to her parents, who favored her younger brothers. Reading, which she learned at age 3, helped fill the void left by the lack of attention shown her. She grew close to her two younger brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell,
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who later became distinguished writers themselves. Sitwell also formed a friendship with a governess, Helen Rootham, who liked poetry and encouraged her to read and write, introducing her to French Symbolist poetry. In 1914 Sitwell left the unhappiness of her home for London, where, having abandoned her earlier idea of pursuing music, she hoped to establish herself as a poet. Her early published poems, such as “The Drunkard” and “The Mother,” appeared in the Daily Mirror and were collected as The Mother in 1915. Other volumes soon followed, including Clowns’ Houses (1918), The Wooden Pegasus (1920), and Bucolic Comedies (1923).
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Edith Sitwell (쑖 SV-Bilderdienst / The Image Works)
In London she developed a strong dislike for Georgian poetry. With her brothers she began to run Wheels, a yearly anthology of more
avant-garde work published in response to the popular volume Georgian Poetry. Among the contributors to Wheels was ALDOUS
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HUXLEY. The bold anthology generated the first of the public literary battles from which Sitwell never seemed far. Her pen was merciless toward critics of her poetry, and she was adept at finding ways to capitalize on negative publicity. In addition to her published work, she began to give lectures and poetry readings. A disciplined poet, Sitwell devoted a great deal of time to refining technique, crafting her verse to bring out rhythm and sound. Her early poetry reflects her efforts to develop her style and was influenced in part by her reading of French Symbolist poets such as Paul Verlaine, Ste´phane Mallarme´, and Arthur Rimbaud. Sir WILLIAM WALTON composed music for the poems of one of her early volumes, Fac¸ade (1923), and she read the poetry to his music in 1923 at its first of many public performances. The Sleeping Beauty (1924), a lengthy poem loosely based on the fairy tale, evokes memories of childhood experiences and imagination and laments the destruction of youthful innocence. The Sleeping Beauty was followed by the collections Troy Park (1925), which contained many autobiographical elements, and Rustic Elegies (1927). The title poem of Gold Coast Customs (1929) is a harsh, pointed, and rhythmic poem incorporating imagery from West African tribal cultures. Sitwell developed an interest in Ghana (formerly the British Gold Coast Colony) after a visit to the British museum, where she saw African tribal relics. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1930. Sitwell’s collections Street Songs (1942), Green Song (1944), and Song of the Cold
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(1945), written during World War II, include much of her war poetry and are considered by many to be her best work. Her famous poems from this era include “Still Falls the Rain,” about the bombing of London; and “Dirge for the New Sunrise” and “The Shadow of Cain,” both inspired by the use of the atomic bomb in Japan. Sitwell’s mature poetry was increasingly tinged with religious symbolism, and in 1955 she joined the Catholic Church. Her later poetry appeared in such volumes as Gardeners and Astronomers (1953) and The Outcasts (1962; published in the United States as Music and Ceremonies in 1963). Although she considered herself primarily a poet, Sitwell wrote a number of prose works. They include the biography Alexander Pope (1930), a pioneering effort in the rehabilitation of a major poet neglected in the early twentieth century; Bath (1932); The English Eccentrics (1933); I Live Under a Black Sun (1937), a novel based on the life of Jonathan Swift and set during World War I; A Poet’s Notebook (1943); Fanfare for Elizabeth (1946); and A Notebook on William Shakespeare (1948). She was made Dame of the British Empire in 1954 and died of heart failure in 1964.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Elborn, Geoffrey, Edith Sitwell, A Biography (1987); Salter, Elizabeth, Edith Sitwell, 1979; Sitwell, Dame Edith, Taken Care Of: An Autobiography, 1966.
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Solti, Georg (October 21, 1912–September 5, 1997) Conductor, Pianist ir Georg Solti enjoyed a long and successful career as one of the twentieth century’s most highly regarded conductors. Solti, of Hungarian background, was best known for his interpretations of German opera and symphonies. He also recorded many of his works, both as a pianist and a conductor. Solti was born Gyo¨rgy Solti into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. His father changed the family surname—Stern—to Solti, a name taken from a local town. His father observed the Jewish faith religiously, but Solti took after his less devout mother. He attended school in Budapest as a child. His mother loved music and tried to interest him in piano lessons, but her first attempt failed to interest him in regular practice. Solti was more interested the second time around. Solti eventually settled on a career in music and enrolled in the Liszt Academy. There he studied piano under BE´ LA BARTO´ K and composition under Zolta´n Koda´ly. Solti also studied
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at the Erno¨ Fodor School of Music. At the age of 18, he joined the staff of the Budapest Opera, where he debuted as a conductor with Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro in 1938. As a Jew in an increasingly Nazi-dominated Europe, he had difficulty finding positions. He passed the years of World War II in Zu¨rich and in 1942 won the Geneva International Piano Competition. Despite criticism, he took a post as musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946. At Munich he premiered PAUL HINDEMITH’s Mathis der Maler and began to develop his symphonic repertoire. He also met RICHARD STRAUSS, whose works (Don Quixote, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Salome, and others) he later conducted many times. While in Munich, Solti also began to make recordings, the first of which was a Beethoven sonata for Decca in Zu¨rich. After leaving Munich in 1952, he went to the Frankfurt Opera, where he debuted with Carmen and conducted until 1960. From 1961 to 1971 he conducted the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in London. Among his productions there were Mozart’s Don Giovanni, designed by FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI (1962); the British premiere of ARNOLD SCHOENBERG’s Moses and Aaron; a production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier directed by LUCHINO VISCONTI (1965–1966 season); and Beethoven’s Fidelio (1967). Solti was knighted in 1971 and became a British citizen the following year. During this time he also appeared as a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1969 Solti accepted the post he was to hold the longest, as musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In his autobiography, he described his years there as the “happiest . . . of my professional life.” His precise and disciplined approach to directing helped revitalize the orchestra. Solti was also musical director of the Orchestra of Paris
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(1972– 5), musical advisor to the Paris Opera (1971–1973), and principal conductor and artistic director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1979–1983). Solti gave concerts as a guest conductor all over the world. In 1991 he conducted a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem performed on the two hundredth anniversary of Mozart’s death. In 1995 he gave several Barto´k concerts in London and Paris to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Barto´k’s death. He is best known as a conductor for
his operas and symphonies by Mozart, Gustav Mahler, Franz Schubert, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Arnold Schoenberg, and others. His many acclaimed recordings include all of Beethoven’s symphonies, Wagner’s opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung (Der Ring des Nibelungen), and Das Rheingold.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Solti, Sir Georg, Memoirs, 1997.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr (December 11, 1918– ) Novelist, Essayist leksandr Solzhenitsyn revealed the full human meaning of the atrocities of the Soviet prison camps, or gulags, in novels such as One Day in the Life of Ivan
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (쑖 Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works)
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Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago more thoroughly than any other Russian writer. His works portray the spiritual degradation Russians suffered under Communism and were largely responsible for bringing attention to the Soviet gulags in the West. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.” Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia to Cossack parents. His father died before his birth, and he was brought up for the most part by his mother. After graduating in mathematics and physics from the University of Rostov, Solzhenitsyn entered the Soviet army in 1941 and fought in World War II. In 1945, Soviet authorities arrested him for writing a derogatory remark about Joseph Stalin in a letter to a friend. Solzhenitsyn spent the years between 1945 and 1953 in Soviet gulags, or prison camps, and the next three years as an exile in Kazakhstan. He was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer in 1953 but miraculously recovered. In 1956 he moved to Ryazan and taught mathematics.
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Solzhenitsyn’s rehabilitation in 1956 was part of the mass rehabilitations that occurred after Stalin’s death in 1953. His first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) depicts the horrifying conditions in a Siberian gulag. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, the principal character, was initially arrested for allowing himself to be taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II. The novel was an instant success and, for a time, acceptable to authorities anxious to paint the new government under Khrushchev as a more tolerant regime than Stalin’s. However, after 1963 official denunciation of Solzhenitsyn’s work forced him to publish underground. Several novels, including The First Circle and Cancer Ward, were smuggled to the West and published, intensifying criticism of him at home. The First Circle described the plight of the many scientists and intellectuals who were sent to special prisons and forced to conduct research that conformed to Soviet demands or be sent to the squalid forced-labor camps. The title comes from the first circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, which is reserved in part for those who have won fame by the work of their minds. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers in 1969 and remained a vocal critic of Soviet policy. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 but could not leave the country to accept it for fear he would not be allowed to return. During and after his years of imprisonment, Solzhenitsyn secretly collected accounts of arbitrary arrests, torture, and atrocities that befell other prisoners. Coupled with his own experiences, these accounts provided the material for his “experiment in literary investigation,” The Gulag Archipelago. Along with its
succeeding parts, the novel documents the experiences of prisoners in the Soviet system of labor camps, describes the web of prison camps and actions of the secret police, and recounts incidents of terrorism. The publication of the first part in France in 1973 led to charges of treason against Solzhenitsyn and his exile from the Soviet Union in 1974. After living briefly in Zu¨rich, he moved to an isolated home in Cavendish, Vermont, where he completed a three-volume literary history of Russia during World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. The first volume in the series, published in 1983, was an expanded edition of August 1914 (1971), which describes Germany’s defeat of the Russian Army at the Battle of Tannenburg. Lenin in Zu¨rich, a novel depicting the Soviet revolutionary’s years in exile in Zu¨rich before the Bolshevik Revolution, was published in 1975. Solzhenitsyn has consistently maintained objections to both Western corporate capitalism and Soviet Communism as well as the oligarchic structure of the post-Soviet Russian government. His nonfiction works include his memoirs The Oak and the Calf (1980), The Mortal Danger (1980), and ‘The Russian Question’ at the End of the 20th Century (1995). Soviet officials restored his citizenship in 1990 and dropped the treason charges the following year. He returned to Russia in 1994 after finishing The Red Wheel and continues to write.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bloom, Harold, ed., Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, 2001; Grazzini, Giovanni, Solzhenitsyn, 1971; Pearce, Joseph, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, 2001; Scammell, Michael, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, 1984.
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Sondheim, Stephen Joshua (March 22, 1930– ) Composer he Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim, still active in the twenty-first century, was the leading American stage musical composer in the second half of the twentieth century. Famous for the scores to such productions as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday in the Park with George, Sondheim also wrote the lyrics for the Broadway classic West Side Story. Off the Broadway stage, his songs are frequently performed and recorded by musical artists. Sondheim was an only child born into an Orthodox Jewish family to Herbert and Janet “Foxy” Sondheim in New York City. He spent his early childhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His father was a dress manufacturer who left the family when Sondheim was ten. His mother was of Orthodox Jewish background, but Sondheim was not brought up with any religious affiliation. Soon after his father left, she and Sondheim moved to a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His relationship with his mother was strained throughout his life. Sondheim first became interested in the theater after watching JEROME KERN’S final Broadway musical, Very Warm for May (1939). Around the time his father left the family, he befriended Jimmy Hammerstein, son of the lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960). The latter became the father figure that Sondheim never had and significantly contributed to his love of the theater. At Hammerstein’s show South Pacific (1949), Sondheim met Harold (Hal) Prince (1928– ), the future director of many of his own shows. During his high school years, Sondheim attended the private Quaker preparatory George School in Pennsylvania. There he wrote the musical comedy By George, based
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on events taking place at the school. Encouraged by positive reaction from his friends, Sondheim showed the script to the elder Hammerstein, who sat down with the boy and spent the afternoon critiquing it. Sondheim soon became Hammerstein’s informal student, and Hammerstein assigned him to write four musicals that were never produced. Sondheim attended Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1950. While at Williams, he won the Hutchinson Prize. The two-year fellowship enabled him to study with the American composer Milton Babbitt (1916– ), a pioneer in electronic and serial music. Following his studies, Sondheim experimented with various forms of music as he tried to launch his career. He auditioned songs and also wrote music for nine episodes of the television series Topper in 1953 and 1954. In 1954, Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics for Saturday Night, which was never produced until 1997 at the Bridewell Theatre in London. It was recorded in 1998 and produced as an Off-Broadway show in 2000. It was not until he wrote the lyrics to the enormously popular West Side Story (1957) that Sondheim broke through to the big time. Directed by JEROME ROBBINS with music by LEONARD BERNSTEIN and a book by Arthur Laurents (1918– ), the show ran for more than seven hundred performances. Sondheim scored another hit with lyrics for the musical Gypsy (1959), with music by the British-American songwriter Jules Styne (1905–1994). Starring Ethel Merman (1908–1984), it, too, ran for more than seven hundred performances. Up until the farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Sondheim had only written lyrics, with collaborators lending the music. The musical was
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based on the ancient Roman playwright Plautus’s farces with a book by the American theater writer Bert Shevelove (1915–1981) and the American comedy writer Larry Gelbart (1928– ). The show was moderately successful and won several Tony Awards. Sondheim’s next major effort for Broadway, Anyone Can Whistle (1964), did not fare as well. The following year, he wrote the lyrics for Do I Hear a Waltz? with music by RICHARD RODGERS, marking the final time he did not write the music to accompany his lyrics. In 1970, Sondheim began an eleven-year collaboration with Hal Prince, the producer whom he had met more than twenty years earlier at Hammerstein’s show. Their work was largely experimental for Broadway, and also quite successful for the most part. Company (1970) was a plotless concept/theme musical, as was Follies (1971). The latter was packed full of songs reminiscent of the works of earlier composers. A Little Night Music (1973), based on Swedish director INGMAR BERGMAN’S film Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), became one of Sondheim’s biggest successes and produced the hit “Send in the Clowns” for the American singer Judy Collins (1939– ). To date, the song remains Sondheim’s only Top 40 hit. Pacific Overtures followed in 1976 and presented an unconventional depiction of the Westernization of Japan. Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) with libretto by Hugh Wheeler (1912–1987) was based on Christopher Bond’s 1973 stage version and was another big success for Sondheim. Merrily We Roll Along (1981), his last collaboration with Prince until the late 1990s, was Sondheim’s most traditional musical score but was a Broadway flop. Seeking a change in direction, Sondheim next collaborated with the American librettist James Lapine (1949– ), whose more avant-
garde flavor attracted him at the time. The pair produced the hit Sunday in the Park With George (1984), based on the life of the French Neo-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat (1859–1891). The musical score was unique in that Sondheim styled it on Seurat’s painting methods. The following year, the show won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. Sondheim and Lapine also collaborated on the fairy tale Into the Woods (1987) and on Passion (1994). In the late 1990s, Sondheim again began working with Prince for Wise Guys, a musical comedy about con artist brothers Addison Mizner (1872–1933; an architect) and Wilson Mizner (1876–1933; a playwright and entrepreneur). The show was retitled Bounce! in 2003 and ran in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Sondheim is still working on the show, which has yet to make it to Broadway. Sondheim’s music is noted for its complex polyphony in vocals, intricate melodies, and angular harmonies. In spite of his late breakthrough from simply writing lyrics to composing music as well, he is considered one of the most complex musicians writing for Broadway. His love of films has generally not included screen musicals, and though his songs have appeared in Hollywood film and television scores, he has written relatively little specifically for broadcast media.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gordon, Joanne Lesley, Art Isn’t Easy: The Achievement of Stephen Sondheim, 1990; Gottfried, Martin, Sondheim, 2000; Secrest, Meryle. Stephen Sondheim: A Life, 1998; Swayne, Steve, How Sondheim Found His Sound, 2005; Zadan, Craig, Sondheim & Co., 1986. www.sondheim.com. www.sondheim.org.
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Soyinka, Wole (July 13, 1934– ) Playwright, Novelist, Poet, Essayist
Wole Soyinka (right) (쑖 Topham / The Image Works)
he Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka is best known for his plays, which incorporate Western literary style and traditional Yoruba myth in depictions of the modern Nigerian cultural and political climate. He was the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1986), and the prize committee described him as one “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.” Soyinka was born Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka in Abeokuta, Nigeria. His mother was a trader and his father a school supervisor. He is a member of the Yoruba people, a major ethnic group that composes one-fifth of Nigeria’s population and inhabits the southwestern region of the country. After attending primary school, he studied at Government College and University College in nearby Ibadan and later at the University of Leeds in En-
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gland. After graduating from the latter with a degree in English literature in 1957, he served as a play reader in the Royal Court Theatre in London until his return to Nigeria two years later. In 1958 he married Barbara Dickson. Soyinka’s one-act play Swamp Dwellers, along with the comedy The Lion and the Jewel, was produced in London in 1959 and in Ibadan the following year, and both appeared in print in 1963. The former, set in a generation when the young begin to abandon tribal village life and move to the cities, challenged traditional religion. The Lion and the Jewel dramatizes the conflict between tribal tradition and encroaching Western influence in the dilemma of a young woman, who ultimately chooses an older, traditional man over her young, Westernized lover. When he returned to Nigeria he organized a theater group, The 1960 Masks, which consist-
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ed largely of young, educated actors. He founded the Orisun Theatre in 1964 and served as editor of the literary journal Black Orpheus from 1961 to 1964. Some of his poems appeared in Langston Hughes’s African Treasury in 1960. In addition to writing and producing his own plays, he began a long career of teaching at universities. Soyinka played the roles of the Forest Father and Obaniji in the opening production of his first major play, A Dance of the Forests (1960), a lavish and complex drama that incorporates Yoruba myth and tradition in both its content and dramatic style. Through the character of the deity Forest Father, who poses as a clerk trying to unmask corruption, Soyinka presented a cyclical view of history that examined the actions of historical figures and the roles of traditional gods and spirits, connecting corrupt figures of Nigeria’s past with those of the present in an unflattering picture of both. The play won a prize from Encounter magazine. The central character in The Road (published in 1965) is an ex-Christian professor, who has apparently nursed the victim of an accident back to health, but in reality his death is in suspension. The professor maintains a sphere of influence over a small group of people who take palm-wine communion with him at night in the forest, all of them at various stages of knowledge about death, and he aims to eradicate the fear of that ultimate fate and prepare all of them for it. The story culminates in the dramatic stabbing death of the professor at the hands of a thug. Kongi’s Harvest (1967) is a satire on the Nigerian political climate. The two main characters are symbolic of the old and new orders: Oba Danlola, an imprisoned king representative of the old order, and Kongi, the authoritarian dictator representative of the new. Soyinka’s other early plays include The Trials of Brother Jero (1960), a satire of a dishonest religious charlatan, Brother Jeroboam; The Strong Breed (1963); and Jero’s Metamorphosis (1972).
During the Nigerian civil war, Soyinka was arrested and imprisoned (1967–1969) after writing an article that urged both sides to sign a cease-fire. The experience inspired his Poems from Prison (1969), later published in 1972 as A Shuttle in the Crypt, and his prose work The Man Died (1972). In Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), Soyinka contrasted Yoruba tradition with European values and criticized a general tendency toward the abandonment of traditional tribal culture. A servant prepares to carry out the traditional Yoruba ritual suicide upon his king’s death but, tempted by a beautiful girl, he cannot bring himself to follow through with it. He is in part kept from death through the objection of a British official, who is horrified at the practice, but his decision is ultimately his own choice. Among Soyinka’s other plays are Madmen and Specialists (1971), which followed his civil war experiences and carries a strong antiwar tone; A Play of Giants (1984), with which he sought to portray postcolonial-era African despots as corrupt creations of the feuding Cold War–era superpowers; Requiem for a Futurologist (1985); From Zia, With Love (1992); The Beatification of Area Boy (1995); and King Baabu (2001). His other works include the novels The Interpreters (1965), a fictional discussion among six Nigerian intellectuals, and Season of Anomy (1973); the poetry collections Idanre and Other Poems (1967), Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems (1988), Outsiders (1999), and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002); the autobiographical works Ake´: The Years of Childhood (1981), Isara: A Voyage Around Essay (1989), and You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006); the essays in Myth, Literature, and the African World (1976), and The Credo of Being and Nothingness (1991); and The Open Sore of the Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (1996). He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Leeds in 1973.
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Soyinka has lived mainly as an exile in the United States, where, until the dictator’s death in 1998, he vocally criticized the Nigerian leadership under General Abacha, who ordered the execution of the writer Ken SaroWiwa (1941–1995) in 1995 and charged Soyinka with treason in 1997.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gera, Anjali, Three Great African Novelists: Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka & Amos Tutuola, 2001; Jeyifo, Biodun, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism, 2004; Jones, Eldred D., Wole Soyinka, 1973; Moore, Gerald, Wole Soyinka, 1978; Okome, Onookome. ed., Ogun’s Children: The Literature and Politics of Wole Soyinka Since the Nobel, 2003.
Spark, Muriel (February 1, 1918–April 13, 2006) Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Critic f Muriel Sarah Spark’s witty and satiric novels, the most famous is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961. Her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1954 was a major influence on all her subsequent writing, much of which is de-
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Muriel Spark (쑖 Mary Evans/Jeffrey Morgan Collection / The Image Works)
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voted to the examination of good and evil. Spark also wrote poetry, short stories, plays, and criticism. Spark was of Jewish, Italian, and English descent, born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh. She studied at James Gillespie’s School in Edinburgh from 1924 to 1936 and in 1937 moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); the same year, she married S. O. Spark, by whom she had a son and whom she divorced in 1938. In 1944, Spark returned to England and worked in the British Foreign Office, writing propagandistic news stories during the war. After the war, Spark founded the literary review Forum and from 1947 to 1949 served as editor of The Poetry Review, in which she included both traditional and avant-garde verse. Her first volume of poetry, The Fanfarlo and Other Verses, was published in 1952. The major influence on Spark’s life at this point was her religious conversion. She was baptized into the Anglican Church in 1953 and converted to Roman Catholicism the following year. Her first short story, “The Seraph and the Zambesi,” was published before her conversion in 1951. Her Catholic faith heavily colors her subsequent fiction, which often depicts conflicts between good and evil.
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The boundary between good and evil is clearly delineated in her first novel, The Comforters (1957). The elderly Mrs. Jepp, unknown to her family, is involved in a diamond smuggling operation. Her grandson Laurence is trying to find out how she can live so well on her income, and nobody believes her when she tells them the truth about her activities. Laurence’s love, Caroline, an author who has recently become a Catholic, might be seen as a representation of Spark herself. Caroline comes into contact with the novel’s embodiment of evil, Georgina Hogg, at a rest home. Memento Mori (1959), Spark’s next novel, takes as its subjects death and old age. In The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960), Douglas Dougal is another evil figure, blamed for Humphrey Place’s abandonment of Dixie on their wedding day. The lazy and mischievous Dougal comes to the peaceful town of Peckham Rye. He stirs up trouble at the two jobs he holds, without doing much work at either. He is also ghostwriting an autobiography for Maria Cheeseman, embellishing the story to make it sound more exciting. When Dixie’s brother, Leslie, steals his notes, Dixie’s brother insinuates he is a police spy. Word of his alleged clandestine activities gets back to his bosses, who give him a raise. After causing an enormous amount of trouble in the town, he eventually leaves. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) is Spark’s most famous novel. The manipulative teacher Jean Brodie is a more subtle evil character than either Georgina Hogg or Douglas Dougal. For two years, she teaches and takes into her confidence six 10-year-old girls, and she continues to influence them afterwards. Her strange methods invite suspicion from the school administration, which eventually forces her to leave. Sandy, the only one of the six girls who understands her manipulative ways, betrays her. None of the girls turn out as Miss Brodie expected them to. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was the basis of a 1969 film. The Mandelbaum Gate (1965) carries a darker tone than Spark’s earlier novels and is
the first of them set against a modern political backdrop. Barbara Vaughan, like Spark, is part English, part Jewish, and a Catholic convert, and the novel is about her quest for identity. Vaughan, in Israel, wants to visit shrines in Jordan but cannot legally do so on account of her Jewishness. Risking her life, she visits the shrines anyway, and a series of nonsensical events unfolds around her. Inspired by the Watergate scandal, The Abbess of Crew (1974) is a political satire set in an abbey. Sister Felicity and Alexandra contend for the position of abbess in an election. Felicity, about whom Alexandra has uncovered incriminating evidence, flees the abbey with her Jesuit lover. Alexandra’s electronic surveillance of the abbey comes to the attention of the pope, to whom she attempts to justify her actions with religious answers. The Abbess of Crew was made into the film Nasty Habits (1977). The Only Problem (1984) is loosely based on the Book of Job. The thirty-five-year-old Harvey Gotham leaves his wife and goes to France, where he intends to study the Book of Job. Like the biblical figure, he is visited by a number of would-be comforters. As he tries to work and study, he finds himself in the middle of manipulations in relationships. The title of Reality and Dreams (1996) suggests its central conflict. The film director Tom Richards is working on his dream project, The Hamburger Girl, when he falls off of a crane. His wife, the American cookie heiress Claire, is as adulterous as he is. Everyone in the story seems caught in routine and redundancy. Their daughter, the unattractive Marigold, disappears amidst the chaos, and parental love for her is not as strong as for Tom’s daughter from a previous marriage, Cora. Tom works to regain control of his film after the accident, and when he returns, the distinction between fiction and reality is not so clear. Aiding and Abetting (2000) is a witty black comedy based on the real-life character of Lord Lucan, a British earl who mistakenly killed his daughter’s nanny in 1974 while in-
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tending to murder his wife. Spark’s final novel before her death, The Finishing School (2004), is set at a finishing school that a married couple run in Switzerland. The husband, Rowland Mahler, grows frustrated when he cannot summon the inspiration to write his novel while a young pupil in his writing class bursts forth with creativity. Spark’s other novels include The Bachelors (1960), The Girls of Slender Means (1963), The Driver’s Seat (1970), Not to Disturb (1971), The Hothouse By the East River (1973), The Takeover (1976), Territorial Rights (1979), and Loitering With Intent (1981). Her critical biographies include Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary Shelley
(1951), John Masefield (1953), and The Bronte¨ Letters (1954), and among her other works are Collected Poems I (1967), Collected Stories I (1967), The Stories of Muriel Spark (1985), and Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography (1992). Spark spent much of her time in Italy. She was made Dame of the British Empire in 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cheyette, Bryan, Muriel Spark, 2000; Hynes, Joseph, The Art of the Real: Muriel Spark’s Novels, 1988; Page, Norman, Muriel Spark, 1990; Spark, Muriel, Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography, 1992; Walker, Dorothea, Muriel Spark, 1988.
Spencer, Stanley (June 30, 1891–December 14, 1959) Painter ir Stanley Spencer established his reputation as a painter in England after World War I with his modernized biblical subjects and depictions of his native Cookham landscape. At first influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, a mid-nineteenth-century group of English artists who drew their inspiration from the painters of the early Italian Renaissance, he soon developed a style marked by his use of deliberately simplified forms. Spencer’s work influenced a younger generation of painters in Britain, including Lucian Freud (1922– ). Spencer was born into a large family in Cookham, Berkshire, England. His father was an organist, and many of his siblings were musically oriented as well. Spencer and his brother Gilbert, however, were more interested in the visual arts. After being tutored at home by older sisters, they gained the friendship of a local painter, William Bailey, from whose daughter they took their first painting
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lessons. At the age of 16 Spencer entered the Technical Institute in Maidenhead, and he subsequently studied at the Slade School. The early illustrations Spencer produced were detailed depictions that owed their inspiration to the Pre-Raphaelites, with whom he shared a predilection for painting religious subjects. He began to concentrate on biblical subjects, dressing the figures in modern clothing and placing them in the Cookham landscape. During World War I Spencer served in Macedonia, and his war experience inspired many of his paintings during the decade after the war. His work was first exhibited with the New English Art Club, but it was not until 1927 that he held his first one-man show, at the Goupil Gallery in London. This show featured one of his most famous paintings, The Resurrection: Cookham (1924–1926). The Resurrection of the Soldiers (1928– 9) is one of several works he executed for the Sandham
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Memorial Chapel in Burghclere, Hampshire. In this painting, resurrected war casualties can be seen in Cookham churchyard, which is chaotically littered with white crosses, many carried by the soldiers. Spencer continued to paint modernized biblical scenes in the 1930s, including several paintings in a projected series of forty in a Christ in the Wilderness series. Domestic scenes, as in Workmen in the House (1935) as well as portraits and landscapes were all recurring themes in Spencer’s later paintings. His portraits treat acquaintances and wellknown figures; his landscapes, such as Cookham Moor (1937), primarily feature scenes from Cookham. In the 1940s he painted a series of scenes at Port Glasgow. Some paint-
ings, such as Love among the Nations (1935–1936), carry a strong erotic bent. The controversial Leg of Mutton Nude (1937), another example, graphically depicts himself and his lover in the nude. In spite of his friendships with other painters and literary figures, particularly those of the Bloomsbury Group (see DUNCAN GRANT and VIRGINIA WOOLF), Spencer essentially worked on his own. In 1950 he was elected to the Royal Academy and was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was knighted in 1959.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Newton, Eric, Stanley Spencer: A Biography, 1991; Robinson, Duncan, Stanley Spencer, 1990.
Spender, Stephen (February 28, 1909–July 16, 1995) Poet, Playwright, Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Critic, Editor, Journalist, Essayist, Teacher tephen Harold Spender, best known as a poet, rose to prominence in the England of the 1930s with his verse on social and political issues. Spender evolved a personal and lyrical style in his later poetry, and he also subsequently wrote novels, essays, and volumes of literary criticism. Spender was born in London. His father and his paternal uncle, J. A. Spender, were liberal journalists. Both of his parents died before he was 18. Spender attended Miss Harcourt’s School in East Runton and Gresham’s School in Holt, Norfolk, before enrolling at the University College School in London. At the University College, Oxford (from which he never graduated), Spender met a number of people who proved important to the development of his early poetry. These were the poets W. H. AUDEN, C. DAY-LEWIS, and LOUIS MACNEICE, all of whom, along with
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Spender, earned the collective nickname “MacSpauday.” During this time he also met Christopher Isherwood, with whom he traveled to Germany. Spender began to publish poetry in 1928 with the privately printed Nine Experiments: Being Poems Written at the Age of Eighteen (1928). Twenty Poems followed two years later. The “MacSpauday” four were a group of poets who, faced with the Depression and the rise of Hitler, became leftists and strong antiFascists; their poetry, often referred to as the distinctive poetry of the 1930s, reflected their social and political concerns. Spender’s first major contribution to this body of work was Poems (1933), which, though they had personal aspects, were generally political (“Van der Lubbe” and “Perhaps”). The long poem Vienna (1934) took its inspiration from a socialist uprising in Vienna. Spender joined the Com-
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munist Party briefly in 1937 but grew disillusioned with it well before the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Spender’s verse play Trial of a Judge (1938) was produced by the Group Theatre in London and also belongs to this period. The drama pits the two totalitarian political ideologies battling each other at the time, Communism and Fascism, against one another. The hero of the play, a liberal judge, rejects both extremist ideologies. Spender developed an outlook similar to the judge’s. With The Still Centre (1939), Spender’s poetry began to evolve toward a more personal style of subjective self-examination and reflections on the nature of existence. Political poems remained, including several having to do with the Spanish Civil War (“Thoughts during an Air Raid” and “The Marginal Field,” about oppressed farmers). The poems of the last section of the work turn to his personal life, particularly the breakup of his 1936 marriage to Agnes Marie Inez Pern (“The Separation”). The theme of separation continues in Ruins and Visions (1942), in which the “ruins” are both personal and social. The final section of “visions,” however, reflects a measure of hope and optimism. Spender served in the National Fire Service (1941–1944) during World War II and married the concert pianist Natasha Litvin in 1945. He went to occupied Germany after the war with the British Cultural Commission and also began to lecture in the United States. With Poems of Dedication (1947), his poetry became almost exclusively personal. Prominent in these verses is a group of poems written for his sister-in-law, Margaret Spender, who died of cancer. In The Edge of Being (1949) and in later volumes, such as The Generous Days (1969), Spender explored religious, existential, and philosophical questions. Spender was involved with several periodicals during his lifetime. From 1939 to 1941, he edited the review Horizon (1939–1941) with Cyril Connolly and Peter Watson. With Melvin J. Lasky and Irving Kristol, he edited the liber-
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al Encounter from 1953 to 1967. Spender also helped found the Index on Censorship. Among his works of fiction is The Burning Cactus (1936), a volume of five stories. His autobiographical novel The Backward Son (1940) recalls his experiences and emotions as a young boy. The protagonist, Geoffrey Brand, goes to a preparatory school, Tisselthorp House, on his father’s orders. Geoffrey hates the school, which is populated with cruel classmates and run by an overly strict administration. His doting mother dies, producing a host of strong emotions in Geoffrey and leading to his father’s deterioration. In 1958 Spender wrote two novellas, Engaged in Writing and The Fool and the Princess. One of Spender’s most important prose works is his autobiography, World within World, first published in 1951 and reissued in 1994 with a new introduction by Spender, “Looking Back in 1994.” It has been prized for its lyricism and its frank self-revelationas well as for its fascinating picture of the literary and intellectual world in the England of the 1930s, including memorable portraits of such key figures as W. H. Auden and VIRGINIA WOOLF. The Destructive Element (1935) was Spender’s first major work of literary criticism. Others followed over his career, including The Creative Element (1953), Life and the Poet (1942), The Making of a Poem (1955), The Struggle of the Modern (1963), Love-Hate Relations: English and American Sensibilities (1974), and studies of Shelley and T. S. E LIOT. His social and political writings include Forward from Liberalism (1937) and The Year of the Young Rebels (1969). His Journals, 1939– 3 appeared in 1986. Dolphins, his final volume of poetry, was published in 1994. Letters to Christopher (1980) contains Spender’s correspondence with Isherwood. Spender taught English at University College in London from 1971 to 1977 and lectured at many American universities. He was named Commander of the British Empire in 1962, received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1971, and was knighted in 1983.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Hugh, David, A Portrait With Background, 1992;
O’Neill, Michael, Auden, MacNeice, Spender: The Thirties Poetry, 1992; Sternlicht, Sanford, Stephen Spender, 1992.
Spielberg, Steven Allan (December 18, 1946– ) Director, Producer, Screenwriter o date, the three-time Academy Award winning American director, producer, and screenwriter Steven Spielberg is the highest-grossing filmmaker of all time. Although Spielberg is famous for many of his films, he has broken the records (twice his own) for highest-grossing film of all time three times with Jaws, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park. He belongs to a generation of Hollywood filmmakers that rose to prominence in the later part of the twentieth century, including FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA, MARTIN SCORSESE, and GEORGE LUCAS. More than these contemporaries, however, Spielberg has catered to mainstream commercial tastes. Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His family name comes from the Austrian city of Spielberg, where his Hungarian Jewish ancestors lived in the seventeenth century. Spielberg’s family moved frequently as his father obtained different jobs as a computer engineer. They lived in several places in New Jersey, as well as in Arizona and California. By the time he was in high school, Spielberg was already directing films and writing screenplays. His first two credited directing roles were in the amateur western film The Last Gun (1959) and the short, independent film Fighter Squad (1961), for which he also wrote the screenplay. He followed Fighter Squad with the short war film Escape to Nowhere (1961), which he also wrote and directed. The latter showcased children as Word War II soldiers.
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Three years later, while attending Arcadia High School in Phoenix, Arizona, he wrote and directed the 140-minute science fiction adventure Firelight (1964) about aliens who invade a small town. The theme of aliens was an early favorite of Spielberg’s and has recurred many times in films throughout his career. Firelight was shown at a local movie theater and earned positive reviews. Spielberg’s parents divorced, and he moved to California to live with his father. He graduated from Saratoga High School in Saratoga, California, in 1965. He briefly attended Long Beach University, but he dropped out to pursue his entertainment career. Although he had wanted to attend film school, his grades prevented him from gaining admission. In 1968, Spielberg took a position as an unpaid intern at Universal Studios, where he worked in the editing department. After working on the unfinished film Slipstream, he made his first short film for theatrical release entitled Amblin’ (1968), about a young man and a young woman who meet wandering in the desert and fall in love while traveling together. The film impressed Sidney Sheinberg (1935– ), then the vice president of production for Universal’s television department, and through his influence Spielberg signed on as the youngest director to secure a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio. Spielberg soon found himself directing television episodes and films. His first professional job was for a segment entitled “Eyes” (1969) for a pilot episode of Night Gallery
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that starred actress Joan Crawford (1905–1977). An episode of Marcus Welby, M.D. entitled “The Daredevil Gestures” (1970) and “Make Me Laugh,” another episode (1971) for Night Gallery followed. The same year, Spielberg also directed episodes for The Name of the Game and The Pyschiatrist. He continued to work in television for Universal, directing for a number of shows including the first series episode for Colombo (1971), followed by the television movies Duel (1971), Something Evil (1972), and Savage (1973). Spielberg’s debut on the big screen came in 1974 with The Sugarland Express, starring Goldie Hawn (1945– ) and based on a true story about a woman and her escaped-convict husband who try to kidnap their child, who has been placed with foster parents. The film impressed critics more than it did the public. Spielberg was to find lasting fame with his next work, the blockbuster horror film Jaws (1975), about a killer shark and based on a novel of the same title by Peter Benchley (1940–2006). A huge box-office hit, the film won three Academy Awards and broke the record for highest-grossing film of all time. Although Jaws spawned a number of sequels, Spielberg did not direct any of them. His next film was the UFO story Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which, like Jaws, starred Richard Dreyfuss (1947– ) and was another huge box office success. He was not as successful with his next film, the World War II farce 1941 (1979), about a group of Pearl Harbor inhabitants who try to prepare for a Japanese invasion, however. He and GEORGE LUCAS collaborated on the popular adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the first in what is to date the Indiana Jones trilogy that also included Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Spielberg, again working with Lucas, is currently filming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, scheduled for release in 2008.
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Spielberg broke Jaws’s record for highestgrossing film with E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), a popular film about a boy who befriends an extra-terrestrial being trying to return to his home in outer space after he was accidentally left on earth. The same year, he produced and wrote the screenplay for Poltergeist (1982), directed by Tobe Hooper (1943– ). The following year, he directed the second segment of The Twilight Zone (1983). In the mid-1980s, although he continued to direct movies, Spielberg increased his role as a producer. To date, he has more than a hundred credits as producer or executive producer of films, television shows and specials, and television series to his name. He wrote the story for and served as executive producer of the popular film The Goonies (1985), directed by Richard Donner (1930– ). He has been the producer behind many popular films, including Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Arachnophobia (1990), An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), Twister (1996), Men in Black (1997), Deep Impact (1998), The Mask of Zorro (1998), The Haunting (1999), Shrek (2001), and Evolution (2001). He produced television series, miniseries, and specials, including Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), Family Dog (1993), Animaniacs (1993), Freakazoid! (1995), SeaQuest DSV (forty-four episodes between 1993 and 1995), Pinky and the Brain (1995), Toonsylvania (1998), and Band of Brothers (2001). In 2001, Spielberg produced a project he and STANLEY KUBRICK had planned entitled A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Kubrick died before they could begin. The film featured innovative visual effects and was a futuristic movie about a robotic being longing for love. In 1985, he directed the critically acclaimed The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker’s (1944– ) novel of the same name. The epic story follows the difficult life of Celie Johnson, played by Whoopi Goldberg (1955– ), who is raped by her father at the age of fourteen. In 1987, Spielberg shot the first American movie in Shanghai since the 1930s, an adapta-
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tion of the Shanghai-born British writer J. G. Ballard’s (1930– ) autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun (1987). The story follows the experiences of James Graham (played by Christian Bale, 1974– ), a privileged young man who is captured during the Japanese invasion of Shanghai. Although the film was a hit with the critics, it did not fare well at the box office. Always, a romantic film starring Dreyfuss as a risk-taking pilot who extinguishes forest fires, followed Spielberg’s second Indiana Jones film in 1989. Robin Williams (1951– ) starred in Hook (1991) as a middle-aged Peter Pan whose youthful spirit has become corrupted. He returns to Neverland to rediscover his Peter Pan spirit of old and rescue his children kidnaped by the evil Hook (played by Dustin Hoffman, 1937– ). Spielberg scored another smash hit with Jurassic Park (1993), based on a novel by American author Michael Chrichton (1942– ). The film, a story about cloned dinosaurs run amok in a theme park, was a box-office smash laden with special effects provided by Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic company and broke Spielberg’s last record of the highest-grossing film of all time. Schindler’s List (1993) was based on the true story of Oskar Schindler (1908–1974), a shrewd German industrialist of Roman Catholic background who risked his life to save 1,100 people from perishing in the Holocaust during World War II. Although Spielberg had been nominated numerous times for Academy Awards for Best Director, he won his first for Schindler’s List. The film also won Best Picture. Spielberg donated the profits to establish the Shoah Foundation, which, headquartered at the University of Southern California, archives filmed testimony of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. To date, the Shoah Foundation claims to have collected 52,000 testimonials. The Lost World (1997), the sequel to Jurassic Park, was another box-office smash and was followed by Amistad (1997). The latter, and all of his films since then, was released by
his new studio DreamWorks, which he built in the mid-1990s. Amistad was based on a true story about an 1839 African slave rebellion aboard a ship that is traveling to America. Tom Hanks (1956– ) starred in Spielberg’s popular Saving Private Ryan (1998), a World War II drama about a squad of American soldiers who try to find a missing U.S. soldier in France. Military authorities place priority on finding the missing private after learning that his mother will receive news of three of his brothers’ war-related deaths at the same time. Saving Private Ryan won Spielberg his second Academy Award for Best Director. Minority Report (2002) with Tom Cruise (1962– ) was based on a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick (1928–1982). The futuristic story, set in a society where perpetrators of crimes can allegedly be identified before they commit them, concerns a police captain who has been identified as a murderer of a man he has not yet met. Catch Me if You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio (1974– ) followed the same year. It relates the true story of Frank Abagnale Jr., a high-schooler who impersonates an airline pilot, a doctor, an assistant attorney general, and a history professor in fraudulent schemes and cashes millions of dollars in bad checks. The comedy The Terminal (2004), about an Eastern European man who becomes trapped and takes up residence in a New York airport, again starred Hanks with Catherine Zeta Jones (1969– ) and Stanley Tucci (1960– ). War of the Worlds (2005), a modernized version of the H. G. WELLS classic of the same title, starred Cruise and Dakota Fanning (1994– ) and featured special effects from Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic. Spielberg received some criticism for Munich (2005), based on the events following the Munich Massacre of 1972, in which eleven Israeli athletes were murdered at the Olympic Games. The follow-up Israeli intelligence Operation Wrath of God, aimed at assassinating the Palestinian perpetrators, was documented in Canadian journalist George Jonas’s (1935– ) Vengeance: The True Story of an Is-
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raeli Counter-Terrorist Team (1984), on which Spielberg’s film was based. The facts of the controversial book have been called into question, which in turn sparked criticism of Spielberg’s film. Spielberg’s next directing efforts, Lincoln and Interstellar, are slated for release in 2009. Spielberg has been nominated for many Academy Awards and has won two for Best Director and one for Best Picture. He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1986, has received numerous awards from Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, and has been honored with many international awards.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brode, Douglas, The Films of Steven Spielberg, 1995; Crawley, Tony, The Steven Spielberg Story, 1983; Freer, Ian, The Complete Spielberg, 2001; Friedman, Lester D., Citizen Spielberg, 2006; Jackson, Kathi, Steven Spielberg: A Biography, 2007; McBride, Joseph, Steven Spielberg: A Biography, 1997; Morris, Nigel, The Cinema of Steven Spielberg: Empire of Light, 2007; Mott, Donald R., Steven Spielberg, 1986; Perry, George C., Steven Spielberg, 1998; Schoell, William, Magic Man: The Life and Films of Steven Spielberg, 1998; Taylor, Philip M, Steven Spielberg: The Man, His Movies, and Their Meaning, 1992. www.spielbergfilms.com.
Springsteen, Bruce (September 23, 1949– ) Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist hen thinking of the all-American rock and roll artist, Bruce Springsteen is often the first name that comes to mind. Affectionately known to his fans as “The Boss,” Springsteen started recording in the early 1970s with the E Street Band. He became famous not only for his legendary recordings Born to Run and Born in the USA, but for unparalleled, energy-fueled (and widely bootlegged) live performances that lasted for several hours. Much of Springsteen’s electrically charged early music centers on the struggles of everyday working-class people and is tinged with the flavor of the New Jersey industrial towns of his upbringing. In his later career, Springsteen has branched out to acoustic and more philosophical and political music. Springsteen was born Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in the working-class town of Freehold, New Jersey. His father was a bus
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driver of Dutch and Irish ancestry, and his mother was a legal secretary who came from an Italian background. He was raised as a Catholic and attended the St. Rose of Lima parochial school in Freehold Borough. His rebellious spirit emerged early on, often putting him at odds with the nuns. He later transferred to the Freehold Borough High School and after graduating, briefly attended Ocean County Community College. When he was seven, he saw ELVIS PRESLEY perform on The Ed Sullivan Show (see ED SULLIVAN), prompting his interest in pursuing a career in music. At the age of thirteen, he bought his first guitar. In the mid-1960s, he became the lead guitarist of The Castiles and later the lead singer. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public studio in Brick Township, New Jersey and played a variety of venues, including Cafe´ Wha? in Greenwich Village, New York.
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From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed around New Jersey with guitarist “Miami” Steve Van Zandt (1950– ; Van Zandt is now well-known for his role as the mobster Silvio Dante on HBO’s hit series The Sopranos), drummer Vini Lopez, and keyboardist Danny Federici (1950– ) in a band that was first called Child and later renamed to Steel Mill. Springsteen also performed at small clubs in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and along the Jersey shore. He had several other bands in 1971 and 1972, and when pianist David Sancious (1953– ) joined his ranks, he had the core of the E Street Band. Springsteen’s E Street Band took its name from a street in Belmar, New Jersey, where Sancious’s mother lived. Over the years, he has worked on and off with its members, many of whom have pursued their own musical careers. E Street Band members have at various times included Van Zandt (also known as “Little Steven”); Federici; Lopez; Sancious; bassist Garry Tallent (1949– ); saxophonist Clarence “Big Man” Clemons (1942– ); pianist Roy Bittan (1949– ); drummer Max Weinberg (1951– ); guitarist Nils Lofgren (1951– ); violinist, percussionist, and backing vocalist Soozie Tyrell (1957– ); backing vocalist and guitarist Patti Scialfa (1953– ), who is now Springsteen’s wife; drummer Ernest “Boom” Carter; and violinist and backing vocalist Suki Lahav (1951– ). Springsteen’s manager Mike Appel convinced producer John Hammond (1910–1987) to audition him for Columbia records in May 1972, and he signed a record deal with the label the same year. His first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., was released in early 1973 and featured the early classic “Blinded by the Light.” The same year, he released The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, which contained his now-famous songs “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” “Asbury Park (Sandy),” and “4th of July.” The pair of albums attracted critical acclaim, notably from Jon Landau (who later became Springsteen’s producer and manager), and was popular among New Jersey audiences.
In August 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band performed five shows at the Bottom Line in New York, an event that attracted significant attention from the media. The shows were broadcast live on WNEW, and combined with the release of Born to Run (1975), made Springsteen into an international star. The title track of Born to Run is now considered an American classic, and the album also showcased such notable songs as “Thunder Road” and “Tenth Avenue FreezeOut.” Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in October 1975. Springsteen and the E Street Band toured extensively for the next two years before returning to the studio to record Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). A much darker album than its predecessors, it still retained the Jersey flavor of his first efforts but added deeper dimensions of despair to the lives of the characters. “Factory,” for example, paints a bleak picture of people doomed to the monotony of a factory worker’s life: End of the day, factory whistle cries Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes And you just better believe, boy, somebody’s gonna get hurt tonight It’s the working, the working, just the working life
The title track, “The Promised Land,” “Badlands,” “Candy’s Room,” and “Prove It All Night” are all popular songs from the album. His contribution to the 1979 album No Nukes and its accompanying film (1980) marked the beginnings of Springsteen’s public involvement in political and social issues. Although over the years he has been an outspoken critic of nuclear armament, war, and other issues—which are reflected in some of his music—he refrained from actively endorsing a political candidate until U.S. Senator John Kerry (1943– ) ran against George W. Bush in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Springsteen, along with many other artists, mounted a heated campaign against Bush, and his song
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“No Surrender” (from Born in the U.S.A.) became the theme song of Kerry’s campaign. The double album The River (1980) still maintained focus on the working-class industrial life, particularly evident in the title track, but carried a somewhat more upbeat tone than Darkness on the Edge of Town in songs like “Crush On You” and the hit “Hungry Heart.” Nebraska (1982) was a complete departure from the sum of his work to date. Shedding the E Street Band, he recorded the sparse, acoustic-based solo album that presented a cast of down-and-out characters. “Johnny 99” sympathetically relates the story of a man who believes the circumstances of his troubled background led him to commit murder, and “Atlantic City” was another popular song from the album. The album ends with “Reason to Believe,” which mixes the characters’ daily-life struggles with a measure of hope that seems ironic to the narrator: “ . . . at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.” Back with the E Street Band, Springsteen next recorded Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which became one of the best-selling albums of all time and a hallmark of American rock and roll. The title track, “Glory Days,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “My Hometown,” and other songs all became hits. Many people mistook the title song as a patriotic anthem, when it in fact it pointedly criticizes the poor treatment of Vietnam war veterans. The song opens: Born down in a dead man’s town The first kick I took was when I hit the ground You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much Till you spend half your life just covering up Born in the U.S.A. . . .
During the ensuing tour, he met the model (and later actress) Julianne Phillips (1960– ), and they married in 1985. Their marriage was short-lived, and the unhappiness surrounding it was evident on Tunnel of Love (1987). Springsteen became involved with his backup singer Scialfa (1953– ) during the tour that accompanied that album, he and Phillips di-
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vorced in 1990, and Springsteen and Scialfa married the following year. They are still married and have three children. Live 1975–1985 provided a ten-year retrospective of Springsteen’s music, interspersing his popular songs and the live energy of his performances with homespun narratives that had become characteristic of his shows. It became one of the best-selling live albums of all time. In 1989, Springsteen and Scialfa moved to California. Human Touch and Lucky Town, two albums released on the same day in 1992, evince a newfound personal happiness that had been absent from all of his previous work. His contentment and even feelings of blessing and bliss are particularly evident in the latter’s “Better Days,” its title track, and “Living Proof.” In 1994, Springsteen won an Academy Award for “Streets of Philadelphia,” which appeared in the soundtrack to director Jonathan Demme’s (1944– ) film Philadelphia (1993). The film starred Tom Hanks (1956– ) and Denzel Washington (1954– ) and treated the subject of a man dying from AIDS. The following year, he released Bruce Springsteen Greatest Hits and the solo acoustic effort The Ghost of Tom Joad, with its title borrowed from the character Tom Joad in American author John’s Steinbeck’s (1902–1968) famous novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939). After the subsequent tour, Springsteen moved back to New Jersey. Released in 1998, the four-CD box set Tracks featured dozens of unreleased performances and B-sides. The following year, he embarked on a reunion tour with the E Street Band. Brendan O’Brien produced The Rising (2002), an album recorded with the E Street Band in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The title track was a popular hit, and it was Springsteen’s best-selling album of new material in more than a decade. In 2005, he released Devils & Dust, another solo acoustic album. The following year’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions featured a large group of musicians who contributed to
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interpretations of songs recorded by (but not necessarily written by) the folk singer Pete Seeger (1919– ). Bruce Springsteen With the Sessions Band: Live in Dublin (2007) contains selections recorded in Ireland from the tour that followed. His next album Magic, recorded with the E Street Band, is scheduled for release in October 2007. Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Alterman, Eric, It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen, 1999; Eliot, Marc, Down Thunder Road: The Making
of Bruce Springsteen, 1992; Gambaccini, Peter, Bruce Springsteen, 1985; Graff, Gary, ed., The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z, 2005; Hilburn, Robert, Springsteen, 1985; Himes, Geoffrey, Born in the U.S.A., 2005; Humphries, Patrick, Bruce Springsteen: Blinded By the Light, 1986; Marsh, Dave, Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story, 1981; Marsh, Dave, Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts— The Definitive Biography, 1972–2003, 2004; Marsh, Dave, Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s, 1987; Sandford, Christopher, Springsteen: Point Blank, 1999; Sawyers, June Skinner, ed., Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader, 2004; www.brucespringsteen.net.
Stanislavsky, Konstantin (January 17, 1863–August 7, 1938) Director, Actor, Theorist he Russian director and actor Konstantin Sergeyevich Stanislavsky was a primary force in shaping the modern theater, cofounding the Moscow Art Theatre with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1897. Stanislavsky rejected the artificial theatricality of nineteenth-century theater and aimed to create a theater that would convey a felt sense of reality, chiefly through intense training of his actors. The “Stanislavsky Method,” the ideas on acting he continued to develop throughout his working life, had a profound effect on twentieth-century theater. Stanislavsky was born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev in Moscow. His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer and his mother the daughter of a French actress. Stanislavsky’s entire family was involved with the theater from his youth. Aside from their frequent trips to the theater, the Alekseyev children staged puppet productions that gradually grew more elaborate. In 1877, their father
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built a theater, and Stanislavsky acted in its first productions. The family soon formed the Alekseyev Circle, and Stanislavsky continued to act regularly in its productions. He also began to act with other groups (adopting the stage name Stanislavsky to keep his extracurricular activities from his parents) and attended other theater performances when he could. Stanislavsky began his lifelong habit of recording critical comments about his acting and his shows in notebooks around this time. He was a relentless self-critic, constantly trying to improve his voice (helped by lessons from Fyodor Kommisarzhevski) and other aspects of his performance. In 1888, Stanislavsky formed The Society of Art and Literature, part of which was an amateur theater company. The company remained active for a decade, producing works by Russian playwrights as well as by William Shakespeare and earning the increasing respect of
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Konstantin Stanislavsky (right) (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-35342)
Moscow society. Stanislavsky married Maria Perevshchikova the same year; she used the stage name Lilina and was to appeared in many of his productions. With the writer/director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858–1943), Stanislavsky formed the Moscow Art Theater in 1898. The artificial acting in the first show, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, convinced Stanislavsky to rework his approach to directing. In the theater’s next play, a revival of Anton Chekhov’s previously unsuccessful The Seagull, Stanislavsky aimed for a psychologically penetrating presentation that would draw the audience into the actors’ dilemmas. The play was an enormous success, and many Chekhov plays later premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre (The Three Sisters, for example, and The Cherry Orchard). Stanislavsky was already beginning to develop his ideas on acting, later known as the “Stanislavsky Method.” He was a demanding director, requiring actors to become intimate-
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ly acquainted with their characters. In order to achieve the necessary knowledge, they drew on their own experiences, isolating each aspect of their roles and finding something in their own experience that could help them relate to it before eventually combining all aspects into a convincing whole. He was frequently known to tell his actors, “I do not believe you.” However, he also insisted that his actors should harmonize with each other, creating a coherent experience for the audience. Stanislavsky strove to remain faithful to the playwright’s intentions and did not try to create an original interpretation. Aside from Chekhov’s plays, The Moscow Art Theatre presented MAXIM GORKY’s The Lower Depths, plays by HAUPTMANN, Ibsen, MAETERLINCK, Turgenev, Shakespeare, and many others. The theater gained worldwide recognition under Stanislavsky’s direction. In the early 1920s the company toured the United States and Europe. Although he continued to work well into the Communist years, he found himself increasingly frustrated by the demands placed on him by the new Soviet critics. Stanislavsky nevertheless continued to develop his acting theories, the last of which was his “theory of physical action,” designed to make actors feel their characters on a physical level. His noteworthy plays from the Soviet period include Armoured Train 14-69 and a version of Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls. Until he had a heart attack in 1928, Stanislavsky continued to act as well as direct. His notable roles include Astrov in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Gayev in The Cherry Orchard (1904), Vershinin in The Three Sisters, and Satin in Gorky’s The Lower Depths. Outside of the Moscow Art Theatre, he was involved in several other ventures. He formed the First Studio, dedicated to training young actors who already had some experience in the theater, in 1912. In 1918 he became involved with the Bolshoi Opera Studio, producing such works as Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin in 1922.
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Stanislavsky’s writings include his autobiography My Life in Art (1924), An Actor Prepares (1936), and Building a Character (1948).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Benedetti, Jean, Stanislavski, 1988; Jones, David Richard, Great Directors At Work: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook, 1986; Worrall, Nick, The Moscow Art Theatre, 1996.
Stephens, James (February 9, 1880–December 26, 1950) Poet, Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright long with W. B. YEATS, GEORGE MOORE, and JAMES JOYCE, James Stephens was a prominent voice in the Irish Literary Renaissance of the early twentieth century. Stephens achieved fame with his fantastic novel The Crock of Gold in 1912 and subsequently wrote many stories and poems infused with Celtic legend and lore. Details of Stephens’s origins and personal life are often uncertain, as he purposely tried to confuse them. He was born in Dublin on February 2, 1882 (Joyce’s birthday), he claimed, but many scholars believe his actual date of birth was February 9, 1880. Stephens also claimed that he never had any formal education, but some believe he attended the Meath Protestant Industrial School for Boys from 1886–1896. Stephens went to work as a solicitor’s clerk in Dublin and in 1901 was part of a gymnastics team that won the Irish Shield. The Irish nationalist cause attracted his attention, and by 1907 he was contributing regularly to Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Fe´in and Sinn Fe´in Daily. The same year he met the Irish poet Æ (George William Russell), under whose influence he developed an interest in the occult. Stephens went to meetings of the Hermetic Society and read the writings of Madame Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society. His theosophical studies, combined with an interest in Irish culture in legend, were the primary influences on Stephens’s work. He
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learned Gaelic and attended political meetings, but his nationalist outlook did not extend to violent political activity. His first book of poetry, Insurrections, depicts life in the Dublin slums and was published in 1909. Stephens was also involved with the theater in his early career, acting from time to time in productions at the Theatre of Ireland. The theater staged his play The Marriage of Julia Elizabeth in 1911. The Charwoman’s Daughter (1911; published in the United States as Mary, Mary), Stephens’s first novel, takes place in a Dublin slum and incorporates fairy tale elements. With Thomas MacDonagh, David Houston, and Padraic Colum, Stephens founded The Irish Review the same year. The publication of the novel The Crock of Gold (1912) made Stephens famous and enabled him to devote his time to writing. Winner of the Polignac Prize in 1913, The Crock of Gold is a fantasy steeped in Irish legend. Other works of fiction followed, including the short-story collection Here Are Ladies (1913) and the novel The Demi-Gods (1914). Stephens collected ten traditional Irish tales in his Irish Fairy Tales (1920). Like his fiction, his poetry incorporates Irish lore and addresses love, the imagination, and similar themes. His volumes of verse include The Hill of Vision (1912), Five New Poems (1915), Songs from the Clay (1915), The Adventures of Seamus Beg (1915), Rein-
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carnations (1918), Little Things (1924), Theme and Variations (1930), Strict Joy (1931), and Kings and the Moon (1938). The poems of Green Branches (1916) commemorate the Easter Rising. His Collected Poems appeared in 1926. Deirdre (1923) was the major success of Stephens’s later literary career. The story derives from a Gaelic legend in which a king, warned in vain by the druid Cathbad that the child Deirdre will ruin Ulster in the future, later desires to marry her. Deirdre elopes with Naoise and his two brothers to Scotland, but all are fooled into returning. The king’s assassin murders the three brothers, and Deirdre eventually commits suicide. For his version of the Deirdre legend Stephens received the Tailteann Festival Medal in 1924. In the Land of Youth (1924) is also based on Irish legend. In 1928 Stephens delivered his first radio broadcast for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and regular broadcasts began in 1937. In 1932 he became a founding member
of the Irish Academy of Letters, and he received an honorary doctorate in literature from Trinity College (Dublin University). Stephens lectured frequently in the United States. Stephens’s later works of fiction include the short-story collection Etched in Moonlight (1928) and How St. Patrick Saves the Irish (1931). Among his other works are Arthur Griffith: Journalist and Statesman (1922); the essay collection On Prose and Verse (1928); and The Insurrection in Dublin (1916), about the Easter Rising. Richard J. Finneran edited an edition of Stephens’s letters, published in 1975.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Martin, Augustine, James Stephens: A Critical Study, 1977; McFate, Patricia, The Writings of James Stephens: Variations on a Theme of Love, 1979; Pyle, Hilary, James Stephens: His Work and an Account of His Life, 1965.
Stern, Isaac (July 21, 1920–September 22, 2001) Violinist saac Stern spent more than sixty years performing as an internationally renowned violin virtuoso. Throughout his career, he recorded an extensive body of work, actively promoted younger players, and was involved in worldwide efforts to advance the arts. Stern was born in Kremenetz, Ukraine, but moved with his family to San Francisco, California, during the Russian civil war when he was ten months old. His mother was his first music teacher, and he began playing the violin at the age of eight. From 1928 to 1931, he studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Upon the completion of his studies
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there, he began to study privately with the American violinist Louis Persinger (1887–1966). In 1932, Stern returned to the San Francisco Conservatory, where he studied for five years with the Ukrainian-American violinist and concertmaster Naoum Blinder (1889–1965). He made his recital debut in San Francisco at age thirteen. His professional debut came on February 18, 1936, when he played the French composer Camille SaintSae¨ns’s (1835–1921) Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor with the San Francisco Symphony. Stern soon became a well-known violin virtuoso. He debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1943,
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and throughout his long career he played on the world’s most famous concert stages, performing both standard repertoire and premiering works of other composers. Stern was also known for his extensive body of critically acclaimed recordings, most of them for CBS Masterworks/Sony Classical. According to Sony, his more than one hundred recordings include over two hundred works by sixtythree composers. Among his recordings are concertos by the German Romantic composers Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) and Johannes Brahms (1833–1897), the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), the German classical composers Ludwig von Beethoven (1770–1827) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), and the Venetian Baroque composer and violinist Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741). Stern also recorded works by modern composers such as BE´ LA BARTO´ K, PAUL HINDEMEITH, LEONARD BERNSTEIN, SAMUEL BARBER, and IGOR STRAVINSKY. Sony Music released a forty-four disc set of his recordings entitled Isaac Stern: A Life in Music in 1995. Aside from his work on the stage, Stern also appeared in numerous television specials and films. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, he performed Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto from atop Mount Scopus in northeast Jerusalem with the Israel Philharmonic, conducted by LEONARD BERNSTEIN. The concert was later made into the documentary film A Journey to Jerusalem (1968), directed by David Maysles (1931–1987). In 1981, the film From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Feature). Stern won an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement—Classical Music/Dance Programming for his television role in Performing for Carnegie Hall: The Grand Reopening (1987). He also contributed to the motion picture soundtracks Music of the Heart (1999) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and lent his talents
to dubbing violin-playing scenes in Hollywood films. Among these was director Norman Jewison’s (1926– ) Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Throughout his career, Stern remained active in promoting both performing arts in general and promising younger musicians. He taught many violin workshops at Carnegie Hall and in Israel over the years. He was president of Carnegie Hall for more than thirty years, having been active both in preventing its demolition in 1960 and promoting its restoration in the 1980s. Stern was a founding member of the National Council on the Arts. He often invited younger performers to play with him onstage and is credited with discovering the Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma (1955– ) and the Israeli-American violinists Itzhak Perlman (1945) and PINCHAS ZUKERMAN. Stern’s short-lived marriage to ballerina Nora Kaye (1920–1987) in 1948 ended in divorce the following year. In 1951, he married Vera Lindenblit, to whom he remained married for forty-three years. They divorced in 1994, and Stern married Linda Reynolds in 1997. Stern’s autobiography, My First 79 Years, written with the American rabbi-author Chaim Potok (1929–2002), was published in 1999. He died of congestive heart failure at the age of eighty-one. Among the many other awards Stern won throughout his career are honorary doctorates from numerous universities, awards from governments worldwide, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1984, the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1987, the National Medal of Arts from President George H. W. Bush in 1991, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the elder Bush in 1992, and Japan’s highest honor, the Order of the Rising Sun, in 1997. BIBLIOGRAPHY Stern, Isaac, My First 79 Years, 1999. www.isaacstern.com. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ stern_i.html. www.sonyclassical.com/artists/stern/bio.html.
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Sternberg, Josef von (May 29, 1894–December 22, 1969) Director he Austrian-born director Josef von Sternberg treated his films as visual tapestries above all else. His films, only one of which he shot in color, emphasize pictorial elements, cinematography, and the use of light and shadow. Sternberg is also known as the director who molded the actress MARLENE DIETRICH. Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to Orthodox Jewish parents in Vienna. He moved with his family to the United States as a child and grew up in New York. Sternberg first entered the film industry in 1911, when he went to work as a film patcher for the World Film Corporation in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He eventually worked his way up to assistant director. During the World War I years he traveled extensively in the United States and Europe and served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps making training films. Having already begun to work as a cameraman and assistant director in Hollywood, Sternberg settled there permanently in the early 1920s. His first film, The Salvation Hunters (1925), was a realistic depiction of waterfront derelicts. The same year he signed an illfated contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and left without finishing a project. The Salvation Hunters impressed both Mary Pickford and CHARLIE CHAPLIN, the former of whom sought his collaboration. More successful was his 1927 contract with Paramount Pictures. His first Paramount film, Underworld (1927), stars George Bancroft as the gangster Bull Weed and was one of the earliest gangster films. Several other films followed, including The Drag Net (1928), The Docks of New York (1928), and The Last Command (1928; starring the German actor Emil Jannings). Thunderbolt (1929) marked Sternberg’s first venture into sound film. The year 1930 saw the release of Sternberg’s best-known film, Der blaue Engel (The
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Blue Angel). He had seen the then unknown Dietrich in the play Two Bow Ties and, against the preferences of everyone else involved in the project, insisted on casting her as the cabaret singer Lola-Lola opposite Jannings. Shot entirely in Germany in both English and German, the film made Dietrich a star. Sternberg brought Dietrich to the United States, where they completed a succession of films in the early 1930s. Gary Cooper plays Dietrich’s love interest in Morocco (1930). She stars as a secret agent during World War I in Dishonored (1931) and an unhappy wife in Blonde Venus (1932). Shanghai Express (1932), The Scarlet Empress (1934), and The Devil is a Woman (1935), all with Dietrich in the lead roles, marked the height of Sternberg’s visual achievement. The Scarlet Empress is loosely based on the life of Catherine the Great. Based on Pierre Louys’s The Woman and the Puppet, the story of The Devil is a Woman was later revisited in L UIS BUN˜ UEL’s That Obscure Object of Desire. Cooper and many other actors found Sternberg a difficult director to work with. He treated them as mere elements in his cinematic canvases and demanded repeated takes of small scenes. His style is marked by his use of chiaroscuro, his handling of contrast, of light and shadow to create often mysterious and enigmatic effect. Neither Dietrich nor Sternberg earned the critical acclaim their partnership generated after they parted ways. Sternberg made several unsuccessful films in the 1930s, including An American Tragedy (1931), adapted from Theodore Dreiser’s novel; Crime and Punishment (1935), adapted from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic; the operetta The King Steps Out (1936), starring Grace Moore; and Sergeant Madden (1939).
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Later films include The Shanghai Gesture (1941), adapted from a play by John Colton; Macao (1950), a thriller with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell; and Jet Pilot (1957), with Janet Leigh and John Wayne. HOWARD HUGHES produced both Macao and Jet Pilot, and the latter, though finished in 1950, was not released for seven years. Jet Pilot was Sternberg’s only color film. Sternberg found his last film the most personally gratifying of his later works. The Saga of Anatahan (1952) was shot in Japan with a
studio tropical-island set and narrated by Sternberg himself. His memoirs Fun in a Chinese Laundry, appeared in 1965.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baxter, John, The Cinema of Josef von Sternberg, 1971; Baxter, Peter, ed., Sternberg, 1980; Weinberg, Herman G., Josef von Sternberg: A Critical Study, 1967; Zucker, Carole, The Idea of the Image: Josef von Sternberg’s Dietrich Films, 1988.
Stewart, James Maitland (May 20, 1908–July 2, 1997) Actor amed by the American Film Institute in 1999 as the number three greatest American screen legend of all time, Jimmy Stewart appeared in more than seventy-five films during his career. Known for his natural aura and acting ability, he often portrayed good-hearted, honest heroes but was known, especially in his later career, for his adaptability to a variety of roles. Born James Maitland Stewart in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to strict Presbyterian parents of Scottish ancestry, Stewart was the eldest of three children. His father owned a successful hardware store and originally wanted his son to continue the business, which had been in the family for three generations. He attended Mercersburg Academy, where he engaged in a wide variety of extracurricular activities that included track, baseball, football, music, and singing. Stewart also developed interests in aviation and radio engineering. He graduated in 1928, upon which he enrolled in Princeton University. At Princeton, Stewart excelled in architecture, the field of study in which he earned a B.S. in 1932, and pursued graduate studies.
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However, he began to develop an interest in the school’s drama and music clubs, including the Princeton Triangle Club. Aside from his acting interest, Stewart was a proficient accordion player and talented singer. Stewart was invited to join the University Players, an Ivy League performing arts club, and performed with them in the summer of 1932. In November of that year, he appeared in his first major stage production as a chauffeur in the comedy Goodbye Again. He moved to New York City, where he roomed with actor Henry Fonda (1905–1982) and director Joshua Logan (1908–1988). He made his Broadway debut as Constable Gano in Carrie Nation (1932). In spite of his minor parts, Stewart began to attract notice on Broadway and acquired bigger roles in Page Miss Glory (1934) and as the idealistic soldier Sergeant O’Hara in Sidney Howard’s (1891–1939) Yellow Jack. Stewart signed a contract with MGM and ventured into Hollywood in 1935, to only return to the stage once in 1947 for a highly successful run as Elwood P. Dowd in Mary Chase’s (1907–1981) Harvey. He again played
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Dowd in German director Henry Koster’s (1905–1988) film version in 1950, with Josephine Hull (1886–1957) portraying his sister Veta. In his first film, The Murder Man, which starred Spencer Tracy (1900–1967), he played the newspaper reporter Shorty. Although not well-received, it was followed by the more popular film version of the operetta RoseMarie (1936). Other early films include Next Time We Love (1936) and Shopworn Angel (1938), in which he starred opposite Margaret Sullavan (1909–1960); After the Thin Man (1936), in which he played David Graham; and FRANK CAPRA’S You Can’t Take It With You (1938), which won an Academy Award for Best Picture and costarred actress-comedienne Jean Arthur (1900–1991). In director John Cromwell’s (1887–1979) Made for Each Other (1939), Stewart starred opposite Carole Lombard (1908–1942) as a lawyer who falls in love, gets married, and undergoes a series of struggles with his new wife. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), again directed by Capra with Arthur as his costar, featured Stewart as the naive and idealistic Jefferson Smith, who is appointed to represent his state in Washington and soon learns first-hand the depth of corruption in America’s capital. Destry Rides Again (1939) was Stewart’s first western, with MARLENE DIETRICH as his costar. German director Ernst Lubitsch’s (1892–1947) romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and director Frank Borzage’s (1894–1962) The Mortal Storm (1940) both paired Stewart and Sullavan again. Stewart starred in one of his most remembered roles opposite KATHARINE HEPBURN and Cary Grant (1904–1986) in George Cukor’s (1899–1983) classic The Philadelphia Story (1940). For his portrayal of tabloid reporter Macaulay Connor, he earned an Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1941, he appeared in director Clarence Brown’s (1890–1987) romantic comedy Come Live with Me, director George Marshall’s (1891–1975) romantic com-
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edy Pot o’ Gold, and director Robert Z. Leonard’s (1889–1968) musical Ziegfeld Girl with JUDY GARLAND. Stewart was the first Hollywood star to enlist in the military for service—in the United States Army Air Corps—in World War II. He was rejected at first for being underweight but eventually passed the weight test. Stewart resented the preferential treatment the military showed him at first and insisted on being treated like any other soldier. By the time of his discharge in 1945, he was highly decorated, having attained the rank of colonel and flown twenty-five bombing missions over enemy territory in Europe. After the war, Stewart continued to serve in the U.S. Air Force Reserve until his retirement in 1968, during which time he attained the rank of brigadier general. Stewart was back in Hollywood in 1945. His first film after his return was his third and final with Capra, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). His portrayal of George Bailey, an average but suicidal citizen who comes to find meaning in his life with the help of his guardian angel, became one of his most famous performances and earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. During the 1950s, Stewart broadened his horizons as an actor, breaking out of the honest, decent man stereotype he had acquired. He worked with director Anthony Mann (1906–1967) on a number of westerns, including the classic Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1954), and The Man from Laramie (1955). Mann and Stewart also worked together in other genres, as in Thunder Bay (1953), about a clash between an oil-drilling prospector (Stewart’s Steve Martin) and a small fishing town; The Glenn Miller Story (1953), a biographical film in which Stewart played famed American bandleader Glenn Miller (1904–1944); and the Cold War era film Strategic Air Command (1955). The other major direction Stewart took in the 1950s was his work with ALFRED
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HITCHCOCK. He had previously appeared in Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), and they again worked together in the director’s Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958). Stewart’s other films include Sam Wood’s (1883–1949) The Stratton Story (1949); Richard Thorpe’s (1896–1991) Malaya (1949); Delmer Daves’s (1904–1977) Western Broken Arrow (1950); Billy Wilder’s (1906–2002) The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), in which he played famed American pilot Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974); Richard Quine’s (1920–1989) Bell, Book and Candle (1958); Austrian director Otto Preminger’s (1906–1986) Anatomy of a Murder (1959); a number of Westerns either directed or codirected by John Ford (1894–1973), including Two Rode Together (1961), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964); Koster’s Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962), Take Her, She’s Mine (1963), and Dear Brigitte (1965), which featured French model BRIGITTE BARDOT; Andrew V. McLaglen’s (1920– ) Civil War period film Shenandoah (1965); Robert Aldrich’s (1918–1983) Flight of the Phoenix (1965), during the filming of which stunt pilot Paul Mantz (1903–1965) was killed; McLaglen’s The Rare Breed (1966); and famed Western actor John Wayne’s (1907–1979) final film The Shootist (1976), directed by Don Siegel (1912–1991). Later in his life, Stewart played supporting roles on screen, played a number of television roles, and made television appearances. Before he retired, his last major efforts were voicing the characters of Sheriff Wylie Burp
in the animated film An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991) and Chief Rocket-Science Professor in the Goof Troop episode “E=MC Goof” (1992). Stewart died at age 89 of cardiac arrest and pulmonary embolism and is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. He won numerous lifetime achievement awards and in 1972 was inducted into the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s Hall of Great Western Performers. On August 17, 2007, the United States Postal Service issued a forty-one-cent commemorative stamp in his honor. Stewart was highly regarded by his peers not only as a talented actor but as a kind person and a genuine professional. Breaking the stereotypical Hollywood mold, he lived a scandal-free life, remained married to former model Gloria Hatrick McLean from 1949 until his death, and was a longtime supporter of the Republican Party.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Coe, Jonathan, Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life, 1994; Dewey, Donald, James Stewart: A Biography, 1996; Eliot, Marc, Jimmy Stewart: A Biography, 2006; Eyles, Allen, James Stewart, 1984; Fishgall, Gary, Pieces of Time: The Life of James Stewart, 1997; Hunter, Allan, James Stewart, 1985; Molyneaux, Gerard, James Stewart: A Bio-Bibliography, 1992; Pickard, Roy, Jimmy Stewart: A Life in Film, 1993; Robbins, Jhan, Everybody’s Man: A Biography of Jimmy Stewart, 1985; Thomas, Tony, A Wonderful Life: The Films and Career of James Stewart, 1988; www.jimmy.org.
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Stieglitz, Alfred (January 1, 1864- July 13, 1946) Photographer merican Alfred Stieglitz made significant contributions to photography and the modernist visual arts movement through his own photographs as well as through advocacy for other artists. As a member of the Pictorialism movement, he was instrumental in gaining public acceptance of photography as a respected art form, of the same caliber as painting and drawing. The New York-based photographer sought to capture the modern world of turn-of the-century life, and created mainly city scenes throughout his five-decade career. In Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1864, Stieglitz was the first of six children born to wealthy immigrant parents from Germany. In 1881 he moved with his family to Europe where he studied mechanical engineering in Berlin. After purchasing his first camera, Stieglitz changed his area of study from engineering to photochemistry, studying under the renowned photographic chemist Dr. H. W. Vogel. In 1886 he submitted his first entry in a photography competition. The following year he won first prize in a contest in Amateur Photographer magazine, gaining acclaim from British and German magazines, who began publishing his photographs. Stieglitz returned to New York in 1890 and became a partner in what would be known as the Photocrome Engraving Company. He would stay with this business until 1895, when he left to concentrate exclusively on photography. Stieglitz became a member of the Society of Amateur Photographers in 1891, which would later be known as the New York Camera Club in 1897. He embraced the technical aspects of photography to develop his creative vision through darkroom processes. Stieglitz became known for his ability to create special attention to atmosphere to give his images depth and quality, such as morning mist rising from a river, or dust swirling past
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his subject on a dirt road. Working from a theory referred to as “naturalism,” Stieglitz captured the subject of his photograph in sharp focus, leaving the background elements to fade, similar to the perception of human vision. In 1893 Stieglitz was married to Emmeline Obermeyer, the sister of his business partner. That same year, he became the chief editor of the American Amateur Photographer magazine. He exhibited work at the International Salon at the Photo Club of Paris in 1894. In 1897 his first collection of photographs was published by R. H. Russell in New York. It was entitled Picturesque Bits of New York. Stieglitz’s daughter Katherine was born in September of 1898. The following year he was granted his first solo retrospective exhibit which included eighty-seven prints from 1885-1899 and was presented by the Camera Club. Stieglitz began editing and publishing the quarterly magazine Camera Work in 1903. The publication ran until 1917 and published a total of fifty issues. He opened The Little Galleries of the Photo Secession in 1905, which would later be known as 291. The small, Fifth Avenue gallery remained open until 1917. In this time, the 291 Gallery, as well as Camera Work, showcased the work of a group of Pictoral photographers known as the Photo Secession, as well as international painters not yet known in the U.S. such as Van Gogh, PICASSO, Cezanne, and MATISSE. Around this time he truly began to embrace photographs in their own artistic right, rather than striving to create the effects of painting with his prints. In one of his better-known photographs, The Steerage (1907), he captures the deck of a ship preparing to sail to Europe, focusing on the composition of the scene with the symbolic separation between passengers of higher and lower economic status. In 1910 he organized the International Exhibition of
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Pictorial Photography exhibition in Buffalo, New York. In April of 1911, Stieglitz was instrumental in granting Picasso his first solo exhibition anywhere, which took place at his 291 Gallery. In 1916 Stieglitz met GEORGIA O’KEEFFE, an artist twenty-four years his junior, best known for her large-scale flower paintings. Two years later he left his wife and daughter to move to New York with O’Keeffe. In the next nine years he took over three hundred portrait photographs of O’Keeffe. He divorced Emmeline and married O’Keeffe in 1924. In 1922 Stieglitz began a photographic study of clouds, which he called Equivalents, to emphasize the importance of form over subject matter in order to create images with emotion. In 1924 he exhibited sixty-one prints at the Anderson Galleries, along with fifty-one of O’Keeffe’s paintings. In a further attempt to support and promote modernist art, Stieglitz opened the Intimate Gallery in 1925, which remained open for four years and hosted twenty
shows. When it closed, he opened a new gallery in its place, called An American Place in 1929, which remained open until his death in 1946 at the age of eighty-two. Stieglitz’s last solo show was held at An American Place in 1934.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Whelan, Richard, Alfred Stieglitz: A Biography, 1997; Lowe, Sue Davidson et al., Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography, 2002; Whelan, Richard and Tom Wesselmann, Stieglitz On Photography: His Selected Essays and Notes, 2005. www.artsmia.org/get-the-picture/stieglitz/frame02. html. www.masters-of-photography.com/S/stieglitz/ stieglitz_articles2.html. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ stieglitz_a_timeline_flash.html. http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/ aa071299a.htm. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/ 0,9171,955151-3,00.html.
Stockhausen, Karlheinz (August 22, 1928– ) Composer, Pianist arlheinz Stockhausen was a leading composer of modern music in the twentieth century, using both experimental music structures and electronic sounds. His work in serialism influenced many of his contemporaries. Stockhausen has also performed and lectured widely around the world. Stockhausen was born in Mo¨drath, near Cologne, Germany. His parents came from peasant backgrounds, and his father was an elementary-school teacher. Both parents died before he was 20—his mother was institutionalized in 1933 and killed by the Nazis in 1941 and his father, who was reported missing dur-
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ing World War II, was presumed dead in 1945. In his youth Stockhausen attended a primary school and then a secondary school at Burscheid. More important to his music career were the piano and violin lessons he began to take at a young age. Stockhausen played the oboe and the piano in a number of orchestras. After serving as a stretcher-bearer during the war, he worked as a farmhand and entered the Teacher’s Training School. From 1947 to 1951 he attended the Cologne Academy of Music, where he studied under the Swiss composer Frank Martin and learned theory under Hermann Schroeder. At this time Stockhausen studied the works of
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modern composers such as ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, IGOR STRAVINSKY, and BE´ LA BARTO´ K. He also began to compose in earnest, completing a sonata for violin and piano and other works. After he had finished his studies, married pianist Doris Andrae, and earned his teaching certification, all in 1951, he went to Paris. There he studied under the composers DARIUS MILHAUD and OLIVIER MESSIAEN, the latter of whom significantly influenced the development of his early work. While in Paris Stockhausen worked at the studio for musique concre`te (concrete music), where he studied various sounds—speech, wood, glass, metals—and began to investigate electronic sounds. With his compositions, Stockhausen explored many elements with which he aimed to re-create the natural processes and order of life. In 1951 he finished Kreuzspiel (1951), which he dubbed his first “pointillist” work, composed of a series of single notes, or “points.” Serialism, in which the musical elements are strictly arranged in sequence without regard for tonality, is the guiding principle of this and other works. In later compositions, he would structure the notes in isolated “groups” or “moments,” sometimes allowing the performers to choose the sequence in which they are played. Other early works include Kontrapunkte (1953; Counterpoints); Klavierstu¨ck XI (1956; Piano Piece XI); Zeitmasze (Measures; 1956), an experiment in speed for five woodwinds; Gruppen (Groups; 1958), which uses three orchestras to simulate movement in space; and Momente (1962; Moments). Stockhausen returned to Cologne in 1953 and took a job at the West German Radio’s (WGR) electronic music studio. From 1954 to 1956 he studied phonetics, acoustics, and communication at Bonn University. To complement the experimental structure of his music, he incorporated electronic sounds using sine waves, potentiometers, microphones, tape recorders, and other devices. He released his first major electronic composition,
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Elektronische Studie I (Electronic Study), in 1953. Composed from sine wave sounds, it was followed by Elektronische Studie II a year later. The 1956 work Gesang der Ju¨nglinge (1956; Song of the Youths) fused a boy’s voice pronouncing words and syllables from the Book of Daniel, chapter 3, with electronic sounds. In Kontakte (1960) Stockhausen paralleled electronic sounds and instrumental music. Mikrophonie I (1964) involved performers who elicited a variety of sounds from the tamtam using two microphones, two filters, and potentiometers. It was followed by Mikrophonie II (1962) for chorus, Hammond organ, and ring modulators. In Stimmung (1968; Tuning), Stockhausen emphasized vocal elements, as performers used German and English words as well as Japanese poetry. In Hymnen (1964–1966; Hymns), the composer combined national anthems from around the world—Africa, the United States, Germany, Russia, and others. Telemusick (1966) incorporated folk music from many countries. The element of chance plays a significant role in Stockhausen’s music, an approach that influenced other composers of the twentieth century. Kurzwellen (1968; Short-Waves), for example, required six performers to react to whatever happens to be playing on two short-wave radios. Later works include Mantra (1970); Zodiac (1975–1976); Licht: Die sieben Tagen der Woche (1977–2003; Light: The Seven Days of the Week), a seven-opera cycle that treats the characteristics of each day of the week; and Klang (2004; Sound), a series of compositions based on hours of the day. Stockhausen served as artistic director of the WGR’s electronic music studio from 1963 to 1977. He has lectured widely in Germany and the United States. In 1964 he formed an ensemble to perform his works and at the end of the century was still touring widely with it. Among the numerous awards he has received are an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin, Holland’s Edison Prize, and the Cologne Art Prize.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Harvey, Jonathan, The Music of Stockhausen: An Introduction, 1975; Kurtz, Michael, Stockhausen: A Biography, 1992; Maconie, Robin, Other
Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 2005; Maconie, Robin, The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1990; Wo¨rner, Karl H., Stockhausen: Life and Work, 1973.
Stoppard, Tom (July 3, 1937– ) Playwright, Screenwriter, Director he Czech-born English playwright Tom Stoppard achieved world fame with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which uses as its main characters two minor figures from Hamlet. Stoppard’s plays are noted for their complexity, verbal mastery, and philosophical leanings. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has produced many of his television and radio plays. In his later years, Stoppard has achieved success as a screenwriter. Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler in Zlı´n, Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. His father, Eugene Straussler, was a doctor for a shoe company, which sent him to Singapore just before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia on account of his Jewish background. Women and children were evacuated from Singapore before the Japanese invasion, and Stoppard’s mother took her two children to India. His father, however, perished during the invasion. Stoppard attended an American-run school in India, and Mrs. Straussler married British Major Kenneth Stoppard. The family moved to England, with Stoppard and his brother taking their stepfather’s name. Stoppard attended the Dolphin School in Nottinghamshire and the Pockington School in Yorkshire. In 1954 he went to work as a reporter for the Western Daily Press and in 1958 took a job writing for the Bristol Evening World. He moved to London in 1962 and wrote reviews for Scene magazine. Three of
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his short stories appeared in Introduction 2: Stories by New Writers (1964). Stoppard’s plays are characterized by their philosophical elements—sometimes presented in the form of characters engaging in debates—and by their comic elements, complex plots, and inventive structure and language. He wrote his first play, A Walk on the Water, in 1960. British Independent Television aired a televised version three years later, and a revised version, Enter a Free Man, was staged in London in 1968. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1964–1965), one of Stoppard’s most popular and enduring works, was produced at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966 and by the National Theatre in 1967. The central characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are minor figures from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. They are symbols of man lost and devoid of purpose in modern society, not unlike many characters that appear in the works of Theater of the Absurd playwrights (see EUGE` NE IONESCO). Their plight is underscored by the way Stoppard combines modern scenes that show how little the two allow themselves to realize what they’re doing with scenes from Hamlet that show them being used by Hamlet’s stepfather, the new king Claudio, who has murdered Hamlet’s father, to entrap Hamlet. The title of the play is actually a line from Hamlet, the line that announces that these two pathetic tools have been caught in the trap that the king had set for Hamlet. Hamlet feels no sympathy for
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them when he hears the news; Stoppard’s audience does, so well has Stoppard brought them alive. In 1965, Stoppard married Jose Ingle. His Gamblers appeared the same year, followed by The Real Inspector Hound (1968), After Magritte (1970), and Dogg’s Our Pet (1971). After divorcing Ingle in 1971, he married Miriam Moore-Robinson in 1972. That year saw the production of another of Stoppard’s major plays, Jumpers, which plays out conflicts between faith, morality, and reason. In the mid-1970s Stoppard wrote several plays, including Travesties (1974), Dirty Linen (1975), and New-Found-Land (1975). Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977) featured music by the American composer Andre´ Previn. It was initially produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Previn. Most of Stoppard’s works shy away from direct political statements. One exception is Professional Foul (1977), which reflects his interest in the plight of dissidents in Communist countries. Stoppard visited Czechoslovakia the same year and met the dissident playwright VA´ CLAV HAVEL, and he has been involved with Amnesty International, a group dedicated to freeing political prisoners around the world. Night and Day (1978) is in part a commentary on the world of journalism. The action unfolds in the fictional country of Kambawe, a former British colony in Africa, in and around the Carson home. The rival journalists Richard Wagner and Jacob Milne try to outdo one another in their coverage of a coup, and the latter loses his life. The emotional and sexual troubles of Ruth Carson, the unhappy, unfulfilled wife of a mine owner, form another thread in the play. Stoppard’s plays from the 1980s and 1990s include The Real Thing (1982), Hapgood (1988), Arcadia (1993), and The Invention of Love (1997), about the life of A. E. HOUSMAN. Arcadia is set in a room in a Derbyshire country house, the Coverly home; the action shifts
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between the nineteenth century and the present. The Coast of Utopia (2002), set in nineteenth-century Russia, is a trilogy of plays about the roots of radicalism in Russian politics, and it won a Tony Award for Best Play in 2007. Rock ’n’ Roll (2006) explores the role of rock and roll music in both Cambridge and Prague. Aside from plays for the theater, Stoppard has written numerous radio plays, television plays, and screenplays as well as adaptations of foreign plays. His radio dramas include The Dissolution of Dominic Boot (1964); M is for Moon among Other Things (1964); If You’re Glad I’ll Be Frank (1966); Albert’s Bridge (1967), winner of the Prix Italia; Where Are They Now? (1970); and Artist Descending a Staircase. Among his screenplays and adaptations are Romantic Englishwoman (1975), adapted from a novel by Thomas Wiseman; Despair (1978), based on a Vladimir Nabokov novel; The Human Factor (1979), adapted from a GRAHAM GREENE novel; Empire of the Sun (1987); The Russia House (1989), from JOHN LE CARRE´ ’s novel; Shakespeare in Love (1998; coauthored with Marc Norman), which won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay; Enigma (2001); His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (2005); and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Stoppard shares cowriting credits on the screenplay for Terry Gilliam’s futuristic cult classic Brazil (1985), which follows the innocent and naive Sam Lowry through a series of mishaps wrought by the modern bureaucratic machine. He wrote the screenplay for and directed a film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in 1991. Stoppard’s works have achieved world popularity, particularly in the English-speaking countries. Among his other plays are Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth (1979); and adaptations of plays by ARTHUR SCHNITZLER and FEDERICO GARCı´A LORCA. His only novel, Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon, was published in 1967.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bloom, Harold, ed., Tom Stoppard, 2003; Gabbard, Lucina Paquet, The Stoppard Plays, 1982; Hodgson, Terry, ed., The Plays of Tom Stoppard: For Stage, Radio, TV, and Film, 2001; Hunter, Jim,
About Stoppard: The Playwright and the Work, 2005; Kelly, Katherine E., The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard, 2001; Londre´, Felicia Hardison, Tom Stoppard, 1981; Nadel, Ira, Tom Stoppard: A Life, 2002; Rusinko, Susan, Tom Stoppard, 1986.
Strauss, Richard (June 11, 1864–September 8, 1949) Composer, Conductor composer in the late Romantic style, Richard Strauss was heralded as a new Wagner in his lifetime; he is primarily known for his contributions to the symphonic poem and the opera. Strauss also enjoyed a long and successful career as a conductor.
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Richard Strauss (쑖 SF Palm / Stageimage / The Image Works)
Strauss was born in Munich, Germany, and from his birth he was surrounded by music. His father, Franz Strauss, played the French horn and was widely renowned for his mastery of the instrument. Although the elder Strauss was frequently forced to play the music of Richard Wagner (1813–1883) in his court position, he detested the composer and his work with all of his being. Franz Strauss’s conservatism and loyalty to the classics became a strong influence on his son. Richard attended school, but from a young age he was clearly destined to pursue a career in music. His mother, who came from a brewing family, gave him his first piano lessons, and he was afterward tutored privately. Franz Strauss introduced him to prominent composers and conductors, and by the time he finished school, he had already composed more than a hundred works. Strauss’s early music bears the stamp of his father’s classical influence and is seldom performed. The conductor Hans von Bu¨low, who thoroughly disliked the elder Strauss, gave the younger his start in a lifelong career as a conductor. Von Bu¨low commissioned Strauss to write Suite for 13 Winds and asked him to conduct the work in Munich in 1884, when Strauss was just 20. Two years later he became third conductor of the Munich Opera, a post he held until 1889. Strauss’s inherited hatred of Wagner slowly began to change after he studied the latter’s
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Tristan und Isolde and Die Walku¨re. The composer Alexander Ritter, an admirer of Wagner, Franz Liszt (1811–1886), and Hector Berlioz (1803– 9), urged Strauss to write symphonic poems. Symphonic poems, also called tone poems, are usually comprised of a single movement; they draw color and character from the poem, story, or other source of inspiration on which they are based, thus creating music marked by expressiveness. Strauss was among the later composers to significantly develop this form, which had been used earlier by both Liszt and Berlioz. Strauss’s symphonic poems are also characterized by frequent use of the leitmotiv (developed by Wagner), a symbolic theme that recurs throughout a composition. From Italy (1886), Strauss’s “symphonic fantasia,” was inspired by a visit to Italy. Both the composer and the critics saw this composition as a transitional piece between the old Strauss and the new. His first published symphonic poem, Don Juan (1889), proved highly successful, and soon people began to herald him as a new Wagner, “Richard II.” His other symphonic poems include Macbeth (1890), Don Quixote (1898), Death and Transfiguration (1895), Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks (1895), Thus Spake Zarathustra (1898), and Life of a Hero (1908). His Domestic Symphony (1903) was first performed in New York during his tour of the United States in 1904. Aside from symphonic poems, Strauss also became famous for his operas, particularly in his later career. He conducted his first, Guntram, in Munich in 1894, but it proved to be a critical and popular failure. At the time he was engaged to the lead soprano, Pauline de
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Ahna, to whom he was happily married from 1894 onward. Another of his operas, Salome (1905), based on a play by Oscar Wilde, premiered in Dresden and generated a heated mixture of praise and criticism on account of its controversial content. It was censored in varying degrees in New York, London, and Vienna, but the publicity made Strauss rich. In 1909 Strauss began a long and successful collaboration with the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874– 9), who served as librettist for six of his operas over the next twenty years. Their collaborative efforts include Elektra (1909), the comic The Night of the Rose (1911), the one-act Ariadne on Naxos (1912), The Woman Without a Shadow (1919), and The Egyptian Helen (1928). After Hofmannsthal died in 1929, Strauss worked with other librettists. His joint opera with the Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, The Silent Woman (1935), cost him his position as president of the Chamber of State Music (1933–1935) in Nazi Germany. Strauss spent part of World War II in Vienna and returned to Germany before his death in 1949. His other works include the musical pantomime Legends of Joseph (1914), written for SERGEI DIAGHILEV’s Ballets Russes and first performed in Paris the same year; Alpine Symphony (1915); and Four Last Songs (1948). Throughout his career, Strauss held several positions as a conductor and/or director in Munich, Berlin, and Vienna.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Finck, Henry T., Richard Strauss: The Man and His Works, 1917; Kennedy, Michael, Richard Strauss, 1976; Wilhelm, Kurt, Richard Strauss: An Intimate Portrait, 1989.
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Stravinsky, Igor (June 17, 1882–April 6, 1971) Composer, Conductor, Pianist long with ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was perhaps the most influential force in the development of modern music. His work influenced, in major or minor ways, that of nearly every other composer in the twentieth century. A private student of the Russian nationalist composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), he developed his early style from his mentor’s instruction in orchestration and Russian folk traditions. Between the first and second World Wars, Stravinsky turned to a neoclassical idiom. The last phase of his career was influenced in style by a new interest in the serial music he had earlier rejected—in particular the work of ANTON VON WEBERN—and in outlook by his reconversion
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Igor Stravinsky (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-32392)
to Orthodox Christianity in 1926. In spite of his late work in twelve-tone music, Stravinsky never warmed to Schoenberg or his work. Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomsonov), near St. Petersburg, Russia, the third of four sons of the operatic bass Fyodor Ignatyevich Stravinsky. His father was a leading singer at the Mariinsky Theatre, and through his career the young Stravinsky was exposed to music, ballet, and opera from a young age. As a child Stravinsky took piano lessons and studied theory. In spite of his own success as a singer and Stravinsky’s love for music, however, his father discouraged him from music as a career. He studied criminal law and philosophy at the University of St. Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1905, and married a cousin, Catherine Kossenko, the following year. While at the university, Stravinsky met Rimsky-Korsakov’s son. Through his acquaintance, he showed some of his early works to the composer, who was impressed with them and took Stravinsky on as a private student. Although Stravinsky thought about studying at the Conservatory, Rimsky-Korsakov discouraged him from doing so. The elder composer enthusiastically encouraged Stravinsky, securing performances of his work. Stravinsky’s Symphony in E-flat Major and song cycle The Faun and the Shepherdess were performed by the Court Orchestra in 1908. The following year, two orchestral works, the Scherzo fantastique and the symphonic poem Fireworks, were performed in St. Petersburg. In the audience was ballet impresario SERGEI DIAGHILEV, who was sufficiently impressed with the pieces to ask Stravinsky to orchestrate ballet pieces for the upcoming season of his Ballets Russes. To the 1910 season of the Ballets Russes, Stravinsky contributed his first original ballet, The Firebird. A
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rousing success after its premiere at the Paris Opera, it was followed by Petrushka in 1911. VASLAV NIJINSKY danced the lead role, and MICHEL FOKINE choroegraphed the ballet. Both works feature rich orchestration influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov as well as the allusions to Russian folk tradition that characterize much of Stravinsky’s early work. Stravinsky scored a major success with his ballet Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), which had originated as an idea for a symphony entitled Great Sacrifice. Marked by its severe dissonances and shifting rhythms, The Rite of Spring was a highly original work in its time and provoked a near-riot at its 1913 premiere at the The´aˆtre des Champs E´lyse´es. The Ballets Russes went on to produce Stravinsky’s The Nightingale, based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, in 1914. Because the Ballets Russes’s activity centered on Paris, Stravinsky spent much of his time there. He passed the years of World War I in Switzerland and fell into financial straits for a number of reasons—his publisher was in Germany, war interrupted the Ballets Russes schedule, and after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, he lost his property. Following the war Stravinsky settled in Paris, where he lived until 1939. He obtained French citizenship in 1934. In the immediate postwar years, he drew heavily from Russian folk tradition, as in the fable Renard (1916) and the Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920). In 1923 Diaghilev’s company performed Stravinsky’s choral ballet The Wedding (1914–1923), based on Russian wedding traditions. Rag-time (1918), The Soldier’s Tale (1918)—which combines mime, dance, speech, and music—and other pieces, meanwhile, incorporated modern-dance elements. After the war Stravinsky also conducted and toured as a concert pianist to earn money, composing a number of works specifically for his own performance. Among these are the Piano Sonata (1924) and the Serenade in A for piano (1925). Stravinsky had now shed the Russian folk idiom of his immediate post-
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war compositions for the neoclassical strain that was to characterize his works until after World War II. Drawing from the traditions of the European composers, he created many instrumental works that, despite their debts to older works, bear Stravinsky’s unique signature. Among these are the Octet for Wind Instruments (1923), the Baroque-flavored Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1924), Violin Concerto in D Major (1931), Concerto for Two Solo Pianos (1932–1935), and the Dumbarton Oaks concerto (1938). Meanwhile, Stravinsky continued to work with the ballet. Pulcinella (1920), which uses elements of the commedia dell’arte, was the first of his neoclassical ballets, created for Diaghilev. Apollo Musagetes (1928) was his first work for the choreographer GEORGE BALANCHINE and his last for the Ballets Russes, which dissolved after Diaghilev’s death in 1929. For Balanchine he also created The Card Party (1936), Orpheus (1947), and Agon (1957). For Ida Rubenstein’s company, Stravinsky composed The Fairy’s Kiss (1928), created from music by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), and Persephone (1934). A distinct change in Stravinsky’s subject matter followed his reconversion to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1926, after which he composed many religious works. The Russian-born conductor SERGE KOUSSEVITZKY commissioned the Symphony of Psalms (1930) for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1938 and 1939, Stravinsky lost his eldest daughter, his wife, and his mother. The following year he married Vera de Bosset Soudeikine and moved with her to California. During this time he composed two major symphonies, the neoclassical Symphony in C (1938–1940) and the Symphony in Three Movements (1942–1945), in which he combined elements of the concerto with a symphony. He also accepted smaller commissions, including the Circus Polka (1942) and the Dances concertantes (1942).
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The last phase in Stravinsky’s music began in the late 1940s, when he met the American conductor Robert Craft. Craft soon became his assistant and musical advisor and moved in with the Stravinskys. Under his influence, Stravinsky began to reinvestigate the twelvetone and serial music advanced by Schoenberg, ALBAN BERG, and ANTON VON WEBERN, which he had previously rejected. Under Webern’s influence in particular, he began composing serial music—but in a style that retained his own individuality. The choral work Canticum Sacrum (1955) retains modal and tonal elements but also contains strictly serial portions. With Threni (1958), a choral setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, however, he had clearly forged his own brand of twelve-tone music. Other serial works followed, many of them on religious
themes—including the Movements for piano and orchestra (1959), orchestral Variations (1964), and the Requiem Canticles (1966). Among Stravinsky’s other works are the operatic oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927); the opera The Rake’s Progress (1948–1951), with libretto by W. H. AUDEN and Chester Kallman; the Mass (1948); and the elegy In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954). The Poetics of Music, a series of lectures he delivered at Harvard in 1939, was published in 1940. During the last years of his life he recorded many of his works in collaboration with Craft.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Craft, Robert, Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 1992; Druskin, Mikhail Semenovich, Igor Stravinsky: His Life, Works, and Views, 1983; Oliver, Michael, Igor Stravinsky, 1995.
Streep, Meryl (June 22, 1949– ) Actress nown for her wide adaptability to a variety of roles and her ability to recreate accents other than her own, the American actress Meryl Streep is widely considered one of the most talented living actresses. To date, she has been nominated for Academy Awards fourteen times, has won two of them, and has won numerous other awards. Streep was born Mary Louise Streep in Summit, New Jersey, and grew up in Bernardsville, New Jersey. Her father was a pharmaceutical executive, and her mother was a commercial artist. After graduating from Bernards High School, she earned a B.A. in drama at Vassar College, where she first developed an interest in acting. She subsequently earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama.
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Streep made her professional stage debut in The Playboy of Seville (1971), and her screen debut came in the television thriller Secret Service (1977). Her first feature film was Julia (1977), in which she costarred with Jane Fonda (1937– ) and Vanessa Redgrave (1937– ) as Anne Marie. The Deer Hunter, in which she costarred with Robert Di Niro (1943), followed in 1978. For the latter, she earned her first Academy Award nomination—for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. In 1978, she won her first Emmy Award for her portrayal of Inga Helms Weiss in the television miniseries Holocaust. The same year, she married sculptor Don Gummer (1946– ). In 1979, Streep appeared as Jill in her only WOODY ALLEN film to date, Manhattan. The same year, she won her first Academy Award (for Best Supporting Actress) for her
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portrayal of Joanna Kramer in Kramer vs. Kramer opposite Dustin Hoffman (1937– ). She won a second Academy Award (for Best Actress) for her portrayal of Holocaust survivor Sophie Zawistowski in Sophie’s Choice (1982). In the 1980s, Streep appeared in a string of successful films, beginning with director Karel Reisz’s (1926–2002) The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981). In Silkwood (1982), based on a true story and costarring with Kurt Russell (1951– ) and Cher (1946– ), Streep portrayed Karen Silkwood, a nuclear plant worker and whistleblower who died under mysterious circumstances. In Out of Africa, she starred with Robert Redford (1936– ) in a film detailing the evolving circumstances in the life of a Danish woman who moves to Africa to establish a coffee plantation. Ironweed, in which she starred with Jack Nicholson (1937– ), featured Streep as the down-and-out former singer Helen Archer. In Evil Angels (1988), based on a true story, Streep portrayed Lindy Chamberlain, the Australian mother accused of her daughter’s death after claiming that a dingo took her child. Streep continued to appear in successful screen roles during the 1990s, sometimes broadening her horizons to less conventional roles. The screen version of Carrie Fisher’s (1956– ) novel Postcards from the Edge (1990) featured Streep as Suzanne Vale, a Hollywood actress fresh out of a detox center for substance abuse. Director Robert Zemeckis’s (1952– ) Death Becomes Her (1992) showcased Streep with Goldie Hawn (1945– ) and Bruce Willis (1955– ) in a black comedy about two rivals who imbibe an immortality potion. The following year, she starred in the film version of Chilean novelist Isabel Allende’s (1942– ) The House of the Spirits. In 1994, Streep portrayed an expert rafter who tries to outsmart two felons who threaten her family in The River Wild. The Bridges of Madison County, directed by CLINT EASTWOOD, followed in 1995. In 1996, she appeared in Before and After and Marvin’s
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Room, the latter with Diane Keaton (1946– ) and Leonardo DiCaprio (1974– ). In One True Thing (1998), Streep portrayed a mother dying of cancer cared for by her daughter, played by Rene´e Zellweger (1969– ) . Streep’s character in Music of the Heart (1999), based on the true story of schoolteacher Roberta Guaspari, launches an uphill battle to teach violin to inner-city students in Harlem. In the twenty-first century, Streep has not slowed the pace of her acting and continues to play prominent film characters. In 2002, she costarred with Nicholas Cage (1964– ) in Spike Jonze’s (1969– ) Adaptation as real-life author and journalist Susan Orlean (1955– ). The Hours, in which she costarred with Nicole Kidman (1967– ) and Julianne Moore (1960– ), followed the same year. In 2004, Streep appeared with Denzel Washington (1954– ) in Jonathan Demme’s (1944– ) remake of the classic Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Her latest films include Prime (2005); Robert Altman’s (1925–2006) A Prairie Home Companion (2006), with Lindsay Lohan (1986– ) and Lily Tomlin (1939– ); The Devil Wears Prada (2006), with Anne Hathaway (1982– ); and Dark Matter (2007). Streep is slated to appear in Rendition and Lions for Lambs in 2007, in Mamma Mia!, First Man, Doubt, and Dirty Tricks in 2008, and in Wanted and A Question of Mercy in 2009. Although best known for her prominent screen roles, Streep has dabbled in other areas of film and television. She has voiced characters for the animated television series The Simpsons, for a 1999 episode of King of the Hill, and in STEVEN SPIELBERG’S film A.I.. (2001) as the Blue Mecha character. With Al Pacino (1940– ) and Emma Thompson (1959– ), she played four different roles in six episodes of the HBO television version of TONY KUSHNER’S play Angels in America (2003). Since 2002, Streep has hosted the annual benefit event Poetry & the Creative Mind. Streep’s stage credits belong to the early and late parts of her career. In 1976, she ap-
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peared in the Broadway double-bill of TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and ARTHUR MILLER’S A Memory of Two Mondays. The latter performance earned her a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Her other early Broadway credits include award-winning performances in Anton Chekhov’s (1860–1904) The Cherry Orchard and the BERTOLT BRECHT-KURT WEILL musical Happy End. After a long absence from the stage, she returned to theater in 2001 to play Arkadina in the Chekhov revival The Seagull. In 2005, she
appeared in Charlie Kaufman’s (1958– ) Theater of the New Ear, and in 2006, she starred in Kushner’s new version of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Maychick, Diana, Meryl Streep: The Reluctant Superstar, 1984; Smurthwaite, Nick, The Meryl Streep Story, 1984; www.merylstreeponline.net.
Sullivan, Edward Vincent (September 28, 1901–October 13, 1974) Television Personality est known for his wildly successful Sunday night television variety show in the 1950s and 1960s, The Ed Sullivan Show, Ed Sullivan was responsible for popularizing and launching the careers of innumerable artists, musicians, and other performers from all walks of life. Sullivan was a boxer and entered the media profession by working as a newspaper sportswriter. He eventually obtained the job of theater columnist for The New York Graphic when popular gossip columnist and entertainment reporter Walter Winchell (1897–1972) left. Sullivan later worked for The New York Daily News, with his columns focused on gossip and Broadway shows. Sullivan began to make a name for himself broadcasting show business news over the radio and working as an emcee at charity events and vaudeville revues. In 1948, Sullivan went to work for CBS hosting a Sunday night television variety show entitled Toast of the Town, which became The Ed Sullivan Show in 1955. The show aired from CBS Studio 50 on Broadway in New York. In 1967 the studio was re-
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named the Ed Sullivan Theater, and it is currently the broadcasting spot of The Late Show with David Letterman. Unlike other popular hosts on the airwaves of his day, Sullivan was not a natural-born television personality on camera. Often stiff and awkward, he seemed to have little personality and simply introduced his guests without fanfare and stepped aside to watch them perform. For his wooden stage presence, he was widely parodied in his day. Many argue that it was not Sullivan who made the show attractive to television audiences, but the vast variety of successful talent he was somehow able to secure. Dancers, comedians, musicians, sports stars, poets, and many others all appeared on his show. Sullivan was responsible for making the careers of many of these performers and bolstering the popularity of acts that were already publicly known. He seemed to possess an uncanny ability to know talent on the verge of success and paid handsome sums of money to book them for his shows.
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Although Sullivan seemed to have a sense of humor about impersonations of him, he had little tolerance for talent he felt had crossed him in some way and held long-term grudges. Blues-rock singer BO DIDDLEY once performed a different song than planned and was subsequently banned from appearing on Sullivan’s show. In 1956, injuries from an automobile accident forced Sullivan to take a sabbatical from his show. As a result, he missed ELVIS PRESLEY’S performance, much to his dismay. On February 9, 1964, he was present when THE BEATLES performed. It remains one of the most-watched shows in history, and Sullivan got along so well with the band that he agreed to introduce them at a series of concerts. In 1965, CBS started broadcasting the program in RCA’s compatible color process. Sullivan was noted for his early support of civil rights, hosting many talented and famous African-American performers such as singer and actress Pearl Bailey (1918–1990), jazz musician LOUIS ARMSTRONG, actor and comedian Richard Pryor (1940–2005), singer Richie Havens (1941– ), and bandleader DUKE ELLINGTON. He balked at pressure to exclude
minorities and emerging forms of entertainment from his show. The show’s popularity peaked in the 1960s, and by 1971 it had fallen from television’s top twenty. Anxious to appeal to a younger generation of viewers, CBS canceled the show, and an angry Sullivan refused to host a “final show.” He appeared on several CBS television specials and for a twenty-fifth anniversary show in 1973. In addition to The Ed Sullivan Show, he appeared in several films, including Mr. Broadway (1933), There Goes My Heart (1938), Bye Bye Birdie (1963), The Patsy (1964), and The Singing Nun (1966). He died of esophageal cancer at age 73. Sullivan’s longtime wife, Sylvia Weinstein, whom he married in 1930, died two years before he did.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bowles, Jerry G., A Thousand Sundays: The Story of the Ed Sullivan Show, 1980; Harris, Michael David, Always on Sunday: Ed Sullivan, an Inside View, 1968, Maguire, James, Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan, 2006.
Sutherland, Graham (August 24, 1903–February 17, 1980) Painter, Graphic Artist s an artist, Graham Vivian Sutherland started out making prints inspired by the Romantic tradition in England. In the 1930s he turned to both Paris and painting, after which he produced expressionistic landscapes, portraits, and abstract figures inspired by anthropomorphic forms. Sutherland also designed a large tapestry for the Coventry cathedral. Sutherland was born in London. His father was a civil servant and worked with the
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Board of Education. In his early youth, Sutherland developed a love for geography, landscape, and natural history that later manifested itself in his art. He entered a preparatory school in 1912 and two years later transferred to Epsom College, where, to his dismay, he followed a science-oriented curriculum. Upon his graduation, Sutherland worked briefly for the railway before entering Goldsmiths’ College School of Art at New Cross (1921). He remained there until 1925, mainly
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studying printmaking. He established himself first as a printmaker and had his first one-man show at the Twenty-One Gallery (which had already published some of his work) in 1925. He was elected Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers the same year. Two events that shaped his future followed: his 1926 conversion to Roman Catholicism and his 1927 marriage to Kathleen Barry. Sutherland remained deeply devoted to both for the rest of his life. At this point in his career, he had little use for the modern and avant-garde influences of Paris. His early works were largely representational, and Sutherland looked for inspiration toward Romantics like Samuel Palmer (1805–1881). In order to support himself, he took a teaching post at the Chelsea School of Art (1928) and designed glassware, posters, ceramics, and other items for commercial manufacturers. His attitude toward Paris began to change in the 1930s, and he also began to divert his energies from printmaking to painting. His first major oil paintings date from the early 1930s. The representational forms of his early works gave way to more abstract figures as he absorbed Parisian influences. Among these was PABLO PICASSO, whose friendship he gained and whose work he grew to admire. In 1936 some of his work was exhibited at the International Surrealism Exhibition in London, and he held his first one-man show two years later. From 1941 to 1944 he served as a war artist. Later in the decade, Sutherland’s work began to gain recognition in the United States. Many of Paris’s leading painters were sworn enemies of the Church, but Sutherland’s devout Catholicism led him to paint religious subjects in modern style. Among these is Christ Carrying the Cross (1953). What is sometimes described as his “thorn period” began
around the same time. Protruding thorns or thorn-like shapes stand out in paintings such as Thorn Head (1946) and Palm Palisade (1948). Crucifixion (1946), commissioned for St. Matthew’s Church in Northampton, emphasizes the crown of thorns on the crucified Jesus. After the war Sutherland spent much of his time in France, where he abandoned his English and Welsh landscapes for Riviera scenes. He painted numerous portraits of famous figures, including SOMERSET MAUGHAM (1949), Winston Chur-chill (who did not like his; 1954), and a somber Edward SackvilleWest (1954– 5). The major work of Sutherland’s career, however, is his Christ in Glory (1952– 2), a massive tapestry for the Coventry Cathedral that depicts a seated Christ with raised forearms. The work took a decade to complete and was woven by the French firm of Pinton Fre`res. In his later life, he painted many semiabstract anthropomorphic forms inspired by insects, birds, and other creatures. His Oak Tree with Setting Sun (1976) depicts the head of a large bird staring at the ground from an oak tree, set against a brilliant red background. Sutherland’s later landscapes are dark, brooding, and expressionistic, as in Dark Landscape (1962) and Trees on a River Bank (1971). His other works include Bestiary (1968), a series of twenty-six lithographs; and Bees (1977), a series of fourteen aquatints. He was elected to the Order of Merit in 1960 and became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1972.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Berthoud, Roger, Graham Sutherland: A Biography, 1982; Hayes, John, The Art of Graham Sutherland, 1980.
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Sutherland, Dame Joan (November 7, 1926– ) Singer
Joan Sutherland (쑖 ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
oan Sutherland showed little promise as a professional singer in her youth but rose to become one of the twentieth century’s leading coloraturists and operatic sopranos. She made her professional debut in her native Australia before moving to London and joining the company at Covent Garden. Her tall, imposing figure and strong, warm voice made her a commanding stage presence.
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Sutherland was born in Sydney, Australia, to parents who were devoted Scots Presbyterians. Her mother was a talented singer and was her primary music instructor until she was 18. Her family had limited funds, so the Freemasons financed the education of Joan and her sister Barbara (whose later suicide devastated her). In 1934 she entered St. Catherine’s School, Waverly, where she studied until she was 16. Although Sutherland already nursed dreams of singing opera professional-
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ly, her real talent did not emerge until a late age. Upon leaving St. Catherine’s, she went to business school and took a job typing weather reports at Sydney University. As she worked in her day jobs, Sutherland devoted her spare time to honing her singing voice. She increasingly aspired to perform publicly and continued to study piano and voice with her mother. In 1945 she received her first major break when she entered and won a singing competition sponsored by John and Aida Dickens. Sutherland began to study under John Dickens, who insisted against her mother’s judgment that she was a dramatic soprano rather than a mezzo-soprano. Sutherland made her professional debut as Dido in a performance of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Sydney in 1947 and her operatic debut in the title role of the premiere of Sir Eugene Goossens’s one-act opera Judith in 1951. She moved with her mother to London later that year and began to study with Clive Cary at the Royal College of Music. The following year she debuted as the First Lady in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Zauberflo¨te with Covent Garden’s Royal Opera Company, with which she sang for six seasons. Her most important London acquaintance, however, was Richard Bonynge, who encouraged her—again against her mother’s wishes—to study the bel canto repertoire and pursue coloratura roles. They married in 1954. During the 1950s, Sutherland toured England and began working for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). She appeared regularly on the BBC’s Third Programme and later
on The Ed Sullivan Show and other American television programs. One of Sutherland’s most successful performances came in 1959, when she sang the title role of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, produced at Covent Garden by FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI. In 1961 she debuted with the same role in New York City, and she repeated it at the Australian Opera in 1980. Sutherland’s Lucia established her reputation as the leading coloraturist of her era. Sutherland continued to sing all over the United States and Europe until her retirement in 1990. Among her notable roles were Norma in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma, Cleopatra in George Frederick Handel’s Giulio Cesare, the three sopranos in Jacques Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffman, and Marie in La fille du re´giment. Sutherland also appeared in Beatrice di Tenda (for her debut at Milan’s La Scala), Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, Esclarmonde, the bel canto works La sonnambula and I puritani, Alcina, Lucrezia Borgia, and Les Huguenots. Sutherland recorded many works by Handel, Bellini, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven (including the Choral Symphony), and others. She was made Dame of the British Empire in 1979 and in 2004 received a Kennedy Center Honor for outstanding achievement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Eaton, Quaintance, Sutherland and Bonynge: An Intimate Biography, 1987; Major, Norma, Joan Sutherland: The Authorized Biography, 1994; Sutherland, Joan, A Prima Donna’s Progress: The Autobiography of Joan Sutherland, 1997.
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Sydow, Max von (April 10, 1929– ) Actor, Director lthough best known for his brooding characters in INGMAR BERGMAN’s Swedish films and his villainous roles on the American screen—such as the Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon and Joubert in Three Days of the Condor—the Swedish actor Max von Sydow has appeared in dozens of films in a wide variety of roles. Sydow was the son of a Lutheran ethnologist, born Carl Adolf von Sydow in Lund, Sweden. He developed an interest in acting at an early age and helped found an acting club at his high school. From 1948 to 1951 Sydow studied at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm, and upon his graduation he took jobs at various theaters. From 1953 to 1955 he acted at the Municipal Theatre in Ha¨lsingborg, and for the next five years he worked at the Municipal Theatre of Malmo¨. Sydow returned to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm from 1960 to 1962, and at all three he appeared in diverse roles that ranged from modern to Shakespearean. His film debut came with a small part as Nils the crofter in Alf Sjoeberg’s Bara en mor (Only a Mother) in 1949. Over the next several years, paralleling his stage performances, he continued to appear in Swedish films. He appeared in the first in a series of Bergman films with his role in Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal); other Bergman films during the 1960s include Jungfruka¨llan (The Virgin Spring, 1960), Sasom i en Spegel (Through a Glass Darkly, 1961); Nattvardsga¨sterna (Winter Light, 1963), Skammen (Shame, 1968), and En Passion (The Passion of Anna,
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1969). In many of these he worked with the Norwegian actress Liv Ullman. In 1965 Sydow launched his career on the American screen with his portrayal of Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told, which also featured CHARLTON HESTON as John the Baptist and a script written by the American poet CARL SANDBURG. The following year he appeared in Hawaii (1966). From the 1970s onward he regularly appeared in many successful American films, including The Exorcist (1973), Voyage of the Damned (1976), Three Days of the Condor (1976), Flash Gordon (1980), Conan the Barbarian (1981), Samson and Delilah (1984), Dune (1984), Christopher Columbus (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Awakenings (1990), and The Ox (1991). Sydow directed his first film, Ved vejen, in 1987. He has also continued to appear in Swedish films, such as The Flight of the Eagle (1981); Enskilda Samtal (Private Confessions, 1996); and Jan Troell’s Hamsun (1997), in which he played the controversial Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun. His most recent films include Solomon (1997), Hostile Waters (1997), What Dreams May Come (1998), Snow Falling on Cedars (1999), S TEVEN SPIELBERG’S Minority Report (2002); Heidi (2005), and Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King (2006).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cowie, Peter, Max Von Sydow: From The Seventh Seal to Pelle the Conqueror, 1989.
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Symons, Arthur (February 28, 1865–January 22, 1945) Poet, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Critic rimarily influenced by the French Decadents and Symbolists, Arthur Symons helped popularize both in England in the 1890s and early 1900s in a number of critical works. Several volumes of his own Symbolist-inspired poetry appeared in Britain before a severe mental collapse in 1908 eroded the quality of his output. Symons also wrote short stories, plays, and travel books. Symons was born in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, England. His father, an itinerant Wesleyan minister, moved the family around frequently, taking them to Northumberland, Cornwall, and Devon, thus preventing Symons from forming many lasting attachments. This early mobility was to follow him into adulthood, when he enjoyed traveling extensively around Europe. The sporadic schooling Symons received was another consequence of his frequent relocation. In 1886, Symons published his first major work, An Introduction to the Study of Browning. Robert Browning and Walter Pater, whom he met at Oxford in 1888, were the two most important influences on his early verse. To Pater he dedicated his first volume of poetry, Days and Nights, published in 1889 and heavily influenced by Browning, whom he met that year. From 1889 onward, Symons traveled regularly in Europe. In France he met writers such as Stephane Mallarme´ and Paul Verlaine, the latter of whom was the most significant influence on his later work. Symons was instrumental in bringing Verlaine to England for a series of lectures in 1893. He also joined the Rhymers’ Club, where he started a friendship with the Irish poet WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS. By this time, Symons had become an advocate of decadence, the deliberate rejection of traditional values in art and life, in England. His critical work The Decadent Movement in
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Literature was published in 1893. In his personal life, he pursued a series of hedonistic adventures from which he aimed to gain new experiences. These included experimentation with drugs and many liaisons with women, and from such experiences he derived two volumes of poetry, Silhouettes (1892) and London Nights (1895). Symons also contributed controversial material to the avant-garde Yellow Book and took the editorship of the magazine The Savoy with the artist Aubrey Beardsley in 1896. Under Yeats’s influence, Symons abandoned his poetic emphasis on sensation and hedonistic pleasure and developed an interest in mysticism. He married Rhoda Bower in 1901. His new spiritual bent accompanied his embrace of the French Symbolists, particularly the work of Verlaine. His 1899 critical work The Symbolist Movement in Literature was instrumental in introducing French Symbolism to England, and it influenced later writers such as J AMES JOYCE and T. S. ELIOT. With Plays, Acting, and Music (1903) and Studies in Seven Arts (1906), Symons attempted to apply Symbolist principles to the various arts. Among his volumes of Symbolist-influenced verse are Amours (1897), Images of Good and Evil (1899), and The Fool of the World (1906). In addition to poetry, he produced a volume of short stories entitled Spiritual Adventures (1905). The stories are psychologically oriented and often autobiographical, probing the nature of artists and their relationship to society. The successful portion of Symons’s career ended with his complete mental breakdown while on vacation in Italy in 1908. Confined to a mental institution until 1909, he settled permanently in Kent upon his release. The novelist JOSEPH CONRAD, whom he gained as a friend in 1911, was among the significant associations of his later life.
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Symons never fully regained his sanity or his ability to write as he had before. He recovered sufficiently to continue working, but most critics do not place his later output on the same level as his earlier work. The material for both The Romantic Movement in English Poetry (1909) and the poetry volume Knave of Hearts (1913) was written before his breakdown. Symons recounted his mental illness in Confessions (1930). Among his later published works are the poetry collections Lesbian and Other Poems (1920), Love’s Cruelty (1923), and Jezebel More, and Other Poems (1931); and the criti-
cal works Studies in the Elizabethan Drama (1919) and studies on Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, and Walter Pater. Symons also wrote travel books, among which was Cities (1903), and plays. In 1899, he discovered a number of unpublished Casanova writings, some of which were later published by The Casanova Society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckon, Karl E., Arthur Symons: A Life, 1987; Lhombreaud, Roger, Arthur Symons: A Critical Biography, 1963; Monroe, John M., Arthur Symons, 1969.
Synge, John Millington (April 16, 1871–March 24, 1909) Playwright fter having studied French literature at the Sorbonne, Edmund John Millington Synge returned to his native Ireland on the advice of the poet WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, and contributed seven plays to the Irish Renaissance, plays that were the heart of the dramatic aspect of the revival of literature, before he succumbed to cancer. Steeped in Irish culture, his dramas are savagely witty, critical of prevailing social mores, yet full of the beauty as well as the humor of peasant speech. Synge was born into a upper-middle-class, conservative, Protestant Anglo-Irish family in Rathfranham, near Dublin, Ireland. His father was a barrister and died of smallpox the year after he was born. Synge later harbored a particular resentment toward his mother’s dedication to her religious tenets, and by the age of 18 he had abandoned Christianity for Darwinism. He studied at a classical English school for several years but was for the most part tutored at home. At first aspiring to become a musician, he studied the violin.
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In 1888 Synge studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and the following year he entered the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He studied music in Germany in 1893 but decided to abandon his professional musical aspirations the following year. Synge spent the next several years in Paris, studying languages and literature at the Sorbonne, particularly French literature. There he met Yeats, who advised him to return to Ireland, which he did a number of years later. From the beginning of his career as a playwright, Synge’s productivity was hampered by his Hodgkin’s disease, for which he underwent his first medical treatment in 1897. Two years later he helped found the Irish Literary Theatre, which evolved into the Abbey Theatre. Between 1898 and 1902 he spent, at Yeats’s suggestion, much of his time on the Aran Islands, absorbing the language and lore of the people of this isolated world where Irish was still the native speech. He recounted his journeys in the four-part work The Aran Islands (1907), but more importantly the sto-
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ries he heard furnished him with plots, and the rhythms of the language enriched his prose. The culture of the Aran Islands, as well as of western Ireland, was in fact to serve as the backdrop for his dramas. The characters in his plays often battle emotionally or psychologically oppressive circumstances, as is the case in the one-act drama In the Shadow of the Glen (first performed 1903). The story concerns Nora Burke, who is trapped in a loveless marriage to an older man and seeks an outlet in Patch Darcy, representative of the freedom she yearns for. When the Moon Has Set (1903) takes place in a country house of the sort owned by the then-fading Anglo-Irish Protestant landowning class. The struggle in this play is against what Synge saw as the life-stifling forces of religion. Colm, the heir to the home, falls in love with a distant cousin and nun, Sister Eileen. They battle in their love against the vows she has taken as a nun, and in the end she chooses her freedom, renounces her vows, and marries Colm. The three women in Riders to the Sea (1904), a one-act play set in a cottage kitchen, seem to be prisoners of fate. The play is set in the Aran Islands, and it captures the beauty of the speech there as well as the tragedy of a world in which so many women must see their men lost at sea. In the three-act drama The Well of the Saints (1905), Synge explores the nature of society through a married couple, both beggars, who are both physically and symbolically detached from society
through their blindness. They are given the gift of sight by a wandering healer and part ways. Emotionally beaten in the world of sight, both again go blind and refuse another chance to see. Synge’s most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World (1907), unfolds in a western Irish village and takes a critical view of Irish braggadocio. The protagonist of this great comedy is the peasant boy Christy Mahon, who boasts of having killed his father and thus wins the admiration of the villagers. Their respect for him erodes, however, when his father turns up alive. A sharply humorous and critical drama, the play provoked riots at the Abbey Theatre in 1907 and among the Irish members of the audience in the American cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Among Synge’s other works are the play The Tinker’s Wedding (1908), the unfinished drama Deirdre of the Sorrows (his only play based on an Irish myth), and Poems and Translations (1909). BIBLIOGRAPHY Benson, Eugene, J. M. Synge, 1982; Gerstenberger, Donna, John Millingon Synge, rev. ed., 1990; Greene, David H., J. M. Synge, 1871– 9, 1989; Jones, Nesta, ed., File on Synge, 1994; Kiely, David M., John Millington Synge: A Biography, 1995. King, Mary C., The Drama of J. M. Synge, 1985; Kopper, Edward A., Jr., ed., A J. M. Synge Literary Companion, 1988; Skelton, Robin, J. M. Synge, 1972; Yeats, W. B., Synge and the Ireland of His Time, 1970.
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TAGORE, RABINDRANATH
Tagore, Rabindranath (May 6, 1861–August 7, 1941) Poet, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Composer, Painter he most prolific and influential figure in modern Indian literature, Rabindranath Tagore wrote poems, novels, plays, and short stories in his native Bengali. His use of colloquial language revolutionized Bengali literature, which had previously drawn from traditional Sanskrit styles. Tagore’s own English translation of the poetry collection Gitanjali (1912) introduced his work to the Western world and earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh, and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.” He himself said that the main theme of his literary work was “the joy of attaining the Infinite within the
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Rabindranath Tagore (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-95518)
finite,” and with his blending of Indian and Western tradition he has brought that joy alive for many. Tagore was born Rava ndrana tha Tha kura in Calcutta. His father, Debendranath Tagore, was a wealthy land-owner and philosopher who renounced the orthodox Hindu religion and led a sect called the Brahmo Samaj. The elder Tagore was a major formulator of the sect’s doctrines, which deny the importance of ritual and ceremony and teach its followers to pursue harmony with nature and righteousness. The younger Tagore, the fourteenth of fifteen children, saw little of his parents (his mother died when he was 13) and was raised primarily by servants. He attended school intermittently, was tutored privately, and in 1878 studied law at London University. Tagore’s massive literary output began in his youth, when he started to write poetry and plays. His first book of poetry, A Poet’s Tale, was published when he was 17. Tagore’s poetry ranges from the lyrical and ethereal to straightforward narrative, but it all has in common a distinct Bengali flavor and is all enriched with imagery from his homeland. Love, man’s relationship to nature, the search for God in nature, the political and social climate, and sympathy for the poor all emerge as prominent themes in his work. As for form, Tagore rejected the boundaries of traditional poetry and adopted freer forms. Many critics consider Manasi (The Ideal One; 1890) the volume that marks the beginning of Tagore’s poetic maturity. Other volumes of his poetry include The Golden Boat (1894), the title poem of which is one of his most famous; Stories and Legends (1900), a book of fragmentary prose poems which incorporates Sikh history and social criticism; For a While (1901); the book of children’s verse Crescent Moon; Red Oleanders; and two
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books written during an illness, Sickbed and Recovery. In 1891, Tagore moved to a family estate in what is now Bangladesh. During his time there, he developed a deep love for the Ganges River, the landscape, and the impoverished residents of the area. In 1893 he married Mrinalini Devi, the daughter of one of his employees on the estate, by whom he had five children. Tragedy scarred the family—his wife died in 1902, followed by a daughter in 1903 and a son in 1907. Tagore’s dramas are as diverse as his poetry. Some are comedies, such as Vaikuntha’s Manuscript (1897); Fun and Mockery (1907); Bachelor’s Club (1920); and Saved at Last (1926). Others are more serious contemplations of nature, as in Last Rains (1931) and Natarja: The Theatre of Seasons (1927). Many are rendered in verse and use music, song, and dance in the presentation. In The Outcast, an outcast girl falls in love with Ananda, the follower of Buddha. Other plays include Chitra (1892); The Play of Illusion; The King of the Dark Chamber (1910); The Post Office (1912), which was produced in both London and Dublin by the Abbey Theatre actors; The Immovable (1912); The Waterfall (1922); and Housewarming (1925). In 1901, Tagore founded a progressive children’s school in Shantinketan, then West Bengal. Disturbed by the rise of a mechanistic society, he sought to keep the children in contact with nature and in harmony with it as well as to combine Eastern and Western modes of thought. The school opened with five children and by 1921 had evolved into Vishva-Bharati University. Not until 1912 did Tagore’s literary endeavors become accessible to Western readers. That year, he published a translation of Gitanjali (1912; Song Offerings), with a preface written by his admirer WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS. Tagore wrote in Bengali and translated many of his own works into English. After the No-
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bel Prize established his international fame the following year, Tagore traveled widely all over the world. Britain’s King George V knighted Tagore in 1915, but he renounced the honor in 1919 to protest the massacre by British troops of 400 demonstrators in Amritsar. Tagore involved himself in politics throughout his adult life. Although he envisioned a sort of universal man, he was a leading nationalist and advocate of independence from Britain. He counted among his friends the pacifist-nationalist Mahatma Gandhi and shared his belief in nonviolent revolution. Tagore’s novels have received less attention than his poetry and plays but carry similar themes. Both Gora (1909) and The Home and the World (1916) reflect political and ideological currents in India. Other novels include Flight of Swans (1916); The Royal Sage, later adapted as the verse play Sacrifice; The Home and the World (1916); and Crosscurrents (1929). In addition to his literary, political, and educational endeavors, Tagore began to paint in the 1920s. He composed hundreds of songs, many of which remain popular in his native land. His “Our Golden Bengal” is now Bangladesh’s national anthem. The Indian film director Satyajit Ray adapted many of Tagore’s works to his medium. Tagore’s Collected Poems and Plays was published in 1966.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Chakrabarti, Mohit, Rabindranath Tagore: A Quest, 1995; Chakravorty, Byomkesh Chandra, Rabindranath Tagore, His Mind and Art: Tagore’s Contribution to English Literature, 1971; Dutta, Krishna, and Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, 1995; Ghose, Sisirkumar, Rabindranath Tagore, 1986; Kripalani, Krishna, Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography, 1980; Lago, Mary M., Rabindranath Tagore, 1976.
TAMAYO, RUFINO
Tamayo, Rufino (August 26, 1899–June 24, 1991) Painter, Sculptor n his mature paintings, Rufino Tamayo combined images drawn from pre-Columbian art, intense color, and influences of the avant-garde European painters— in particular the Cubism of PABLO PICASSO. Disagreeing with the politically charged subject matter of his compatriot and contemporary DIEGO RIVERA, Tamayo instead painted on themes of nature, folk tradition, and everyday human activity. He was also a muralist and sculptor. Tamayo was of Zapotec Indian ancestry, born in Oaxaca, Mexico. Following the deaths
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Rufino Tamayo (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-103674)
of his parents, he moved to Mexico City in 1911. There he studied at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts from 1917 to 1921. From 1921 to 1923 he worked for the National Archaeology Museum in Mexico City as head of the Department of Ethnographic Drawing, a position that exposed him to the pre-Columbian artifacts he grew to admire. These artifacts significantly influenced the flat, simple figures in his early works. Early paintings such as Children (1924), a portrayal of a young boy and girl walking on green hills hand in hand, and the still-life Yellow Chair (1929), which depicts a tray of fruit on a yellow chair, use representational images and lack the boldness of color he would later develop. Tamayo had his first one-man show in Mexico City in 1926 and the same year moved to New York, where he was to spend a significant amount of time over the years. In 1928 he returned to Mexico, later taking a position as head of the Education Ministry’s Fine Arts Department. In 1933 he finished his first mural, The Music and the Song, for Mexico’s National School of Music, and in 1934 he married Olga Flores Rivas. After 1936 he returned to New York annually for more than a decade, and it was at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940 that his viewing of a Picasso exhibit initiated a change in his painting style. Impressed by Picasso’s Cubist works, and particularly the antiwar painting Guernica, he experimented with his own Cubist style in paintings such as Women of Tehuantepec (1939). Pre-Columbian figures reemerged in Animals (1941), a brilliant red-and-yellow depiction of barking dogs. Tamayo was soon to move toward more abstract creations, as in his mural Nature and the Artist (1943) for the Hillyer Art Library at Smith College. Although he had been well known in Mexico since the 1930s, a successful exhibition at
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the Venice Biennale in 1950 established his international reputation. During the 1950s he continued painting in an abstract style with vibrant color. In vibrant reds and oranges, Sunset (1953) depicts the rays of the setting sun projecting outward. In other paintings, as in the cool-blue-dominated White Watermelons (1956), which shows a faint hint of fruits sitting on the table, images fade into a background of color. Tamayo’s mature paintings are sometimes dominated by a single color, as in the bright pink Man with a Guitar (1959). Portrait of Olga (1964), a portrait of his wife, seated and clad in an orange garment, is among the most realistic of his later paintings. Works such as The Man with the Stick (1966), Three Figures in Red (1967), and Three Characters (1970) fade elementary, almost abstract figures into brilliantly colored backgrounds. Among Tamayo’s other works are a number of murals: The Birth of Nationality
(1952); Man (1953); Mexico Today (1953); America (1955); Prometheus Bringing Fire to Man (1958), for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) building in Paris; Israel Today (1963) and Israel Yesterday (1963), for the Israeli ocean liner Shalom; Total Eclipse (1977), for the ALFA Industrial Company in Mexico City; and the glass mural The Firmament (1983), for the Grupo Alfa in Monterrey. Tamayo also sculpted, creating primarily large metal figures. His donation of his collection of pre-Columbian art established the Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art in Oaxaca in 1974. The Rufino Tamayo Museum, devoted to his work, was founded in Mexico City in 1981.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Correador-Matheos, J., Tamayo, 1987.
Ta ` pies, Antoni (December 13, 1923– ) Painter he Catalan artist Antoni Ta`pies started out as a self-taught Surrealist painter before turning to a purely abstract style that employs thick surfaces of paint mixed with grit and incorporates everyday objects. Since gaining recognition in the early 1950s, Ta`pies has won numerous international awards for his paintings. Ta`pies was born in Barcelona. His father was a lawyer who came from a family of professionals and academics, and his mother came from a family of booksellers. Both influences contributed to an open, richly cultural atmosphere at home, in which learning was encouraged. In 1926 Ta`pies entered the college of the Sisters of Loreto in Barcelona, and
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he studied at a number of other schools over the next several years. The Spanish Civil War, a formative influence in his life, erupted in 1936. As a young adult Ta`pies absorbed the art of ancient Sumer and Egypt as well as Eastern philosophy, psychoanalysis, and developments in modern art. From 1943 to 1946 he studied law at the University of Barcelona, and at the same time he established a painting studio. As an artist Ta`pies was for the most part self-taught. Deciding to give up law altogether, he helped found the review Dau al Set (Seven-Sided Die) with a group of writers and painters influenced by the French Surrealists. One of these, the poet Joan Brossa, would
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collaborate with him on several books, including El pa a la barca (1963) and Novella (1965). Ta`pies’s early paintings, such as Figure on Burnt Wood (1947) and The Trickery of Wotan (1950), were influenced by the Surrealists and are generally characterized by their use of earth tones and grafitti-like figures. His works were first exhibited at the Salo´n de Octubre in Barcelona in 1948. Two years later he became acquainted with the heavily textured abstract work of JEAN DUBUFFET, marking a turning point in his style. Ta`pies, too, began to experiment with thick impasto surfaces, mixing paint with sand, marble dust, and other substances and dubbing his creations “matter paintings.” His participation in the Venice Biennale in 1952 helped secure his international reputation. The abstract Swirling Sand (1955) and Bleu avec quatre barres rouge (1966; Blue with Four Red Bars), which uses marble dust, demonstrate his preoccupation with texture and thick surfaces.
Buckets, mirrors, cords, sacks, cardboard, straw, and other objects appeared in his painting-collages as well. In Circle of Cord (1967) he placed a single strand of cord on a canvas. Other works in this vein include Collage of a Plate (1962), Cardboard in the Form of a T (1968), Collage with Sacks (1969), and Straw on Wood (1969). Among Ta`pies’s other works are a tapestry for the first Tapestry Biennale in Lausanne, Switzerland (1965), and a mural for the Municipal Theatre of St. Gallen (1970). His later paintings include Ca`dera (1992), in marble dust, acrylic, and vinyl, and 3 (1994). The Ta`pies Foundation was founded in Barcelona in 1990 and houses more than two thousand of his works. Ta`pies has won many awards, including a Lissone Prize in Milan (1957) and an award at the Venice Biennale in 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Linhartova´, Vera, Ta`pies, 1992; Wye, Deborah, Antoni Ta`pies in Print, 1991.
Tarkovsky, Andrei (April 4, 1932–December 29, 1986) Director he Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky, best known for his medieval epic Andrei Rublev, earned many international awards for his seven major films. Although international critics and audiences widely appreciated his work during his lifetime, his productivity suffered at the hands of Soviet censors who often refused to fund his work or approve his scripts. Tarkovsky was the son of the poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky and was born in Zavrazhye, a small village near Yuryevets. His mother was an editor in Moscow, and he lived
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with her after his parents separated when he was 4. Both parents stimulated his interest in the arts, and the young Tarkovsky particularly admired his father’s poetry. After finishing high school in 1951, he enrolled in the Institute of Eastern Studies. He later dropped out of the institute and joined a Siberian geological expedition. Upon his return, he enrolled in the Higher State Institute of Cinematography, where he studied under Mikhail Romm. Romm served as a great source of encouragement to Tarkovsky and actively supported his career.
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During his years at the institute he married a fellow student, Irma Rausch. Although he was to endure great difficulties with Soviet censors, his involvement in film began during a time when restrictions on the arts loosened after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Tarkovsky directed his first film, The Steamroller and the Violin (1960), for his diploma. Two years later, his first full-length film, My Name is Ivan, won international acclaim, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The story, set during World War II, centers on a Russian boy orphaned after his mother’s death at the hands of the Germans. Andrey Rublev (1965), a picturesque epic about a medieval Russian icon painter set in the early 1400s, consists of ten separate episodes. With the exception of the epilogue, Tarkovsky shot the whole film in black and white. The film, banned until 1971 in the Soviet Union, is widely considered his masterpiece. During the filming he met Larissa Pavlovna Yegorkina, who later became his second wife. Both of Tarkovsky’s parents appeared in the autobiographical Mirror (1975), based on his childhood memories. Among Tarkovsky’s seven full-length films are two science fiction works. Solaris (1971) is set on a space station from which scientists observe a mysterious planet with a powerful ocean that covers its entire surface. The story, based on a book by the Polish author Stanislaw Lem, explores the conflicts between science and rationalism on the one hand, and humanity and spirituality on the other. Aboard the space station, Chris, a psychiatrist who has been sent to investigate recent odd occurrences, encounters alien beings who embody human thoughts and fears. Among them is his deceased wife, who had earlier committed suicide. Stalker (1979) is based on Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The “stalker” illegally leads forays into “the Zone,” an area believed to harbor mysterious power after being hit by a meteorite. For two of the
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stalker’s adventurers, a cynical writer and a science professor, the journey turns into a difficult spiritual test. Nostalgia (1983), filmed in Italy, is ostensibly about a Russian poet in Italy conducting research on an eighteenth-century composer. Black and white flashbacks are interspersed with present action in color. The film reflected Tarkovsky’s personal pain and nostalgic yearning for Russia’s spiritual and moral past. This yearning is embodied in the poet, Andrei, and his interest in Domenico, a local madman who asks him to carry a lighted candle through St. Catherine’s pool. After Tarkovsky finished the project he refused to return to the Soviet Union and remained in the West until his death. The Sacrifice (1986), Tarkovsky’s last film, deals with the subject of nuclear holocaust. An impending nuclear war never materializes when a successful lecturer, Alexander, makes a bargain with God to sacrifice his possessions and his son if He will stop the war. Tarkovsky’s films are marked most strikingly by their intense imagery and use of lengthy camera shots, particularly evident in his later films. His careful formulation of imagery takes precedence over narrative and plot structure, which are often ambiguous in his work. He infused all of his films with his personal and spiritual outlook, frequently treating subjects such as broken relationships (perhaps stemming from his own) and faith. His approach to cinema opposed the accepted artistic style of Socialist Realism expected by Soviet critics and embraced by SERGEI EISENSTEIN, whose work he generally disliked. Sculpting in Time, his commentary on cinema, was published in 1986. He died of cancer the same year.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Johnson, Vida T., and Petrie, Graham, The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, 1994.
TATLIN, VLADIMIR
Tatlin, Vladimir (December 28, 1885–May 31, 1953) Painter, Architect, Sculptor, Illustrator, Designer, Teacher ladmir Yevgrafovich Tatlin founded Constructivism, an artistic movement that explored the use of industrial materials in nonobjective sculptures and reliefs, in the immediate pre-Soviet period in Russia. Best known for his model for the Monument to the Third International, Tatlin painted, sculpted, illustrated books, and designed fabrics, furniture, and theater sets. Tatlin was born in Moscow and grew up in Kharkov, now in the Ukraine. His mother was a poet, but her influence cannot have been great, since she died when he was two. As a railway engineer his father traveled frequently, leaving Tatlin under the care of an unsympathetic stepmother. At the age of 18 he ran away to sea, and for the next decade he divided his time between the sea and the pursuit of his art career. Tatlin spent time copying church icons and frescoes and entered the Penza School of Art, finishing his studies there in 1910. He next studied at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts. The first major exhibition of Tatlin’s work came in 1910 at the Second International Art Exhibition at Odessa. His first paintings were representational. In early works such as Fishmonger (1911) and Sailor (1912), Tatlin depicted his human subjects as angular, essentially flat forms. Landscapes and still-lifes, such as Flowers (1912), also appear as subjects in his early paintings. A 1913 visit to Paris precipitated a change from representation to abstraction in Tatlin’s art. There he met PABLO PICASSO and viewed some of his three–dimensional reliefs. When Tatlin returned to Russia, he began to create abstract “painting reliefs,” in which he combined a variety of materials on the canvas. The Bottle (1913), for example, is an abstract work constructed of wallpaper and tinfoil on canvas. Relief (1917) used galvanized iron on wood.
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Tatlin’s work marked the beginning of Constructivism in Russia. With a group of other artists who included Naum Gabo, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Antoine Pevsner, Tatlin explored the possibilities of wood and metal in nonobjective sculpture and painting. The movement continued for a short period of time after the revolution of 1917, but the Bolshevik government’s unfavorable disposition toward abstract art prevented Constructivism from flourishing. Tatlin’s best-known work is his design for the Monument to the Third International, commissioned in 1919. He presented the model at the Eighth Congress of the Soviets in December 1920. The abstract design consisted of an iron, spiral framework supporting rotating geometric shapes (a cube, a cylinder, and a cone). The disapproval of Soviet authorities, however, prevented the structure from ever being built. During the 1920s Tatlin taught in Leningrad, Moscow, and elsewhere. His activities for the remainder of his life were varied, extending from book illustration to his experiments with a glider he called Letatlin. In 1923 he designed fabrics for the Shveiprom factory. His furniture designs included a Bentwood chair with a moulded seat in 1927. Tatlin illustrated S. Sergel’s On the Sailing Ship (1929), verse by the revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Daniil Kharms’s Firstly and Secondly (1929). Early in his career he designed sets and costumes for productions such as Tsar Maximilian (1911) and the opera Ivan Susanin (1913–1914), and he devoted much of his later career to theater design as well.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Milner, John, Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian Avant-Garde, 1983.
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Te Kanawa, Kiri (March 6, 1944– ) Singer rom her soprano roles in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, RICHARD STRAUSS, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and other composers, Kiri Janette Te Kanawa is known for her warm voice and exuberant stage presence. By the early 1970s she was performing in the major opera houses of the world. She continues to appear in operatic roles and in the 1980s began recording popular music. Te Kanawa was born in Gisborne, North Island, New Zealand. She was adopted as a baby, and both her biological and adoptive fathers were of Maori descent. Likewise, both mothers were of British descent. Te Kanawa was educated at St. Mary’s College, a Catholic girls’ school, in Auckland. As a child she developed a love of music, and after finishing school she began to sing at weddings and clubs. In 1965 Te Kanawa won first prize in a radio singing contest and won a second competition sponsored by the Melbourne Sun. The following year the New Zealand Arts Council awarded her a scholarship to study at the London Opera Center, at which time she moved to London and settled there permanently. In 1969 she made her professional debut as Elena in Gioacchino Rossini’s La donna del lago (The Lady of the Lake) at the Camden Festival. Her debut at Covent Garden, as Xenia in Boris Godunov, came in 1971. Sir Colin Davis’s production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (1971) at Covent Garden the same year featured Te Kanawa in the role of the Countess Almaviva and brought her her first major success. Three years later, filling in for a soprano who fell ill, she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in a widely acclaimed performance of Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello. Te Kanawa has repeated both the Countess and Desdemona on many occasions.
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With an international reputation, she was soon performing in the major opera houses of the world—in London, New York, Vienna, San Francisco, Chicago, Sydney—as well as in the festivals at Salzburg, Glyndebourne, and elsewhere. Her major roles include Mimi in GIACOMO PUCCINI’s La Bohe`me, Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Pamina in Mozart’s Magic Flute, the Marschallin in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, and Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata. Te Kanawa has made many operatic recordings and appeared in many films. In the 1980s and 1990s she ventured into other musical realms, recording Blue Skies (1984), a collection of show tunes; Come to the Fair (1984), a collection of British folk songs; and L EONARD BERNSTEIN’s West Side Story (1985) with JOSE´ CARRERAS. She also starred in the soprano solo role in Paul McCartney’s classical music debut Liverpool Oratorio (1991). Te Kanawa sang Handel’s “Let the Bright Seraphim” at the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. In 1989 she published Land of the Long White Cloud: Maori Myths, Tales And Legends. Following performances in SAMUEL BARBER’S Vanessa in 2004, Te Kanawa retired from opera. She continues, however, to appear at concert halls. In 1982 Te Kanawa was made Dame Commander of the British Empire. She received the order of New Zealand in 1995 and holds honorary degrees from the University of Durham, Oxford University, and the University of Auckland. BIBLIOGRAPHY Fingleton, David, Kiri Te Kanawa: A Biography, 1983; Jenkins, Gary, Kiri: Her Unsung Story, 1998. www.kiritekanawa.org.
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Kiri Te Kanawa (쑖 ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
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Tebaldi, Renata (February 1, 1922–December 19, 2004) Singer, Actress enata Tebaldi first achieved fame as an operatic soprano for La Scala in Milan, singing in operas such as Lohengrin and La Traviata. After she debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1955, she was an international star rivaled in her roles only by the American soprano Maria Callas. Tebaldi was born in Pesaro, Italy. Her father was a cellist who came from a family with a long history in Le Marche, and she saw little of him after her early childhood (after having not spoken to him for nearly two decades, she reconciled with him in 1960). Tebaldi had other musical influences in her family, including a grandmother who was a celebrated singer in her day and many musically inclined relatives in her mother’s family. From her mother she received her first music lessons. After a long and difficult battle with polio, Tebaldi began to take music lessons and sing in church. She attended a local school and later studied piano and singing at the Parma Conservatory. To her mother’s disappointment, she increasingly devoted her energies to singing rather than the piano. At the age of 18 she auditioned for Carmen Melis in Pesaro. Melis immediately took her on as a student and was the most important influence on Tebaldi’s career. Through her connections, Tebaldi made her professional singing debut as Elena in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele at the Teatro Sociale in Rovigo in 1944. She would later sing the lead role of Margherita. Two years later, she auditioned for the celebrated conductor ARTURO TOSCANINI, who hired her to sing the Prayer from Moses and Verdi’s Te Deum for the postwar reopening of La Scala. Tebaldi joined La Scala’s company in 1949 and remained there until 1954. She sang in many successful productions, including Lohengrin (as Elsa), I Masestri Cantori,
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Gounod’s Faust (as Margherita), La Traviata, and La Wally. Tebaldi made her first international appearance in Lisbon in 1949, and she was soon singing all over Europe and the Americas. Tebaldi’s mother traveled with her until her death in 1957. At the invitation of RUDOLF BING, Tebaldi joined New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1954 and debuted there as Desdemona in Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello the following year. By this time she had become an international star. Although she was a very public figure—in part due to her long-standing feud with Callas, which the press sensationalized—Tebaldi led a private life and did not care for the social events that came with her stature. In addition to singing with the Metropolitan, she continued to tour the world. After wrecking crews demolished the Old Metropolitan in 1966, she appeared in the new building in La Gioconda in 1967. Among her best-known roles is Mimi in GIACOMO PUCCINI’s La Bohe`me, which she first performed at Parma’s Teatro Ducale in 1945. She later sang Mimi opposite PLA´ CIDO DOMINGO, with whom she appeared on numerous occasions, at the Boston Lyric Opera in 1966. Her other roles include Madeleine in Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Che´nier (first performed in 1945) and the title role in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (first performed in Barcelona in 1958). Tebaldi also appeared in Tosca; La Fanciulla del West; Aida; Simon Boccanegra; Manon Lescaut; and La Forza del Destino (in one New York performance of which her costar Leonard Warren collapsed on stage and died). In 1973 she gave a world concert tour. Tebaldi has recorded much of her music and appeared in films of her operas, notably Andrea Chenier (1961) and Tosca (1961). She has received numerous honors and awards, among which are an honorary doctorate from
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Villanova University (1966), the title of Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy (1974), and the Tebaldi Rose, named for her by the horticulturalist Georges Delbard.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Casanova, Carlamaria, Renata Tebaldi, 1995. www.geocities.com/renatatebaldi/index.html.
Teyte, Maggie (April 17, 1888–May 26, 1976) Singer coring her first major success as Me´lisande in Pelle´as et Me´lisande, the British soprano Maggie Teyte became a world-renowned opera star in the first half of the twentieth century. Her many recordings and performances of the works of French composers also established her as an interpreter of French song.
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Maggie Teyte (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-25140)
Teyte was born Margaret Tate into a prosperous but declining Catholic family in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England. Among the Tate children, girls were a minority, and Maggie’s less than ideal upbringing was further aggravated by her father’s excessive strictness. On the other hand, Teyte and her siblings were exposed to music from their birth, as her father was a talented pianist and her mother a gifted singer. She studied at a convent in Wolverhampton before her father moved the family to London, where she attended the Royal College of Music. Teyte’s father died when she was 13, and soon afterward she was discovered by the pianist Walter Rubens, who accompanied one of her performances at the Church of Corpus Christi. The Rubens family practically adopted Teyte, and she left her own family to live with theirs. Partially funded by the Rubenses, she went to Paris in 1903 to study voice under the Polish tenor Jean de Reszke. Three years later, she delivered her first public performance at a Mozart festival. In 1907, her opera debut came in Monte Carlo, where she sang the part of Tyrics in Jacques Offenbach’s Myrianne et Daphne. She returned to Paris and sang with the Ope´ra-Comique. The composer CLAUDE DEBUSSY, with whom she had a long and successful working relationship, gave Teyte her first major break. After a protracted quarrel between the American soprano Mary Garden and Georgette Le-
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blanc, mistress of the Belgian playwright MAURICE MAETERLINCK, Teyte secured the role of Me´lisande in the original production of Debussy’s opera Pelle´as et Me´lisande (based on Maeterlinck’s play). Teyte repeated her highly successful Me´lisande many times throughout her career. She performed many other Debussy works, including La Damoiselle e´lue and Le Martyre de Saint-Se´bastien, and was sometimes accompanied by the composer himself. Teyte’s success in Paris led to other engagements in London and Berlin. Her London operatic debut came in 1910, as Melka in Muguette. With a series of performances conducted by Sir THOMAS BEECHAM, Teyte won popularity in England. Her debut role in the United States came with the Chicago-Philadelphia Opera Company in 1911. Over the years, she performed with many major opera companies in the United States, France, and England, and her voice lasted well into her maturity. She performed her last major role as Belinda in Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Mermaid Theater in London in 1951. Other notable roles Teyte sang during her career are Blonde in Die Entfu¨hrung aus dem Serail;
Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro; Cinderella in the American premiere of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon; Margue´rite in Faust; Nuri in Euge`ne d’Albert’s Tiefland; Mimi in GIACOMO PUCCINI’s La Bohe`me; the title role in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly; and Antonia in Les Contes d’Hoffman. In Paris In 1907, Teyte made the first of her many recordings. Over the next several years she made many records for Columbia in London and New York, and in 1919 she began recording for Edison. Success with her recordings came in the 1930s, when, working with pianist Alfred Cortot for the Gramophone Company in London, she recorded many French songs. These include Clair de lune and other Debussy pieces. Teyte recorded music by a variety of other composers, including Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faure´, and Sir WILLIAM WALTON, many with the pianist Gerald Moore. Teyte was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1957 and Dame of the British Empire in 1958.
BIBLIOGRAPHY O’Connor, Gary, The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Maggie Teyte, 1979.
Tharp, Twyla (July 1, 1941– ) Choreographer, Dancer wyla Tharp’s choreography, a unique blend of dance and classical, pop, and jazz music, was both influential and successful in the second half of the twentieth century. To date, Tharp has choreographed more than 125 dances for dozens of international companies, including works for Broadway, film, and television. Tharp was born Twila Thornburg in Portland, Indiana. In 1951, the family moved to
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Rialto, California, where her father owned a construction firm and a car dealership. Tharp’s mother, a piano teacher, taught her to play the instrument at a young age and involved her in a wide variety of activities. Tharp attended Pacific High School in San Bernadino, California, and also studied at the Vera Lynn School of Dance. She went on to study at Pomona College in California and Barnard College in New York City, from
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which she graduated with an art history degree in 1963. In New York, she began dancing with both MARTHA GRAHAM and Merce Cunningham (1919– ). In 1963, she joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company. She left two years later to form Twyla Tharp Dance. Tharp’s productions first hit Broadway with When We Were Very Young (1980), and in 1981 she collaborated with Talking Heads lead singer David Byrne (1952– ) on The Catherine Wheel. Her highly successful 1985 version of Singin’ in the Rain premiered at the Gershwin and ran for more than 350 performances, after which followed a national tour. In 1988, Tharp’s company merged with the American Ballet Theatre. While there, Tharp created more than a dozen works. In 1991, she reformed Twyla Tharp Dance and, with M IKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV, created the highly successful Cutting Up the same year. Tharp’s dance company toured internationally from 1999 to 2003. With the American singer Billy Joel in 2002, Tharp collaborated on the dance musical Movin’ Out, a roaring public and critical success. The show opened on Broadway, earned a Tony Award in 2003, and was followed by a national tour. For Movin’ Out, Tharp also earned the Astaire Award in 2003, the Drama League Award for Sustained Achievement in Musical Theater, and the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Choreography. The London production earned further acclaim.
Tharp based one of her most recent efforts, The Times They Are A-Changin’ (2005) on BOB DYLAN’S music. Set in the context of a down-and-out family circus, the production was a commercial and critical disaster. Tharp has also worked in the film industry, including several projects with director MILOS FORMAN— Hair (1978), Ragtime (1981), and Amadeus (1984). She collaborated with Taylor Hackford (1944– ) on White Nights (1985) and James Brooks (1940– ) on I’ll Do Anything (1994). For television, she directed Making Television Dance (1977) and codirected the television special Baryshnikov by Tharp (1984). Push Comes to Shove, Tharp’s autobiography, was published in 1992. In 2003, she published The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. Among Tharp’s numerous awards are Barnard College’s Medal of Distinction, two Emmy Awards, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President’s Award, and the 2004 National Medal of the Arts. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Still very active in dance, Tharp continues to choreograph and lecture internationally.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Siegel, Marcia B., Howling Near Heaven: Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance, 2006; Tharp, Twyla, Push Comes to Shove, 1992. www.twylatharp.org.
Thomas, Dylan (October 27, 1914–November 9, 1953) Poet, Novelist, Playwright
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he introspective, challenging, rhythmic poetry of Dylan Marlais Thomas, rich in imagery drawn from his native land-
scape in Wales, is generally ranked among the best English-language lyric poetry of the twentieth century.
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Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales, where he grew up and attended grammar school. His mother came from a farming background, and his father taught English at the same grammar school he attended. As an English teacher, his father encouraged his early literary ambitions and read poetry to him as a child. Although structured academic environments bored Thomas, and he earned poor grades, he served as editor of the school’s magazine and was able to publish some of his writings. At age 16 he began working for the South Wales Evening Post. Thomas moved to London when he was 21. His first collection of poetry, 18 Poems, appeared in 1934 and met with a number of favorable reviews. Twenty-Five Poems followed in 1936 and earned a positive review from EDITH SITWELL in the Sunday Times. Both books collected poetry laced with the natural imagery of the Welsh landscape, lyrical introspection, and speculation about life and death. Death appears as a prominent theme in his earliest poetry, such as “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” (1936). Thomas consistently wrote from the angle of personal experience and shied away from political or social commentary. In 1937 Thomas married Caitlin Macnamara, an Irish Protestant and the subject of his long poem “I Make This in a Warring Absence” (1937). The couple had three children, Aeronwy, Colm Garan, and Llewelyn Edouard. His next book, The Map of Love (1939), blended poetry, prose sketches, and Surrealism and was commercially less successful than its two predecessors. It was followed by Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940), a series of autobiographical prose sketches about his youth. While Thomas’s work gained him a reputation in literary circles, it was not at first widely popular with the general public. Perpetual monetary worries, exacerbated by his failure to pay income taxes, troubled Thomas and his family. As he found he could not earn a living as a poet, he worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Added to his fi-
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nancial problems were increasingly frequent drinking binges, an addiction that eventually resulted in his death. Although Thomas wanted to serve in World War II, the military rejected him on account of his health, and he instead continued to write documentary scripts for the BBC. Preoccupation with death characterizes many of the poems that appeared in his next book of poetry, Deaths and Entrances (1946). The book includes several well-known Thomas poems such as “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London” and the mythical “A Winter’s Tale.” “Ceremony after a Fire Raid” laments the death of an infant during the war. The volume also contained Thomas’s spirited and probably most widely loved poem recollecting the happy times he spent at his grandparents’ country home, “Fern Hill,” which praises the innocence of youth. Its opening lines are often quoted: “Now as I was young and easy under the apple bough / About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green . . .” After the war the Thomases moved to Oxford and lived in a small summer cottage owned by the historian A. J. P. Taylor. Taylor’s wife became his patron, later enabling the Thomases to move to a cottage at Laugharne, called the Boat House. In 1949 Thomas made the first of several trips to the United States, where he read his poetry and delivered lectures. His powerful voice, combined with the painstaking care he took in framing rhythm and sound in his poetry, earned him a sizable following in the United States. He also continued to work periodically for the BBC, reading roles for radio productions, such as Satan in Paradise Lost. In 1952 Thomas’s Collected Poems was published with a preface written in verse. The work collected all of his previous poems, with the exception of one from Death and Entrances as well as six new ones. The first version of his “play for voices,” Under Milk Wood, was performed in the United States the following year. The story is comic, set in the fictional Welsh town of Llareggub, and at-
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tempts to capture the character of the town’s inhabitants. Thomas, depressed, and notorious for his drinking binges, died of alcohol poisoning in New York shortly after his thirty-ninth birthday. At the time of his death he had completed part of a novel, which appeared with
other prose in Adventures in the Skin Trade, published posthumously in 1954.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ferris, Paul, Dylan Thomas: A Biography, 1977; Tremlett, George, Dylan Thomas: In the Mercy of His Means, 1992.
Thompson, Hunter Stockton (July 18, 1937–February 20, 2005) Author, Journalist prolific American journalist and writer, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson forged a new style of writing termed “Gonzo journalism” in which writers interject themselves into their subjects so thoroughly that they become central to the story. Although his work and style formed a major part of the New Journalism literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s that fused fact and fiction, Thompson perhaps leaned more heavily on fictional elements than did other writers of the movement (see NORMAN MAILER). Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky. His father was an insurance salesman and World War I veteran. His mother was a secretary and librarian. When Thompson was fourteen, his father died, and his mother took on the responsibility of supporting him and his brothers. He attended the I. N. Bloom Elementary School, followed by Atherton High School and then Louisville Male High School in 1952. He was something of an athlete as an adolescent and began to write when he was in high school. From his childhood, Thompson found himself constantly at odds with authority figures—a trait that remained with him throughout his life. After being paroled from a short jail sentence for theft, Thompson enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He completed basic train-
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ing at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas and was subsequently stationed at a succession of places, including Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola, Florida. There he served as the sports editor for The Command Courier, the base’s paper. His position as sports editor afforded him the opportunity to travel with and cover the Eglin Eagles, the base football team that included a number of future professional players. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1958, after which he took a series of journalistic jobs from which he was frequently fired. Thompson also took writing classes part-time at Columbia University’s School of General Studies in New York. In 1962 and 1963, Thompson served as a correspondent in South America for the National Observer. Upon his return to the United States (still writing for the National Observer), he married Sandra Dawn Conklin and moved to Aspen, Colorado. Again, Thompson fell out with the paper he was working for, and his next move was to settle in San Francisco. Around this time, Thompson wrote the novel The Rum Diary, which was not published until 1998. The protagonist is freelance journalist Paul Kemp, who searches for a meaningful place for himself while working for a
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failing newspaper in the Caribbean. A film version of the novel, starring Thompson’s longtime friend Johnny Depp (1963– ) and directed by Bruce Robinson (1946– ), is scheduled for release in 2008. Sometime during the 1960s, Thompson paid for a mail-order doctorate and afterward began using the title “Dr.” He found himself at home in the hippie-counterculture of 1960s San Francisco and began writing for an alternative paper, The Spider, in Berkeley. Thompson got a big break in 1965 when The Nation asked him to write a piece on his experiences with the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang. He grew so involved with the gang that he spent the next year with them. However, their relationship disintegrated and ended in members of the gang severely beating him. In 1966, Thompson published Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Two years later, Thompson and his wife moved to Woody Creek, Colorado, where he lived in his self-described “fortified compound” (named “Owl Farm”) for the remainder of his life. Never far from politics, Thompson was among the crowd members that police beat outside of Chicago’s 1968 Democratic convention. In one of the more bizarre episodes of his life, he ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, representing the Freak Power Party in 1970. Thompson and the party advocated the legalization of drugs and a few more unusual issues (such as renaming Aspen “Fat City”). Ironically, his race led to the publication of his first article for Rolling Stone, beginning a long and fruitful, but strained, relationship with the magazine. The year 1970 also began Thompson’s career in “Gonzo journalism” with the publication of “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” a derisive article on one of the most important events of his hometown and one of the most revered national sporting events. His fame, however, came in 1971, when his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was
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published. The book emerged from his drugfueled adventure to a district attorney’s antidrug conference as a reporter. The novel is a first-person tale of a journalist (Raoul Duke, Thompson’s fictional creation of himself) and his friend who travel to Las Vegas carrying an assortment of drugs, to cover an anti-narcotics convention and a motorcycle race but find themselves sidetracked. Fear and Loathing not only cemented Thompson’s fame as a writer, but it became a cult classic among the hippie-counterculture. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had originally been published serially in Rolling Stone, and by this time Thompson was writing regularly for the magazine. In 1972, he covered campaigns for both presidential candidates, Richard M. Nixon and Senator George McGovern for the magazine. The articles were later compiled into Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. Thompson was both a proponent of McGovern and a vocal critic of Nixon—a hatred that lasted long after his presidency. After a number of misunderstandings over stories between Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner (1946– ) and Thompson, the latter’s contributions to Rolling Stone declined following the 1972 election. In 1980, he and his wife divorced. The same year saw the release of the film Where the Buffalo Roam, featuring film adaptations of Thompson’s works and experiences. Actor Bill Murray (1950– ) played Thompson, and Art Linson (1942– ) directed the film. Thompson was involved in several films during his later life and in 2003 was the subject of director Wayne Ewing’s documentary Breakfast With Hunter. Thompson’s next project was The Curse of Lono (1980), an account of a marathon in Hawaii based on two trips he took to the state with British cartoonist Ralph Steadman (1936– ) and written in his characteristic Gonzo style. In 1983, Thompson reported on the U.S. invasion of Grenada. Thompson’s writing pace slowed during the later years of his life, but he continued to produce regularly. During the late 1980s, he
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worked as a media critic for the San Francisco Examiner. He published a number of pieces in Rolling Stone, including “Fear and Loathing in Elko” (1992), which severely criticized Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas. His “Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie” is his account of the 1992 presidential campaign. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004” recounts his road trip with losing presidential candidate John Kerry and was his last major work before his death. Kingdom of Fear (2003) combined new and older writings with newspaper clippings and vented angry commentary on post September 2001 America and the Bush-Cheney administration. The same year, he married Anita Bejmuk, his longtime assistant. During the last five years of his life, Thompson wrote “Hey, Rube,” a weekly sports column for ESPN.com. Many of these columns were published in 2004 as Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness—Modern History from the Sports Desk. Many of Thompson’s works were collected in the four-volume The Gonzo Papers (1979–1994). Douglas Brinkley (1960– ), his friend and biographer, edited his collected letters (of which there were thousands). The first volume, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955-1967, was published in 1998, and the second, Fear and Loathing in America: Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, appeared in 2000. A third and final volume tentatively titled The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop, 1977-2005 is slated for publication in 2008. Along with his hobby of collecting peacocks, Thompson was an avid photographer, and many of his photos have been exhibited
posthumously. Depp wrote the introduction to GONZO, a “visual biography” of Thompson featuring his photographs published in 2006. On February 20, 2005, Thompson committed suicide with a gunshot wound to the head. He suffered from ill health, and his family maintains that he planned the act to end his pain and suffering. Thompson’s son Juan and his family were visiting at the time of the suicide. Thompson’s contribution to the New Journalism movement was significant, and he is considered, along with TOM WOLFE (1931– ), Gay Talese (1932– ), and NORMAN MAILER, one of its primary members. Never dry, Thompson’s first-person narratives ranged from humorous to vitriolic to bizarre. He was an editor’s worst nightmare, often faxing illegible, last-minute alterations to his stories right before press time. Since his writing deliberately blurred the lines between fact and fiction, editors and fact-checkers encountered perpetual difficulties verifying the truth of his articles. Although politically active throughout his life, Thompson held beliefs that, though leftist in nature, did not align with either of the major political parties. His viewpoints merged elements of anarchism and socialism. His writing defiantly glorified drug and alcohol use, and he was a lifelong supporter of the legalization of drugs. Thompson was also an avid gun collector and longtime member of the National Rifle Association. BIBLIOGRAPHY Carroll, E. Jean, Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson, 1993; McKeen, William, Hunter S. Thompson, 1991; Steadman, Ralph, The Joke’s Over: Bruised Memories— Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me, 2006. www.gonzo.org.
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Thorndike, Sybil (October 24, 1882–June 9, 1976) Actress BERNARD SHAW created what is often considered his best play, Saint Joan, specifically for the actress Agnes Sybil Thorndike, known for her versatile acting ability and long, distinguished career on the English stage. Although her heart remained with stage acting, Thorndike also starred in a number of films as well as radio and television productions for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Thorndike was the oldest of four children, born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England. She grew up in Kent, where her father, a clergyman, was a minor canon at the Rochester Cathedral. As children Thorndike and her sib-
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lings all took an interest in the theater, staging their own amateur productions. With her brother she created her own play, The Dentist’s Cure, at the age of seven. Thorndike also learned to play the piano in her youth and attended a local girls’ grammar school. Suffering from a recurrent wrist injury when she played the piano, Thorndike decided to pursue a career in acting. She auditioned for Philip Ben Greet’s acting company and in 1904–1905 toured the United States playing minor roles with him. Her professional debut came in the role of Palmis in W. S. Gilbert’s The Palace of Truth in 1904. Upon her return to England, Thorndike struggled to recover from a voice ailment. When her voice came back, she returned to the stage, acting on Sunday nights for the Play Actors’ Society. Shaw was in attendance at one of the performances and singled her out as an understudy for a role in his Candida. In 1908 Thorndike met the actor and future director Lewis Casson, whom she soon married. Aside from their shared interests in the theater, Thorndike and her husband were vocal advocates of women’s suffrage, pacifism, and Indian independence. She worked with Annie Horniman’s company at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, in 1908–1909 and returned from 1911 to 1913. With HARLEY GRANVILLE-BARKER and Charles Frohman’s company she played several roles in 1910, notably her lead in Elizabeth Baker’s Chains. From 1914 to 1918 Thorndike acted with the Old Vic Company in London, playing such notable Shakespearean roles as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth and Gertrude in Hamlet. World War I rendered these years difficult ones for her, as her husband returned from battle wounded and she lost a brother. After the war, she appeared in a wide variety of roles on English as well as American and Eu-
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ropean stages. From 1920 to 1922 she starred in a series of thrillers produced at the Little Theatre. Thorndike’s Joan of Arc in Shaw’s Saint Joan was perhaps her most famous role. The play debuted on March 26, 1924, at the New Theatre in London and ran for more than 2,000 performances. Her other notable plays include Coriolanus in 1938, in which she played Volumnia opposite LAURENCE OLIVIER’s Coriolanus; Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (1943); Richard III (1944), as Queen Margaret; J. B. PRIESTLEY’s The Linden Tree (1947), as Isobel Linden; Treasure Hunt (1949), as Aunt Anna Rose; William Douglas Home’s The Reluctant Peer (1964); The Viaduct (1966); and John Graham’s There Was an Old Woman (1969), her final role. In 1921 Thorndike acted in her first film as Mrs. Brand in Moth in Rust (1921), though she always preferred the stage to the cinema. She starred as Edith Cavell in Herbert Wilcox’s controversial Dawn, about a World War
I Red Cross nurse executed by the Germans for sheltering enemy soldiers. Her other films include Hindle Wakes (1931); The Tudor Rose (1936); Brittania Mews (1948), as Mrs. Mouncey; Lewis Milestone’s Melba (1953), as Queen Victoria; and LAURENCE OLIVIER’s The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), as the Queen Dowager with Marilyn Monroe. In the later years of Thorndike’s long stage career, she played a number of elderly matron figures. Although she started out as a tragic actress, she was known on the English stage for her ability to portray a wide variety of characters, among which were several male roles. The Thorndike Theatre opened outside of London in 1969. She was created Dame of the British Empire in 1931.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Morley, Sheridan, Sybil Thorndike: A Life in the Theatre, 1977; Sprigge, Elizabeth, Sybil Thorndike Casson, 1971.
Tinguely, Jean (May 22, 1925–August 30, 1991) Sculptor he Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely from a young age had a fascination with motion, an interest that was to manifest itself in a lifetime of “kinetic sculptures,” sculptures that move. Tinguely’s moving creations on occasion produced foul odors, obnoxious sounds, and abstract paintings, and in the 1960s he devised a number of them to self-destruct. Tinguely was born into a Catholic family in Fribourg, Switzerland. His father was a factory worker who, according to Tinguely, subjected his family to repeated violence. As an adolescent Tinguely had already begun to exhibit his penchant for bizarre sculptures con-
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cerned with movement when he clandestinely built a structure from waterwheels. He studied painting and sculpture at the Basel School of Fine Arts intermittently between 1941 and 1945. There he met his first wife, Eva Aeppli, whom he married in 1949. From 1945 to 1952 he created “edible sculptures” from grass. He moved to Paris in 1953 and began constructing his “me´tame´chaniques,” or “metamechanicals,” which employed scraps of junk, metal, and other objects to form moving sculptures. Among his most popular works were his Machines a` peindre (Painting Machines), which mechanically painted abstract pictures. Some
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of his machines produced sounds and odors. At the Paris Biennale in 1959, one of Tinguely’s painting machines produced forty thousand patterns. Tinguely began to create his first large, selfdestructing sculpture in the 1960s. The most famous of these was the twenty-seven-foottall Homage to New York, an assemblage of wheels, motors, and other pieces of discarded junk that self-destructed in half an hour at the Museum of Modern Art in New York amidst fire and explosives. Some of his sculptures shook until they disintegrated. At this time he was living with the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who also produced self-destructing sculptures. Study for an End of the World is another of his works of this kind. Tinguely’s inclination to produce the bizarre continued unabated until his death. In 1969 he conceived the idea for his massive Head, or Le Cyclop, a seventy-five-foot-tall structure at Fountainbleau in the shape of the head of a cyclops, with which he had help from Saint Phalle. Two years later he designed a large, revolving spiral sculpture for the firm Hoffman-La Roche. Eight years later he fitted a tractor with wheels, barrels, cymbals, explosives, and other noisemaking and odor-producing objects, calling it Klamauk (Din, 1979). Tinguely drove the tractor publicly on numerous occasions, and it was a conspicuous part of his funeral procession when he died.
Tinguely worked out of a large bottle factory near Fribourg he called “The Depot” or the “Torpedo Institute.” After living with her for eleven years, Tinguely married Saint Phalle in 1971. They separated two years later but remained friendly and never legally divorced. In the 1980s he completed a Meta-Harmonie series, the first (1987) of which consists of integrated ladders and walkways. His later sculptures moved away from self-destruction but continued to address the sculptor’s preoccupation with movement. Moving wheels formed an integral part of much of his work. The works’ moving parts sometimes allowed for spectator participation. His other works include a Floating Water Sculpture (1980) and Bird in Love (1988–1989), a large, colorful, and mobile eagle structure. By the time of his death in 1991, he had become a well-known figure in Switzerland and was given a state funeral. The Museum Jean Tinguely, designed by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, opened in 1996 in Basel and houses some fifty-five of his works donated by Saint Phalle.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Sweeney, James Johnson, Jean Tinguely Sculptures, 1965; Tomkins, Calvin, The Bride & The Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde, 1968.
Tippett, Michael (January 2, 1905–January 8, 1998) Composer, Conductor, Librettist nown primarily for his instrumental and operatic compositions, Sir Michael Kemp Tippett was a contempoof RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS and
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BENJAMIN BRITTEN. Unlike these two wellknown composers, Tippett failed to gain international recognition until the 1970s. Schooled in the music of Ludwig van Bee-
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thoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and other German composers, Tippett also drew from English and contemporary musical influences. Tippett was born in London. His father was a lawyer whose fruitful investments enabled him to retire at a relatively young age. Tippett’s mother was a writer who published a number of novels, was active in the Labor Party, and later became a follower of the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner. Both parents were interested in music, though not seriously, and Tippett had little exposure to music in his early childhood. He was tutored by a governess and at the age of 9 sent to a preparatory school in Dorset. At the age of 13, he began two unpleasant years of study at Fettes College in Edinburgh. Meanwhile, he had begun to study the piano privately. Tippett next attended a grammar school in Lincolnshire, where he continued his piano studies under a Mrs. Tinkler and played a concerto at a school concert. He entered the Royal College of Music, where he studied from 1923 to 1928 and received his first formal training in composition. During this time he immersed himself in the study of Beethoven’s music. He completed his musical education with private training under R. O. Morris (1930–1932). Unable to earn a living as a composer, Tippett took a post teaching French and music in 1929. In his spare time, he involved himself in productions of music by Vaughan Williams and others at the Barn Theatre. Several of his own works premiered there in 1930. Two years later, Tippett gave up teaching and pursued a career as a conductor. Tippett’s extramusical interests were numerous and encompassed politics, literature, languages, and psychology. Embracing socialism, he read the works of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW and H. G. WELLS. He had learned both German and French in his youth and spoke both fluently. Tippett briefly joined the Communist Party in 1935 but grew disillusioned when it failed to embrace Trotskyism. He de-
clared himself a conscientious objector during World War II and served three months in jail for failing to comply with the terms of his status. The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was also a major influence on his outlook. By the early 1930s, Tippett was composing regularly. He finished his First String Quartet in 1935 and received his first real recognition with Concerto for Double String Orchestra (1939), generally considered one of his best instrumental works. Tippett’s early music owes more to German—particularly Bee-thoven and Bach—and English composers than his later work, which is marked by his experimentation with dissonant counterpoint and his incorporation of popular and folk music. From 1940 to 1951 he served as music director at Morley College in London, and he also spoke on radio and television broadcasts for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Tippett published four symphonies, the first of which he completed in 1945. He had written another in the mid-1930s but disliked it and never published it. In 1956–1957 he worked on a second symphony. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra commissioned his final symphony, which premiered with Sir GEORG SOLTI conducting it. His other instrumental works include string quartets and piano sonatas. Among Tippett’s works for voice is his oratorio A Child of Our Time (1939–1941), influenced by both black spiritual music and his pacifist political views. The Vision of St. Augustine, a second oratorio, was finished in 1965. In 1942 Tippett wrote a cantata for tenor Peter Pears and Britten, Boyhood’s End. In 1951 he completed a song cycle for Pears entitled The Heart’s Assurance, settings of poetry by Alun Lewis and Sidney Keyes. The Midsummer Marriage (1946– 2) was the first major of Tippett’s operas and was followed by King Priam (1957). With exuberant, optimistic music and choreography by JOHN CRANKO, the former relates (with Tippett’s own libretto) the tale of two lovers. Tippett also wrote the libretto for subsequent operas, including The Knot Garden (1966–1969) and
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The Ice Break (1973–1976). Another opera, New Year, was produced in 1989. Many of them premiered at the Royal Opera House in London. Although a prolific composer, Tippett failed to receive the recognition enjoyed by his contemporaries Britten and Vaughan Williams. His music was not well known in England until the 1960s, and it took another decade to win acclaim in the United States. He was knighted in 1966, became a member of Britain’s Order of Merit in 1983, and received more than a dozen honorary degrees. His other works include two children’s operas with
CHRISTOPHER FRY; the Triple Concerto (1979); Byzantium (1991), for soprano and orchestra; and the orchestral work The Rose Lake (1994). His autobiography, Those Twentieth Century Blues, was published in 1991.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bowen, Meirion, Michael Tippett, 1981; Kemp, Ian, Tippett: The Composer and His Music, 1987; Matthews, David, Michael Tippett: An Introductory Study, 1980; Tippett, Michael, Those Twentieth Century Blues: An Autobiography, 1991.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (January 3, 1892–September 2, 1973) Novelist, Illustrator, Writer of Children’s Books, Scholar, Teacher ohn Ronald Reuel Tolkien invented the world of Middle Earth and a complex mythology and complete set of languages for it; from the mythology he drew his classic children’s story The Hobbit and the enormously popular and influential fantasy trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. In broadest terms, Tolkien’s mythology is informed by his extensive knowledge of European languages and myth, and the books drawn from it compellingly dramatize the universal struggle between good and evil as well as expressing the deep dislike of all that seems life-denying and even life-threatening in the modern industrialized world, and expressing it in a way that resonates with many readers. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, in the Orange Free State (now part of South Africa) and moved to England with his mother and brother when he was three. His father, a banker, died before he could join them. Tolkien’s mother tutored her sons privately, and from her he developed his love for languages. He also devoured books of ancient myth and
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fairy tales in his youth. At the age of 8, Tolkien enrolled in the King Edward VI school. His mother’s death in 1904 made him an orphan, and he and his brother found guidance under a parish priest. Although the Tolkiens came from a Protestant background, his mother converted to Catholicism in his youth, and Tolkien maintained his Catholic faith throughout his life. After winning a scholarship, Tolkien studied classics and later English at Oxford. By this time, he had acquired a familiarity with many languages, including Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, French, German, Latin, Spanish, and Greek. In 1915, he enlisted in the army, and the following year he fought in the horrifying Battle of the Somme. (He had married Edith Bratt, another orphan whom he had met at the home of one of his guardians, before he left England.) After the war, Tolkien took a job as an editor for the Oxford English Dictionary. Tolkien’s long scholarly career began in 1921, when he went to work as a Reader in
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the English Language at Leeds University. From 1925 until 1959, he taught Anglo-Saxon and English language and literature at Oxford. His scholarly works include A Middle English Vocabulary; an edition of the classic medieval romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925) with E. V. Gordon; and a groundbreaking and also delightfully readable essay on the only Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936). Tolkien’s friend C. S. LEWIS joined the Oxford faculty in 1926. Lewis, along with Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Tolkien, and others, formed the core of the informal literary group the Inklings. The Inklings were one of many groups that provided Tolkien with intellectual discussion, and they listened to him read his work before it was published. Tolkien had been working on creating the mythology and languages of Middle Earth for years when the story he had drawn from that work for his children, The Hobbit, was published in 1937; it soon became a children’s classic. The symbolic story begins when the wizard Gandalf informs Bilbo of his appointed mission to help the dwarves recover wealth stolen from their forefathers in antiquity. The evil and powerful dragon Smaug jealously guards the treasure in Lonely Mountain. Bilbo, perfectly comfortable in his hobbit hole, is a reluctant adventurer, but the dwarves, led by the venerable and grumpy Thorin, have been told by Gandalf that he will join them in their quest and play the role of burglar when they reach the Lonely Mountain. When they question whether such an ordinary, respectable, middle-aged hobbit can possibly be a successful burglar, Bilbo finds himself insisting on going, much to his own surprise. Their travels take them through battles with trolls, goblins, giant spiders, and other evil forces. More important in the long run than the successful completion of their quest is an incident along the way. Deep in a cave under a mountain, where the strange creature Gollum lives, Bilbo finds a mysterious ring that renders its wearer invisible.
The Hobbit thus serves as an introduction to The Lord of the Rings (1954– 5), a trilogy consisting of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The story unfolds in the Third Age of Middle Earth. Frodo Baggins, nephew of The Hobbit’s Bilbo, receives the mysterious ring his uncle found in Gollum’s underworld when he is 33 years old. The controller of the ring possesses the power to rule the world, but he (or she— the elf-queen Galadriel is among those tempted by the ring) will inevitably be corrupted by the ring, which was created by the Dark Lord himself. The forces of good in Tolkien’s mythological world consist of dwarves, hobbits, men, and elves, who band together to throw the ring into the Crack of Doom and destroy it. In their quest they are opposed by a host of evil forces. The juxtaposition of the down-toearth hobbits and heroic figures who might have stepped out of an old romance are part of what gives the book such power that even some sophisticated critics cannot simply dismiss it, while a broad reading public has made it one of the most influential books of the second half of the twentieth century, according to one poll taken in England. Tolkien’s son Christopher undertook the task of publishing his father’s unfinished and unpublished works after his death. The Silmarillion (1977) takes place before the other novels. Set in the First Age of Middle Earth, it relates events that led up to the adventures of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. It is not a coherent whole like the Lord of the Rings, but some of the stories, generally written before the novels, have power. Unfinished Tales (1980) consists of additional stories that take place in three ages of Middle Earth, many of them again written before the novels. Lays of Beleriand (1985) also consists of previously unpublished stories and verse. Among Tolkien’s other works are Farmer Giles of Ham (1949); The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962); Tree and Leaf (1964); Smith of Wootton Major (1967); and The Father Christmas Letters (1976), a collection of illustrated letters from Father Christmas Tol-
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kien wrote to his own children. He was made Commander of the British Empire in 1972. Christopher Tolkien has now edited ten volumes of the History of Middle Earth. Both The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings were made into animated films.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Carpenter, Humphrey, Tolkien: A Biography, 1977; Crabbe, Katharyn W., J. R. R. Tolkien, 1981; Evans, Robley, J. R. R. Tolkien, 1972; Grotta, Daniel, J. R. R. Tolkien, Architect of Middle Earth: A Biography, 1976.
Toller, Ernst (December 1, 1893–May 22, 1939) Playwright, Poet, Screenwriter, Politician rnst Toller was among a generation of Expressionist playwrights in Germany fathered by Swedish playwright August Strindberg (1849– 2) and German playwright Frank Wedekind (1864–1918). After his experience fighting in World War I, Toller involved himself in radical political activity and dramatized his Marxist worldview in a series of plays written in prison. He continued to write plays after his release in 1924 and eventually moved to the United States. Toller was born the son of a Jewish shopkeeper in Samotschin, East Prussia, now Szamocin, Poland. He entered the Knabenschule in 1893 and continued his studies at the Realgymnasium in Bromberge. Toller began to write poetry and plays at a young age. In 1913, he entered the University of Grenoble, where he studied until the outbreak of World War I. Toller enlisted in an artillery regiment and was discharged for medical reasons. Following his release, he studied at the University of Munich, where he met THOMAS MANN and RAINER MARIA RILKE, and at the University of Heidelberg. After fighting in the war, Toller devoted his energies to protesting the hostilities. In Heidelberg he founded the Kulturpolitischer Bund der Jugend to oppose the war. Escaping police, he went to Munich, where he met Kurt Eisner and helped lead a strike of munitions
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workers. Authorities arrested him for his activities, and while in prison he read the writings of Marx, Lenin, and other Communists. Upon his release, Toller increasingly involved himself in radical political activity. In 1919 he was elected president of the Central Committee of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, a
Ernst Toller (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-37042)
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revolutionary state that was later suppressed. Toller was again arrested, charged with high treason, and sentenced to five years in prison. Meanwhile, he had begun to write, and he completed many of his popular early works during his incarceration. The play Die Wandlung (1918; Transformation), like most of Toller’s work, is written from a Marxist perspective. Its protagonist is a young Jewish man, Friedrich, who dreams of becoming a sculptor and enthusiastically enlists in the military service to fight in a colonial war in Africa. Friedrich suffers serious wounds but recovers, after which he determines to sculpt a statue to the Fatherland. However, he grows disillusioned with his former patriotic perspective and destroys the statue. In style Toller followed the Expressionists, who aimed to present ideas through an emotionally shocking, often distorted style. Toller’s Masse-Mensch (1920; Man and the Masses), also written in prison, attracted attention after its publication. The protagonist of the story is Sonja Irene L., Communist leader and wife of a bourgeois husband. She calls for a strike and is checked by a strange figure who advocates a revolution to transform society. A revolution breaks out, after which Sonja Irene L. is imprisoned and executed. A succession of other plays followed Masse-Mensch—Die Rache des verho¨hnten Liebhabers (1920; The Scorned Lover’s Revenge), Tag des Proletariat (1920; Day of the Proletariat), Die Maschinenstu¨rmer (1921; The Machine Wreckers), and Hinkemann (1922). Toller also completed several scripts for the Leipzig Massenfestspiel in the early 1920s: Bilder aus der grossen Franzo¨sischen Revolution (1922; Pictures from the Great French Revolution), Krieg und Frieden (1923; War and Peace), and Erwachen! (1924; Awake!). He was released from prison in 1924, after which he was exiled from Bavaria and traveled widely in Europe giving lectures. The play Hoppla, wir leben! (1927; Hoppla! Such Is Life!) marked another of his successes. Kilman, the Prime Minister, was one
of a group of revolutionaries who had narrowly escaped execution years earlier, and he was the only one to escape imprisonment. Upon his release, another of the formerly condemned, Karl Thomas, grows disgusted with Kilman and plots to kill him. Thomas decides not to follow through with the assassination, but a right-wing nationalist assassin does kill him. Thomas is arrested for the crime and commits suicide before the authorities identify the real assassin. Toller’s later plays include Bourgeois bleibt Bourgeois (1929; Once a Bourgeois, Always a Bourgeois); Feuer aus den Kesseln! (1930; Draw the Fires!); Wunder in Amerika (1931; Miracle in America), with Hermann Kesten; and Die blinde Go¨ttin (1932; The Blind Goddess). In the early 1930s, Toller argued with the prominent Nazi Alfred Mu¨hr on the radio. He fled Germany with the rise of the Nazis, who revoked his citizenship in 1933. The same year saw the publication of his autobiography Eine Jugend in Deutschland (1933; Growing Up in Germany), considered by some critics to be his best work. The following year he served as a delegate to the First Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in Leningrad. He married Christiane Grautoff in 1935. Toller eventually settled in the United States, where he briefly and unsuccessfully tried scriptwriting in Hollywood. He hung himself at the Mayflower Hotel in New York in 1939. Among his other works are Nie wieder Friede (1936; No More Peace); Pastor Hall (1939); the radio play Berlin Letzte Ausqabe (1929; Berlin: Last Edition); Briefe aus dem Gefa¨ngnis (1936; Letters from Prison); the poetry collections Gedichte der Gefangenen (1921; Prison Poems), Weltliche Passion (1934; Secular Passion), and Das Schwalbenbuch (1923; The Swallowbook); and the travel book Quer durch (1930; Right Across).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Benson, Renate, German Expressionist Drama: Ernst Toller and Georg Kaiser, 1984; Davies, Cecil W., The Plays of Ernst Toller: A Revalua-
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tion, 1996; Dove, Richard, He Was a German: A Biography of Ernst Toller, 1990; Kane, Martin, Weimar Germany and the Limits of Political
Art: A Study of the Work of George Grosz and Ernst Toller, 1987; Pittock, Malcolm, Ernst Toller, 1979.
Toscanini, Arturo (March 25, 1867–January 16, 1957) Conductor nown for his demanding, impeccable precision and ability to conduct from memory, Arturo Toscanini was one of the foremost conductors of the twentieth century. His work was centered in Milan (at La Scala) and in the United States, where he conducted the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the New York Philharmonic, and the NBC Symphony. Partial to the music of the nineteenth century, he generally disliked the work of modern composers. Toscanini was born in Parma, Italy. His father was a devoted patriot and loyal follower
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Arturo Toscanini (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-38917)
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of the Italian nationalist revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882). In 1876 Toscanini won a scholarship to the Parma Royal School of Music, where he studied composition, the piano, and the cello until 1885. After graduating with highest honors, Toscanini played the cello—notably in the second cellist’s chair at La Scala in the world premiere of Otello—and began to conduct at various opera houses in Italy. In 1887, while playing at the opera house in Rio de Janeiro, Toscanini was asked to substitute for an absent conductor. His direction of Guiseppe Verdi’s Aı¨da from memory astounded the audience and led to the quick establishment of his name as a conductor. Back in Italy, Toscanini rose to fame in the early 1890s. He directed the premiere of Il Pagliacci in 1892 and in 1895 was appointed director of the Teatro Regio in Turin, where he directed the world premiere of GIACOMO PUCCINI’s La Bohe`me (1896) and the Italian premiere of Richard Wagner’s Go¨tterda¨mmerung (Twilight of the Gods). He married Carla de Martini in 1897. Toscanini was appointed music director at Milan’s La Scala in 1898, where he remained for the next decade. The year of his departure he conducted the Italian premiere of Pelle´as et Me´lisande. He left in 1908 to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and two years later conducted the world premiere of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West (Golden Girl of the West). In 1920 Toscanini made his first recordings, for RCA Victor, beginning a re-
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where he conducted his inaugural performance of Verdi’s Falstaff. Opposed to the Fascist regime in Italy, he left to conduct the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra (1928–1936). During the 1930s he also conducted at the festivals in Bayreuth and Salzburg as well as the premiere concerts of what would become the Israel Philharmonic in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem (1936–1937). In 1937 he joined as a conductor the NBC Symphony, sponsored by the network and created especially for him by David Sarnoff and Samuel Chotzinoff. He remained with the symphony until 1954, the year of his final public performance. Resistant to the atonal developments in modern music (see ARNOLD SCHOENBERG), Toscanini was best known for his interpretations of the symphonic music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Johannes Brahms as well as Verdi’s operas. He rehearsed his players exhaustively and believed a conductor should remain loyal to the composer’s intentions. Clarity and precision, rather than expressiveness, were hallmarks of his style, as was his ability to conduct from memory. Poster (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-33683)
cording career that lasted more than three decades. Toscanini returned to Italy in 1921 and until 1929 was the sole artistic director at La Scala,
BIBLIOGRAPHY Horowitz, Joseph, Understanding Toscanini: How He Became an American Culture God and Helped Create a New Audience for Old Music, 1987; Sachs, Harvey, Toscanini, 1978.
Trudeau, Garretson Beekman (July 21, 1948– ) Cartoonist, Playwright eginning in the early 1970s, the American cartoonist Garry Trudeau married the art of the daily newspaper comic strip with op-ed page editorial cartooning in his long-running, famous creation
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Doonesbury. Today, Doonesbury is published regularly in almost 1,400 newspapers internationally, and the strip has been collected in dozens of hardcover and paperback books.
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Trudeau was born in New York City in 1948. He is the great-grandson of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau, who founded facilities for treating patients with pulmonary tuberculosis at Saranac Lake, New York. Trudeau’s father continued his work at the Trudeau Institute at Saranac Lake, where the cartoonist was raised. He attended St. Paul’s School and later enrolled at Yale University, where he earned a B.A. and later an M.F.A (1973) in graphic design. He was a member of Scroll and Key. Doonesbury began in 1968 during his Yale years as Bull Tales, which was published in the Yale Daily News. Two years later, the Universal Press Syndicate first published an evolved version of Bull Tales, retitled Doonesbury, in about two dozen newspapers. Doonesbury is characterized by its bold, dry humor and biting satire of political events, social trends, and declining educational standards. Through the cartoon, Trudeau has stirred and been in the center of a number of controversies, some of which have resulted in newspapers’ refusal to print the cartoons. Its large cast of characters spans the gamut of mainstream American politics, but Trudeau’s commentary is generally left-leaning. In recent years, Doonesbury has relentlessly criticized the actions and policies of President George W. Bush. Over the years, Doonesbury has featured a vast array of characters that span the American political, educational, and cultural spectrum. The original cast of players all attended the fictional Walden College during the early years of the comic strip. Later on, some of them started a commune, after which they all moved in different directions. The title character, Mike Doonesbury, is a middle-aged ex-advertising man and a cofounder of a small software company. Alex Doonesbury, daughter of Mike Doonesbury and performance artist J. J. Caucus, is a computer techie at MIT. B. D., another prominent character, is a conservative-minded career military man and veteran of the Vietnam War and both Gulf Wars. Over the past few years,
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Elias has risen to prominence in the Doonesbury story. A war veteran himself, he counsels B. D. to help him overcome post-traumatic stress disorder. Zonker Harris has evolved from being a hippie to a med student and the Lieutenant Governor of American Samoa. He currently works at McFriendly’s. Harris’s Uncle Duke used to write for Rolling Stone magazine and later embarked on a political career as, among other positions, governor of American Samoa, ambassador to China, proconsul of Panama, and mayor of a fictional town in Iraq. Uncle Duke has also been involved in a number of sordid activities, including smuggling drugs, and early on Trudeau based his character on HUNTER S. THOMPSON’S fictional selfmodeled character Raoul Duke. In addition to the fictional Doonesbury characters, Trudeau regularly inserts caricatures of actual politicians and other figures into the cartoon. He does not reproduce their faces, but rather represents them either through symbols (such as a waffle for former President Bill Clinton) or off-scene dialog. Just five years after the cartoon’s syndication, Trudeau became the first cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. In 1977, his animated film The Doonesbury Special, a collaboration with the husband and wife team of John (1914–1977) and Faith Hubley (1924–2001), was first aired by NBC and was nominated for an Oscar. It won the Jury Special Prize of the Cannes Film Festival in 1978. From January 1983 to October 1984, Trudeau took the unusual step (for a cartoonist) of breaking from publishing Doonesbury while he worked on a Broadway musical version of the comic strip. The musical, featuring a score by composer Elizabeth Swados (1951– ), depicted the graduation of Doonesbury’s main characters from Walden College and premiered at the Biltmore Theatre on November 21, 1983. He returned to the newspaper pages with an evolved set of characters who had moved on from college and the commune to other pursuits.
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In August and September 2001, Trudeau (among other journalists) fell for an Internet hoax perpetrated by the fictional Lovenstein Institute alleging that President George W. Bush had the lowest IQ of any president in the past half century, that Bush’s IQ was exactly half that of former President Bill Clinton’s, and that Clinton had the highest IQ among the group. Trudeau exploited this information in Doonesbury, and when the information proved to be false, he made a public retraction in which he still poked fun at President Bush’s intelligence. Aside from his Doonesbury-related work, Trudeau has written plays, scripts for television, and magazine and newspaper articles. His satirical political revue Rap Master Ronnie (1984) took aim at the administration of
former President Ronald Reagan and again featured a score by Swados. He also wrote the award-winning HBO television show Tanner ’88, directed by Robert Altman (1925–2006), and its sequel, Tanner on Tanner (2004). In 1980, Trudeau married journalist Jane Pauley (1950– ). In spite of his success, Trudeau maintains a relatively private lifestyle, rarely granting interviews or making public appearances. Among his many awards are the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award for 1994 and its Reuben Award for 1995. He was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993 and has received honorary degrees from numerous universities. www.doonesbury.com.
Truffaut, Franc¸ois (February 6, 1932–October 21, 1984) Director, Actor ranc¸ois Truffaut’s 400 Blows, along with JEAN-LUC GODARD’s Breathless (1961), was one of a number of films to inaugurate the New Wave of French cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Truffaut and other New Wave directors rebelled against conventional French cinema, helping to merge the roles of scriptwriter and director in film. Truffaut was born into a lower-middle-class family in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. His childhood was unhappy and troubled, and his formal schooling ended when he was 14. Truffaut’s entrance into the world of film began when he attracted the attention of the prominent critic Andre´ Bazin. Bazin invited him to work for his film magazine, Cahiers du Cine´ma, and Truffaut became an outspoken critic of contemporary French film. He and other critics advocated a new style of film-
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making in which a director becomes a “film author” or auteur and is involved in all aspects of the production. Truffaut’s first short films were The Mischief Makers (1958) and A Story of Water (1959), a comedy. Antoine Doinel, a juvenile delinquent always in trouble at school, is the semiautobiographical protagonist of Truffaut’s first full-length film, 400 Blows (1959). Doinel matures through three sequels made over Truffaut’s career, Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979). Truffaut won an award for best director for 400 Blows at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959, and from then on he was considered a leader of the French New Wave. The term New Wave originally applied to a number of films from new directors in France in the late 1950s. New Wave directors, including Truffaut, objected to conventional meth-
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ods of studio production. Working with slim budgets, they sometimes hired unknown actors instead of professionals. Directors often improvised scenes, diminishing the importance of the written script. The director took part in all aspects of the film—Truffaut wrote or co-wrote all of his own scripts, directed his films, and acted the main parts in some of them, including The Wild Child and Day and Night. Among the directors who influenced his work were ALFRED HITCHCOCK and the French directors JEAN RENOIR and JEAN VIGO. Shoot the Piano Player (1960), adapted from David Goodis’s novel Down There, is a thriller about Charlie Kohler, a cafe´ piano player who abandons his career as a concert pianist and is inadvertently drawn into his brother’s gangster world. In Jules and Jim (1961), a German (Jules) and a Frenchman (Jim) fall in love with the stormy Catherine, who resembles a statue they both admire. Jules and Catherine marry with Jim’s blessing, but Catherine carries on numerous affairs outside of their marriage, including, later, a romantic relationship with Jim. Jules is determined to keep their trio of friendship intact and permits Catherine to do as she wishes. Fahrenheit 451 (1966), adapted from the science fiction story by Ray Bradbury, marked Truffaut’s only attempt at science fiction and was his first color film. The futuristic story takes place in a nightmarish society in
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which the government has outlawed all books, but some rebels have devoted their lives to memorizing and passing on the greatest books. In The Wild Child (1967), Truffaut plays Dr. Itard, who tries to civilize an uncivilized boy. Many of Truffaut’s later films deserve mention. Small Change (1976) depicts the lives of French schoolchildren. The Story of Adele H. (1975) is based on the life of the daughter of the French novelist Victor Hugo (1802–1885) and tells the story of a woman who develops a deep romantic obsession with Lieutenant Albert Pinson. Truffaut again starred as Ferrand in Day for Night (1973), about a director struggling to finish filming a second-rate movie, Meet Pamela, amidst a slew of problems with the cast and crew members. The film received an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Among Truffaut’s other films are Mississippi Mermaid (1969), The Bride Wore Black (1968), Two English Girls (1972), The Green Room (1978), The Last Metro (1980), and Confidentially Yours (1983). His dialogue with Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock/Truffaut, was published in English in 1983. BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, Don, Franc¸ois Truffaut, 1974; Crisp, C. G., Franc¸ois Truffaut, 1972; Insdorf, Annette, Franc¸ois Truffaut, 1978.
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Unamuno, Miguel de (September 29, 1864–December 31, 1936) Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Critic, Essayist leading member of the Generation of ’98, the Spanish author Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo contributed to a revival of Spanish literature at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. His radically independent temperament and thinking kept him at a distance from others associated with that movement and he generally explored individualistic and existential questions. Unamuno was of Basque ancestry, born in Bilbao, Spain. He graduated from the Colegio de San Nicola´s in 1876, attended the Vizcayan Institute of Bilbao, and in 1880 enrolled in the University of Madrid, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy and literature. A voracious reader, he spent much of his time in study. Around 1890 his writings began to appear in such periodicals as the socialist Lucha
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Miguel de Unamuno (쑖 Pierre Choumoff / Roger-Viollet / The Image Works)
de clases (Class Struggle). In 1891, Unamuno took a post as a professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Salamanca. From 1901 to 1914 he served as president of the university. Unamuno’s antiauthoritarian political views caused him sporadic trouble throughout his life. During World War I, he expressed support for the Allies, defying King Alfonso XIII, who strove to keep Spain neutral. Unamuno’s public position resulted in his dismissal from the university. His opposition to General Miguel Primo de Rivera ten years later forced him into exile until 1930. From 1931 to 1936 he again served as president of the University of Salamanca. When he denounced supporters of General Francisco Franco in 1936, the year the Spanish Civil War broke out, he again lost his job and was placed under house arrest. A heart attack took his life the same year. Unamuno was heavily influenced by the Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), who wrote about the conflict between faith and reason, and the need to work out one’s own faith “in fear and trembling,” a central preoccupation of Unamuno’s thought. He even learned Danish to enable him to read the philosopher’s works in his native language. He believed the individual should serve as the central focus of philosophy, and that the individual’s search for faith in immortality was one of the primary human concerns. He expounded on these ideas in essays collected in The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples (1913) and The Agony of Christianity (1925), and they form the basis of his fiction. The novels for which Unamuno is famous are most noteworthy for their detailed psychological portraits of individuals. In 1897 he published his first, the autobiographical Paz en la Guerra (Peace in War). The character
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of Don Avito Carrascal in Amor y Pedagogı´a (1902; Love and Pedagogy) is a stinging indictment of blind faith in science and progress. Carrascal attempts to reduce all emotion and spirituality to scientific principles, and to raise his son, Apo-lodoro, accordingly. Apolodoro’s eventual suicide cements the failure of Carrascal’s “religion,” the worship of science. Mist (1914) features a chapter in which one of the characters, Augusto Pe´rez, converses with his creator, Unamuno, about the reality of existence. Abel Sa´nchez (1917) is a modernized adaptation of the biblical Cain and Abel story seen through the eyes of Joaquı´n Monegro, a Cain figure consumed with hatred for Abel Sa´nchez. Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr (1933) is Unamuno’s most mature work, a thorough exploration of his own questions about life, faith, and death. Saint Manuel is a parish priest, full of charity and kindness, but lacking the faith to believe in eternal life. However much he himself lacks faith, he works overtime to inspire it in his parishioners, for he be-
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lieves that without faith in everlasting life, there can be no comfort in earthly existence. Unamuno’s poetry, less widely read than his novels and essays, has a mystical quality and explores similar themes. Collections of his poems include Poesı´as (1907); A Rosary of Lyric Sonnets (1912); Rhymes from Within (1923); Teresa (1924); Ballads of Exile (1927); and The Christ of Vela´zquez (1920), a poetic study of the Spanish baroque painter Diego Vela´zquez (1599– 0). His other works include the novels La Tı´a Tula (1920) and Don Sandalio, Jugador de Ajedrez (1933); the plays Fedra (1924) and Raquel (1933); the essay collections En Torno al Castacismo (1895; Concerning Traditionalism) and Life of Don Quixote and Sancho (1905); and the travel sketches Paisajes (1902; Landscapes). BIBLIOGRAPHY Basdekis, Demitrios, Unamuno and Spanish Literature, 1967; Marı´as, Julia´n, Miguel de Unamuno, 1966; Nozick, Martin, Miguel de Unamuno, 1971.
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Vale ´ ry, Paul (October 30, 1871–July 20, 1945) Poet, Essayist, Playwright he publication of The Young Goddess Fate in 1917 established Paul-Ambroise Vale´ry’s reputation as one of France’s leading poets in the early twentieth century. The poem, widely considered his masterpiece, followed a long period of artistic silence precipitated by a personal crisis in 1892. Much of Vale´ry’s poetry belongs to the decade between 1912 and 1922, after which he mostly lectured, taught, and wrote essays. Vale´ry was born in the Mediterranean port town of Se`te, France. His father was Corsican and a customs official, and his mother was Italian. Vale´ry attended the Dominican Convent School and the Colle`ge de Se`te as a boy. When his family moved to Montpellier, he enrolled in the lyce´e and developed interests in poetry, architecture, and mathematics. He studied law at the University of Montpellier and earned his degree in 1892. By that time, Vale´ry’s poetry, much of it written in sonnet form and influenced by the Symbolists, was already beginning to appear in literary reviews. Early in his career he met a number of literary figures who would prove important to his development as a writer. First among these was the Symbolist poet Ste´phane Mallarme´, to whom he was introduced in 1891. Vale´ry attended Mallarme´’s
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Paul Vale´ry (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-119127)
weekly Tuesday night gatherings, where he made the acquaintance of other artists. Through Pierre Louy¨s he met the writer ANDRE´ GIDE, who became a lifelong friend. Having undergone a personal crisis that led him to abandon poetry, Vale´ry moved to Paris in 1894. He devoted himself to refining his intellect, rising early in the morning for a few hours of contemplating and recording his thoughts. By the end of his life his notebooks totaled more than 250 volumes containing impressions, essays, formulas, and other fragments, which were published as Cahiers. Vale´ry sought an ideal combination of intellectual and artist in prose works such as An Evening with Mr. Teste (1895), and the figure he most admired in this regard was the Italian Renaissance painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. His Method of Leonardo da Vinci was also published in 1895. From 1897 to 1900 Vale´ry worked in the French War Office. The year 1900 brought two major changes to his life. He married Jeannie Gobillard, a friend of Mallarme´’s daughter, and began twenty-two years of work as the private secretary of Edouard Lebey, director of the French press association. In 1912 Gide began to press Vale´ry to publish some of his poetry. He began work on what would become his most famous work, The Young Goddess Fate (1917). The poem is meticulously structured and took him five years to complete. Fate is personified as a young woman grappling with questions of consciousness, knowledge, and being. Revised versions of Vale´ry’s early poems appeared in Album of Ancient Verse, 1890–1900 (1920). Vale´ry’s last major collection of poetry, Odes, was published in 1922. Its verse, classical in style and rich in imagery, varies widely in structure and theme but shares a musical
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quality born of Vale´ry’s painstaking attention to form. The most popular piece from Odes is “The Graveyard by the Sea,” a meditation on death inspired by the Se`te cemetery where Vale´ry was later buried. In much of his work, Vale´ry was preoccupied with the relationships and conflicts between thought and will. Vale´ry turned to other forms of expression for the remainder of his life. In 1921 he had published the Socratic dialogs Eupalinos, or The Architect (1921) and Dance and the Soul (1921). Lebey died in 1922, after which Vale´ry lectured and published new editions of his works. He was elected to the French Academy in 1925, and his two ballets in free verse,
Amphion and Se´miramis, were produced in 1931 and 1934 respectively. His essays cover a wide range of subjects that reflect his multiple interests: politics, philosophy, architecture, art, and other areas. In 1937 he took a position as professor of poetry at the Colle`ge de France. Among Vale´ry’s other works are the play Mon Faust (1941) and his volumes of essays, including Varie´te´ (1924).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Crow, Christine M., Paul Vale´ry and the Poetry of Voice, 1982; Grubbs, Henry A., Paul Vale´ry, 1968.
Valle ´ -Incla ´ n, Ramo ´ n del (October 28, 1866–January 5, 1936) Playwright, Novelist, Poet, Politician
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he novels and plays of the Spanish author Ramo´n Marı´a del Valle´-Incla´n are characterized by their sharp social
Ramo ´ n del Valle´-Incla ´ n (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-118658)
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satire and detailed treatment of Spanish history, often expressed in his self-crafted literary genre esperpento. He is sometimes included among the writers of the Generation of ’98, although some critics dispute this classification. Valle´-Incla´n was born Ramo´n Valle Pen˜a in the fishing village of Villanueva de Arosa, Spain, and raised in Spain’s Galician region. He attended law school at the University of Santiago de Compostela but never earned his degree. While at school, he began contributing short stories to literary magazines. He later moved to Madrid, where he wrote for the paper El Globo. In 1892 Valle´–Incla´n went to Mexico, where he worked as a journalist. He returned to Galicia the following year and settled in Madrid in 1895. His first book of short stories, Of Women: Six Amorous Tales, was published the same year. Valle´-Incla´n acquired a reputation as a flamboyant personality. He frequented Madrid cafe´s and engaged in avant-garde literary and
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political discussions. During one of the more raucous debates, he received a skin wound, and a subsequent infection resulted in the loss of his left arm. Among those he met was the Nicaraguan writer Ruben Darı´o, father of Modernismo in Spanish and Latin American literature. Many of Valle´-Incla´n’s earlier works are written in the Modernist vein, and they also show influences of the French Symbolists. His first major works are his four Sonatas (1902–1905), about a Galician womanizer. They begin with the Autumn Sonata, and each bears the name of a season. His novel Flower of Sainthood was published in 1904, and three years later he married the actress Josefina Blanco, by whom he had six children. Valle´-Incla´n traveled extensively, collecting research for his The Carlist Wars (1908–1909), a trilogy of novels about the strife surrounding Isabella II’s rule of Spain (1833–1868). Valle´-Incla´n’s numerous plays belong to several genres. Several feature the character of Don Juan Manuel de Montenegro, including The Ballad of the Wolves (1908). Among his farces are The Dragon’s Head (1909) and The Marquise Rosalinda (1912). In his later works, Valle´-Incla´n began to use a style he called esperpento, characterized by sharp satire of Spanish culture and parodies of Spanish heroes. The play Bohemian Lights (1920) began his esperpentos. One of his most famous plays in this style, Don Friolera’s Horns (1921), pointedly satirizes the Spanish Army and King Alfonso XIII. Madrid authorities removed his esperpento play The Captain’s Daughter (1927) from
stores because of its sharp treatment of pressing political issues. Valle´-Incla´n joined a theatrical group organized by the novelist P´IO BAROJA and his brother, and he subsequently formed his own circle. His other dramas include Divine Words (1920), Silver Face (1922), The Baptist’s Head (1924), the esperpento trilogy Shrove Tuesday (1930), and The Dead Man’s Finery (1930). Valle´-Incla´n’s novel Tirano Banderas (1926), about a Latin American dictator, takes place in the fictional Latin American state of Tierra Caliente and is written in esperpento style. Other later novels, The Court of Miracles (1927), Hurrah for My Owner (1928), and the unfinished Military Tricks (1958), belong to a projected series on Spanish history in the latter part of the nineteenth century entitled The Iberian Circle. During his lifetime Valle´-Incla´n lost two bids for the Spanish Parliament, and his political outlook drifted leftward as he aged. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not live to see the Spanish Civil War that began the year of his death. By the early 1930s he suffered from poor health. In 1931 he became a museum director of the palace museum at Aranjuez. He divorced his wife in 1932 and became director of the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1933. Also among his works is a book of poetry, The Marijuana Pipe (1919).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Lima, Robert, Valle´-Incla´n: The Theater of His Life, 1988; Smith, Verity, Ramo´n del Valle´–Incla´n, 1973.
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Vallejo, Ce ´ sar (March 16, 1892–April 15, 1938) Poet, Short-Story Writer, Novelist he work of the Peruvian-born writer Ce´sar Abraham Vallejo gained more popularity after his death than it did during his lifetime. Vallejo’s primary interest in his life and literary career was the suffering of the underclasses, and his embrace of Marxism in his twenties influenced much of his writing. Vallejo was of Spanish and Indian ancestry, the youngest of eleven children born in Santiago de Chuco, Peru. His parents raised their children in a devout Catholic atmosphere. After studying at a secondary school in Huamachuco, Vallejo worked in a series of jobs before enrolling in the University of Trujillo (1913–1917), where he studied literature. As a child and in his jobs on sugar estates and mines, Vallejo was disturbed by the poor treatment of the underclasses who made up the labor force. The first poets whom he read were classic Spanish poets and the Romantics. During his years at the university Vallejo met regularly with other poets to read their own poetry and discuss the work of others. His first book of poetry, The Black Heralds, was published in 1918. His early poetry shows stylistic influences of the Parnassians, who paid meticulous attention to the structure, style, and form of their poetry. In theme Vallejo’s early poetry borrowed from the Modernists. Most of his verse is rife with despair and a sense of futility in the face of social forces beyond one’s control. The conflict between Indian and Spanish culture in Peru is also a major theme in his work. These poems also evidence the personal religious crisis that led Vallejo away from the Catholicism of his upbringing. The poetry in his next major volume, Trilce (1922), broke with the style of The Black Heralds. Experimental syntax, colloquialism, and bold, disturbing imagery re-
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placed the smooth form of the previous volume. Vallejo involved himself heavily in political matters for most of his life. Peruvian authorities jailed him for his political activity on behalf of Indians in 1920. In 1923 he left Peru permanently, thereafter living alternately in Paris and in Spain. His visits to the Soviet Union, his militant political activity, and his open support of Marxism led to his temporary expulsion from France in 1930. Like many Spanish and Latin American writers at the time, he immersed himself in the politics of the Spanish Civil War, supporting the Republican side. After he moved to Paris, Vallejo began to write prose poems, associated with avantgarde artists, and wrote political articles. He married Georgette Phillipart, with whom he lived beginning in 1929. Vallejo was continually troubled by financial worries in France, and his poetry was relatively unknown. Vallejo’s two major novels, Savage Story (1923) and Tungsten (1931), treat the same themes as his poetry. The first concerns a psychologically troubled Indian. Tungsten, published the same year Vallejo joined the Communist Party, is set in Peru and depicts the exploitation of Native American mineral miners from a Marxist perspective. The novel draws from Vallejo’s own experience working in a Peruvian mine offices before he enrolled at the university. Along with Tungsten, Vallejo’s later poetry is colored by his embrace of Communism. He believed poetry should serve the interests of the masses and strove to structure his work to that end. Most of his late verse was published posthumously, including the volumes Human Poems (1939) and Spain, Let this Cup Pass from Me (1940), much of which was inspired by the Spanish Civil War.
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Vallejo’s The Complete Posthumous Poetry was published in 1978. His other works include Musical Scales (1922), a collection of short stories.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Franco, Jean, Ce´sar Vallejo: The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence, 1976.
Vargas Llosa, Mario (March 28, 1936– ) Novelist, Playwright, Critic, Essayist, Politician orge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa is one of the most widely read writers in the Spanish-speaking world and is most famous for his novels. He is also well known for his political and cultural essays, which initially conveyed a socialist perspective and later became more moderate. His 1990 bid for the presidency of Peru as a candidate for the Liberty Movement Party was unsuccessful. Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru. His family moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1937, and he returned to Peru in 1945. In 1950 his father, apprehensive of his son’s literary aspirations, sent him to Leoncio Prado, a military school in Lima. The violent and corrupt atmosphere of the military school, which Vargas Llosa hated passionately, had a profound impact on him and his later writing. His first published literary piece was a play, The Flight of the Inca (1952). The following year he began to study law at the University of San Marcos. When he was 19 he married his aunt (by marriage only; she was not a blood relative), Julia Urquidi, causing an uproar in his family; they divorced in 1963. Meanwhile, he had begun writing short stories, six of which were collected as The Leaders in 1959. From 1959 to 1966 Vargas Llosa lived in Paris, where he began to write novels. His first novel, The Time of the Hero, was published in 1963 and became an international success. Vargas Llosa’s experiences at Leoncio Prado, where the story takes place, furnished the inspiration for the novel. When
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one of the students steals a chemistry test, the administration imposes disciplinary measures to force out the culprit, Cava. He is finally discovered when one of the cadets, nicknamed Slave, begins to resent his prolonged confinement. Slave squeals on Cava, who is subsequently expelled from the school. The disgruntled Jaguar, another cadet, resents what he considers Slave’s treachery and murders him. School officials, fearing negative publicity, insist that Slave’s death was a suicide and attempt to silence anybody who might declare otherwise. The complex story line of the sometimes mythical The Green House (1966), Vargas Llosa’s next novel, is set in the Amazon jungle of northern Peru. The Cubs (1967), a novella, is a psychological study of a young boy who is castrated by a dog that attacks him in the locker room. Before the accident he is a successful and ambitious boy—a star soccer player and an excellent student. When other boys begin to take an interest in girls, however, he grows more and more depressed and vents his frustrations in destructive, and finally deadly, behavior. With the four-part epic Conversation in the Cathedral (1969), Vargas Llosa presented a panoramic view of corruption in Peruvian government and society in the 1950s. The story, set during the dictatorship of Manuel Odrı´a from 1948 to 1956, unfolds from a series of recollections during a conversation between two men in a cathedral.
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In 1966 Vargas Llosa moved to London. After a brief stay at Washington State University in 1968, he returned to London and then moved to Barcelona in 1970. His next novel, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973), is an often comic satire of the Peruvian military. Pantaleo´n Pantoja, a military officer, is sent to the Peruvian jungle to construct an alternative sexual outlet for soldiers who are fond of raping the local women. Pantoja sets about his dubious task in a highly methodical and organized fashion. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), a semiautobiographical story partially based on his relationship with his aunt and his development as a writer, was written after his return to Peru in 1974. The War of the End of the World (1982), based on a political rebellion in Brazil in the 1890s, became very popular in Spanish-speaking countries. Vargas Llosa’s later novels include The Storyteller (1989); The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (1985); Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1987); Death in the Andes (1995), a mystery set in the Peruvian Andes, the stomping
grounds of Maoist Shining Path guerillas; Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (1997); The Way to Paradise (2003); and Mischiefs of the Bad Girl (2006). After losing the Peruvian presidential election to Alberto Fujimori in 1990, he moved to Europe, where he continues to write. Among Vargas Llosa’s other works are literary studies, Garcı´a Ma´rquez: Story of a Deicide (1971), The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary (1975), Between Sartre and Camus (1981), and The Temptation of the Impossible (2004); the plays The Lady of Tacna (1981), Kathie and the Hippopotamus (1983), and The Jest (1986); the collections of political essays Against Wind and Nausea (1983) and Making Waves (1997); and his election memoirs, A Fish in the Water (1993).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gerdes, Dick, Mario Vargas Llosa, 1985; Ko¨llman, Sabine, Vargas Llosa’s Fiction and the Demons of Politics, 2002; Mun˜oz, Braulio, A Storyteller: Mario Vargas Llosa Between Civilization and Barbarism, 2000; Williams, Raymond Leslie, Mario Vargas Llosa, 1986.
Vaughan, Sarah Lois (March 27, 1924–April 3, 1990) Singer alled during her career “Sassy” and later “The Divine One,” the American singer Sarah Vaughan was one of jazz music’s greatest female vocalists in the twentieth century. Vaughan’s singing career spanned more than forty-five years, and with her multi-octave, contralto voice she performed with many of the greatest jazz legends of her time. Vaughan attended East Side High School in Newark before transferring to Arts High in 1931. By that time, she had already fallen in love with the popular music she heard on rec-
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ords, at live performances around Newark, and on the radio. She began to perform secretly at a number of night clubs in Newark, including the Newark Airport USO and the Piccadilly Club. Her nightclub ventures eventually spurred her to drop out of school. Before long, Vaughan was traveling regularly to the Apollo Theatre, Harlem’s Ballroom, and other nightspots in New York City to hear the popular big bands of the era. One evening in 1942, on a dare from a friend, she competed in the Apollo Theatre’s Wednesday Night Amateur Contest and won first prize for her
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rendition of “Body and Soul.” In 1943, she opened a week-long series of shows for popular jazz singer ELLA FITZGERALD as part of her award for winning the contest. At that time, she met pianist Earl Hines (1903B-1983), who made Vaughan the female singer for his band. For the next year or so, Vaughan toured with Hines, baritone Billy Eckstine (1914B-1993), and trombonist/pianist Cliff Smalls. Hines’s entourage, which at times included trumpeter DIZZY GILLESPIE (1917B-1993), the British saxophonist Benny Green (1927B-1998), and saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920B-1955), was an early pioneer in the bebop genre. Bebop, a movement in jazz that emphasized harmony over melody, improvisation, and upbeat tempos, grew popular in the 1940s. In 1944, Vaughan joined Eckstine in his newly formed bop band, which later included such notables as trumpeter Miles Davis (1926B-1991) and drummer Art Blakey (19191990). Late that year, she made her first recording with Eckstine’s band for Deluxe entitled “I’ll Wait and Pray.” Vaughan, backed by some of the era’s leading jazz musicians, was soon recording music under her own name for Continental and left to pursue a solo career. She remained friendly with Eckstine, however, and recorded with him on occasion for years to come. In 1945, Vaughan began singing regularly in New York clubs, and she continued recording for a number of labels as well. Around this time, she befriended trumpeter George Treadwell, who soon became her manager and in 1946 her husband. Although the marriage was not to last, Treadwell was a capable manager. He refashioned Vaughan’s stage appearance, making her more marketable to the public, and proved apt at handling the financial aspects of her career. She recorded some of her most important early songs for Musicraft during this era, including Tadd Dameron’s (1917B1965) “If You Could See Me Now,” “Everything I Have Is Yours,” “I’ve Got a Crush On
You,” and the popular hits “Tenderly” (1947), “It’s Magic” (1948), and “Nature Boy” (1948). In 1947, Esquire magazine bestowed upon Vaughan its New Star Award. Well on her way to success, Vaughan signed with Columbia records in 1948, and recordings such as “I’m Crazy to Love You” and “I Cried for You” continued to hit the music charts. Her repertoire expanded to include pop songs and Broadway show tunes such as “Whatever Lola Wants.” Magazines such as Down Beat and Metronome named her for numerous awards over the next several years. She began to tour extensively, performing sold-out shows around the United States. In 1949, she made a notable appearance in a benefit performance entitled 100 Men and a Girl with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and two years later she embarked on her first European tour. In 1954, dissatisfied with what she perceived as Columbia’s tendency to stifle her creativity and commercialize her work, she signed with Mercury Records. With the exception of a three-year relationship with Roulette Records, Vaughan was to stay with Mercury until 1967. Her first hit for the label, “Make Yourself Comfortable, ” appeared on the charts in the mid-1950s. Other hits such as “The Banana Boat Song” and “You Ought to Have a Wife” followed in quick succession, and in 1959 she earned her first gold record with “Broken- Hearted Melody.” Vaughan recorded several notable jazz albums during this period, including In the Land of Hi-Fi (1955) and No Count Sarah (1958) with members of COUNT BASIE’S orchestra. She also began what became a long series of regular appearances at the Newport Jazz Festival in its inaugural presentation in 1954. By this time, she was touring internationally with some of the greatest names in jazz, including pianist Oscar Peterson (1925B), pianist Herbie Hancock (1940B- ), and trombonist J. J. Johnson (1924B-2001). In 1958, Vaughan filed for divorce from Treadwell. The same year, she married Clyde “C.B.” Atkins, and the couple settled in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Like Treadwell, At-
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kins served as her manager, but his managerial talents proved to be less savvy. The pair adopted a daughter in 1961, but their marriage fell apart and ended in divorce in 1963. The divorce, in part precipitated by Atkins’s violent behavior, left Vaughan to pay for the consequences of his reckless gambling habit. During her brief time with Roulette Records, Vaughan recorded the notable albums After Hours (1961) and Sarah Plus Two (1962). After returning to Mercury in 1963, she traveled to Denmark with producer Quincy Jones (1933B- ) and recorded a number of live performances released as Sassy Swings the Tivoli (1963). In 1969, with her Mercury contract having ended two years earlier, Vaughan relocated to California. In 1970, she met and fell in love with Marshall Fisher, who also became her manager. The following year, she began recording with Mainstream Records, releasing a series of albums that began with A Time In My Life in 1971. The French composer and conductor Michel Legrand (1932B- ) joined her on the ballad collection With Michel Legrand (1972). It was during this era that Vaughan recorded “Send in the Clowns” from STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S (1930B- ) musical A Little Night Music, which opened on Broadway in February, 1973. It was to become her signature song, and the lyrics from “Send in the Clowns” now adorn the waiting stations of the New Jersey Transit’s light rail systems in her honor. A few years after the end of her contract with Mainstream, at the invitation of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (1944B- ), Vaughan in 1974 sang in an all-Gershwin show. She performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, kicking off a series of appearances with symphony orchestras that lasted through the 1970s. In 1977, Vaughan signed with Pablo Records and the same year released I Love Brazil, an album recorded in Rio de Janeiro. Featuring noted Brazilian musicians, the album was a popular success and earned Vaughan a
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Grammy nomination. She went on to record five more albums with the labelC: How Long Has This Been Going On? (1978), Duke Elllington Songbook, Vol. 1 (1979), Duke Ellington Songbook, Vol. 2 (1979), a full-length album entitled Send in the Clowns (1981), and Crazy and Mixed Up (1982). In 1978, Vaughan married trumpeter Waymond Reed, who became part of her standard trio and again became her manager. They divorced in 1981. Although her recording pace slowed considerably during the 1980s, Vaughan continued to perform. Several television broadcasts showcased her singing and career, notably PBS’s Sarah Vaughan: The Divine One (released on DVD in 1993), part of the network’s American Masters series. In 1981, she won an Emmy for another Gershwin performance with the New Jersey Symphony that was broadcast on PBS. She performed a version of the Gershwin program again with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and for the recording Gershwin Live! (1982), she earned a Grammy Award. She was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1982. She recorded her last full album, Brazilian Romance, a collection of Latin jazz songs, in 1987. Her last studio recording was a duet with Fitzgerald in 1989. Her health began to deteriorate the same year when doctors diagnosed her with lung cancer. She died at the age of sixty-six in 1990. Her funeral was held at the First Mount Zion Baptist Church in Newark, where she had once played the organ and sung in the choir. Vaughan was a unique presence in American music. She sang for more than one U.S. president: in 1964 for Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House and a decade later at a private concert for Gerald Ford and French President Giscard d’Estaing (1926B ). She treated her melodic vocals like a jazz instrument and unlike other jazz musicians of her time is not widely imitated. Although she sometimes sang with larger ensembles, her preferred performing style was to set her vo-
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cals to a backing trio of musicians consisting of a pianist, a double bassist, and a drummer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, Denis, Sarah Vaughan: A Discography, 1991; Gourse, Leslie, Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan, 1993. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ database/vaughan_s.html.
Vaughan Williams, Ralph (October 12, 1872–August 26, 1958) Composer reaking with a long-established tradition of German musical dominance, Ralph Vaughan Williams founded the nationalist movement in twentieth-century British music. His lifelong interest in the English folk song formed the starting point for his melodic, folk-infused, and often pastoral compositions, which include nine symphonies, choral works, chamber music, songs, and stage works. Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, England. His mother was a niece of Charles Darwin, and his father, of Welsh ancestry, was the vicar of Down Ampney. Vaughan Williams took his first music lessons from an aunt and at the age of 6 composed his first piece of music. In 1882 he entered a preparatory school at Rottingdean, where he continued to study the piano and the violin. Five years later, he entered the Charterhouse School and played the violin in the orchestra. Having studied at the Royal College of Music in London, Vaughan Williams entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the University Music Club. Upon the completion of his studies at Cambridge, Vaughan Williams returned to the Royal College of Music. During his two periods at the Royal College, he studied under Sir Charles Stanford and Sir Hubert Parry and formed a friendship with his fellow pupil
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GUSTAV HOLST. Vaughan Williams later earned his doctorate in music at Cambridge. In 1897, he married Adeline Fisher and went to Berlin for a year of study under Max Bruch. In 1903, Vaughan Williams began collecting English folk songs. Over the next several years, he worked as the music editor of The English Hymnal. He had finished his Bucolic Suite in 1902 and enjoyed early successes with pieces such as the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910). His first symphony, titled A Sea Symphony, was begun in 1905 and performed at the Leeds Festival in 1910. A setting of poetry by Walt Whitman, it was his most ambitious piece to date. In 1909, Vaughan Williams went to Paris to work briefly under MAURICE RAVEL. Eight symphonies were to follow the Sea Symphony. The second, a four-movement work entitled the London Symphony, was completed in 1914 and revised several times afterward. The Fourth Symphony in F-minor (1935) stands out among the others for its uncharacteristic dissonance. More typical of Vaughan Williams’s style was his meditative third symphony (Pastoral Symphony, 1922). Also well known among his work is this seventh symphony, the Sinfonia Antarctica (1953), an adaptation of music for the 1949 film Scott of the Antarctic (1949). Vaughan Williams interrupted his composing to serve in World War I and resumed writ-
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Ralph Vaughn Williams (쑖 Ursula Vaughan Williams / Lebrecht / The Image Works)
ing music afterward. Hugh the Drover, his first opera, featured a libretto by Harold Childs and was begun before the war. A depiction of English rural life heavily influenced by English folk music, the opera was first staged in 1924. Several other operas followed Hugh the Drover, including Sir John in Love (1929), based on William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor; The Poisoned Kiss, performed in 1936; and Riders to the Sea (1937), drawn from a play by the Irish dramatist JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE. The Pilgrim’s Progress (1951), his final opera and often considered one of his masterpieces, is derived from the classic allegory by the 17th century John Bunyan. Vaughan Williams’s second wife, Ursula Wood, whom he married after Adeline’s death in 1951, contributed libretto. The opera incorporated his ear-
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lier “pastoral episode” The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains (1922) and provided much of the material for his Fifth Symphony. The ballet music Job: A Masque for Dancing (1931), also ranked among his best works, is among Vaughan Williams’s other compositions for the stage. To his symphonies and stage works Vaughan Williams added many songs, choral works, chamber works, and concerti. On Wenlock Edge (1909), a cycle of songs for tenor, string quartet, and piano, is set to poetry by A. E. HOUSMAN. Poetry by George Herbert (1593–1633) provides the lyrics for Five Mystical Songs (1911) for baritone, choir, and orchestra. The String Quartet in A Minor is considered one of Vaughan Williams’s best chamber works. The Mass in G Minor, the cantata Toward the Unknown Region (1907), and the oratorio Sancta Civitas (1926; The Holy City) are among his choral works. Vaughan Williams was appointed Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music in 1919 and received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University the same year. He became president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 1932. Among his other works are the pastoral work The Lark Ascending (1921) for violin and orchestra, Magnificat (1932), Folk Songs of the Four Seasons (1950), and the Romance (1952) for harmonica and orchestra.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Day, James, Vaughan Williams, 1961; Foss, Hubert J., Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Study, 1950; Frogley, Alain, ed., Ralph Vaughan Williams Studies, 1996; Hurd, Michael, Vaughan Williams, 1970; Kennedy, Michael, The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1964; Vaughan Williams, Ursula, R. V. W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1964.
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Velde, Henry van de (April 3, 1863–October 25, 1957) Architect ith VICTOR HORTA, Henry van de Velde was an originator of the Art Nouveau movement in European architecture and interior design. Rejecting Victorian Revival architecture, he used curvilinear forms and ornate interiors to lend a new expressiveness to architectural design. Van de Velde’s Kunstgewerbeschule was later incorporated into the influential Bauhaus school. Van de Velde was the youngest of eight children, born in Antwerp, Belgium. His father was a wealthy chemist. As a boy he attended grammar school, and for a short period of time he thought of becoming a musician. Van de Velde’s interests soon turned to the visual arts, however, and he studied painting at the Antwerp Academy of Art from 1880 to 1883. In Brussels he involved himself with a group of artists known as Les XX, which also included the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). The following two years, he lived in Paris and Barbizon. Van de Velde experimented with and absorbed various movements in French art, from the Pointillism of Georges Seurat to the Postimpressionist paintings of Vincent van Gogh. Seurat’s influence is particularly apparent in van de Velde’s Pointillist painting Blankenberghe (1888), as van Gogh’s influence is evident in Garden in Kalmthout (1892). Before he turned to interior design and the applied arts, van de Velde finished several major paintings and tapestries, such as the painting Abstract Plant Composition (1892–1893) and the tapestry Angel Watch (1893). He married Maria Se`the in 1894 and the following year designed his own house—the Bloemenwerf house at Uccle. This relatively simple dwelling reflects early Art Nouveau style, characterized by flowing, curvilinear forms. Van de Velde designed the dining room chairs and other furnishings for the house. In 1896 he de-
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signed the furniture and interiors for Samuel Bing’s Paris art galleries, and an exhibition of interiors in Dresden the following year established his reputation as an interior designer. The same year, van de Velde exhibited four rooms at the Paris Salon Art Nouveau, among which was a smoking room. He began taking commissions for interiors, designing a sales room for the Havana Company (1899), a hairdressing salon (1901), and a number of private homes. The Folkwang Museum (1902) in Hagen, Germany, was another important early commission. In 1900–1901 he worked in Berlin, and from 1902 to 1917 he lived in Weimar. He initially went to the latter as an advisor to the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar and the family craft industries. Throughout this time, van de Velde designed interiors, furnishings, and many smaller items—candlesticks, clothing, ceramics, and silverware. Integration of the interior decor with the design of the building was a key focus of his work. Van de Velde, like other Art Nouveau artists, rebelled against Gothic Revival architecture, and he particularly admired the work of William Morris and England’s Arts and Crafts Movement. In Weimar van de Velde took on a number of significant commissions. The Nietz-sche archive (1903) in that city was commissioned by the sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). WALTER GROPIUS incorporated van de Velde’s reorganized Kunstgewerbeschule (arts and crafts school) in the famous Bauhaus when he founded it in 1919. Karl Ernst Osthaus commissioned van de Velde to build the Hohenof in Hagen (1907–1908), and the architect designed for himself during that time a villa, the Hohe Pappeln. He also designed a tennis club in Chemnitz (1906–1908). During his time in Weimar, van de Velde expanded his activities from interiors to building designs. His later designs grew more func-
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tional than his early interiors. The theater for the Werkbund Exposition in Cologne in 1914 was one of his last major commissions before World War I. Van de Velde’s most influential work belongs to the prewar period, but after the hostilities ceased he took commissions in Belgium, Holland (for the Kro¨ller-Mu¨ller family), and Switzerland, where he lived during
the last decade of his life. Among his later designs is the tall University Library tower in Ghent (1936). His buildings are marked by their expressive use of concrete and a focus on vertically oriented elements.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Sembach, Klaus Ju¨rgen, Henry van de Velde, 1989.
Vidal, Gore (October 3, 1925– ) Novelist, Playwright, Essayist he prolific American writer Gore Vidal established himself as one of America’s primary person of letters during the course of the twentieth century. He is known for novels in which he was unafraid to experiment with controversial subject matter and style and for sharply critical essays. Vidal’s writing has both invited admiration and stirred controversy and opposition. His work The City and the Pillar (1948) was the first major American novel to treat homosexuality in an open manner. Vidal was born Eugene Luther Vidal in West Point, New York, at the United States Military Academy Cadet Hospital. His father was the first aeronautics instructor there and served as the Director of Air Commerce in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration from 1932 to 1937. Following her divorce from Vidal’s father when the boy was ten, his mother married the wealthy financier Hugh D. Auchincloss, who then divorced Vidal’s mother and married Jacqueline Kennedy’s mother. Vidal’s maternal grandfather was Thomas Pryor Gore, a Democratic senator from Oklahoma. Senator Gore, who was entirely blind, used Vidal as his guide, thus exposing him as a child to ins and outs of politics most adults never see. Vidal
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later adopted his grandfather’s last name as his own first name. Vidal grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended St. Albans School. In 1943, he gradu-
Gore Vidal (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-94219)
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ated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and the same year he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve. He trained at the Virginia Military Institute and subsequently served as a maritime warrant officer stationed at the Aleutian Islands before being hospitalized for arthritis and frostbite. It was during this period that he wrote his first novel, Williwaw (1946), the style of which derives from the minimalist approaches of authors like ERNEST HEMINGWAY. Williwaw, set in the environment of his military service, describes the ordeal of a naval commander caught in a storm at sea. Although not an enormous popular success, critics took note of Vidal’s work from that point onward. In a Yellow Wood, a story in which a man must choose between a love affair and a secure job, followed in 1947. Vidal, short on money in spite of his wealthy family background, moved to Guatemala and for a short time shared a home with the French writer ANAI¨S NIN. He soon published his most significant novel to date, the controversial The City and the Pillar (1948). The novel was one of the first to openly examine homosexual themes, and it prompted The New York Times and other major publications to ignore his next few works. He dedicated the work to a mysterious “J.T.,” whom he later revealed to be Jimmie Trimble, a past love interest from his St. Albans days who perished at Iwo Jima in 1945. Between 1949 and 1954, Vidal published a succession of novels, including The Season of Comfort (1949), A Search for the King (1949), Dark Green, Bright Red (1950), The Judgment of Paris (1952), and Messiah (1954). The Judgment of Paris, a witty novel set in Europe, was written following his travels to that continent with the playwright TENNESSEE WILLIAMS. Shortly after returning from Europe, Vidal and his partner Howard Austen moved to Edgewater, a mansion along the Hudson River. Messiah was unique in that it presented the novel in a journal-within-a-memoir format, a technique Vidal would employ in his later
writings. Also belonging to this period are three mystery novels he authored under the pseudonym Edgar Box, Death in the Fifth Position (1952), Death Before Bedtime (1953), and Death Likes It Hot (1954). Vidal also began to write plays, screenplays, and television scripts. Among the more successful of these were the satirical teleplay Visit to a Small Planet (1955) and The Best Man (1960), both of which became Broadway hits and later successful films. In 1956, MGM hired him as a screenwriter. He assisted CHRISTOPHER FRY in a rewrite of director William Wyler’s (1902–1981) Ben-Hur (1959), which showcased actor CHARLTON HESTON in what some argue was his most famous role. Among his other plays, which were less successful than his other works, are Romulus (1962), Weekend (1968), and An Evening With Richard Nixon (1972). During the 1960s, he returned to writing novels, among which were Julian (1964), a literary treatment of the Roman emperor that benefited from his ability to research Roman history while living in Rome; a political critique, Washington, D.C. (1967), the protagonists of which are a political family living during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration; and the controversial transsexual comedy Myra Breckenridge (1968). Another novel, Two Sisters, followed in 1972, and Vidal has continued to write fiction since then. A number of his later novels treat American politics and history— Burr (1973), about the politician and Revolutionary War hero Aaron Burr (1756–1836); 1876 (1976), about the election of Rutherford B. Hayes (1922–1893) as president of the United States; Lincoln (1984); Empire (1987), set in the post-Civil War era; Hollywood (1990), about the American film capital in the 1920s; The Golden Age (2000), which treats the American political scene from 1939 to 1954; and Creation (originally published in 1981; revised and expanded in 2002). Societal satire is another dominant vein in his fiction and is characteristic of such works as Myron (1975), the sequel to Myra Brecken-
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ridge; Kalki (1978); Duluth (1983); Live from Golgotha: the Gospel According to Gore Vidal (1992); and The Smithsonian Institution (1998). In spite of his extensive body of fiction, Vidal is equally well- known for essays that he began to write in the 1950s. These started as short reviews for such publications as The Reporter, The New York Times Book Review, and Esquire and soon evolved into longer essays. Beginning in 1960, he published numerous essays on literary, social, political, and other topics in The New York Review of Books. His sharp but formal writing became the hallmark of his style, and Vidal has been as unafraid to offer scathing criticism of wellknown figures as he has been willing to promote the works of figures he considered talented but underappreciated. His essays have been collected in The Second American Revolution (1982), At Home (1988), and other volumes. In 1993, Vidal won the National Book Award for his collection United States: Essays, 1952–1992. His more famous essays include “Armageddon” (1987), a scathing indictment of the Reagan presidency; and “Pink Triangle and Yellow Star” (1981), in which he paralleled the persecution of homosexuals with that of the Jews under the Nazis. The Last Empire, another essay collection, was published in 2000. Vidal has published two memoirs to date, Palimpsest (1995) and Point to Point Naviga-
tion (2006). His other works include Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings (1999), a series of literary and social essays that typify his long-held resentments toward traditional sexual values in the United States; the short story collection Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories (2006); and a series of politically charged writings directed against the BushCheney administration, including “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace,” (2002) and “Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta” (2002). Vidal has also appeared in a number of films, including FEDERICO FELLINI’S Roma (1972, as himself); Tim Robbins’s Bob Roberts (1992, as Senator Brickley Paiste); With Honors (1994, as Professor Pitkannan); Gattaca (1997, as Director Josef); and Igby Goes Down (2002, as the First School Headmaster). Among Vidal’s awards are Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Altman, Dennis, Gore Vidal’s America, 2005; Kaplan, Fred, Gore Vidal: A Biography, 1999; Vidal, Gore, Palimpsest, 1995; Vidal, Gore, Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 1964–2006, 2006. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ database/vidal_g.html.
Vigo, Jean (April 26, 1905–October 5, 1934) Director ean Vigo was one of the first major French directors after the silent film era. In spite of his early death at age 29 and his production of only four films, the cynical satire and “poetic realism” of his work in-
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fluenced later generations of French filmmakers. France’s prestigious annual Jean Vigo Prize honors his name. Vigo was born in Paris. His father, Euge`ne Bonaventure de Vigo, a radical anarchist,
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changed his name to Miguel Almereyda and spent his life in and out of prison. His mother, Emily Cle´ro, was also a political activist. After his father’s death in 1917, Vigo lived with relatives and attended boarding schools in Millau and Chartres. Because of his father’s infamy, he used an assumed name. Vigo’s childhood was rife with illness, poverty, and instability. He moved to Paris in 1924 and acquired an interest in film. In 1929 Vigo married Elizabeth Losinska. His father-in-law’s gift of 100,000 francs enabled him to buy a camera and direct his first film, A Propos de Nice (1930). The documentary, set in Nice, paints a harsh and satiric portrait of the town’s wealthy and glamorous vacationers, whom Vigo contrasts with the locals. The Russian cinematographer Boris Kaufman shot the film and would work with Vigo in the future. Vigo directed his first fictional film, Zero for Conduct, in Paris in 1933. Its story concerns a revolt in a boys’ boarding school, and much of the material is drawn from Vigo’s own childhood experience. The film examines one of Vigo’s principal preoccupations—the tyranny of authority. School administrators bear derogatory names such as “Gas-Snout.” French censors considered the film subversive and banned it, and it was suppressed in France until the end of World War II. Vigo’s films are openly critical of middleclass values and evince his cynical, anarchis-
tic outlook. He began his career at the end of the silent film era and was one of the first directors to use sound. His style, sometimes called “poetic realism,” interlaced surrealistic with realistic elements and influenced later directors such as the French New Wave filmmakers FRANC¸ OIS TRUFFAUT and JEAN-LUC GODARD. Many consider Vigo’s last film, L’Atalante (1934), to be his best work. The story takes place aboard a barge on the river Seine. Jean (Jean Daste) is the barge’s captain and has just married Juliet (Dita Parlo). Juliet has difficulty adjusting to the monotonous life aboard the barge, which is, among other things, overrun with cats. The ship’s eccentric mate, Pere Jules (Michel Simon), captures Juliet’s imagination with his odd artifacts and stories of world travel. Jean reluctantly takes Juliet to Paris, where a peddler flirts with her. When Juliet returns to the city by herself, the jealous Jean leaves without her, and Pere Jules eventually succeeds in reuniting them. Vigo’s other film, Taris, Swimming Champion (1931) was a joint effort with Germaine Dulac and a documentary about the French swimmer Jean Taris. Vigo, who was ill for most of his life, died of septicemia in 1934.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Salles Gomes, P. E., Jean Vigo, 1971; Smith, John Milton, Jean Vigo, 1972.
Villon, Jacques (July 31, 1875–June 9, 1963) Painter, Graphic Artist acques Villon began painting professionally just before the advent of Cubism in Paris and was influenced by the movement’s emphasis on flat planes and geometric patterns. His early abstract experi-
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artist as well as a painter, Villon’s work attracted little attention outside of Paris until the last fifteen years of his life. Villon was born Gaston E´mile Duchamp in Damville, Normandy, France. His father was a notary, and three of Villon’s siblings also devoted themselves to art—RAYMOND DUCHAMPVILLON, MARCEL DUCHAMP, and Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti. Villon adopted his pseudonym from the rebellious fifteenth-century French poet Franc¸ois Villon (1431– 4). After attending school in Normandy in his youth he studied law. Having decided against pursuing a career in law, he joined his brother Raymond in Paris in 1894. There he studied with the French artist Fernand Cormon, who also taught the French Postimpressionist painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), at Montmartre. To earn a living Villon executed illustrations and cartoons for popular periodicals such as Gil Blas, Le Rire, and Le Courrier Franc¸ais. On the side he began to produce etchings and prints on Paris society women and other subjects. Villon began to exhibit at the Salon d’Automne in 1904, and two years later he settled in the Paris suburb of Puteaux, where he
Drawing by Jacques Villon (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature & Cartoon, LC-USZ62-84860)
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kept a studio for the rest of his life. Spurred by the Cubist experiments of PABLO PICASSO, GEORGES BRAQUE, and JUAN GRIS, he began to paint angular, geometric forms—and he shared with Gris a preference for bolder colors than those Picasso and Braque used. In 1911 and 1912 he exhibited some of his paintings at Cubist exhibitions. In 1912, with his siblings and other artists, helped found the Cubist-influenced Section d’Or group. The following year he sold several of his paintings at the Armory Show in New York, but his work did not gain significant international recognition until the late 1940s. Until the 1920s, when he turned increasingly to graphic art, he painted in an abstract style. Among the hundreds of etchings, engravings, and lithographs he produced are illustrations for editions of classical poets such as Virgil and Hesiod as well as many other books. In his mature painting style Villon retained the geometric elements and flat areas of bright color of his early work, but his figures were no longer purely abstract. Due in part to the efforts of the French gallery owner Louis Carre´ in promoting his work, Villon gained international acclaim after World War II. He received the Carnegie Prize in 1950, was made Commander in the French Legion of Honor in 1954, and received the Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale exhibition in 1956.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cabanne, Pierre, The Brothers Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, 1976; Robbins, Daniel, Jacques Villon, 1976; Villon, Jacques, Jacques Villon, Printmaker: The Detroit Institute of Arts Schwartz Graphic Arts Galleries, May 11– July 9, 1995, 1995.
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Visconti, Luchino (November 2, 1906–March 17, 1976) Director uchino Visconti was an originator of the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema and had a direct influence on later filmmakers such as ROBERTO ROSSELLINI and VITTORIO DE SICA. Visconti also directed operas, ballets, and plays. Visconti was born Don Luchino Visconte, Conte di Modrone, into an aristocratic family in Milan. He was exposed to all facets of the arts from his youth. His mother was a musician, and Visconti studied the cello for a number of years. The family-owned theater exposed him to a variety of performances, and Visconti helped design theater sets. After receiving his education, he served in the Italian cavalry (1926–1928). Visconti went to France to pursue a film career and in 1935 began working with the French director JEAN RENOIR on films such as Toni (1935) and A Day in the Country (1936). Visconti also began to involve himself in leftist political activity and was a strong opponent of the Fascist government in Italy. His embrace of Marxism is particularly evident in his earlier work. Obsession (1942), an adaptation of a novel by James M. Cain, is considered one of the earliest Neorealist films and was Visconti’s first effort as a director. The story focuses on a love triangle, the principal players being an innkeeper, his wife Giovanna, and Gino, who stops at the inn and stays to work. Gino and Giovanna fall in love and plan to run off together, but Giovanna relents and returns to the inn. When she and her husband later meet Gino, Giovanna’s obsession conquers, and Giovanna and Gino kill the innkeeper. Troubles arise in their relationship, and the film ends with Giovanna’s death. Visconti’s techniques in filming Obsession influenced later directors. He shot the film in the country instead of a studio, used both established actors and locals, and used long shots.
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Visconti aimed for a realistic atmosphere and rejected the romanticism of earlier Italian films. His next film, The Earth Trembles (1948), partially financed by the Communist Party, used no actors at all; it documents the lives of Sicilian fishermen. Other early films include The Most Beautiful (1951) and We the Women (1953), both featuring the actress Anna Magnani. At the height of his Neorealist period in the 1950s, Visconti produced a number of operas, many starring the Greek soprano Maria Callas. His notable operas include Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata (1955), Vincenzo Bellini’s La Sonnambula (1955), and Verdi’s Don Carlos (1958). The film Senso (1953), takes place during the Italian resistance to Austrian occupation in the 1800s. Rocco and His Brothers (1960) depicts the decline of a poor southern Italian family as it struggles to make the transition to life in Milan. One of Rosaria Parondi’s sons, Simone, falls in love with the prostitute Nadia. Another son, Rocco (Alain Delon), finds himself attracted to Nadia after she and his brother have parted ways. The relationship stirs jealousy in Simone, who in a fit of violence rapes Nadia and beats Rocco. The film ends in tragedy for all involved. Later films, such as The Leopard (1963), based on a novel by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, became more grandiose and complex. Visconti adapted several other films from wellknown literary works, such as his 1957 experimental adaptation of a Fyodor Dostoyevsky story, White Nights, and his 1971 version of THOMAS MANN’s Death in Venice (1971). In Ludwig (1973), Visconti examined homosexuality in the character of Ludwig II, Bavaria’s king from 1864 to 1886. Visconti’s other films include The Wanton Countess (1954); The Stranger (1967), a Technicolor version of ALBERT CAMUS’s The Stranger, with Marcello Mastroianni as Meur-
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sault; and The Damned (1969), which traces the decline of the Essenbeck family against a backdrop of decadence and intrigue in Nazi Germany. He had almost completed his final film, The Innocent, based on a novel by GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO when he died.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bacon, Henry, Visconti: Explorations of Beauty and Decay, 1998; Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, Luchino Visconti, 1973; Schifano, Laurence, Luchino Visconti: The Flames of Passion, 1990; Servadio, Gaia, Luchino Visconti: A Biography, 1982.
Vlaminck, Maurice de (April 4, 1876–October 11, 1958) Painter aurice de Vlaminck’s fame as a painter began when he exhibited with the Fauves at the Salon d’Automne in 1905. Vlaminck’s subsequent self-imposed distance from the Paris schools of artistic thought and theory enabled him to develop his own expressionistic style, which he applied to the numerous landscapes of his later career. Vlaminck was born in Paris into a musically gifted family. His father, of Flemish ancestry, was a hot-tempered violinist who gave private lessons in the house, and his mother was a piano player. Vlaminck attended school but disliked the structured environment. He tried several careers before his finances enabled him to devote himself to painting, including playing the violin in orchestras, giving music lessons, and professional cycling. A bout with typhoid fever ended his cycling career. Never one to follow form, Vlaminck developed his career outside of the conventional art world and its education; he liked to brag that he had never been to the Louvre. He had little use for formal artistic theory, particularly as he aged. In 1900, Vlaminck met and gained the friendship of the painter ANDRE´ DERAIN, with whom he subsequently painted in a restaurant building on the Seine. In 1901, Vlaminck’s perspective changed when he saw an exhibition of the works of Vincent van
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Gogh. The strong emotions conveyed by van Gogh’s brilliant, thickly applied colors struck a chord in Vlaminck. In 1905, Vlaminck showed his work with the Fauves at a famous exhibition at the Paris Salon d’Automne. The artists, who also included HENRI MATISSE, RAOUL DUFY, GEORGES BRAQUE, and Derain, earned the name “fauves” (“wild beasts”) from a disparaging critic who disliked the intense, vivid colors of their works. Vlaminck’s Fauvist paintings, including Fishermen at Nanterre (1905), Red Trees (1906), and The Hill at Bougival (1906), use bright, striking colors, especially reds and greens, applied thickly and directly from the tube. Vlaminck also exhibited at the Salon des Inde´pendants in Paris. By 1908 Vlaminck, believing that Fauvism stifled his ability to capture the emotional essence of his subjects, that it rendered them simplistic, abandoned the style and for a period of time fell under the influence of Paul Ce´zanne. He began to paint still lifes and landscapes with more subdued colors, leading him to the development of his mature style. The blues, grays, and whites that characterized his later work dominated his many landscapes and still lifes. Among his later paintings are The Painter’s House at Valmondois (1920), The Church (1920), and The Village Road (1935).
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Vlaminck distanced himself from all schools of painting and was sharply critical of modern art. He particularly disliked the Cubists, notably PABLO PICASSO, whose work he believed destroyed and distorted the natural. Vlaminck was less successful as a writer. He contributed to the anarchist press in his younger years and wrote a number of naturalistic novels during his lifetime, including D’un lit dans l’autre (1902) and Tout pour c¸a (1903), both co-written with Fernand Sernada and
featuring illustrations by Derain; Ames de mannequins (1907), also with Sernada; Fausse couleur (1957); and Le garde-fou (1958). His autobiographical writings include Dangerous Corners (1929), Poliment (1931), Portraits avant De´ce`s (1943), and Paysages et Personnages (1953).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Vlaminck, Maurice de, Dangerous Corners, 1961.
Vuillard, E´douard (November 11, 1868–June 21, 1940) Painter, Decorator, Graphic Artist n the late 1800s Jean-E´douard Vuillard was among a group of painters calling themselves the Nabis, the principal theorist and spokesman of whom was MAURICE DENIS. Vuillard later evolved a personal style that was labeled Intimism, characterized by its focus on quiet, domestic interior scenes and extensive use of patterning. Vuillard also designed sets for the theater and painted murals for public buildings. Vuillard was born in Cuiseaux, Saoˆne-etLoire, France. His father was a retired army officer and a tax collector, and for a time Vuillard too aspired to a military career. His mother came from a family of textile designers, and the fabrics he became familiar with because of her later appeared in his paintings. For the rest of her life she devoted herself to Vuillard and his career and remained a decisive influence on him. He lived with her until her death. The family moved to Paris in 1878, and his father died in 1884, leaving them in poor financial circumstances. After his sister taught him to read, he attended a Catholic school and later the Lyce´e Condorcet. At the latter he met the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, who married his sister and remained
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a lifelong friend as well as Maurice Denis. Under their influence he abandoned his military ambitions and decided to paint. At the E´cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris he met other painters—PIERRE BONNARD, Paul Se´rusier, and Fe´lix Vallotton among them—who together with Roussel and Denis later formed the Nabis. Vuillard finished his formal study at the Acade´mie Julien. The Nabis emphasized the decorative arts in their work and painted figures using flat areas of color. Vuillard’s still life Lilacs (1892), for example, places a vase of flowers against a solid orange background. The Nabis claimed the nineteenth-century painter Paul Gauguin as their major influence and rejected the work of the Impressionists. At this time Vuillard’s work was also shaped by his association with the Symbolist poet Ste´phane Mallarme´ (1842–1898) and by his admiration of Japanese prints and of the murals of the nineteenth-century French painter Pierre Puvis de Chavanne. A quiet and private person by nature, he was not the leading force among the Nabis, nor did he actively promote his own work. Others helped popularize his paintings, which
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received enthusiastic reviews in the influential magazine La revue blanche. The art dealer Jos Hessel promoted Vuillard’s work as well, and his wife was a recurring subject in his paintings. Vuillard preferred large panels to small paintings. His first decorative commission came in 1892, and in 1894 he executed a Public Gardens series that depicts, in a casual, decorative manner, children playing and adults seated on benches in a typical park scene. His post-Nabi style was dubbed “intimism” for its emphasis on interior, everyday domestic scenes. He often executed these in oil on cardboard. Mother and Sister of the Artist (1893) was one of many paintings for which his mother served as model. The painting’s green, yellow, and red patterned rug and his sister’s green dress typify his extensive use of patterning.
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Outdoor garden scenes recur in Vuillard’s work, as in Woman Seated in a Garden (1898) and Entrance to the Garden (1903). In his later years, during which he exhibited very little, he painted many portraits that place figures in domestic interiors, seated in beds or on chairs. His other works include color lithographs and murals for the Palais de Chaillot (1937) and the League of Nations (1939). In 1893 Vuillard began his association with the The´aˆtre de l’Oeuvre, designing sets and costumes for Henrik Ibsen’s Rosmersholm and other productions. BIBLIOGRAPHY Easton, Elizabeth Wynne, The Intimate Interiors of E´douard Vuillard, 1989; Preston, Stuart, ´ douard Vuillard, 1985; Russell, John, E ´ douard Vuillard, 1868–1940, 1971; Thomson, E Belinda, Vuillard, 1988.
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Wain, John (March 14, 1925–May 24, 1994) Novelist, Poet, Short-Story Writer, Playwright, Critic, Essayist ith several other English writers, John Barrington Wain was dubbed an “Angry Young Man” in the 1950s as a result of the disillusioned protagonist in his first novel, Hurry on Down. In addition to the novels for which he is most famous, Wain also wrote poetry, short stories, and literary criticism. Wain was born in the industrial mining and pottery town of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. His father was a dentist. As a child, Wain loved the countryside and developed an interest in reading and writing. In 1931, he attended the Froebel Preparatory School, Dresden, and in 1934 he enrolled at the NewcastleUnder-Lyme High School. Wain finished his studies at St. John’s College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he met a number of writers who would influence his career, among whom were his tutor C. S. LEWIS and fellow students PHILIP LARKIN and KINGSLEY AMIS. From 1946 to 1949, Wain was a Fereday Fellow at Oxford, and during that time he married Marrianne Urmstom. He published poetry before he wrote his novels, and he dedicated his first volume, Mixed Feelings (1951), to Amis. Poems by Wain, Amis, Larkin, and others appeared in the New Lines (1956) anthology, after which critics dubbed them “The Movement.” Wain and other Movement poets rejected the romanticism and obscurity of DYLAN THOMAS and those who imitated him and opted for verse in plain, direct language. His subsequent volumes of poetry include A Word Carved on a Sill (1956); Weep before God (1961), often considered his best collection; the long poem Wildtrack (1965); Letters to Five Artists (1969); Feng: A Poem (1975); Poems 1949–1979 (1980); and Open Country (1987). Like his poems, Wain’s novels are written in plain language and a realistic style, but they offer satire rather than strict realism. Accord-
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ingly, caricatures and stereotypes are prevalent in his narratives, whose endings often result in compromises or resolutions. Amis and Wain were labeled “Angry Young Men” for their novels featuring disgruntled, angry, and rebellious protagonists in the post–World War II generation. Charles Lumley is such a protagonist in Wain’s first novel, Hurry on Down (1953), often considered his best work. Lumley, a rebel against the class structure of society, is propelled into a series of personal adventures and mishaps when his landlord suspects he will not be able to pay rent. The odd jobs and complicated relationships that follow prove unsatisfactory, but he finally compromises and settles down in the end. Critics welcomed Hurry on Down, and it was published in the United States as Born in Captivity. In The Contenders (1958), the mild-mannered journalist Joe Shaw tries to maintain peace between his two quarreling and competitive friends. Ned Roper is a successful businessman and industrialist who steals the fashion model Myra Chetwynd from the talented artist Robert Lamb, her husband. A Traveling Woman followed in 1960. Having divorced his first wife in 1956, Wain married Eirian James in 1960. A trip to the Soviet Union the same year instilled in Wain a heightened antipathy to totalitarianism and inspired The Young Visitors (1965). The protagonist of Strike the Father Dead (1962), Jeremy Coleman, comes from a family of divergent beliefs. His grandfather was a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, but Jeremy’s father, Alfred, teaches classics and has adopted an atheistic worldview. Added to this mix is the more mild-tempered religious belief of Jeremy’s aunt. It is his father against whom Jeremy rebels, and, pursuing his ambition to become a jazz pianist, he falls under the influence of the American trombonist Percy Brett.
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Through his experience in music, Jeremy is eventually reconciled with his father. In The Pardoner’s Tale (1978), Wain interweaves two stories. Giles Hermitage is a novelist writing a story about Gus Howkins. Howkins, on vacation and trying to forget about his recent split with his wife, spots a woman in danger of drowning in her car and saves her. He has a brief affair with her, until she disappears. Meanwhile, in real life, Hermitage goes to see Helen Chichester-Redferns, a fan of his work who is dying of cancer. At her home, he falls in love with her daughter, Diana, has many discussions with Helen, and agrees to grant her dying wish that he create a self-centered character whose plight ends poorly in memory of her ex-husband. Howkins meets just such a plight, having pursued the woman he saved, Julia, in vain. Hermitage’s relationship with Diana, too, ends with her departure, and he returns to an old girlfriend. Wain wrote short stories, literary criticism, and other works. Among them are the shortstory collections Nuncle and Other Stories
(1960), Death of the Hind Legs (1966), and The Life Guard and Other Stories (1971); his critical and biographical works Preliminary Essays (1957; winner of the Somerset Maugham award), Essays on Literature and Ideas (1963), The Living World of Shakespeare (1964), Arnold Bennett (1967), and C. S. Lewis (1980); the autobiography Sprightly Running (1962); the play Harry in the Night: An Optimistic Comedy (1975) as well as radio dramas; the novels Living in the Present (1955), The Smaller Sky (1967), A Winter in the Hills (1970), and Hungry Generations (1994); and several works on the eighteenth century writer Samuel Johnson. Wain was made Companion of the Order of the British Empire in 1983. He lectured in English literature at the University of Reading from 1949 to 1955 and taught poetry at Oxford in the 1970s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hatziolou, Elizabeth, John Wain: A Man of Letters, 1997; Salwak, Dale, John Wain, 1981.
Walcott, Derek (January 23, 1930– ) Poet, Playwright, Teacher erek Alton Walcott’s poetry and plays reflect his concern with social and personal issues stemming from his native Caribbean environment. Walcott’s major focus is turmoil in the confusing racial and cultural mix left in the aftermath of colonialism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 “for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.” Walcott, who has a twin brother, was born in Castries, Saint Lucia. Like many West Indians, he is of mixed descent, having two black
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grandmothers and two white grandfathers. The theme of conflicts arising from the divergent forces of his mixed racial background recurs throughout his work. His father died shortly after his first birthday, and his mother ran a Methodist grammar school. Walcott attended St. Mary’s College in St. Lucia from 1941 to 1947 and the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica from 1950 to 1954. After graduating, Walcott taught school. He had already begun to write poetry and plays, and his first volume of verse, 25 Poems, was printed privately in 1948. It was followed by
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the long poem Epitaph for the Young (1949), which borrowed heavily from T. S. ELIOT. The next year he founded the St. Lucia Arts Guild with his twin brother, Roderick. He had written several plays in 1946 and 1947, but his first dramatic work to see production, HenriChristophe, was not staged until 1950. The story depicts the rise and fall of the revolutionary leader Henri-Christophe, the autocratic ruler of Haiti from 1807 to 1811. Sea at Dauphin, a one-act play about fishermen in St. Lucia, was produced in 1954. The West Indian–flavored Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958) exemplifies Walcott’s ability to coordinate diverse elements in his productions. He derived the story from a West Indian folk tale and mixes African storytelling tradition, dance, song, and elements of the annual Carnival celebrations in his presentation. The basic story of the play centers around three brothers—the physically strong Gros Jean, the intellectually strong Mi-Jean, and the unremarkable Ti-Jean—who take on a devil-figure. Walcott’s poetry draws its imagery from the West Indian landscape and incorporates folk language into an English base. The title of The Gulf (1969) points to the recurrent theme of racial and cultural divisions. The long lyric poem Another Life (1973) is an autobiographical treatment of Walcott’s early life. His body of verse includes In a Green Night: Poems 1948–1960 (1962); Selected Poems (1964); Sea Grapes (1976); The StarApple Kingdom (1979); The Fortunate Traveler (1981); Midsummer (1984); Collected Poems, 1948–1984 (1986); The Arkansas Testament (1987); Tiepolo’s Hound (2000); The Prodigal (2004); and Selected Poems (2007; with Edward Baugh). Omeros (1990), another long poem, retells Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey using West Indian characters and environment. The Bounty (1997), Walcott’s latest book of poetry, is named for the British merchant ship whose mutineers later founded a settlement in the South Pacific in 1908, while the exiled crew survived a thirty-six-hundred-
mile journey in a small boat. The volume contains two tribute poems, one to the poet JOSEPH BRODSKY and the other an elegy to Walcott’s mother. Walcott’s most famous plays include Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967) and Pantomime (1978), both of which address the theme of racial and cultural divisions. In the latter, the Englishman Harry, an actor and hotel manager, switches roles with his black assistant, Jackson, in a production of Robinson Crusoe. Harry finds the role reversal—with the black character in charge of the white character—uncomfortable, and the two men deepen their friendship as they discuss the reasons for his feelings. In In a Fine Castle (1970), which Walcott intended as a statement on the Black Power Revolution that had just taken place in Trinidad, Brown, a reporter of mixed racial background, goes into the white La Fontaine home to interview Clodia de La Fontaine, who has passed on her title as Carnival Queen to a black woman. Brown finds himself torn between the white Clodia and his girlfriend, Shelley, a militant black nationalist. In the end, he severs himself from both. Aside from writing, Walcott has taught at major universities, including Harvard and Boston University. He settled permanently in the United States in 1981. His other works include the plays Drums and Colours (1958), The Castaway (1965), the musical O Babylon! (1976), and the verse play The Odyssey (1992). In 1998 he collaborated with the American folk singer Paul Simon on The Capeman, which was produced on Broadway.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Baugh, Edward, Derek Walcott, 2006; Bloom, Harold, ed., Derek Walcott, 2003; Hamner, Robert D., Derek Walcott, 1981; Ismond, Patricia, Abandoning Dead Metaphors: The Caribbean Phase of Derek Walcott’s Poetry, 2001; King, Bruce, Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life, 2000; King, Bruce Alvin, Derek Walcott & West Indian Drama: ‘Not Only a Playwright But a Company,’
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the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, 1959–1993, 1995; Thieme, John, Derek Walcott, 1999.
Waller, Fats (May 21, 1904–December 15, 1943) Pianist, Organist, Composer ne of the most engaging and popular performers of his time, Fats Waller is considered one of the best American jazz pianists who played in the stride style. Waller was also a prolific songwriter and composer whose body of work was recorded by some of the most famous singers and musicians of his day. Waller was born Thomas Wright Waller in New York City. His father, Edward Waller, was a Baptist lay minister who held open-air services in Harlem. Waller perhaps inherited some of his musical talent from his grandfather, Adolph Waller, who was a skilled violinist. Waller’s training as a pianist blended both classical and jazz elements. As a young boy, he studied classical piano and organ under the music director of the family’s church and played reed organ at his father’s services. Waller also played at his school. In 1918, Waller won a talent contest for his portrayal of Harlem stride pianist James P.
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Fats Waller (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-123107)
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Johnson’s (1894–1955) “Carolina Shout.” When he was fifteen, he started playing the organ for the Lincoln Theatre. For a time, Waller studied piano under Johnson, and the two made piano rolls for the QRS Music Roll Company. The jazz stride pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith (1897–1973), who nicknamed Waller “Fatty,” also influenced Waller. Contradictory accounts indicate that Waller may have studied at the Juilliard School. Waller was just eighteen years old when Okeh Records gave him piano roll assignments, the first of which was “Got to Cool My Doggies Now” (1922). Waller soon began to accompany noted female blues singers on recordings and write music for other performers as well. Standing out among these efforts was his Wild Cat Blues, which jazz pianist Clarence Williams (1898–1965) and his Blues Five recorded in 1923. Through Johnson, Waller began to play at rent parties— parties featuring a piano player that helped pay the rent by charging the guests. He also accompanied vaudeville acts and played the organ at movie theaters. In 1927, he and Johnson cowrote songs for the latter’s show Keep Shufflin’. In 1928, Waller debuted at Carnegie Hall, where he played piano in Johnson’s Yamekraw. The following year, Waller wrote the score for the Broadway hit show Hot Chocolates, collaborating with Tin Pan Alley lyricist Andy Razaf (1895–1973). “What Did I Do (To Be So Black and Blue)?” (1929), a song from the show, became a hit for LOUIS ARMSTRONG, and the score also featured Waller’s most fa-
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mous song “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” GEORGE GERSHWIN threw a party in 1934 at which Waller played the piano, sang, and generally thrilled the audience with his characteristic charm, humor, and exuberance. The impressed Gershwin invited Waller to record for Victor Records, where he was at the time an executive. The arrangement proved to be a fruitful one, and Waller sold many records with his band Fats Waller and His Rhythm for RCA Victor until his death in 1943. During that time, he also toured the United States and Europe and appeared as a regular radio guest. He held long-running radio shows including Fats Waller’s Rhythm Club and Moon River. In the late 1930s, he embarked on a successful tour of the British Isles and appeared in an early broadcast for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). While in England, he also recorded songs for EMI on its Compton Theatre organ in their London studios. Waller usually used a five- or six-piece combo for his band—an arrangement that produced his most successful recordings— but was also noted for his collaborations with top performers of the day. Among these were Gene Austin (1900–1974), who is considered the first “crooner”—a singer of a type of popular ballads; jazz singer Adelaide Hall (1901–1993); and violinist Erskine Tate (1901–1975). Among his more than five hundred recordings are “Squeeze Me” (1919); “Blue Turning Grey Over You” (1929), a collaboration with
Razaf that Armstrong, BILLIE HOLIDAY, and former BEATLES drummer Ringo Starr all later recorded; “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling” (1929); “Honeysuckle Rose” (1929); “What Did I Do (To Be So Black and Blue)?” (1929); “Jitterbug Waltz” (1930); and “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now” (1932), another collaboration with Razaf; Drawing on his early influences, Waller also composed stride piano works such as “Handful of Keys” (1929), “Valentine Stomp” (1929), and “Viper’s Drag” (1934). Although most famous for his compositions and piano work, Waller appeared in several feature and short subject films such as Hooray for Love! (1935), King of Burlesque (1935), and Stormy Weather (1943). Waller died of pneumonia at the young age of thirty-nine aboard a train around Kansas City, Missouri. His hard and heavy drinking is thought to have contributed to his early death. Waller received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1993.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kirkeby, Ed, Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Story of Fats Waller, 1975; Machlin, Paul S., Stride: The Music of Fats Waller, 1985; Shipton, Alyn, Fats Waller: His Life and Times, 1988; Shipton, Alyn, Fats Waller: The Cheerful Little Earful, 2002; Taylor, Stephen, Fats Waller on the Air: The Radio Broadcasts and Discography, 2006; Vance, Joel, Fats Waller: His Life and Times, 1977; Waller, Maurice, Fats Waller, 1977; www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_waller_fats. htm.
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Walpole, Hugh (March 13, 1884–June 1, 1941) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Critic erhaps best known for Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill, a story of rivalry between two teachers, Hugh Seymour Walpole’s large output of novels is marked by his romantic writing style and varied settings. Walpole also wrote criticism and short stories. Walpole, a descendant of the eighteenthcentury writer Horace Walpole (1717–1797), whose father, Robert Walpole (1676–1745), was England’s first prime minister, was born in Auckland, New Zealand. His father, an Anglican clergyman, moved the family to New York in 1890. In 1894 Walpole’s parents sent him to school in England, at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and then King’s School, Canterbury. He joined them in Durham when they moved there in 1898 and continued his schooling. In 1898, Walpole entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history. After working (unhappily) as a teacher, Walpole decided to pursue a career in writing.
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His first published novel, The Wooden Horse, appeared in 1909 and concerns a father’s attempt to reunite the family he separated. While living in New Zealand, Harry Trojan sent his two-year-old son, Robin, to the family home at Pendragon. Many years later, Harry returns to find nobody wants him there, including Robin. Only after Harry obtains letters Robin’s former girlfriend plans to use for blackmail does Robin reconcile with his father. Maradick at Forty (1910) followed The Wooden Horse, and its protagonist later reappeared in Portrait of a Man With Red Hair (1925). Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (1911), one of Walpole’s best sellers and often considered his best book, was based on his unhappy teaching experience and has been described as powerfully realistic. It was published as The Gods and Mr. Perrin with an entirely different ending in the United States. At Moffatt’s, the popular teacher Archie Traill angers another teacher, Vincent Perrin, in part by winning the allegiance of a student who has been a loyal follower of Traill and by winning the love of Isabel Desart, to whom Perrin is attracted. Perrin decides to murder Traill and kill himself, which he almost accomplishes in the British edition. He tries to stab Traill, who falls from a cliff, and then rescues him in a fit of remorse before he kills himself. The American edition has the ending Walpole preferred, in which Perrin releases his frustrations in a harangue against the school. Other early novels include Fortitude (1913) and The Duchess of Wrexe (1914). During World War I, Walpole served with the Red Cross in Russia, winning the Order of St. George for heroism, and later worked with the Anglo-Russian propaganda bureau in Petrograd. The Dark Forest (1916) unfolds against the background of his Russian experiences. Ivan Durward, a journalist and the nar-
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rator, is doing medical work with John Trenchard in wartime Russia. They work with Dr. Semyonov, who falls in love with Marie, a nurse to whom Trenchard is engaged. The story also involves a second love triangle consisting of two men and a woman, and in each only the victorious man survives the war. The semiautobiographical works Jeremy (1919), Jeremy and Hamlet (1923), and Jeremy at Crale (1927), trace the religious and psychological maturing of an adolescent schoolboy. Walpole was not averse to religion, but his critical view of the organized variety manifests itself in several works, among them The Cathedral (1922), in part a story of political wrangling over a vacant position. The hero of Portrait of a Man with Red Hair battles Crispin, a wily, red-headed, art collector and an embodiment of evil. The disillusioned American Charles Percy Harkness meets James Maradick in London. Maradick sends him to Cornwall, where he ends up becoming Crispin’s prisoner until Harkness’s servant kills their captor. Rogue Herries (1930) begins Walpole’s “Herries Chronicle,” which traces an English family over several centuries. Walpole conducted extensive research to provide the novels with historical context, and the first volume begins in 1730. Francis Herries is a wild sort who falls in love with the much younger Mirabell Starr. She marries him, leaves, and returns many years later. In the interim, Francis mends his ways and settles into a more respectable life. Francis’s conflicts with his son, David, also form an integral part of the story.
Mirabell dies after giving birth, and Francis dies shortly thereafter. Judith Paris (1931), The Fortress (1932), and Vanessa (1933), the next three volumes, bring the story to 1932. Bright Pavilions (1940) goes back in time and takes place before Rogue Herries. Walpole was working on a sixth volume, Katherine Christian, when he died. Walpole wrote in a romantic style, filling his narratives with description and humor. Self-discovery is a dominant theme in his works, and they often reveal a distinct moral outlook. SOMERSET MAUGHAM included in his novel Cakes and Ale (1930) a caricature of Walpole in the self-serving biographer Alroy Kear, a portrait that deeply hurt Walpole. Walpole’s other novels include The Green Mirror (1918); The Secret City (1919), winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; The Young Enchanted (1921); and Farthing Hall (1929), co-written with J. B. PRIESTLEY. Among his other works are the short-story collections The Silver Thorn (1928), All Souls’ Night (1933), Head in Green Bronze (1938), and Mr. Huffam (1948); and critical works on the writers Anthony Trollope, Sir Walter Scott, and JOSEPH CONRAD. He was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1918 and knighted in 1937. Walpole also lectured widely in the United States, where his works enjoyed enormous popularity in the 1920s and 1930s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hart-Davis, Rupert, Hugh Walpole: A Biography, 1985; Steele, Elizabeth, Hugh Walpole, 1972.
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Walter, Bruno (September 15, 1876–February 17, 1962) Conductor, Pianist runo Walter solidified his career as a conductor as an associate of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) and is chiefly remembered for his interpretations of Mahler’s works as well as those of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) and Anton Bruckner (1824–1896). Before his exile from Nazi Germany in 1938, Walter had established himself as one of Europe’s leading conductors. From 1939 on he conducted major orchestras in the United States. Walter was born Bruno Walter Schlesinger into a Jewish family in Berlin. Both of his parents nurtured his early love of music. His mother, who had studied at the Stern Conser-
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vatory, gave him his first piano lessons. With his stormy temperament, inquisitive nature, and facility in learning, Walter showed considerable promise as a musician. His parents engaged a piano teacher for him, and he took private lessons while he attended the gymnasium. Although he was a better-than-average student and loved to read literature, he gave up school as a teenager to pursue a career in music. At the age of nine, Walter entered the Stern Conservatory, which was conservative in musical outlook and opposed to the Wagnerian style. Heinrich Erlich taught Walter the piano, while the traditional and technically precise Ludwig Bussler taught him theory. Walter later studied conducting with Robert Radeke. Finding the narrow focus of the conservatory somewhat restrictive for his curiosity, Walter perused books and music scores in the library to expand his horizons. When Arno Kleffel replaced Radeke, Walter found an advisor who proved to be important to the establishment of his career. With assistance from Kleffel, Walter obtained a position at the Cologne Opera in 1893. In March of the following year, he made his public debut as a conductor with the opera Der Waffenschmied. In 1895, Walter took a position at the Staddtheater in Hamburg, where he met Gustav Mahler, the most important acquaintance of his career. Mahler, then lead conductor at the Staddtheater, was heavily influenced by the nineteenth-century German and Austrian composers such as Beethoven, Wagner, and Anton Bruckner. Walter went on to conduct many of Mahler’s works, including several premieres. The atmosphere in Walter’s next position at the Breslau Staddtheater proved to be too light for the serious-minded conductor, and he left in 1896 to take his first position as chief conductor at the Pressburg Staddtheat-
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er. The following year he went to the Riga Staddtheater in Latvia, where he met his wife, the soprano Elsa Korneck. They married in 1900 and later had two daughters. The same year, Walter obtained a position as conductor of the State Opera in Berlin. He enjoyed many successes there, including Georges Bizet’s Carmen and Hans Pfitzner’s Der Arme Heinrich, but disliked the bureaucratic atmosphere. In 1901 he again joined Mahler at the Imperial Opera in Vienna, where he remained for the next several years. During this time Walter conducted many of Mahler’s operas and other works, among which was the Ninth Symphony (1912). By this time Walter was also conducting performances around Europe. From 1912 to 1922, Walter conducted at the Munich Opera, a position that proved a high point in his career. The hallmark of this decade, in his own words, “was the increased depth of [his] relation to Mozart.” In Munich he also established a friendship with the writ-
er THOMAS MANN; both later found themselves in the United States as exiles from Hitler’s Germany. During Walter’s final years in Germany and Austria, he conducted in Salzburg; at the Berlin Municipal Opera (1925–1929), where he developed a strong interest in Bruckner’s works; in Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Orchestra (1929–1933); and in Vienna from 1936 to 1938. In 1938 Walter moved with his family to Paris and settled permanently in the United States the following year. He spent his later years conducting the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. His autobiographical work Theme and Variations was published in 1946, and his Of Music and Music Making appeared in 1961.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Walter, Bruno, Theme and Variations, 1946.
Walton, William (March 29, 1902–March 8, 1983) Composer VAUGHAN WILLIAMS had long been England’s leading composer when William Turner Walton established his own reputation in the 1930s. Best known for his neoromantic orchestral compositions, Walton also composed two symphonies, numerous film scores, two operas, and music for guitar. Walton was born into a musical family in Oldham, Lancashire, England. His mother sang contralto, and his father was choirmaster at the nearby church. As a child Walton studied violin and piano and sang at his father’s church. His parents sent him to Miss Wilson’s kindergarten and then to a boarding
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school. At the age of nine, he joined the Christ Church Cathedral Choir at Oxford, where he remained as an undergraduate. Having sung in a choir for many years, Walton’s exposure to music had consisted of the standard choral repertoire. At Oxford, however, he absorbed the works of modern composers such as SERGEI PROKOFIEV, IGOR STRAVINSKY, ERIK SATIE, and BE´ LA BARTO´ K. Walton eagerly attended performances of their music and studied scores in the Oxford library. His official area of study was music, but he taught himself much of what shaped his composition.
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William Walton (쑖 Lebrecht / The Image Works)
The Sitwells—EDITH SITWELL and her brothers Osbert and Sachaverell—were the most important acquaintances he made during his Oxford years. Through them, he met prominent literary figures and composers such as FREDERICK DELIUS and Constant Lambert. In 1918 Walton composed a Piano Quartet, and when it was performed for the International Society for Contemporary Music in Salzburg in 1923, he met the composers ALBAN BERG and ARNOLD SCHOENBERG. For more than a decade, Walton lived with the Sitwells, composing much of his early music in their homes. His earliest success came with a group of satirical compositions,
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Fac¸ade (1923), written to accompany a recital of Edith’s poetry. Fac¸ade’s music was also used as the score for a 1931 ballet of the same title. Portsmouth Point (1926), an orchestral work, established Walton’s reputation in England and in the United States. In 1928 he completed his Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra (1928; revised 1943). In 1929 Walton finished his Viola Concerto, a work originally commissioned by Lionel Tertis. The German violinist and composer PAUL HINDEMITH gave the Viola Concerto its first performance, and critics received it enthusiastically. Osbert Sitwell contributed libretto to the oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast
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(1929–1931), for mixed choir, baritone solo, and orchestra. Also successful was the 1935 premiere of the first of his two symphonies (he completed his Second Symphony in 1960). For the Russian-born violinist Jascha Heifetz, Walton finished a Violin Concerto in 1939. Walton was drafted into the military during World War II and asked by the Ministry of Information to compose scores for patriotic films. He complied with scores for several films, including The Foreman Went to France and The First of the Few, both 1942. He devoted much of the next decade to writing scores for films such as Major Barbara (1941) and three Shakespearean films directed by LAURENCE OLIVIER—Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1947), and Richard III (1954). For Henry V Walton received an Academy Award nomination. During a trip to Argentina in 1948, Walton married Susana Gil. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) commissioned his tragic opera Troilus and Cressida, which took eight years to write and opened at Covent Garden in 1954. Walton finished his other major opera, The Bear, in 1967.
Through the influence of guitarist Julian Bream, whom he met during the 1950s, Walton began to compose guitar music. His first was the song-cycle Anon. in Love (1959), and among his others was Five Bagatelles for Guitar (1971), both for Bream. Although his work was often overshadowed by that of BENJAMIN BRITTEN in his later years, Walton had established himself as a leading composer in England by the late 1930s. He evolved an expressive modern style often labeled neoromantic. Among his other works are the Crown Imperial, written for the 1936 coronation of George VI; the march Orb and Sceptre and choral work choral Te Deum, both for the coronation of Elizabeth II (1952); and his final pieces, a Passacaglia for Violoncello Solo and the Prologo e Fantasia, both for the Russian cellist MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH. Walton was knighted in 1951.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Kennedy, Michael, Portrait of Walton, 1989; Smith, Carolyn J., William Walton: A Bio-Bibliography, 1988; Walton, Susana, William Walton: Behind the Fac¸ade, 1988.
Warhol, Andy (August 6, 1920–February 22, 1987) Painter, Graphic Designer, Illustrator, Author, Sculptor, Filmmaker nown as the Pope of Pop, Andy Warhol was the major defining force in the American Pop art movement in the 1960s. He started out as a commercial illustrator and by the end of his life had dabbled in almost every facet of artistic creation, from painting and writing to filmmaking and photography. Warhol was a social chameleon, equally at home among bohemians, aristocrats, intellectuals, rock stars, Hollywood celebrities, and down-and-outs on the street.
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Warhol was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he and his two older brothers grew up. His parents were working-class immigrants of Ruthenian ethnicity from Mikova´, Austria-Hungary, now in northeast Slovakia. His father worked in a coal mine and died at a young age, forcing the young Warhol to take jobs to help support the family while he was in high school. . The family was Byzantine Catholic—a religious preference Warhol retained throughout his life—
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and attended the St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church. When he was in the third grade, Warhol fell ill with chorea, a nervous system disorder believed to be a complication of scarlet fever that causes involuntary movements. Warhol had blotchy skin as a child as a result, and it, combined with his pallid complexion , rendered him a social outcast. His artistic talent emerged early in his life, and while bedridden from the disease, he drew, listened to the radio, and collected pictures of movie stars. His mother strongly encouraged his interest in the arts. After graduating from high school in 1945, he studied commercial art at the School of Fine Arts at what is now Carnegie Mellon University. In 1949, he moved to New York City with his friend, the Realist painter Philip Pearlstein (1924– ), and there began a successful career as a magazine illustrator and advertiser for both Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. He designed window displays for the department store Bonwit Teller but gained perhaps his biggest success as a commercial artist for his blotted-line ink shoe drawings for I. Miller. In 1953, Warhol held his first one-man show at the Hugo Gallery. Inspired early on by the American documentary filmmaker Emile de Antonio (1919–1989), as well as the paintings of JASPER JOHNS and Pop art icon Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), he began to focus his efforts on what would become the Pop art movement. During the 1960s, Warhol began to paint famous and distinctly American commercial products (as well as the dollar bill itself), such as Campbell’s Soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles. A lifelong admirer of and friend to many famous celebrities, he also painted portraits of many well-known figures. Among them were Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962), Troy Donahue (1936–2001), and Elizabeth Taylor (1932– ). In 1962, the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles showed his thirty-two Campbell’s Soup Cans (1961–1962).
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The Pop art of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and others was a direct rejection of Abstract Expressionism, a movement that had gained popularity through American painters such as JACKSON POLLACK earlier in the twentieth century. Its embrace of popular American culture also stood in direct contrast to the anticommericalism of parallel counterculture movements that gained popularity in 1960s America. Warhol merely presented his images without comment or criticism, and when approached for verbal interpretations of his work, he generally refused to comment. In the early 1960s, he founded his studio, which he called “The Factory,” located at 231 East 47th Street in Manhattan. A small loft, it was lined with aluminum foil and silver paint and furnished with street trash. Warhol surrounded himself with avant-garde underground artists and started mass-producing silkscreen prints of commercial products, celebrity portraits, and pictures taken from news events and public disasters. He crafted sculptures that reproduced product wrappers, such as Brillo soap boxes. Warhol embraced commercialism not only as subject matter for his art, but as the vehicle for promoting and selling it. Particularly as his fame grew, he withdrew from the actual production of his conceptual creations and left the physical work to Factory regulars and assistants. Among the most prolific of his collaborators in this capacity was Gerard Malanga (1943– ). In 1966, although he had already made films, Warhol began to devote more of his energy to his underground cinema projects. The films frequently featured members of a group of Factory-associated bohemians he called his Superstars, among whom were heiress and actress Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971); the actor Ondine (1937–1989), whose real name was Robert Olivo and who Warhol met at an orgy; the actress Viva (1938– ), whose real name was Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann; and Ultra Violet (1935– ), the stage name of FrenchAmerican artist Isabelle Collin Dufresne.
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Prominent figures in the New York underground literary and film worlds, such as writer John Giorno (1936– ) and filmmaker Jack Smith (1932–1989), also appear in Warhol’s films of the 1960s. Other Factory regulars included dancer and choreographer Freddie Herko, writer and actor Ronald Tavel (1941– ), photographer and filmmaker Billy Name (1940– ), actress Mary Woronov (1943– ), artist Brigid Berlin (1939– ), and Italian artist Pietro Psaier (1936–2004). Warhol and his Superstars made more than sixty films, many of which were merely shown at the Factory. One of his most famous, Sleep (1963) shows Giorno sleeping for six hours. Many were pornographic in nature, often open expressions of Warhol’s homosexuality, including Blow Job (1963), My Hustler (1965), and Lonesome Cowboys (1968), the protagonists of which are five gay cowboys. The documentary Empire (1964), consists of eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building in New York City from dusk until three o’clock in the morning, and Eat (1963) depicts artist Robert Indiana (1928– ) eating a mushroom for forty-five minutes. Sedgwick, Ondine, and Malanga all appeared in Vinyl (1965), an adaptation of ANTHONY BURGESS’S A Clockwork Orange. Four Stars (1967) lasted twenty-four hours. Bike Boy (1967) pits a macho biker against Warhol’s Superstars, who overpower his ego by cracking jokes he cannot understand and correcting his repeated word mispronunciations. Other Warhol films simply record improvised encounters with Factory regulars, junkies, hustlers, transvestites, and many other characters. Chelsea Girls (1966), however, was his most popular, mainstream, and critically successful cinematic effort. It consisted of two films projected simultaneously, with two different stories being shown at the same time. On June 3, 1968, Factory regular and radical feminist Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) shot Warhol in the chest, as well as his friend and fellow artist Mario Amaya—and attempted to shoot Warhol’s manager Fred Hughes— in the
Factory lobby. Solanas had apparently been angry at Warhol for failing to return a script she had given him. After being sentenced to three years in prison and released, she continued to harass Warhol and eventually wound up in a series of mental institutions before her death. The seriously injured Warhol barely survived the shooting and had to wear a corset for the remainder of his life, and he suffered from the physical consequences of the gunshot wound until he died. Aside from the physical damage he suffered, the incident significantly slowed the pace of his personal output and diminished his artistic ambition. In 1969, Warhol started the literary magazine Interview. During the 1970s, he devoted a lot of his efforts to collecting wealthy patrons for portrait commissions while his longtime collaborating director Paul Morrissey (1938– ) continued to make films using his name. The “Warhol”-Morrissey films were decidedly more mainstream than the pre-shooting films and frequently starred Joe Dallesandro (1948– ). His , series of “oxidation paintings,” which were painted with copper paints and oxidized with urine from either himself or Factory visitors to form unique colors, also belong to the 1970s. During the 1980s, Warhol actively promoted the work of younger artists he admired, notably Neo-expressionists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960– 1988), who died of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-seven and outlived Warhol by little more than a year; and members of the Transavantguardia movement. Among Warhol’s commercially published writings are The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), POP-ism, the Warhol ’60s (1980), and America (1985). He produced photographs and drawings, many of male nudes; designed album covers for The Velvet Underground, THE ROLLING STONES, and other rock artists; self-published a number of writings; made two cable shows entitled Andy Warhol’s TV (1982) and Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes (1986), the latter for MTV; and made guest ap-
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ry Years, 1964–1967, 1989; Ganis, William V., Andy Warhol’s Serial Photography, 2004; Gidal, Peter. Andy Warhol: Films and Paintings, 1971; Greenberg, Jan, Andy Warhol: Prince of Pop, 2004; Hahn, Otto, Warhol, 1972; Koch, Stephen, Stargazer: The Life, World, and Films of Andy Warhol, 1991; Koestenbaum, Wayne, Andy Warhol, 2001; Ratcliff, Carter, Andy Warhol, 1983; Rubin, Susan Goldman, Andy Warhol: Pop Art Painter, 2001; Shore, Stephen, The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory, 1965–1967, 1995; Ultra Violet, Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol, 1988; Watson, Steven, Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties, 2003; Woronov, Mary, Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory, 1995.
pearances television shows. Warhol’s works were exhibited in major shows from the late 1960s to the 1980s. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native Pittsburgh holds more than twelve thousand of his works.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bockris, Victor, The Life and Death of Andy Warhol, 1989; Bockris, Victor, Warhol, 1997; Bourdon, David, Warhol, 1989; Colacello, Bob, Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close-up, 1990; Coplans, John, Andy Warhol, 1970; Copplestone, Trewin, The Life and Works of Andy Warhol, 1995; Crone, Rainer, Andy Warhol, 1970; Dillenberger, Jane, The Religious Art of Andy Warhol, 1998; Finkelstein, Nat, Andy Warhol: The Facto-
www.warhol.org.
Warner, Rex (March 9, 1905–June 24, 1986) Novelist, Poet, Critic, Translator, Essayist, Teacher ex Warner emerged from the leftist political atmosphere in the Oxford of the 1930s and wrote a series of political allegories during the World War II era. In his later life, he dedicated himself to translations of the classics and historical novels, which include two fictional autobiographies of Julius Caesar. Warner was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England and in his youth studied at St. George’s School, Herpenden. At Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a degree in classics in 1928, he was a contemporary of the poets C. DAY-LEWIS and W. H. AUDEN. Warner, also known for his rugby prowess, associated himself with the two poets and sympathized with their left-wing political philosophies. Until the late 1930s, he espoused Communism, an ideology especially apparent in his early novels. A nervous breakdown interrupted Warner’s years at Oxford. When he graduated, he
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taught in both England and Egypt before taking a position as director of the British Institute in Athens in the 1940s. Although best known for his novels, Warner published poetry before prose. Poems (1937), later expanded as Poems and Contradictions (1945), was his only published volume of verse. The sonnet sequence “Contradictions” describes the failure of a love affair. One notable feature of Warner’s verse is the frequent symbolic use of the bird. A plain, clear, and straightforward writing style characterizes Warner’s prose. He is better known for the political allegories of his earlier career than for the historical novels of his later life. The first political story, a Kafkaesque adventure tale entitled The Kite, was published in 1936. The protagonist is an English schoolboy, John, who involves himself with a socialist group in Egypt warring against the drug trade, which they view as an outgrowth of colonialism.
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Five additional novels followed until 1949, the best known of which are The Professor (1938) and The Aerodome (1941). Set in a fictional land, The Professor depicts a small European country in turmoil. The events of the story resemble those of the annexation of Austria in 1938, and the chancellor of the country is a liberal, middle-aged classics professor. The professor’s liberal ideas do not hold up amidst the turmoil, and a flawed socialism is offered as a not entirely satisfactory solution. Warner’s growing disillusion with socialism at the time is evident in The Professor and even more apparent in The Aerodome (1941). In the latter, political events are secondary to the personal quest of the disillusioned protagonist, Roy, who searches for stability and security and is even marginally interested in Fascism. The Aerodome proved to be the most successful of Warner’s novels and was later adapted for television. The Wild Goose Chase (1937), Why Was I Killed? (1943), and Men of Stones (1949) complete Warner’s catalog of political allegories.
From 1964 to 1974 Warner taught English at the University of Connecticut. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he translated many classical texts from the Greek, including Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound (1947), Xenophon’s Anabasis (1949), Euripides’s Hippolytus (1950) and Helen (1951), and the Confessions of St. Augustine. His translations are readable as well as based on sound scholarship. The Young Caesar (1958) and Imperial Caesar (1960), both fictional autobiographies of Julius Caesar, were his first historical novels, followed by Pericles the Athenian (1963) and The Converts (1967). Among Warner’s other works are the essay collections The Cult of Power (1946) and Men of Athens (1972), the novel Escapades (1953), and works on John Milton (1949) and E. M. FORSTER (1950).
BIBLIOGRAPHY McCleod, A. L., A Garland for Rex Warner: Essays in Honour of His Eightieth Birthday, 1985; Reeve, N. H., The Novels of Rex Warner: An Introduction, 1989.
Waters, Muddy (April 4, 1913–April 30, 1983) Guitarist, Singer he blues singer and slide guitar player Muddy Waters fathered the Chicago Blues movement, which electrified the heart and soul of the rough-and-tumble, acoustic-based Mississippi Delta blues born in the American South earlier in the century. Waters’s music not only influenced countless other blues players, but it profoundly affected the development of rock and roll in the1950s and 1960s. Waters was born McKinley Morganfield in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. His mother died in
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1918, and his maternal grandmother raised him in Clarksdale, Mississippi. As a young boy, he loved to play in the mud—a pastime from which his nickname “Muddy” derived. He worked as a farm laborer in his youth. Waters loved music from a young age, at first striking up a fondness for playing the harmonica. By his mid-teens, however, he had developed an interest in the guitar and began playing at parties, picnics, dances, jook houses, and other places that called for musical entertainment. He deeply admired two fel-
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low Mississippian blues players—Son House (1902–1988) and ROBERT JOHNSON—and set about trying to master their bottleneck style of guitar playing. In bottleneck or slide guitar, the musician runs a ring made from glass or metal and worn on the finger up and down a guitar neck to change the string pitch. In 1941, folklorist Alan Lomax (1915–2002), who was the first person to professionally record the legendary folk singer WOODY GUTHRIE, visited the Mississippi Delta to record a number of musicians from the famed seat of American blues. Lomax recorded Waters in his own home and returned again in 1942 for a second recording session. Songs dating from these sessions include “Country Blues” and “I Be’s Troubled.” Both sessions were later released as Down On Stovall’s Plantation (1960) on the Testament label. Happily overwhelmed and encouraged by his recording sessions with Lomax, Waters moved to Chicago in 1943 in hopes of pursuing a professional career in music. He lived with a relative and earned a living driving a truck. At night, Waters played anywhere he could, and the great bluesman Big Bill Broonzy (1893–1958) helped him break into the city’s bustling blues scene. Waters was soon opening for Broonzy’s shows. At the time, Waters was still playing an acoustic guitar, which could not deliver sound loud enough to overpower the roar of Broonzy’s raucous audiences. Equipped with an electric guitar by 1945, however, he was subsequently able to play over the din of the crowds who attended his shows. His electrified blues performances began to attract increasingly larger audiences, and he became a popular club performer. In 1946, Waters recorded his first songs for Aristocrat, a new record label founded by Leonard Chess (1917–1969). Waters cut a number of songs for Aristocrat before he scored hits with “I Can’t Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home.” The songs delivered previously unheard electrified blues to the wider public, and some consider them to
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mark the beginning of the history of modern Chicago blues. After Leonard brought his brother Phil Chess (1921– ) into the Aristocrat label’s business, they renamed the company to the famous Chess Records label in 1950. It was under this name that Waters recorded his famous song “Rollin’ Stone,” which became a huge hit. Waters’s “Rollin’ Stone” was the source of the title of Rolling Stone magazine, the most popular American magazine devoted to rock and roll; was the origin of the name of the famous British rock band THE ROLLING STONES; and served as inspiration for BOB DYLAN’S classic song “Like a Rolling Stone.” During his early sessions with Chess, Waters recorded with studio musicians such as bassist Ernest “Big” Crawford rather than his own players—a decision that was not his. As his fame and popularity grew, however, he brought in a stellar group of musicians that featured drummer Elga Edmonds, harmonica player Little Walter Jacobs (1930–1968), guitarist Jimmy Rogers (1924–1997), and pianist Otis Spann (1930–1970), with Crawford still on bass. With the songwriter and bassist Willie Dixon (1915–1992) helping out on lyrics, the group produced such hits as “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” and “I’m Ready.” The first two of these songs made it to the top ten on the R&B charts. During the 1950s, Waters was one of the most prominent musicians on the Chicago blues scene, along with Broonzy, Howlin’ Wolf (1910–1976), and others. As he began to enjoy immense success, Little Walter, Rogers, and other band members left to pursue their own careers, and Waters struggled to find equivalent talent that suited him. Furthermore, his audiences began to shift dramatically. His traditionally African-American fans deserted him for newer stars and trends in music, and an unexpected element of white folk and rock fans and musicians began to enthusiastically embrace his electrified blues. In 1958, Waters toured England, shocking audiences who were accustomed to the
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acoustic, folk blues that had come from the United States earlier in the century. In 1960, Waters performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, and his appearance there led to the production of his first live album Muddy Waters at Newport, 1960 (1960). Chess Records began to treat Waters with less respect in the studio after the height of his 1950s success and the rise in popularity of new stars, forcing him to record albums that they believed carried more popular appeal and putting somewhat of a damper on the unique blues style he had crafted earlier. Albums from this period include Muddy Waters Brass and the Blues (1966), Electric Mud (1968), Fathers and Sons (1969), and Can’t Get No Grindin’ (1973). Waters would not fully regain the vigor and originality of his earlier performances until his late 1970s and early 1980s sessions with the American blues guitarist Johnny Winter (1944– ). In 1972, Waters returned to England to record The London Muddy Waters Sessions (1972) with the Irish rock and blues guitarist Rory Gallagher (1948–1995), the classic rock band veteran Steve Winwood (1948– ), Rick Grech (1946–1990), and drummer Mitch Mitchell (1947– ), who had gained fame playing in the American rock guitar virtuoso JIMI HENDRIX’s band The Jimi Hendrix Experience. None of these musicians particularly complemented Waters’s style, and the experience left him unmoved if not disappointed. In 1977, with Waters’s contract with Chess having expired, Winter convinced his label Blue Sky to sign him, and he would produce a number of albums for Waters. Winter, a talented blues guitarist himself with a genuine interest in Waters’s music, helped bring out the best in the veteran bluesman. Waters’s first LP with Winter, Hard Again (1977), marked a forceful return to the original Chicago sound he had crafted more than two decades earlier. The band for Hard Again included guitarist Bob Margolin (1949– ), pianist Pinetop Perkins (1913– ), and drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. Winter added guitar, James Cotton (1935–) played the
harp, and Charles Calmese played bass. The album featured the songs “Mannish Boy,” “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” “The Blues Had a Baby and They Named it Rock and Roll,” “Crosseyed Cat,” and “Little Girl.” It became his biggest commercial and critical success in years. Winter went on to produce the rest of Waters’s albums, I’m Ready (1978), Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live (1979), and King Bee (1981). In 1978, Winter brought in some of Waters’s old bandmates from the early 1950s to record I’m Ready, including harmonica player Walter Horton (1917–1981) and Rogers. They were joined by members of Waters’s then-current touring band. Winter and his band backed Waters on Muddy “Mississippi” Waters Live, which featured some of his well-known hits like “Mannish Boy.” King Bee, with “Mean Old Frisco Blues,” “Sad Sad Day,” and “I Feel Like Going Home,” was Waters’s final—and from a creative standpoint least successful—album with Winter. Money disputes plagued the recording sessions, as did Waters’s deteriorating health. Members of the band ended up leaving before they had recorded enough material for an album, and Winters filled in the time with outtakes from previous sessions. Later in his life, Waters frequently played at jazz festivals. His last appearance was in June 1982 playing “Blow Wind Blow” with famed British guitarist Eric Clapton (1945– ). Waters died in his sleep unexpectedly but peacefully in 1983. Waters helped shape subsequent generations of music in countless ways. His influence extended to blues, R&B, country, folk, and most strongly rock and roll. Other songs for which Waters is known include “Long Distance Call,” “Still a Fool,” “Honey Bee,” “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” “Just to Be With You,” “Rock Me,” “Got My Mojo Working,” “Walkin’ Thru the Park,” “You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had,” and “She’s Nineteen Years Old.” Waters’s sons Big Bill Morganfield (1956– ) and Larry “Muddy Junior” Williams are also
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blues musicians. In 1992, Waters was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
er, P., Muddy Waters, 1964; Palmer, R., Deep Blues, 1981; Rooney, Jim, Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters, 1991; www.muddywaters.com.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gordon, Robert, Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters, 2002; Oliv-
Waugh, Evelyn (October 28, 1903–April 10, 1966) Novelist enowned for his black humor and caustic wit, Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh was one of England’s leading satirical novelists in the twentieth century. His novels are primarily set among the upper classes; they depict an England deep in moral rot and spiritual decay. Waugh was born into an Anglican family in Combe Florey, Somerset, England. Well prepared to enter school by his mother’s tutoring, he began his six years at the Heath Mount preparatory school at the age of 7. Waugh’s father, a writer and editor who worked for the firm of Chapman and Hall, was well read and often read literature to his children. Waugh later attended Lancing College, Sussex, and Hertford College, Oxford. After he had finished his schooling, Waugh briefly studied art and worked at an irksome job as a teacher. The year 1928 brought his unsuccessful marriage to Evelyn Gardner and the publication of his first novel, Decline and Fall (1928), a satire on British society and institutions centered around the character of Paul Pennyfeather. In 1930 Waugh and his wife divorced, and Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism. His religious beliefs played an important role in his fiction. In its characteristic satire, it depicts a twentieth-century England in which
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justice is perverted, materialism reigns, and spirituality is dead. Such a climate forms the backdrop of his next novel, Vile Bodies (1930), set in London after World War I. Adam
Evelyn Waugh (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42514)
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Fenwick-Symes, the main character, is one of the Bright Young Things, a group of educated, intelligent, but morally bankrupt boys. A Handful of Dust (1934) also depicts an England in which moral values have died, and it draws from Waugh’s experience with his first wife. The protagonist, Tony Last, prefers to spend time in the country, while his wife, Brenda, is a socialite who likes the city. Brenda has an affair and divorces Tony. Tony takes a trip to the inhospitable South American jungle, a metaphor for England, and becomes the prisoner of an eccentric Englishman who forces him to read Charles Dickens interminably. Waugh married his second wife, Laura Herbert, in 1937. In the 1930s he worked as a journalist. Working for The Times in 1930, he covered the coronation of the Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, and he subsequently covered the Italo-Ethiopian war. The world of journalism is the setting for his comedy Scoop (1938), in which the small-time nature writer William Boot is mistaken for the novelist John Boot and sent to the fictional country of Ishmaelia to cover a war. Although the former Boot is incompetent in the field of journalism, he manages to get the big scoop. Waugh fought in World War II in both the Royal Marines and the Royal Horse Guards, serving in Crete, North Africa, and Yugoslavia. With the exception of The Loved One (1948), a satire on both the Hollywood climate and the funeral industry in California, Waugh’s novels after the war acquired more complexity and stronger religious and moral messages. Through the narrator Charles Ry-
der, Brideshead Revisited (1945) depicts a Catholic family in decline whose members eventually regain their lost faith. Helena (1952) is based on the mother of Constantine the Great. Also belonging to the postwar period is Waugh’s Sword of Honor war trilogy, consisting of Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender (1961). The three novels follow Guy Crouchback, a Catholic who begins as an officer in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers, through his service in World War II and eventual disillusionment. Aside from the novels for which he is most famous, Waugh wrote several travel books, including When the Going Was Good (1946); biographies of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1928), the sixteenth-century Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion (1935), and the twentieth-century defender of Roman Catholicism Ronald Knox (1959); and the first part of an autobiography he never finished, A Little Learning (1964). His other novels include Black Mischief (1932) and The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957). Waugh’s brother and son, Alec Waugh and Auberon Alexander Waugh, also established themselves as writers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Crabbe, Katharyn W., Evelyn Waugh, 1988; Hastings, Selina, Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, 1995; Stannard, Martin, Evelyn Waugh: The Later Years, 1939–1966, 1992; Waugh, Evelyn, A Little Learning, 1964; Wilson, John Howard, Evelyn Waugh: A Literary Biography, 1996.
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Webern, Anton von (December 3, 1883–September 15, 1945) Composer, Conductor, Teacher pupil of ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, Anton Friedrich Ernst von Webern was one of the major composers in the twelvetone style in the first half of the twentieth century and influenced a generation of younger composers that followed him. Like Schoenberg, he started out in the highly chromatic style of the late Romantics, moved into atonality, and finally settled on the twelvetone system as the basis for his work. His best-known works include his passacaglia for orchestra and his lieder (German songs). Webern was born in Vienna into a family on whom nobility had been conferred in the 1500s. His father was a highly successful mining engineer who attained the rank of chief of mining in the Habsburg government. Although Webern’s father was not musical and wanted Webern to follow in his footsteps as an engineer, he gave in to his son’s ambition to become a composer and supported him. From
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Anton von Webern (쑖 Lebrecht Music & Arts / The Image Works)
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his mother, an amateur pianist, Webern received his first music lessons at the age of five. Two sisters were also musically inclined, and the three siblings sometimes played as a trio. In his youth, Webern studied piano and theory in Klagenfurt under Edwin Komauer, graduating in 1902. He also learned to play the cello and joined a local orchestra. Webern later entered the University of Vienna, where he was instructed by the musicologist Guido Adler. At this point in his career, Webern was particularly influenced by the rich chromaticism of the late Romantic composers Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) and Richard Wagner (1813–1883). Disillusioned with academic training, Webern sought private instruction first with Hans Pfitzner (whom he quickly rejected on account of Pfitzner’s dislike of Mahler), and then with Schoenberg (1904–1908). Schoenberg, then immersed in developing his atonal works, was the most important influence on Webern’s career. During his instruction with Schoenberg he also returned to the University of Vienna and received his doctorate with a dissertation on the Choralis Constantinus II of the Dutch composer Heinrich Isaac (1450–1517). Before and during his studies with Schoenberg, Webern composed at a feverish pace, producing works largely in the style of the late Romantics. Among these are his Eight Early Songs (1901– 4), settings of verse by Richard Dehmel, Im Sommerwind (In the Summer Wind, 1904), which Webern called “an idyll for orchestra,” a String Quartet (1905), his orchestral Passacaglia, Op. 1 (1908), and the choral work Entflieht auf leichten Ka¨hnen. Through Schoenberg, Webern met and formed a friendship with the composer’s other pupil ALBAN BERG.
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Like Schoenberg, Webern gradually began to move away from the tonal structure evident in such works as his Stefan George songs (1908–1909) and the Five Movements for String Quartet (1909). From 1908 onward Webern pursued a career as a conductor in numerous cities, responsibilities he never really warmed to until the 1920s. In 1911 he married his first cousin Wilhelmine Mo¨rtl. Webern enlisted to serve in World War I but was discharged due to poor eyesight. Between 1914 and 1926 he concentrated almost exclusively on composing vocal works, and in 1918 he took a teaching post at Schoenberg’s newly established Society for Private Musical Performances, where he remained until 1922. When Schoenberg solidified his twelvetone system in the early 1920s, Webern took immediately to composing in the new style. Kinderstu¨ck (1924) for piano was his first twelve-tone work, and he continued to compose in that style until his death, expanding Schoenberg’s ideas from pitch to other elements, such as tone color and rhythm. Webern met the painter, sculptor, and poet Hildegard Jone in 1926 and afterward used her lyrics exclusively in his vocal works. Among Webern’s later works are the String Trio (1927) and the Orchestral Variations (1940). He also arranged piano and orchestral works.
Webern found moderate success as a conductor in the 1920s, particularly at the Mo¨dlinger Ma¨nnergesangverein (the Mo¨dling Male Voice Choir), with which he began his association in 1921, and at the Social Democratic Party’s Workers’ Symphony Concerts. He also conducted elsewhere in Europe. The rise of Nazism in 1933 proved disastrous for his music career. Schoenberg, with whom he had continued to maintain close ties, was forced to emigrate and settled in the United States. His close friend Berg died in 1935, and Webern’s own art was labeled “degenerate” and banned. The war effectively signaled the end of his career, and he was accidentally shot and killed by a U.S. soldier with the occupation forces in 1945.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bailey, Kathryn, The Life of Webern, 1998; Bailey, Kathryn, The Twelve-Note Music of Anton Webern: Old Forms in a New Language, 1991; Bailey, Kathryn, ed., Webern Studies, 1996; Forte, Allen, The Atonal Music of Anton Webern, 1998; Hayes, Malcolm, Anton von Webern, 1995; Moldenhauer, Hans, Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work, 1979; Reinhardt, Lorijean, From Poet’s Voice to Composer’s Muse: Text and Music in Webern’s Jone Settings, 1995.
Weill, Kurt (March 2, 1900–April 3, 1950) Composer, Conductor he German-born composer Kurt Julian Weill established himself as a collaborator with the playwright BERTOLT BRECHT on operas of social satire. Forced from Nazi Germany in 1933, he eventually settled in the United States and devoted himself to writing popular Broadway musicals. Weill’s
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best-known works include The Threepenny Opera, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and One Touch of Venus. Weill was born into a devout Orthodox Jewish family in Dessau, Germany. His father was cantor at the synagogue of Dessau and composed liturgical music, and his mother
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Kurt Weill (쑖 ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
had broad literary interests. From a young age he showed an inclination toward music, and he taught himself to play the piano before he was 10. He first performed for the public five years later. While still a teenager, he began to compose piano music and songs. Weill studied under Albert Bing and then at the Staatliche Hochschule fu¨r Musik in Berlin (1918–1919). At the latter he studied under Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921), composer of Hansel and Gretel and other operas. In 1919 and 1920 Weill conducted and worked as an opera coach in both Dessau and Lu¨denscheid. During the early 1920s he composed instrumental works that were experimental and expressionistic in nature. Weill admired the atonal works of ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, who at that time was busy developing his twelve-tone method. When he went to study (1921–1924) in the master class of the Italian composer and concert pianist Feruccio Busoni, however, he developed that simpler style that characterized the remainder of his work. In the early 1920s Weill composed primarily instrumental music. His First Symphony (1921) combines the traditional four movements of a symphony into a single large one.
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In 1922 he composed the ballet Die Zaubernacht, and the following year he completed his String Quartet op. 8. His Frauentanz was performed and well received at the Salzburg Festival in 1924. Around this time Weill contributed his first music and drama criticism to the journal of German radio, Der Deutsche Rundfunk, for which he would write for several years. In 1926 he married the actress Lotte Lenya, who sang in several of his operas. Weill wrote his first opera, Der Protagonist, in 1926, with libretto by Georg Kaiser. It premiered at the Dresden State Opera the same year with more success than his “ballet-opera” Royal Palace (1927). He first collaborated with Brecht on the Mahagonny Songspiel, performed at the Baden-Baden festival. The two would score a major success with Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera), which combines Brecht’s modernization of the libretto of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1727) with Weill’s jazz-infused score, including his most wellknown song “Mack the Knife.” Weill expanded Mahagonny to a full-length opera entitled Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), first performed in Leipzig in 1930. The story—which is characteristic of the sharp social commentary Brecht and Weill produced—concerns the overindulgence and eventual self-destruction of a city founded on pleasure. Corruption reigns supreme, and a wealthy murder suspect with enough money to bribe a judge is set free, while a man whose only crime is bankruptcy is executed. In spite of his socialist sympathies, Weill remained less overtly political than Brecht, but his scores nevertheless enhanced the harsh messages Brecht intended to send. Before he left Germany in 1933, Weill composed several other works, including the successful opera for schoolchildren Der Jasager (1930; The Yea-Sayer) and the radio cantata Der Lindberghflug (1928; The Lindbergh Flight), the first with Brecht and the second with Brecht and PAUL HINDEMITH. Weill also composed songs for LION FEUCHTWANGER’s
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play Die Petroleuminseln; the opera Die Bu¨rgschaft (1932; The Pledge), with libretto by Caspar Neher; and incidental music for Kaiser’s Der Silbersee (1932). On account of his Jewish ancestry and his leftist political sympathies, Weill was an early target of the Nazis. He fled to Paris in 1933, where he wrote, with Brecht, The Seven Deadly Sins of the Bourgeoisie (1933). This was followed by Maria Galante in 1934. While in Paris, Weill began his score for FRANZ WERFEL’s Der Weg der Verheissung (The Way of the Promise), which employed traditional Jewish modes. Although he had long since rejected the religion of his parents, he was sufficiently affected by the plight of the Jewish people under National Socialism to complete a work that addressed his cultural heritage. Weill remained bitter about his forced emigration—after settling in the United States in 1935 he refused to speak German or associate with his former German colleagues. Weill’s music style changed dramatically when he moved to New York. He abandoned the stringent social commentary he was associated with in Germany and composed music for popular Broadway musicals. In 1936 he
composed music for Paul Green’s antiwar Johnny Johnson (1936). Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), with libretto by Maxwell Anderson, was the first of several Broadway musicals he composed for and features his popular “September Song.” While Knickerbocker Holiday enjoyed modest success, Lady in the Dark (1941), with libretto and lyrics by Moss Hart and Ira Gershwin, proved to be even more popular. And in One Touch of Venus (1943), with S. J. Perelman and Ogden Nash, he achieved his biggest success on Broadway. Other works include scores for Elmer Rice’s Street Scene (1947); Lost in the Stars (1949), with libretto by Maxwell Anderson based on ALAN PATON’s Cry the Beloved Country; and the American folk opera Down in the Valley (1945). He completed the Second Symphony, his only major instrumental work after the 1920s, in 1934, and also wrote film scores.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jarman, Douglas, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Biography, 1982; Sanders, Ronald, The Days Grow Short: The Life and Music of Kurt Weill, 1980; Schebera, Ju¨rgen, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life, 1995; Taylor, Ronald, Kurt Weill: Composer in a Divided World, 1992.
Welch, Denton (March 29, 1915–December 30, 1948) Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Painter rippled in a disastrous accident at the age of 20, Maurice Denton Welch was trained as a painter, but he spent the last years of his brief life writing autobiographical fiction. He is best known for the only two novels published during his lifetime, Maiden Voyage and In Youth Is Pleasure. He is chiefly remembered for the lyrical, simple beauty and sensitivity of his prose.
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Welch was born in Shanghai and spent his childhood both in England and in China, where his father had business interests. His mother, an American and a Christian Scientist, was a descendant of the Scottish religious reformer John Knox (1513–1572); she died when he was 11. Her death was the first of two tragedies that were to befall him in his youth. From 1927 to 1930 Welch studied at St.
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Michael’s in Uckfield, Sussex. He attended Repton Preparatory School in Derbyshire from 1930 to 1932. At neither of the schools did he have positive experiences, and he later decided to study painting at the Goldsmith School of Art at Newcross. A second tragedy befell Welch in 1935, when a woman driving a car hit him as he rode his bicycle to a relative’s house. Welch’s near-fatal injuries included a fractured spine and damaged internal organs, and the accident left him an invalid for the rest of his life. Before the accident he had begun to paint and exhibit at Leicester galleries, and he continued his art when he had sufficiently recovered. Welch began writing during World War II. His first published piece, “A Visit with Sickert,” appeared in the Horizon in 1942, and several others appeared in various periodicals. He designed the cover and additional artwork for his first novel, Maiden Voyage, published in 1943. EDITH SITWELL vigorously praised Welch’s work, contributing to its unexpected popularity. Maiden Voyage, which features a protagonist named Denton Welch, introduces his characteristic autobiographical and subjective style and follows Welch from his departure from Repton to his entrance into art school. The protagonist of his next work, In Youth Is Pleasure (1946), is the sensitive and melancholy schoolboy Orvil Pym. The third-person narrative follows Pym, also an autobiographi-
cal character, as he travels in England. The short-story volume Brave and Cruel (1946) was the third and final of Welch’s book-length works to appear in his lifetime. The collection contains his best-known short story, “When I Was Thirteen.” “When I Was Thirteen” is one of the most overt examples of Welch’s exploration of homosexual themes in his writings. The narrator of the story is an innocent, 13-year-old boy who spends time at a Swiss ski resort with an older boy, Archer. The more experienced Archer introduces him to sensual pleasures such as drunkenness, but nothing of a sexual nature occurs between them. The narrator’s innocence does not prevent violent accusations to the contrary from his older brother, and he emerges from both the experiences with Archer and the accusations from his brother a more mature person. A Voice through a Cloud (1950) is one of Welch’s darkest narratives and recounts his accident, his struggle to recover, and the pain and isolation that result from the ordeal. His other works, all published posthumously and many of them unfinished, include the shortstory collection A Last Sheaf (1951); The Denton Welch Journals (1952); and I Left My Grandfather’s House (1958).
BIBLIOGRAPHY De-la-Noy, Michael, Denton Welch: The Making of a Writer, 1984; Phillips, Robert, Denton Welch, 1974.
Wells, H. G. (September 21, 1866–August 13, 1946) Novelist, Journalist, Short-Story Writer, Essayist, Critic
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erbert George Wells is known primarily for his science fiction novels, including The Time Machine and The
War of the Worlds. In addition he was a prolific social and political commentator, one of the most influential of his time, embracing at
WELLS, H. G.
H. G. Wells (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-21351)
first a belief in human social progress through science but becoming increasingly pessimistic with age. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England, and was the son of small shopkeepers who had little money. Although he excelled in school, his parents could not afford to give him much education, and he worked in a series of small jobs as a draper, a tutor, and a journalist. When he was 18, he received a scholarship for biology and enrolled in the Normal School of Science in London. After he graduated he began teaching science. In 1891 he married a cousin, Isabel Mary Wells. After three years of unhappy marriage, Wells left her for Amy Catherine Robbins, whom he married in 1895. Again, the marriage was unhappy on account of Wells’s numerous affairs. After the publication of Wells’s first book, Textbook of Biology (1893), he wrote a series of science fiction novels. His first, The Time Machine, appeared two years later. The War of the Worlds (1898), one of Wells’s most popular novels, is a nightmarish depiction of a Martian invasion set in England. Humans are
powerless before the Martian marauders, and the Martians only suffer defeat when they succumb to bacteria they have no immunity to. Wells used the cruelty of the Martian invasion to bring out the evils of European colonialism, with its domination over other peoples. In The First Men in the Moon (1901), two men journey to the moon. One, an unscrupulous businessman named Bedford, amasses a fortune from the plentiful gold on the moon and takes it back to earth. Cavor, a scientist, remains among the strange inhabitants of the moon, whose only purpose is to perform a particular job. Wells’s other science fiction novels include The Wonderful Visit (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The Food of the Gods (1904), and The War in the Air (1908). After his long series of science fiction writings, Wells began to write more conventional novels that nevertheless retained a critical tone. Tono-Bungay (1909) depicts a man who invents and profits from an ineffective medicine, and, symbolically, pervasive corruption in England. The History of Mr. Polly (1910) is an optimistic story of a draper, Alfred Polly, who is unsuccessful in everything he attempts—his job as a draper, his marriage, and even his attempted suicide. After all these fail, he flees from them and succeeds in finding happiness with a landlady. In A Modern Utopia (1905), Wells created a cold utopia in which society is divided into five classes. The most intelligent people, or Samurai, serve as rulers. The next two classes are divided into those artistically inclined and those practically inclined, while the Dull and the Base form the lowest two rungs in the utopian organization. The Base class, composed of drunkards and people of very low intelligence, was to be eliminated from the society. In 1903, Wells, a socialist, joined the Fabian Society, founded by GEORGE BERNARD SHAW and Beatrice and Sidney Webb. The society advocated the nonviolent introduction of socialism. Wells became involved in a bitter power struggle with Shaw and the Webbs and
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lost. His New Machiavelli (1911) included a harsh satire of the Webbs. Wells became increasingly pessimistic after the beginning of World War I. Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916), published during the war, depicts the destruction of an English family by the war. After the hostilities ceased, he wrote less fiction and concentrated on science and history. His popular Outline of History (1920) reflects his evolutionary view of the past and his hopes for the future; it provoked a bitter debate with the Catholic writer HILAIRE BELLOC. Humanity, Wells believed, could embark on a path of social progress armed with the proper knowledge. With his son and Julian Huxley he wrote The Science of Life (1931). Wells refused to leave London during German bombing raids in World War II. That humanity should have to suffer a second world war cemented his pessimism, and he believed he had failed with his ideas, passing the ver-
dict on himself, “He was clever but not clever enough.” This attitude is reflected in his final book, Mind at the End of its Tether (1945). Wells suffered from cancer and died in 1946. Among his other works are the short-story collections The Stolen Bacillus (1895), The Plattner Story (1897), and Tales of Space and Time (1899); the novels Anticipations (1901), Mankind in the Making (1903), Bealby: A Holiday (1915), and Boon (1915); The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind (1932); and his autobiography, Experiment in Autobiography (1934), an impressively frank account, written from the point of view of an outside observer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Coren, Michael, The Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H. G. Wells, 1993; Martin, Christopher, H. G. Wells, 1988; West, Anthony, H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life, 1984.
Werfel, Franz (September 10, 1890–August 26, 1945) Poet, Novelist, Playwright he Austrian writer Franz Werfel began his career writing poetry and plays influenced by the Expressionist movement in Germany in the early twentieth century. With the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, he fled to France and eventually the United States, completing a number of novels and plays that express his growing religious faith, historical themes, and his concern for the Jewish people. Werfel was born to a glove manufacturer and merchant in Prague, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. He studied in Prague, where he met FRANZ KAFKA as well as in Leipzig and Hamburg. During World War I Werfel fought in the Austrian Army, serving on the Italian
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and Galician fronts. In 1917 he went to work for the war press bureau in Vienna. Werfel’s war experience led to his subsequent pacifism, which he promoted in poetry readings at cafe´s and for which he was arrested. Der Welt-freund (The Friend of the World), his first collection of poetry, appeared in 1911. The Expressionists influenced Werfel’s first collections of verse, which found an early champion in KARL KRAUS. The two broke in 1916, and Werfel continued to publish poetry during the 1920s. The trilogy Der Spiegelmensch, influenced by Goethe’s Faust, was published in 1921. An expressionistic adaptation of Euripides’s Trojan Women was produced in 1916
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Franz Werfel (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, Lot 12735-1179, XXIS17)
in Berlin and marked Werfel’s first success in the theater. His other plays, also in Expressionist style, include The Goat Song (1921) and Juarez and Maximilian (1924), made into the film Juarez (1939) in the United States. Werfel is best known, however, for his novels, the first of which was Verdi, Roman der Oper (Verdi, A Novel of the Opera, 1925), about the composer Guiseppe Verdi (1813–1901). Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (1933; The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, 1934), a historical novel depicting the Armenian resistance to the Turks during World War I, established him as an international author and won widespread praise from Armenians around the world. Proud of his Jewish heritage but increasingly drawn to Catholicism, Werfel incorporated many biblical, cultural, and religious elements in his works. The play The Eternal
Road (1933) and the novels Hearken unto the Voice (1937) and Embezzled Heaven (1940) show an increasing concern with religious faith. Werfel married Alma Mahler, the widow of the composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and the former wife of the architect WALTER GROPIUS, before Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. His Jewishness, combined with his denunciations of Nazism on the radio and in print, made him an early enemy of the regime. He fled with Alma to France in 1938. When France fell in 1940, they embarked on a harrowing journey with the aim of reaching the United States. During their flight, they passed some time in Lourdes, the small French town where the nineteenth-century Catholic saint Bernadette saw visions of the Virgin Mary. Moved and intrigued by Bernadette’s visions, Werfel determined to write a novel in her honor if he reached the United States. They undertook a dangerous flight over the Pyrenees with Heinrich Mann, brother of THOMAS MANN, and eventually made it to America. The resulting novel was his Das Lied von Bernadette (1941; The Song of Bernadette, 1942). Jennifer Jones starred in the 1944 film adaptation of the novel as Bernadette and won an Academy Award for best actress. Werfel’s other popular works in the United States include Jakobowsky und der Oberst (1944; Jakobowsky and the Colonel), a comedy produced in New York in 1944, later the basis for the film Me and the Colonel (1958). He spent the last years of his life working in Hollywood and died there in 1945.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Jungk, Peter Stephan, Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna, and Hollywood, 1990; Jungk, Peter Stephan, A Life Torn By History: Franz Werfel, 1890–1945, 1990; Steiman, Lionel B., Franz Werfel—The Faith of an Exile: From Prague to Beverly Hills, 1985.
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White, Patrick (May 28, 1912–September 30, 1990) Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Short-Story Writer ith a series of novels that both explore modern Australian society and probe the psychological lives of artists, intellectuals, simpletons, and other individuals, Patrick White ranks among the most prominent Australian authors of the twentieth century. White was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973 “for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature,” and became the first Australian to receive the honor. White was born into a prosperous Australian family in London and grew up outside of Sydney, where his father owned a sheep station. At the age of 9, he entered Cranbrook, an elite school, and he later transferred to Tudor House, Moss Vale. When White was 13, his family sent him to school at Cheltenham in England, an experience that proved to be less than pleasant. He returned to Australia in 1929 and worked as a jackeroo before going back to England to study modern languages at King’s College, Cambridge. White published a small volume of verse, Thirteen Poems, while he was still in school. His first novel, Happy Valley, appeared in 1939; it concerns a tangled web of love affairs in New South Wales. The Australian Literature Society awarded the book its Gold Medal in 1941. Its successor, The Living and the Dead (1941) takes place in 1930s London and is one of few of White’s works set outside of Australia. During World War II, White joined the Royal Air Force and served as an intelligence officer in the Middle East. There he met his companion Manoly Lascaris. By this time, he had lived and traveled widely in Europe and the United States, and a 1946 visit to Australia inspired him to return there permanently. The volume The Ploughman and Other Poems (1935) reflects some of his travels in Europe.
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The Aunt’s Story (1948), an experimental novel, captures the theme of individual isolation, a recurrent one in White’s work, in the character of the spinster Theodora Goodman. The Tree of Man (1955) marked a significant turning point in White’s career. The agnosticism of his earlier life gave way to an interest in mysticism and a belief in God. Through the lives of the protagonists, the farming couple Stan and Amy Parker, who lead normal, typical lives filled with triumphs and tragedies, White relates his vision of a changing Australian culture. Also important to the work is the psychological dimension of the characters. White now directed his fictional analysis toward contemporary Australian society and criticized the materialistic lifestyle he called “the Great Australian Emptiness.” White was an eccentric personality, known for his volatile temper and an intensely private life from which he rarely emerged other than to voice his political opinions. Over the years he vocally involved himself in a number of political issues, protesting the Vietnam war and demanding rights for Australian aborigines, to take two examples. The sense of loneliness and isolation that characterized his early work, however, also continues as a strong force in his later fiction. Voss is a character study of an explorer set in the nineteenth-century Australian interior; it won numerous awards after its publication in 1957. Seen from alternating perspectives, The Solid Mandala (1966) offers character studies of the twin brothers Waldo and Arthur Brown. Waldo is an intellectual incapable of feeling, while the mentally retarded but sensitive Arthur is in harmony with what he feels and with the natural world. White explored the motivations and behavior of the painter Hurtle Duffield in The Vivisector (1970). A Fringe of Leaves (1976), in which the protagonist, Mrs. Roxborough, is taken captive by a
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tribe of Australian aborigines after a shipwreck, reflects White’s lifelong interest in the aborigines. In spite of White’s serious interest in the theater, his plays failed to gain the popular success or critical acclaim his novels earned. Several of his plays and sketches were produced in London while he lived there in the 1930s. Three decades later, his plays began to see production in Australia. Among them are The Season at Sarsaparilla (1962); The Ham Funeral (1964), an expressionistic play whose protagonist is an introverted Young Man in search of meaning; and Night on Bald Mountain (1964). His later plays include Big Toys (1977) and Signal Driver (1982). Among White’s other works are the novels Riders in the Chariot (1961), Eye of the
Storm (1973), and The Twyborn Affair (1979); the short-story collections The Burnt Ones and The Cockatoo; and the autobiography Flaws in the Glass (1981). He used his Nobel Prize money to establish the Patrick White Literary Award, which he intended as an annual prize for an established Australian writer who has failed to gain the recognition he or she deserves.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Akerholt, May-Brit, Patrick White, 1988; During, Simon, Patrick White, 1996; Kiernan, Brian, Patrick White, 1980; Marr, David, Patrick White: A Life, 1991; Walsh, William, Patrick White’s Fiction, 1977; Williams, Mark, Patrick White, 1993.
White, T. H. (May 29, 1906–January 17, 1964) Novelist, Poet, Essayist erence Hanbury White is best known for his original and entertaining retelling of the Arthurian legend in a series of novels published together as The Once and Future King, loosely based on the fifteenth-century classic, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (The Death of Arthur). White’s book has probably done more than any other retelling of the legend to keep Arthur alive in the twentieth century. His other works include a number of novels and journals reflecting both aspects of English history and his love of outdoor activity as well as poetry. White was born in Bombay, India. The stormy relations between his father, who was district superintendent of police, and his mother contributed to his lifelong unhappiness. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1923. White’s family took him to England in 1911, and he
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entered Cheltenham College in 1920. Five years later he began his studies at Cambridge. After being diagnosed with tuberculosis, White spent several months recuperating at a sanatorium and in Italy in 1927–1928. Around the time of his recovery, White began to write professionally. Several of his articles appeared in the Saturday Review before the publication of his first two works, the poetry collection Loved Helen and Other Poems (1929) and the poem The Green Bay Tree; or Wicked Man Touches Wood (1929). White’s preoccupation with the question of love emerges in the former as well as in his early novel They Winter Abroad (1932). The story of They Winter Abroad concerns a group of English vacationers in Italy, all of whom approach love and relationships in different— and unsatisfactory—ways.
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White struggled with his homosexuality and in 1936 sought psychiatric treatment for it. He led an intensely private and reclusive life, devoting much of his time to outdoor activity and the care of his dogs and birds. From 1932–1936 he taught at the Stowe School. During that time he published a number of novels that are not generally well regarded, including the detective mystery Dead Mr. Nixon (1931; with R. McNair Scott), the thriller Darkness at Pemberley (1932), and First Lesson (1932), which, along with They Winter Abroad, was published under the pseudonym James Aston. Farewell Victoria (1933) marked the beginning of White’s mature works; it follows the protagonist, Mundy, a horse-groom, through seventy-five years of English history. The story opens during Mundy’s youth in 1858 and traces his growing isolation through two marriages, service in the Boer War, and the death of his son in World War I. Two other novels, Earth Stopped and Gone to Ground, followed in 1934 and 1935. The autobiographical England Have My Bones (1936), which reflects the activities of his own life during a one-year period in the 1930s, marked White’s first success as a writer. DAVID GARNETT wrote an unfavorable review of the work, which ironically led to a lifelong friendship between the two men. From then on, Garnett was a significant influence on White’s work, often reading his manuscripts and offering advice before publication. White illustrated Burke’s Steerage (1938) with his own drawings. After 1936, White devoted himself exclusively to writing. His biggest success came with the series eventually published as The Once and Future King (1958), a retelling of the story of Arthur, legendary king of the Britons in the sixth century. The first volume, The Sword in the Stone, appeared in 1939, followed by The Queen of Air and Darkness (1940, initially published as The Witch in the Wood), The Ill-Made Knight (1941), and The Candle in the Wind (1958). The Book of Merlyn, a fifth book intended for the series, was
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found among White’s papers when he died and published in 1977. White’s book shows at once real love for Malory’s classic, an encyclopedic knowledge of medieval life, and an impressive ability to tell the story of Arthur in a way that reaches a wide twentieth-century audience, with its mixture of modern slang and heroic and tragic adventure. Sophisticated critics may see it as a children’s book, but some at least acknowledge that it is a children’s book of genius. Adapted as the musical Camelot, with a film version of the musical appearing in 1967, The Once and Future King has reached an even wider audience. In his later works, White moved away from medieval history. Mistress Mash-am’s Repose (1946) is a charming children’s book in which a little girl saves the descendants of the little people of Lilliput (subject of the first book of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) who were brought to her family’s estate by Gulliver in the eighteenth century from the greed of her evil governess and the even more disgustingly evil local parson. The Elephant and the Kangaroo (1947) is an autobiographical satire on White himself, Ireland, and Christian religious beliefs. His other works include The Goshawk (1951), a prose account of two birds he owned and trained that is considered a classic of falconry; the social histories The Age of Scandal (1950) and The Scandalmonger (1951); The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts (1954), a delightful modern version of a medieval bestiary, full of strange lore; The Master (1957); The Godstone and Blackymor (1959; published in the United States as A Western Wind); and America at Last (1965), a journal he kept during an American lecture tour in 1963. White died of a heart attack in 1964.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Crane, John K., T. H. White, 1974; Kellman, Martin, T. H. White and the Matter of Britain: A Literary Overview, 1988; Warner, Sylvia Townsend, T. H. White, 1967.
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Wigman, Mary (November 13, 1886–September 18, 1973) Choreographer, Dancer ary Wigman introduced her own style of expressive choreography to European dance in the World War I era. Wigman’s work heavily influenced the development of modern dance in Europe and, through her students, in the United States. Wigman was born Marie Wiegmann into a family of substantial means in Hannover, Germany. As a youth she attended boarding schools in England and Switzerland, and during her school years she was fond of writing plays to entertain the guests at her family gatherings. Wigman also took piano, social dance, and voice lessons. Wigman received her primary dance training under Imile Jaques-Dalcroze and the Hungarian choreographer/ ce notator Rudolf Laban. From 1910 to 1912 she studied at Hellerau, and during this time she began to choreograph in earnest. Finding the atmosphere too stifling, however, she spent 1913–1919 in a freer environment at the artists’ colony of Monte Verita in the Swiss Alps. Wigman later established her own company as well as a school in Dresden (1920), which
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was later closed by Nazi authorities. After World War II Wigman moved the school to Leipzig and Berlin, and in 1931 she opened the Wigman School in New York City. The school later became the Hanya Holm School, named for and directed by one of her pupils. Wigman’s choreography and designs often used masks (influenced by Asian and African art) and expressive movement, and her dances were often staged without musical accompaniment. Among her works are The Seven Dances of Life (1918), Witch Dance, Totenmal (1930), the opera Orpheus and Eurydice (1947), and solo and group dances.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Manning, Susan, Ecstasy and the Demon: Feminism and Nationalism in the Dances of Mary Wigman, 1993; Scheyer, Ernst, The Shapes of Space: The Art of Mary Wigman and Oskar Schlemmer, 1970; Sorell, Walter, ed., The Mary Wigman Book: Her Writings, 1975; Wigman, Mary, The Language of Dance, 1963.
Wilder, Thornton Niven (April 17, 1897–December 7, 1975) Playwright, Novelist he American playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder was perhaps best known for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. A successful writer, Wilder also taught at major universities for much of his adult life.
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Wilder was the second of five children, born Thornton Niven Wilder in Madison, Wisconsin. He had a twin brother who died at birth. His father, Amos Parker Wilder, was a newspaper editor for the Wisconsin Journal from the mid-1890s to 1906, when he took a position as U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong and China that lasted until 1914. Wilder spent
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Thornton Wilder (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42494)
part of his childhood abroad, and his father was a strict figure who made his children work on farms during the summertime. His mother, Isabella Niven Wilder, was highly educated and introduced her children to writing, literature, and poetry. She became the first woman elected to public office in Hamden, Connecticut, in 1920. All of her children became distinguished in their own professions, and Wilder was closest to his sister Isabel. Wilder started writing plays while at the Thacher School in Ojai, California. His high intelligence made him an outcast among classmates, who either teased or completely ignored him. He attended the English China Inland Mission Chefoo School at Yantai, but his mother returned him and his siblings to California in 1912 due to the unstable political climate in China. He attended Emerson Elementary School in Berkeley and graduated
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from Berkeley High School in 1915. He next studied Greek and Roman classics at Oberlin College near Cleveland, Ohio. He moved with his family to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1917 and enrolled at Yale University. He left school for several months to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War I but returned after his service. At Yale, he was a member of the literary fraternity Alpha Delta Phi, and he published his first play there, The Trumpet Shall Sound (1920) in the Yale Literary Magazine. Wilder subsequently studied archaeology at the American Academy in Rome and eventually earned his M.A. in French from Princeton in 1926. His first novel, The Cabala, was published the same year and was inspired by his travels in Europe and his associations with American expatriate writers and other artists living abroad, including GERTRUDE STEIN and ERNEST HEMINGWAY. Wilder’s second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), brought commercial success, critical acclaim, and his first Pulitzer Prize in 1928. The story concerns several unrelated travelers who find themselves on a rope bridge in eighteenth-century Peru when it collapses and kills them. In the aftermath of the accident, a monk investigates their life stories in search of an answer to the question of whether the disaster was an accident or an act of God. His investigations lead to his own death at the hands of the Inquisition. In 1998, the novel was selected by the editorial board of the American Modern Library as one of the one hundred best novels of the twentieth century. Three different film versions were released in 1929, 1944, and 2004. Wilder made his Broadway debut with The Trumpet Shall Sound (1926), which ran for only thirty performances. His translation of Lucre`ce (1932) was not much more successful, running for thirty-one performances. Wilder’s adaptation of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s (1828–1906) A Doll’s House (1937) was slightly more successful, running for 144 performances. During this time period, he also published the novels The
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Woman of Andros (1930) and Heaven’s My Destination (1935). His next Broadway play, however, Our Town (1938), ran for 336 performances on Broadway and won him his second Pulitzer Prize. Set in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, it was inspired by Stein’s 1925 novel The Making of Americans. Narrated by a character called the Stage Manager, it uses a minimalist set and follows the lives of the Gibbs and Webb families, as well as other citizens of Grover’s Corners. The same year, the Austrian-American director Max Reinhardt (1873–1943) directed a Broadway production of Wilder’s The Merchant of Yonkers, which he had adapted from Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy’s (1801–1862) Einen Jux will er sich machen (1842). The production was a flop by commercial standards and closed after thirty-nine performances. Wilder served in the Army Air Force during World War II, attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, and won a number of awards for his service. His three-act play The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) opened in New York with Fredric March (1897–1975) and Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968) in the lead roles. The story follows the lives of the suburban New Jersey couple George and Maggie Antrobus, who struggle with their family through five thousand years of war and natural disasters. The play ran for 359 performances and earned Wilder his third Pulitzer Prize. Around this time he also wrote the screenplay for ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S film noir thriller Shadow of a Doubt (1943). After his discharge from the military, Wilder finished his historical novel The Ides of March (1948), about the final months of Julius Caesar. The same year, the production of his one-act play The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden (1948) was combined with Eva Wolas’s 1948 adaptation of JEAN-PAUL SARTRE’S The Respectful Prostitute for a successful run of 318 performances at the Cort Theatre on Broadway.
The British director TYRONE GUTHRIE encouraged Wilder to rework The Merchant of Yonkers into the successful farce The Matchmaker (1954). Guthrie directed the play, which was a much greater success than The Merchant of Yonkers with 486 runs, and it earned the director a Tony Award. Ruth Gordon (1896–1985) starred in the title role of Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi. The play later became the basis for the 1964 Broadway hit musical comedy Hello, Dolly!, starring Carol Channing (1921– ), and director Gene Kelly’s (1912–1966) follow-up film version in 1969. Wilder’s later plays include The Wreck of the 5:25 (1957), Bernice (1957), Childhood (1960), Infancy (1960), Plays for Bleecker Street (1962), and Alcestiad (1977). In spite of his enormous success as a writer, Wilder considered himself a teacher first. He taught French at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. From 1930 to 1937, he taught comparative literature at the University of Chicago. Later on, he was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii and taught poetry at Harvard University. He maintained a close circle of friends that included Hemingway, the American novelist Willa Cather (1873–1947), the American actor Montgomery Clift (1920–1966), and Stein. Wilder’s last novel, Theophilus North, about a sensitive man trying to choose between different careers, was published in 1973. He died in his sleep in Hamden, Connecticut, where he had been living with his sister, Isabel, for many years. In addition to the three Pulitzer Prizes, he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1957 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. In 1967, he won the National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day, about a twentieth-century inventor accused of murder.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Blank, Martin, ed., Critical Essays on Thornton Wilder, 1996; Bloom, Harold, ed., Thornton Wilder, 2003; Burbank, Rex J., Thornton Wild-
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er, 1961; Castronovo, David, Thornton Wilder, 1986; Goldstein, Malcolm, The Art of Thornton Wilder, 1965; Goldstone, Richard Henry, Thornton Wilder: An Intimate Portrait, 1975; Harrison, Gilbert A., The Enthusiast: A Life of
Thornton Wilder, 1983; Simon, Linda, Thornton Wilder: His World, 1979; Wilder, Amos Niven, Thornton Wilder and His Public, 1980; www.thorntonwildersociety.org.
Williams, Hank (September 17, 1923–January 1, 1953) Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist uring his short career, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist Hank Williams established himself as one of the most influential musicians in American history. His songwriting was succinct and often derived from great personal pain, and his delivery was poignant, stirring, and heartfelt. Williams’s music is revered by country and rock and roll musicians alike, and his songs continue to be widely covered in those and other genres. His son, Hank Williams, Jr., is a popular country music performer. Williams was born Hiram King Williams in 1923, in Mount Olive, Alabama, near Georgiana, Alabama. He suffered from spina bifida, a birth defect resulting in an incompletely formed spinal cord, which would remain a source of pain for his entire life. His father, Elonzo “Lon” Huble Williams, was a log-train engineer for the W. T. Smith Lumber Company and a World War I veteran. His mother, Jessie Lillybelle “Lillie” Williams, was a domineering personality, a Baptist fundamentalist, and a church organist, and it was she who introduced Williams to gospel music in church. Following his father’s employment, the family moved around southern Alabama during his early childhood. When Williams was seven, his father began to suffer from face paralysis. He was eventually diagnosed with a brain aneurysm and was subsequently hospitalized for eight years. Williams moved with his mother and sister to Georgiana. His moth-
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er supported them with odd jobs throughout the difficult Great Depression period, and the children sold peanuts, shined shoes, delivered newspapers, and did other jobs to help the family out. In Georgiana, he met the blues musician Rufus Payne, whose habit of carrying around with him a mixture of tea and alcohol earned him the nickname “Tee-Tot.” Tee-Tot was an important early influence on Williams and became his mentor. Later in 1934, the family moved to Greenville, Alabama, where Williams’s mother opened a boarding house next to the Butler County courthouse—and where Tee-Tot lived. They lived in Greenville until 1937, when they moved to Montgomery, Alabama. There, the young Williams won an amateur night contest at the Empire Theatre singing his own song “The WPA Blues.” Around this time, Williams started calling himself “Hank,” a name he thought better-suited to his ambition to become a country music singer. After school and on weekends, he started playing his Silvertone guitar in front of WSFA radio studios. Somewhere around early 1937, studio producers asked him to come in and perform. Listeners began to call in asking for the “singing kid,” and Williams soon had his own popular radio show. Riding on the success of his radio show, Williams formed a band called the Drifting Cowboys. The original lineup consisted of
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guitarist Braxton Schuffert, fiddler Freddie Beach, and comic Smith “Hezzy” Adair. The band toured southern and central Alabama, playing at clubs, beer joints, and parties, and late in 1939 Williams dropped out of school to devote all of his attention to his music. At this point in his career, his musical style combined country, gospel, and honky-tonk and was partly derived from popular country artists such as Roy Acuff (1903–1992) and Ernest Tubb (1914–1984). His mother, fully supportive of his musical endeavors, became the band’s manager. She booked shows for them, negotiated prices, and drove them around in her station wagon, enabling them to play farther away than previously. Williams continued to return to Montgomery for his radio show. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, Williams lost all of his bandmates to the draft. To complicate matters, he had begun to sink deeper and deeper into alcoholism, and the replacement members did not want to be around him. After repeatedly showing up drunk for his radio show, the station fired him. For a short time beginning in 1942, he went to work in Mobile’s shipyards. In 1943, Williams met Audrey Mae Shepard, whom he married the following year. She learned to play stand-up bass, played with Williams in the band, and became his manager. After having negotiated with Nashville music publisher Fred Rose (1897–1954), who had partnered with Acuff to form Acuff-Rose Publications, he recorded several songs for Sterling Records in 1946. Rose was to manage his career from that point onward. He moved to Nashville the same year. On the heels of their success, he signed with MGM and released “Move It On Over,” which was a huge hit in the country music world and the first of his songs to enter the charts. In 1948, Williams began to appear on the Louisiana Hayride, which broadcast from Shreveport, Louisiana, on KWKH on Saturday nights and reached throughout the Southern United States. He released a few more moderately successful songs before re-
cording Rex Griffin’s “Lovesick Blues” in 1949. The song not only topped the country charts for sixteen weeks but made its way into mainstream music. The same year, he sang the song at the Grand Ole Opry and became the first performer there to receive six encores. Williams reformed the Drifting Cowboys with guitarist Bob McNett, bassist Hillous Butrum (1928–2002), fiddler Jerry Rivers, and steel guitarist Don Helms (1927– ) to form the most famous version of the Drifting Cowboys. The same year, his wife gave birth to their son Hank Williams, Jr. (1949– ), who remains a popular country music recording artist. He released eleven more hit songs that year, including “Wedding Bells,” “Mind Your Own Business,” “You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave),” and “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It.” In 1950, Williams started recording some of his songs as Luke the Drifter, a name he took on when he performed his more religious music. By this time, his life had begun to disintegrate into one of personal pain combined with a search for redemption—themes that are reflected not only in much of country and rock and roll music but in his own songs like “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy,” “They’ll Never Take Her Love from Me,” “Nobody’s Lonesome for Me,” “Long Gone Lonesome Blues,” “Moanin’ the Blues,” and “I Just Don’t Like This Kind of Livin’,” and “I Saw the Light.” In 1951, “Dear John” became a hit, but the Bside, “Cold, Cold Heart” (covered by the American popular musician Tony Bennett, 1926– ) remains one of his most famous songs. Williams’s final years were plagued by his turbulent marriage and drug and alcohol addiction. In an effort to quell his excruciating back pain, he began to mix morphine and painkillers with his longtime alcoholism. He separated from his wife in 1952, and they divorced the following year. Williams had a brief relationship with Bobbie Jett that produced daughter Jett (1953– ), who was born just after he died and later became a country singer. He was fired from the Grand Ole Opry
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in October 1952 and told not to return until he had sobered up, and his alcoholism led to the breakup of his band. He subsequently rejoined the Louisiana Hayride and married Billie Jean Jones Eshliman. In spite of his turbulent circumstances, however, he continued to produce hit songs such as “Half as Much,” “Jambalaya (On the Bayou),” “You Win Again,” “Kaw-Liga,” “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,” “Take These Chains From My Heart,” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” among them. On New Year’s Day in 1953, Williams was supposed to play in Canton, Ohio. Bad weather prevented him from flying, and he hired a chauffeur. The driver pulled over at an allnight service station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, and discovered that Williams was unresponsive. He was dead from a heart attack. Williams was buried in the Oakwood Annex in Montgomery, Alabama.
In 1961, Williams became one of the first artists elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an Early Influence in 1987.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Caress, Jay, Hank Williams: Country Music’s Tragic King, 1979; Escott, Colin, Hank Williams: The Biography, 1994; Flippo, Chet, Your Cheatin’ Heart: A Biography of Hank Williams, 1989; Hemphill, Paul, Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams, 2005; Koon, George William, Hank Williams: So Lonesome, 2001; Moore, Thurston, Hank Williams: The Legend, 1972; Rivers, Jerry, Hank Williams: From Life to Legend, 1967; Rogers, Arnold, The Life and Times of Hank Williams, 1993; Williams, Roger M., Sing a Sad Song: The Life of Hank Williams, 1981; www.hankwilliams.com.
Williams, Tennessee (March 26, 1911–February 25, 1983) Playwright, Screenplay Writer, Short-Story Writer ennessee Williams was one of the twentieth century’s major American playwrights, producing among other works The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. He explored the major themes in his work through characters based on his emotionally difficult family relationships during his childhood and received numerous awards for his plays. Williams also wrote screenplays, novels, poetry, and short stories. Williams was the second of three children, born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi, in his maternal grandfather’s home. His grandfather was the local Episcopal rector, and Williams’s mother, who came from old Southern genteel ancestry, shared his devotion to the church. His father, Cornel-
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ius Williams, was a traveling shoe salesman and was increasingly abusive toward his children as they grew older. Both parents frequently argued violently, which particularly frightened Williams’s emotionally fragile sister Rose. Throughout his life, Williams remained close to Rose, a beautiful woman who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent most of her adult life in mental institutions. She became increasingly paranoid as she grew older, after which her parents allowed doctors to treat her with a prefrontal lobotomy. The botched operation left her incapacitated for the remainder of her life, inflicting a serious emotional blow on Williams, who never forgave his parents for allowing the procedure.
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By the time Williams was three, the family had moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was diagnosed with diphtheria at age five and was consequently paralyzed for the next two years. In 1918, the family moved to St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Soldan and University City high schools. When Williams was sixteen, he won third prize for his essay “Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?” which was published in Smart Set. During the early 1930s, Williams attended the University of Missouri-Columbia and was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. It was there that he saw a production of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s (1828–1906)) Ghosts, inspiring him to pursue a career as a playwright. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1935 but began writing plays after he recovered. In the late 1930s, he attended Washington University for a year, and then finally earned his degree from the University of Iowa in 1938. In 1939, he received a $1,000 Rockefeller Grant, and in 1940 his first major play, Battle of the Angels, was produced by the Theatre Guild in Boston. The same year, Williams moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, to write for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. In 1944, he wrote The Glass Menagerie, often considered his best play, which premiered in Chicago and then jumped to Broadway for a successful run of 563 performances starring Laurette Taylor (1884–1946) as the Southern matriarch Amanda Wingfield, Many believe he heavily modeled the play on his own family. Set in St. Louis, Missouri, during the Great
Tennessee Williams (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-128957)
Depression, it relates troubled relationships among the sensitive poet Tom, his disabled sister Laura, their controlling mother Amanda, and a father who abandoned the family when the children were young. The play won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. For a time, Williams lived in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana, which provided the setting for his 1977 play Vieux Carre´. It was there that he started writing his famous play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), but he finished it in Key West, Florida, where he had moved in the 1940s. The play won a Pulitzer Prize and another New York Drama Critics Circle Award, was directed by ELIA KAZAN, and ran for 855 performances on Broadway. The story concerns a clash in values and cultural mores between the egotistical, Southern relic Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski, who is rising to prominence as part of the industrial, inner-city immigrant class. Among Williams’s other successes as a playwright were Summer and Smoke (1947), which relates the story of a relationship between a minister’s daughter and a doctor; Rose Tattoo (1951), about a young man and an older widow who find romance; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), which again treated the theme of the dysfunctional Southern family and won a Pulitzer Prize; Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), directed by Kazan, about the drifter Chance Wayne and his faded movie star girlfriend who return to his hometown, where they encounter trouble left over from one of his past relationships; Suddenly, Last Summer (1958), one of a number of his plays to star his close friend actress Anne Meacham (1925–2006) in lead roles; and The Night of the Iguana (1961), in which an ex-minister takes a disparate group of women to a cheap hotel in Mexico, where complex dramas unfold. Williams’s other plays include the fantasy Camino Real (1953), Period of Adjustment (1960), The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here
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Anymore (1963), Small Craft Warnings (1972), and Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980). Many of Williams’s plays were made into major films. These include The Glass Menagerie (1950), directed by Irving Rapper (1898–1999); A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), directed by Kazan; The Rose Tattoo (1955), directed by Daniel Mann (1912–1991); Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), both directed by Richard Brooks (1912–1992); The Fugitive Kind (1959), based on Orpheus Descending and directed by Sidney Lumet (1924– ) with a screenplay cowritten by Williams and Meade Roberts (1930–1992); Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–1953) with a screenplay cowritten by Williams and GORE VIDAL; Summer and Smoke (1961), directed by Peter Glenville (1913–1996); Period of Adjustment (1962), directed by George Roy Hill (1921–2002); The Night of the Iguana (1964), directed by John Huston (1906–1987); and Boom (1968), based on The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore and directed by Joseph Losey (1909–1984). Kazan also directed a film based on Williams’s original screenplay Baby Doll (1956), and many of Williams’s plays have also been adapted for television. Williams, who was openly homosexual, maintained a relationship with Frank Merlo from 1947 until Merlo’s death from cancer in 1963. Merlo provided a measure of stability during Williams’s frequent bouts with depression. After his death, Williams sank into a tenyear period of depression and addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol.
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Williams died after choking on a pill bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York, likely because the prescription drugs and alcohol he had consumed inhibited his gag response. He was buried in the Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. By the time of his death, he had produced twenty-five full-length plays, dozens of short plays and screenplays, two novels, a novella, sixty short stories, more than a hundred poems, and an autobiography, Memoirs (1975). He was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1989. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bloom, Harold, ed., Tennessee Williams, 2007; Boxill, Roger, Tennessee Williams, 1987; Hayman, Ronald, Tennessee Williams: Everyone Else Is an Audience, 1993; Falk, Signi, Tennessee Williams, 1978; Griffin, Alice, Understanding Tennessee Williams, 1995; Hirsch, Foster, A Portrait of the Artist: The Plays of Tennessee Williams, 1979; Leavitt, Richard F., The World of Tennessee Williams, 1978; Leverich, Lyle, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, 1995; Londre´, Felicia Hardison, Tennessee Williams, 1979; Rader, Dotson, Tennessee: Cry of the Heart, 1985; Roudane´. Matthew C., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, 1997; Smith, Bruce, Costly Performances, Tennessee Williams, the Last Stage, 1990; Spoto, Donald, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams, 1985; Thompson, Judith, Tennessee Williams’s Plays: Memory, Myth, and Symbol, 1987; Tischler, Nancy Marie, Student Companion to Tennessee Williams, 2000; PattersonWilliams, Dakin, Tennessee Williams: An Intimate Biography, 1983; Williams, Tennessee, Memoirs, 1975. www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ williams_t.html.
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Wilson, August (April 27, 1945–October 2, 2005) Playwright merican August Wilson’s ten-play depiction of African-American life in the United States during each decade of the twentieth century creates a unique and monumental legacy that not only earned the playwright two Pulitzer Prizes, but made him one of the nation’s leading playwrights of his generation and his century. Wilson was born in Pittsburg and named Frederick August Kittel after his father, a white German immigrant named Frederick Kittel who was a baker. Wilson’s mother, Daisy, was African-American and worked as a cleaning woman. He grew up in the city’s primarily black Hill district and learned to read at age four. His father, who, by various accounts, was less than attentive to his family of six children, left when Wilson was only eleven. Wilson’s mother later remarried and the family moved to a primarily white neighborhood. The young boy, educated in parochial and private schools, encountered problems at school when he was older and the only black student. At fifteen, he dropped out after being accused of plagiarism, and set about educating himself with voracious reading at the public library. His father died in 1965. That was also the year Wilson moved out of the family apartment to launch his own life. He took his mother’s surname, purchased a typewriter, and discovered the blues: Bessie Smith, to be specific. By 1968, he co-founded Black Horizons Theater in Pittsburgh with his friend Rob Penny and directed one of Penny’s plays. This was also the time Wilson took up the Black Nationalist cause, and the time his stepfather died. Wilson wed his first wife, Brenda Burton, in 1969, a marriage that would only last three years but produced a daughter in 1970. Although Wilson had been writing poems and short stories, his playwriting efforts didn’t begin until the 1970s. In fact, the first
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professional play Wilson watched in its entirety was ATHOL FUGARD’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead, in 1976. In 1978 Wilson moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he wrote children’s plays for the Science Museum of Minnesota. He married a social worker named Judy Oliver, and soon began to see his playwriting efforts reap rewards: Jitney earned a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwright Center in St. Paul and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was accepted by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwright’s Conference. This was the turning point that launched Wilson into the spotlight. Chief among the outcomes of his acceptance at the conference was the opportunity to meet the dean of Yale Drama School, Lloyd Richards, who, having previously directed Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, became Wilson’s key artistic partner and directed many of his plays. So began Wilson’s ascent in theater and his unprecedented ten-play cycle of AfricanAmerican life. His influences included the blues and painter Romare Bearden, and his plays take place over a limited period of time. Almost all are set in and around Wilson’s hometown of Pittsburgh. Critics have compared Wilson to the greats of American theater, including ARTHUR MILLER and EUGENE O’NEILL. Ma Rainey, first produced at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1984, reached Broadway that fall. Inspired by the story of the real-life singer, Wilson’s play is set in 1927, when Rainey held on to her power and art by withstanding pressures to do otherwise. The following year, the play drew a Drama Critics’ Circle Awards as well as a Tony nomination for Best Play. The next year brought Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, again opening at Yale. In 1987, Fences arrived in New York, opening at the 46th Street Theatre and earning Wilson numerous awards, including the first of his
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two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Set in 1957, this is the story of a garbage man whose dreams of a baseball career were curtailed by his race as his son considers a football scholarship. Times are evolving, but Troy Maxson (played by James Earl Jones) can’t see that. Wilson’s plays continued to see performances at the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, Connecticut. The Piano Lesson opened at Yale in November 1987, again directed by Richards, after a public reading at the O’Neill conference. Set in 1936, the play focuses on a century-old piano owned by the Charles family, slave descendants, that represents the family’s conflict. One character sees it as a family heirloom and another, as a resource to be sold to purchase the Mississippi land where the ancestors had once been slaves. Originally, the piano had been purchased by the owners of the Charles family at the cost of two Charles family members. At that time, a Charles had carved into the piano both the faces of the two who had been sold, as well as other family icons. Ultimately, the story is about the present-day Charles family’s past heritage and its future as landowners. Again, Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play, in 1990. Meanwhile, Wilson’s personal life saw his second marriage end in divorce in 1990. He moved to Seattle. In 1994, he married Costanza Romera, a costume designer. The couple had two children. As the years unfolded, Wilson continued to chronicle the African-American experience, decade by decade (although not necessarily in chronological order): Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (setting: 1911), Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, and King Hedley II were all nominated for the Pulitzer. By 1991, Wilson had entered the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Wilson did not breeze through his career without controversy. In the mid- to late 1990s, he publicly argued on behalf of funding for a black American theater. Robert Brustein, founding director of the Yale Repertory and American Repertory theaters, who had delivered previous and unfavorable reviews of Wilson’s work, argued on behalf of theater as a whole and that Wilson had found success in mainstream theater. The two met in 1997 at Town Hall in New York in a debate moderated by Anna Deavere Smith. The final play of his epic vision of 20th century African-American life was unveiled, again, at the Yale Repertory Theatre. Radio Golf, set in the late 1990s, tells the tale of two professional go-getters, one of whom hopes to become his city’s first black mayor. In what must have been one of his last interviews, Wilson told his hometown Pittsburg Post-Gazette that he was glad he finished his cycle. Indeed, his ten-play epic depicting a cultural shift over a century is unprecedented. On Oct 2, 2005, Wilson died in Seattle, surrounded by his loved ones.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bryer, Jackson R. and Hartig, Mary C., Facts on File Companion to American Drama, 2003; Elkis, Marilyn, August Wilson, A Casebook, 1994, 2000; Kolin, Philip C., American Playwrights Since 1945: A Guide to Scholarship, Criticism, and Performance, 1989; Nelson, Emmanuel S., African American Dramatists: An A-to-Z Guide, 2004; Pereira, Kim, August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey, 1995; Shafer, Yvonne, August Wilson, a Research and Production Sourcebook, 1998. Augustwilson.net. www.post-gazette.com.
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Winfrey, Oprah Gail (January 9, 1954– ) Talk Show Host, Actress, Philanthropist he woman who would eventually become one of the world’s greatest philanthropists and the richest African-American female in history came from less than ideal beginnings. Oprah Gail Winfrey, born illegitimately on January 19, 1954, to impoverished parents in Kosciusko, Mississippi, molested at age nine and pregnant at age fourteen, could very easily have succumbed to the combination of destitution and lost opportunity. Instead, she grew to control a billion-dollar media empire, reaching 48 million homes in the United States every week with her eponymous venture, The Oprah Winfrey Show, also broadcast in a vast number of countries around the globe. Winfrey, the creator of Harpo Productions and Harpo Films has “through the power of media . . . created an unparalleled connection with people around the world.” Indeed, she has, in addition to her success with The Oprah Winfrey Show, launched a magazine, produced popular daytime talk shows such as Dr. Phil, and recently produced an XM satellite radio station. Her magazine, O, the Oprah Magazine, reaches a monthly circulation of 2.3 million readers. Her 1985 Oscar-winning performance in The Color Purple spawned a Broadway musical, which she also produced, and which opened in 2005 to positive reviews. Winfrey broke into the national spotlight in 1984 when her WLS-TV talk-show ratings trampled Chicago favorite Phil Donahue, the first daytime talk show on television and an industry powerhouse. The show is now well into its third-decade season. While Winfrey’s media success landed her Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list for three years in a row, it is her charitable work that has garnered her international attention. Her two main charitable organizations, The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation and Oprah’s Angel Network,
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have raised $40 million for education in South Africa and $50 million for international nonprofit charities, respectively. According to Business Week, Oprah has donated $303 million of her estimated $1.5 billion net worth to charity during her lifetime. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which opened its schoolroom doors in 2007, supplies 152 poor South African girls with free top-quality education. The impact of The Oprah Winfrey Show on American popular culture is considerable. Many memorable events on the show have seeped into legend, even by those who don’t watch it, such as Winfrey’s gift of a Pontiac G6 to every member of her audience, or actor Tom Cruise’s infamous couch-jumping interview. Winfrey has also been credited with turning the emphasis of daytime talk television away from obsession with personal tragedy and toward self-improvement, self-empowerment, and world events. Her impact on the literary world, dubbed “The Oprah Effect,” helped boost a sagging industry. Oprah’s Book Club, a regular feature on the show, instantly guarantees bestseller status for any book she recommends. The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard, one of the first books featured on her show, lasted 71 weeks on USA Today’s bestseller list. Winfrey’s blessings in the political sphere are formidable, as well. She has direct influence on the political process itself, through fundraising for Barack Obama, but the larger impact comes from her ability to expose world issues to many of her viewers who otherwise would remain unfazed. Racism, genocides in Rwanda and Sudan, and disaster relief are a few topics she regularly addresses. Oprah Winfrey has made a life and a career out of other people’s stories. But her own inspirational story makes her worthy of her being a guest on her own show. Her media em-
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pire, built from the ground up, her influence on millions of viewers, and her commitment to charity makes her an example for millions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Garson, Helen S., Oprah Winfrey: A Biography, 2004; Time 100 Persons of the Century, Time
Magazine, June 8, 1998; Westen, Robin, Oprah Winfrey: I Don’t Believe In Failure, 2005; Kantrowitz, Barbara, Peterson, Holly, and Wingert, Pat, Oprah Winfrey, Media Entrepreneur, 2005. www2.oprah.com
Wolfe, Thomas (October 3, 1900–September 15, 1938) Writer merican writer Thomas Wolfe is known for autobiographical novels composed of exalted, lyrical prose. WILLIAM FAULKNER once described Wolfe’s work as an attempt to “put all the experience of the human heart on the head of a pin.” In Wolfe’s novels (two completed during his life, two more published after his death) passion trumps structure, and emotion and impression are rendered in elegant, poetic description. Wolfe’s premature death, due to illness, cut his career short, and much of his work has been published posthumously. Wolfe was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the youngest of eight siblings. His mother was an ambitious real estate agent and his father was an enthusiastic drunkard; he later referred to both his parents with affection, and portrayed them with good humor. At the age of sixteen Wolfe went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was involved with literary magazines and the school newspaper. His interest came to rest in the theater, as he worked with the Carolina Playmakers. He started to publish short stories and poetry in 1917 and wanted to be a playwright. He graduated from Chapel Hill at age 20 and went on to study playwriting at Harvard University under Professor George Pierce Baker. He would later satirize his experience at Harvard in Of Time and the River.
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Unable to get his plays published, Wolfe began teaching English at New York University, where he worked intermittently from 1924 to 1930. In 1925 Wolfe traveled to Europe, thinking he would have more time and creative inspiration there than at his teaching post. On his return trip he met Aline Bernstein, the set designer for the New York Theater Guild. Bernstein was wealthy, married and almost 20 years Wolfe’s senior. The two began a love affair. She would later appear as the character “Esther Jack” in several of his late novels. (Bernstein also wrote of the love affair, in the books Three Blue Suits and The Journey Down.) Wolfe dedicated his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, to Bernstein. She played an invaluable role in Wolfe’s personal and professional development. Bernstein was Wolfe’s mentor and his muse, his emotional and his financial support. In Of Time and the River, Wolfe writes of the Aline Bernstein character: ‘After all the blind, tormented wanderings of youth, that woman would become his heart’s centre and the target of his life, the image of immortal one-ness that again collected him to one, and hurled the whole collected passion, power and might of his one life into the blazing certitude, the immortal governance and unity, of love.‘ The affair lasted seven years.
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Thomas Wolfe (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-87328)
Wolfe began writing Look Homeward, Angel in 1926 and worked on it throughout his trips to Europe. (He originally called it O, Lost.) The book is a mostly autobiographical coming-of-age story about Wolfe’s literary alter ego, a young boy named Eugene Gant who grows up in Asheville, North Carolina. The manuscript impressed Maxwell Perkins, the editor at Charles Scribner’s Sons famous for editing F. Scott Fitzgerald and ERNEST HEMINGWAY. Scribner’s published Look Homeward, Angel in 1929 to the shock and outrage of Wolfe’s hometown of Asheville. Most of the novel’s characters were recognizable citizens of Asheville who were furious at their unflattering portrayal. The city banned the book’s sale and Wolfe did not return until 1937. Outside of Asheville, however, the book was well received and successful with both critics and the public. Wolfe won a Guggenheim fellowship in 1930. He used the money to travel to Europe, away from his lover. He returned to New York
alone in 1931 and moved into a rented apartment in Brooklyn, mostly independent from Bernstein. He replaced the support of his lover with that of his editor. Perkins became a father figure for Wolfe, and encouraged the young writer as he finished his second book, Of Time and the River. The novel sees Eugene Gant, the hero of Look Homeward, Angel, as a young man attending Harvard and traveling Europe. The second book was even more successful than the first, though some critics questioned the lack of narrative structure and Wolfe’s reliance on his editor to shape the book. In response to these accusations, Wolfe switched publishing houses from Scribner’s to Harper’s in 1937 and began working with editor Edward Aswell. Wolfe’s last, unfinished work was an effort to move beyond his egocentric, autobiographical earlier work into more universal themes. He gave his hero a new name, George “Monk” Webber, and used him to explore theories of social criticism. Wolfe developed pneumonia while on a tour of national parks in the American West. His symptoms worsened and he was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the brain. He died on September 15, 1938. Before he died, Wolfe had given Aswell a manuscript for his next novel that was over four thousand pages long. To make the work more commercially viable, Aswell divided the massive tome into two novels, published posthumously: The Web and the Rock (1939) and You Can’t Go Home Again (1940), plus a collection of stories called The Hills Beyond (1941). Overall, Wolfe’s small body of work includes four novels, all of them autobiographical, and several short story collections and plays. Wolfe is remembered for a writing style that lifted his largely plotless, memoir-like novels into works of enthralling beauty and emotion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bruccoli, Matthew J. and Park Bucker, eds., To Loot My Life Clean: The Thomas Wolfe-Max-
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well Perkins Correspondence, 2000; Kennedy, Richard S., The Window of Memory: The Literary Career of Thomas Wolfe, 1968; Mitchell, Ted. Thomas Wolfe: An Illustrated Biography, 2007.
http://library.uncwil.edu/wolfe/wolfe.html. www.thomaswolfe.org. www.wolfememorial.com. www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/tw/bio.html. www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails. asp?cid=968095.
Wolfe, Tom (March 2, 1930– ) Journalist, Writer merican writer Tom Wolfe is known for combining journalistic research with literary style to create works that reveal entire social movements. Tom Wolfe was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He received his bachelor of arts degree in 1951 from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1957. Wolfe’s first career was as a newspaper reporter. This journalistic training would shape Wolfe’s style for the rest of his career. He started writing for the Springfield Union in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1956. Wolfe went on to spend ten years in the newspaper business. The highlight of his journalism career was a six-month stint in 1960 as the Washington Post’s Latin American correspondent. Wolfe won the Washington Guild’s foreign news prize for his coverage of Cuba during that time. Wolfe’s gradual career shift away from reporting started with his 1962 move to the New York Herald-Tribune. He began working for the Herald-Tribune’s Sunday supplement, which would become New York magazine. The longer, more in-depth feature pieces Wolfe wrote for the magazine mirrored the style of his books. Wolfe’s first book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, began as a magazine article. In the title piece, originally an assignment for Esquire
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magazine, Wolfe attended a “kustomized kar” show in California. The other episodes in the book describe similar encounters with the extravagance of 1960s counter-culture, all written with a reporter’s attention to detail. In 1968 Wolfe published two books simultaneously. The Pump House Gang, like Streamline Baby, portrays life in the 1960s. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the other book, recounts the origins of the hippie movement. The non-fiction book focuses on prominent counter-cultural figures like author KEN KESEY and Neal Cassady, of Beat Generation fame. Kesey and Cassady spearheaded a group called “The Merry Pranksters” who traveled America in a bus, taking drugs. Wolfe’s account describes not only his travels with them, but the beginning and creation of what would become the enormous and very important hippie movement. In his next book, Radical Chic & MauMauing the Flak Catchers (1970), Wolfe examined racial friction in the United States from the viewpoints of both the Black Panthers and the U.S. Government. Wolfe’s reputation as a social critic and literary figure was quickly growing. He next set his critical eye— and pen—to the art world for his 1975 book The Painted Word. Without questioning the art itself, Wolfe satirizes and sarcastically dissects the critical and commercial aspects of the art world. He followed this book closely
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with another, 1976’s Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine, a collection of Wolfe’s articles and shorter works. Wolfe had spent over six years working on his next project, The Right Stuff (1979). The book chronicles the history of the U.S. space program, starting with rocket experiments in the years immediately following World War II. The same men who started out flying test airplanes (they were the first to break the sound barrier) went on to become the country’s first astronauts. The bestselling book won Wolfe the American Book Award for nonfiction, the National Institute of Arts and Letters Harold Vursell Award for prose style, and the Columbia Journalism Award. It was also turned into a motion picture. In 1980 Wolfe published In Our Time, a collection of the writer’s illustrated articles that had been appearing monthly in Harper’s Magazine for the past three years. The next year saw From Bauhaus to Our House, an examination of the architecture world in the style of The Painted Word. In 1987 Wolfe published his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. (The book actually appeared in serial form in Rolling Stone magazine throughout 1984 and 1985.) Though Wolfe’s earlier books often read like novels— with characters, plotlines, and close attention to prose style—they were all “non-fiction novels.” The characters were all real people, and the dialogue and stories emerged from Wolfe’s interviews with and observations of the characters. Bonfire of the Vanities, however, was actually a novel. The book described the Yuppie generation of the 1980s, but fictionally. Wolfe later said Bonfire was conceived when he decided to write a novel with New York City as its central character. The book was wildly successful. It topped the New York Times bestseller list for two months, with over two million copies sold.
Tom Wolfe’s “non-fiction novels” or “literary journalism” made a statement about the writer’s opinion of contemporary literature, and where he thought the field should go. He made these views explicitly clear in 1989 when he published his essay “Stalking the Billion-footed Beast” in Harper’s Magazine. Wolfe argued that the new American novelist had to be just as much a journalist as a fiction writer. The essay, along with some of his later work, made Wolfe a polarizing figure in the literary world, angering prominent contemporaries like John Updike, NORMAN MAILER and John Irving. Wolfe’s most recent work includes A Man in Full (1998), an exploration of masculinity in the New South of Atlanta, Georgia; Hooking Up, a collection of stories and essays; and I Am Charlotte Simmons, an insider’s view of modern American college life. For this last book Wolfe actually returned to the campus of his alma mater Washington and Lee to speak with students, watch them live and follow them to parties. Tom Wolfe lives with his wife, Sheila, and their children Alexandra and Tommy. Wolfe has been credited for introducing the phrases “the right stuff,” “radical chic,” “the Me Decade,” and “good ol’ boy.” Wolfe is known as a chronicler of our changing times, describing social movements in the staunchly realistic novels of his own “literary journalism” style.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Scura, Dorothy, ed., Conversations with Tom Wolfe, 1990; Shomette, Doug, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe: (Critical Responses in Arts and Letters), 1992. www.nytimes.com/library/books/ 111198tom-wolfe-profile.html. www.tomwolfe.com/bio.
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Woolf, Virginia (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941) Novelist, Critic he English novelist, critic, and biographer Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf was a member of the Bloomsbury Group in London and developed her own style of stream-of-consciousness technique in her novels. Woolf’s work is considered an important part of the modernist movement of the early twentieth century and is still widely read today for the subtlety and beauty of its depiction of the inner life of her characters. Woolf was born Virginia Stephen in London. Her father, the prominent author and critic Sir Leslie Stephen, took charge of his children’s education. Virginia showed an early inclination toward writing, whereas her sister Vanessa showed promise in painting. Virginia suffered the first of her mental breakdowns after the death of her mother in 1895. In 1904, after the death of their father, the four Stephen children moved to the Bloomsbury district in London and became involved with an intellectual circle known as the Bloomsbury Group, formed around Thoby Stephen. Other members included the critic Clive Bell, who later married Vanessa Stephen, the writer Leonard Woolf, the biographer Lytton Strachey, the novelist E. M. FORSTER, and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Virginia also began to write for the Times Literary Supplement in 1905. In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, who took care of her through her recurrent episodes of mental instability and failed suicide attempts. The two established the Hogarth Press in 1917 and printed her works as well as those of others—notably T. S. ELIOT, MAXIM GORKY, and Sigmund Freud. Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915. Night and Day followed four years later, and Jacob’s Room was published in 1922. The first two works followed fairly conventional literary forms, but, beginning with Jacob’s Room, Woolf began to ex-
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periment with other writing techniques that would be able to capture the inner life and the essence of perception. Stream-of-consciousness technique, imagery, and metaphor played an increasingly prominent role in novels such as Mrs. Dalloway (1925), which gives in full detail the thoughts and impressions of Clarissa Dalloway as she interacts with others during a period of twelve hours, telling the whole story of her heroine’s past in the form of natural flashbacks. Using her own family as inspiration for the main characters in the semiautobiographical To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf critically examined the uppermiddle-class background in which she grew up. The passing of time is a prominent theme in Woolf’s later novels. The Waves (1931) uses stream-of-consciousness technique to describe the experiences of six individuals as time propels them through different stages of life. Glimpses of their consciousness are interspersed with descriptions of the repetitive ocean waves and the seashore. The events of Orlando (1928), a very different kind of work, humorous and satirical rather than subtle and lyrical, unfold over a period of more than 300 years in English history. Based in part on the life of Woolf’s friend and sometime lover, Vita Sackville-West, the novel explores the sexual identity of an individual who is not sure whether he/she is a man or a woman. Woolf wrote two final novels before her death in 1941, The Years (1937) and Between the Acts (1941). Her other works include biographies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog and of the art critic Roger Fry as well as two significant feminist essays on the difficulties faced by women writers, A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938). In 1941, Woolf drowned herself, depressed by the bombings of World War II and fearing a relapse into mental illness. After her death,
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Leonard Woolf wrote a five-part autobiography, the last volume of which was published in 1969.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bell, Quentin, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, 1972; Forster, E. M., Virginia Woolf, 1942; Kelley, Alice Van Buren, The Novels of Virginia Woolf: Fact and Vision, 1973.
Wright, Frank Lloyd (June 8, 1867–April 9, 1959) Architect rank Lloyd Wright was unarguably the most influential and prominent architect in the United States. The numerous stylistic changes, all based on what he termed “organic architecture,” he underwent through his long career represent a series of unique efforts to meld buildings, their surroundings, and the lifestyles of their inhabitants. Wright’s work still influences architecture around the world today. Wright was of Welsh descent, born Frank Lincoln Wright in Richland Center, Wisconsin. The family moved often while Wright was growing up, exposing him to different landscapes in Iowa, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. His father, William Russell Cary Wright, was a Baptist preacher. The younger Wright later rejected the fundamentalism of his upbr-
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Herbert F. Johnson, Jr., Wingspread, residence in Racine, Wisconsin, designed by Wright. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, LC-G612T-36133)
Frank Lloyd Wright (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-116659)
inging and embraced Unitarianism. His mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, was a schoolteacher. It was from her that he received a set of geometrically designed building blocks, called Froebel Gifts, that encouraged the future architect to compose his own miniature building designs as a child. He entered the University of WisconsinMadison in 1885, but he grew unhappy with the college of engineering and moved to Chicago to pursue architecture. His most important work there was for the firm Adler and Sullivan, run by architects Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. He served as chief assistant to both of them. Wright married his first wife, Catherine Tobin, in 1889. The couple settled in Oak Park, Illinois, where he built his first house with fi-
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nancial assistance from Sullivan. The site was also the location of his first studio. Still working for Adler and Sullivan, Wright in 1890 took on all of the firm’s residential design work. Unknown to his superiors, he began to accept his own clients on the side, the discovery of which led to his dismissal from the firm. He subsequently went into business for himself, still based out of Oak Park. Wright worked feverishly and designed dozens of houses there. The period of Wright’s work between 1900 and 1917 is marked by his residential “Prairie Houses,” or low buildings with sloping, spreading, and shallow roofs, complete with wide eaves and built from raw, unfinished materials. The interiors of Wright’s Prairie Houses were radical in design at the time, favoring open floor plans that contrasted sharply with the traditional box-type interiors of American homes during that period. His Prairie Houses derived from the American Arts and Crafts movement and used themed, repetitive designs in ornamental woodwork, glass, and other elements. Notable among the Prairie Houses are the Ward W. Willits house (1902–1903) in Highland Park, Illinois, and the Frederick G. Robie house (1908–1910) in Chicago. The Robie house showcases a living and dining area that forms a large, uninterrupted space with sizable fireplaces and built-in seating. In 1904, Wright finished the designs for a new administration building for the Larkin Soap Company, as well as homes for three of its executives, in Buffalo, New York. The innovative design for the administration building incorporated mechanical ventilation as well as metallic furniture and a unique blend of natural and artificial light. The same year, he designed a home for Edwin Cheney. Wright, known almost as much for his colorful personality as his architectural work, fell in love with Cheney’s wife Mamah and subsequently carried on a brazen affair with her. Neither of their spouses would grant them divorces, and in 1909 the pair eloped to Europe. The resulting scandal tempo-
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rarily damaged Wright’s architectural career in the United States. Wright and Cheney traveled widely around Europe, and in 1910 he visited Ernst Wasmuth’s publishing house in Berlin. Wasmuth’s firm published the two-volume Wasmuth Portfolio the same year, thus opening up Wright’s work to European architects and influencing an entire generation of them. After a brief stay in Italy, Wright returned to the United States, settling in a new home (which he called Taliesin) he built in Spring Green, Wisconsin, in 1911. The home was the scene of a tragic and brutal massacre in 1914. While Wright was away, a crazed servant set fire to the residential part of the home and murdered seven people with an axe. Among the dead were Mamah and her two children, along with a draftsman, a gardener, and a workman and his son. In 1913 and 1914, Wright kept himself busy designing the Midway Gardens in Chicago’s South Side. The Gardens consisted of a cluster of gathering spots built around an open court, accented by sculptures and large murals. In 1916, Wright began work on the design for the Imperial Hotel (1916–1922) in Tokyo, one of few major buildings to survive the Tokyo earthquake in 1923. The year 1923 brought further tragedy for Wright. His mother died, and having finally been granted a divorce, he married Miriam Noel, whom he had known since the year of Mamah’s murder. The marriage was doomed from the beginning, due in part to Noel’s morphine addiction, and nearly brought Wright to financial ruin. The following year, Wright met Olgivanna Lazovich, who eventually moved in with him at Taliesin. Their daughter Iovanna was born in 1925, and they enjoyed a long, happy relationship that lasted until his death. In 1923 and 1924, Wright used what is called the “textile block system” to design numerous houses around southern California. These homes, including the Aline Barnsdall house (1916–1920) in Los Angeles and the Mrs. George Madison Millard house (1923) in Pasadena, were constructed from precast,
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patterned concrete blocks. The Ennis House (1924) in Griffith Park belongs to this period of Wright’s work and remains a popular shooting sight for Hollywood filmmakers, though it is in need of repairs. In the 1920s, Wright designed the Graycliff estate for Isabelle and Darwin Martin on a bluff that overlooks Lake Erie south of Buffalo. The estate consists of a complex of three buildings, with cantilevered balconies and terraces. The largest of the buildings, the Isabelle R. Martin House, showcased ribbons of windows and a screen of windows that faced views of Lake Erie. Wright used limestone from the lake beach and red-stained roofs. The landscape was dotted with water elements such as a fountain, a miniature waterfall, and a pond. Princeton University hosted a series of lectures Wright delivered on architecture in 1930 that were published the following year as Modern Architecture. In 1932, Wright established the Taliesin Fellowship, providing student apprenticeships at the third version of his home (which had again been partially destroyed by fire, the second time by accident) in Wisconsin. He published an autobiography the same year. Wright conceived a complex vision of suburban development that was termed “Broadacre City,” which he expounded on in his book The Disappearing City (1932) and revealed in the form of a twelve-by-twelve foot model of his then futuristic community. He worked on the concept until his death. Fallingwater, perhaps Wright’s most famous private home, was built between 1935 and 1937 for Mr. and Mrs. Edgar. J. Kaufmann, Sr., at Bear Run, Pennsylvania. The house, so named because it was built near a stream with a waterfall flowing under the building, was deliberately set in natural surroundings and again employed Wright’s characteristic cantilevered balconies and terraces. Wright used limestone for vertical constructions and concrete for horizontal elements. Around this same time (1937–1938), he de-
signed a new winter home for himself, Taliesin West, near Scottsdale, Arizona. Wright first designed “Usonian” houses, or practical, geometric houses designed to provide affordable comfort for middle-class residents, and they influenced residential developers for years to come. The Usonian houses, exemplified in the Goetsch-Winckler House (1939) in Okemos, Michigan, showcased Wright’s preference for open floor plans and featured heated concrete foundation slabs and simplified construction techniques that allowed for quicker building. From 1938 to 1954, Wright designed numerous buildings for Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida. He also designed the Marin County Civic Center in San Raphael, California (1957–1966). The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City occupied much of his time between 1943 and 1959 and is his most famous public building. In his original vision, the building, a beige spiral on Fifth Avenue, was designed to allow visitors to ride an elevator to the top and proceed down a spiral walkway on foot through the exhibits. Wright’s architectural legacy is immense. Hundreds of the homes and buildings he designed still stand today. He influenced an entire generation of European and American architects, from WALTER GROPIUS and LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE in Europe to FRANK GEHRY in the United States. His vision touched the interiors of his buildings down to the smallest details, including furniture and carpet that he often customized himself.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Hart, Spencer, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1993; Farr, Finis, Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, 1961; Heinz, Thomas A., Frank Lloyd Wright, 1982; Huxtable, Ada Louise, Frank Lloyd Wright, 2004; Levine, Neil, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, 1996; Scully, Vincent Joseph, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1960; Secrest, Meryle, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1992; Storrer, William Allin, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, 2002; Storrer, William Allin, The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion, 2006;
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Wright, Frank Lloyd, An Autobiography, 1932; Wright, Olgivanna Lloyd, Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life, His Work, His Words, 1966.
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www.franklloydwright.org. http://www.pbs.org/flw/.
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Yeats, William Butler (June 13, 1865–January 18, 1939) Poet, Playwright he poet and playwright William Butler Yeats was at the forefront of the literary aspect of the Irish Renaissance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rooted in mysticism, occult philosophy, and Irish tradition, his poetry and plays earned him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923, “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expresssion to the spirit of a whole nation.” Only T. S. ELIOT can challenge him for the place of the most important poet writing in English in the twentieth century, and many would put Yeats first, partly because his work is accessible to a wide audience in a way Eliot’s is not. Some of his poems are still sung in Ireland as folk
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William Butler Yeats (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-00731)
songs, and his poems are favorites in the workshops of the American Men’s Movement. As Robert Bly, the poet who often leads those workshops, puts it, “his rhetoric penetrates to the bone.” Yeats was the son of the painter John Butler Yeats and Susan Pollexfen, both of Protestant backgrounds. As a child he divided his time between the family’s residence in London and relatives in County Sligo, Ireland. The latter setting provided much of the subject matter for his later work. The family returned to Dublin in 1880, and in 1883 Yeats began attending Dublin’s Metropolitan School of Art. Two significant forces shaped Yeats’s work throughout his life. The first was a deep interest in the supernatural, various mystical traditions, alchemy, and the occult that began in his early twenties. These interests led to his involvement with the London branch of the Theosophical Society, an international occult society led by Helena P. Blavatsky, and later the Order of the Golden Dawn. An equally prominent influence on his work was his devotion to Ireland’s culture, history, and nationalistic aspirations. Among Yeats’s first published writings were two poems in the Dublin University Review in 1885. When his family moved back to London in 1887, he established ties with other writers such as W. E. Henley and ARTHUR SYMONS. His early poems, such as “The Stolen Child” (1889) and “The Wanderings of Oisin” (1889), were in the Symbolist tradition, and far more ethereal and mystical than his later work. In “The Stolen Child,” the fairies lure a child away from the human world, “full of weeping,” to their own world of dancing all night beneath the moon. Just so Yeats seemed to long to leave the sadness and complexity of the modern world behind in his early work. To take one more example, one of his most
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loved poems from these early works, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” speaks of his desire to go “And live alone in a bee-loud glade” where he will find peace. “I will arise and go now,” he says, “for always night and day / I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore . . .” An interest in the Celtic pagan traditions of Ireland also shaped many of these early poems, as did the poetry and ideas of the visionary William Blake (1757–1827). In one important early poem shaped by the pagan tradition, “The Song of the Wandering Aengus,” Yeats speaks in the person of the Celtic god of love, who according to the myth wandered for years in search of a beautiful woman who had appeared to him and vanished. The last stanza gave the American writer Eudora Welty the title of one of her important collections of short stories, The Golden Apples: Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.
For many years, Yeats found a focus for his longings in his hopeless love for the Irish nationalist and renowned beauty Maud Gonne, who repeatedly turned down his proposals of marriage. She became a source of inspiration for some of his best early poetry and plays. And later too, even as he began to give up hope of winning her, his love for her inspired poems such as “No Second Troy” (1910), which begins, “Why should I blame her that she filled my days / With misery,” and ends with the famous lines, “Why, what could she have done, being what she is? / Was there another Troy for her to burn?” Yeats also gained the friendship of Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, another Irish nationalist, with whom in 1899 he helped found the Irish Literary Theatre, which became the Abbey Theatre in 1904. The theater promoted
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the work of playwrights who wrote about the traditions of Ireland and served as the center of the revival of drama in the Irish Renaissance. It produced many of Yeats own plays, most of which were written either partly or wholly in verse. Gonne played the lead role in a production of his Kathleen ni Houlihan (1902). After the turn of the century, Yeats’s poetry began to take on a more direct and realistic tone, as he turned from an exclusive fascination with, as he put it, “impersonal beauty,” to make his goal the bringing of “the normal, passionate, reasoning self” into poetry. Collections from this period include In the Seven Woods (1903) and Responsibilities: Poems and a Play (1914). In 1913, while Yeats worked with the American poet EZRA POUND, who encouraged him towards a more modern style, he was exposed to No drama, a traditional form of Japanese drama dating to the 1300s. The use of masks and elaborate costumes in No drama influenced subsequent plays such as At the Hawk’s Well (1916) and Four Plays for Dancers (1921). In 1917, after Gonne had refused yet another marriage proposal, Yeats married Georgie Hyde-Lees, whose interest in automatic writing and speaking influenced her husband’s work. The 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin, a failed nationalist revolt against England, formed the symbolic base for poems such as “Easter 1916” (1916) and “The Rose Tree” (1917). From 1922 to 1928, Yeats was a member of the Senate in the new Irish Free State. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923. In 1925, Yeats combined elements of philosophy, the occult, and history to explain the vision of history as ever recurring cycles of time that he claimed informed his writings, embodying that explanation in his elaborate prose work, A Vision, based, according to Yeats, on his wife’s automatic writing. The poetry of Yeats’s last years is considered by many to be his best. The Tower (1928) used as one of its images the tower of a Norman castle Yeats purchased in 1917 and restored, as did The Winding Stair (1933). He
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devoted his energy to refining form and technique, but he was also able to maintain the inspiration that fueled his earlier work, partly by going even deeper into his own humanity. Even in his highest moments, his vision is of eternity integrated into time, as in the last stanza of “Among School Children” (1928), especially the often-quoted last lines: “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, / How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Later still, in “The Circus Animal’s Desertion” (1939), Yeats speaks of no longer being able to find in the myths and dreams of Ireland a “ladder” to a higher realm, and concludes, Now that my ladder’s gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
Death also emerged as a prominent theme in the later works, such as the play Purgatory (1939). “Under Ben Bulben” printed last in Last Poems, 1936–1939, gives Yeats’s last words on the cycles ot time and the duties of
Irish poets (“Irish poets, learn your trade, / Sing whatever is well made . . .”), and ends with his directions for the epitaph to be carved on his tombstone: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!
Other later works include Autobiographies: Reveries over Childhood and Youth and the Trembling of the Veil (1927) and Last Poems and Two Plays (1939). Yeats’s greatness was recognized at his death by W. H. AUDEN in one of Auden’s bestknown poems, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” (February 1939).
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bloom, Harold, Yeats, 1970; Ellmann, Richard, Yeats: The Man and the Masks, 1978, 3d. ed.; Jeffares, A. Norman, W. B. Yeats, Man and Poet, 1996, 3d ed.; Macrae, Alasdair D. F., W. B. Yeats: A Literary Life, 1995.
Yevtushenko, Yevgeny (July 18, 1933– ) Poet, Novelist, Playwright, Actor, Teacher, Photographer he Russian poet Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko belongs to the postStalin literary generation that criticized narrow artistic standards imposed on Soviet writers. His most famous poem, Babi Yar, memorializes Ukrainian Jews who died at the hands of Nazis in Kiev during World War II. Yevtushenko was born at Zima in Siberia into a family of Ukrainian and Latvian descent. His father, an avid reader, stimulated his intellectual interest when he was a young boy. At age 11 he moved to Moscow. In spite of his interest in reading, he was a poor and
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rebellious student. After working on geological expeditions, Yevtushenko began to write poetry over his mother’s objections. His first published collection of poetry, The Prospectors of the Future (1952), gained him entrance to the Maxim Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow and the Soviet Writers’ Union. As a young poet Yevtushenko was outspoken in his opposition to the official literary demands associated with Socialist Realism. Although critical of Stalinism, he did not oppose Communism. Soviet authorities tolerated such criticism from Yevtushenko and other poets during the anti-Stalin backlash under
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Nikita Khrushchev. Opposition to both nationalism and anti-Semitism appear as frequent themes in Yevtushenko’s work, which, in general, tends to focus on external political forces and events rather than personal issues. Zima Junction (1956), Yevtushenko’s first major poem, is set in his home town and examines confusion in the aftermath of Stalin’s death. Stalin’s Heirs (1956) portrayed the hypnotic dictator as somehow not quite dead and criticized his political heirs. Babi Yar (1961) laments the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews in Kiev during World War II and criticizes both their Nazi executors and Ukrainians who tacitly approved of the massacres. The Soviet composer DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH used the poem in his Thirteenth Symphony. Zima Junction, Babi Yar, and A Precocious Autobiography (1963) all earned Yevtushenko official condemnation from Soviet critics. With the publication of Bratsk Station (1966), a collection of poems whose dominant symbol is a Siberian power station, however, he found himself back in official favor. His poem Flowers and Bullets
(1970) was dedicated to a student who lost her life when soldiers fired at protesters at Kent State University in Ohio. In his later life Yevtushenko has continued to write poetry (forty-two volumes to date), but he has also experimented with other creative areas. His novels include Wild Berries (1982) and Don’t Die before You’re Dead (1991), an often satirical story based on the attempted coup by Soviet hardliners in 1991. Kindergarten (1984), a film about children in Russia during the German invasion of World War II, marked his directorial debut. His other works include the play Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty (performed in Moscow in 1972), the novella Ardabiola (1984), and a collection of photographs, Invisible Threads (1981). Yevtushenko served in the Soviet Parliament from 1988 to 1991. He teaches poetry in Russia and in Oklahoma.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, A Precocious Autobiography, 1963.
Young, Neil (November 12, 1945– ) Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist ince his first recording in the late 1960s, the Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young has built up a rich body of work both as a solo artist and a member of the popular 1960s bands Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Over the years, he has proved himself equally at home with writing pensive, folk-inspired acoustic songs and hard-driving, grunge-style music backed by his longtime band Crazy Horse. Young remains a prolific songwriter and stage performer, having never taken a significant break from recording since he started. What-
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ever style he plays in, he is known for honest, heartfelt songwriting ranging from introspective observations to politically charged criticism that flow from strong convictions. Young is also a well-respected guitarist, and his distinctive high-pitched, nasally voice is instantly recognizable. Young was born Neil Percival Young in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His father, Scott Young, was a sportswriter and novelist, and his mother, Rassy Ragland, was a sports journalist. Young spent his early childhood in Omemee, a small town in southern Ontario.
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When he was six, he suffered from polio, which left him permanently weakened on his left side. Later on, the family moved a number of times, following his father’s journalism career. His parents divorced when he was twelve, after which he moved with his mother back to her native Winnipeg, Manitoba. He enrolled at Earl Grey Junior High School and there formed his first band, The Jades. He also met bassist Ken Koblun, who would later join his band The Squires. Young next attended Kelvin High School in Winnipeg, and during his time there he played in a number of rock bands. The Squires was his first major band, and they had a local hit entitled “The Sultan.” Young subsequently dropped out of high school and continued to pursue his music career. In Thunder Bay, in western Ontario, he met future Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young guitarist Stephen Stills (1945– ). In 1965, he toured Canada as a solo performer. The following year, he joined the ill-fated Mynah Birds, led by funk rocker Rick James (1948–2004). Set to record an album for Motown, the band broke up due to a shady manager and James’s arrest for draft evasion before they could finish it. Following James’s arrest, Young and bassist Bruce Palmer (1946–2004) moved to Los Angeles. With Stills, drummer Dewey Martin (1940– ), and guitarist Richie Furay (1944– ), they formed Buffalo Springfield. By 1967, the group had recorded their first album, Buffalo Springfield. The album featured Stills’s “For What It’s Worth,” which became a hit. The group would, however, proved to be shortlived. They released Buffalo Springfield Again later in 1967, but Palmer was arrested for marijuana possession and deported to Canada, an event that exacerbated tensions already brewing within the band. Three of the album’s tracks were actually Young’s solo recordings, including “Mr. Soul” and “Broken Arrow.” The band split up in May 1968 but was forced to record another album under the terms of their contract, and Last Time Around, consisting mainly of songs the band
had recorded earlier, was released later that year. When Buffalo Springfield disbanded, Young signed as a solo artist with Reprise Records. Elliot Roberts, who also managed his fellow Canadian singer-songwriter JONI MITCHELL, became his manager. His first solo record, Neil Young, was released late in 1968 and included his song “The Loner.” His next album debuted the band members who became Crazy Horse—guitarist Danny Whitten (1943–1972), bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina. Young has consistently turned to Crazy Horse for decades since then when he records his distortion-fueled, raucous electric music. Their first album together, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), featured Young’s well-known classics “Cinnamon Girl,” “Down By the River,” and “Cowgirl in the Sand.” Young soon rejoined Stills in his band Crosby, Stills, and Nash, which featured Stills on guitars and vocals, David Crosby (1941– ) on guitars and vocals, and the British-born singer-songwriter Graham Nash (1942) on vocals. Crosby, Stills, and Nash was a considerably more folk-oriented band that provided a stark contrast to his work with Crazy Horse, and throughout his career Young has continued to record both types of music. With the addition of Young, the group became known as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (often referred to as CSNY) and debuted in Chicago in 1969. They performed at the Woodstock Festival, though Young did not play in the acoustic set and refused to allow himself to be filmed during the electric set. They released their first album, De´ja` Vu, in 1970, from which Nash’s famous “Teach Your Children,” “Woodstock” (a tune written by JONI MITCHELL), and Young’s classic “Helpless” came. So Far (1971), a compilation album with a cover by Mitchell, contained their famous Young-penned song “Ohio” and featured him prominently on vocals. The song was written in response to the Ohio National Guard’s massacre of anti-Vietnam War protestors and on-
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lookers to the protests at Kent State University in Northwestern Ohio in 1970, during which four students died and nine others were injured. Young continued to record solo material and in 1970 released After the Gold Rush. The title track, along with “Southern Man,” which related his perception of racist attitudes in the American South, remain among the most remembered of his songs. The latter angered the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, who retorted in their song “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Well I hope Neil Young will remember, a southern man don’t need him around anyhow.” Young soon embarked on a solo tour and later recorded the successful, country-tinged Harvest (1972), which featured his classics “Heart of Gold” and “The Needle and the Damage Done.” The latter song was inspired by Whitten’s death from a heroin overdose shortly after he was fired from the band in 1972. Young never fell into the drug-abuse trap that took the lives of many other famous musicians whose careers blossomed in the 1960s, and “The Needle and the Damage Done” is a poignant lament for the lives lost to drug addiction: “I’ve seen the needle and the damage done A little part of it in everyone But every junkie’s like a settin’ sun. ”
Young recorded the album Time Fades Away (1973) following Whitten’s death, and to this day it remains one of his least-known works. It was, however, the first in his “Ditch Trilogy,” which also included On the Beach (1974) and Tonight’s the Night (1975). Later that year, he formed The Santa Monica Flyers with guitarist Nils Lofgren (1951– ), who would later become a longtime member of BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S E Street Band. Tonight’s the Night was recorded in the aftermath of the death of his roadie Bruce Berry, who also died of a drug overdose. Its raw and bleak aura prompted record company executives to delay its release, and it was actually recorded prior to On the Beach. In 1975,
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Young returned to a project with Crazy Horse, which had replaced Whitten with Frank “Poncho” Sampedro (1949– ) on guitars. The album, entitled Zuma (1975), featured such noteworthy songs as “Cortez the Killer,” a critical account of the Spanish conquistador Herna´n Corte´s’s (1485–1547) conquest of Mexico, the introspective “Barstool Blues,” and “Through My Sails,” recorded with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. In 1976, Young and Stills recorded Long May You Run as the Stills-Young Band, and the same year, Young joined many other famous musicians who performed in The Band’s The Last Waltz concert (see MARTIN SCORSESE). American Stars ’N Bars, again with Crazy Horse, followed in 1977. That year also saw the release of Decade, a popular twodisc retrospective spanning all aspects of his music up to that point. Comes a Time (1978) featured both the singer Nicolette Larson (1952–1997) and Crazy Horse. Young’s next project was the lengthy Rust Never Sleeps tour, a combined acoustic and electric live show. Two albums emerged from the road show, both recorded with Crazy Horse— Rust Never Sleeps (1979) and Live Rust (1979). Out of the former came “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) and its counterpart “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black), an homage to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten (1956– ), as well as live performances of “Pocohontas,” “Powderfinger,” and “Welfare Mothers.” Young directed a film version of the concerts entitled Rust Never Sleeps (1979) under the name Bernard Shakey, a pseudonym he would use in other directorial efforts. Young started off the 1980s with his folk album Hawks & Doves (1980), Re-ac-tor (1981) with Crazy Horse, the musically experimental Trans (1982), and Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983). With Old Ways (1985), he returned to country music, and Landing on Water followed in 1986. He again collaborated with Crazy Horse on Life (1987). After signing with Warner Brothers, Young and a cast of musicians he dubbed “The Bluenotes” released the blues-tinged This
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Note’s For You (1988), with the title song deriding artists’ choices to allow corporate use of their music: “Ain’t singin’ for Pepsi Ain’t singin’ for Coke I don’t sing for nobody Makes me look like a joke . . .”
The same year, he recorded the CSNY reunion album American Dream. In 1989, Young released the politically charged, up-tempo album Freedom. “Rockin’ In the Free World” from that effort remains one of his most famous songs from the 1980s and decries economic, political, environmental, and social conditions in the United States, with potshots aimed at President George H. W. Bush. In 1990, Young recorded one of his most rowdy albums to date, Ragged Glory, with Crazy Horse. He followed with a distortion and feedback-fueled tour that produced the double live album Weld (1991), which was originally released with a third CD entitled Arc, a thirty-five minute, continuous stream of feedback and distortion. This period in Young’s career coincided with the rise of Seattle grunge bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, which owed much of their sound to his work with Crazy Horse. With Harvest Moon (1992), considered a sort of sequel to Harvest, Young again returned to introspective acoustic music flavored with the spirit of the American Southwest. He returned to another project with Crazy Horse and in 1994 released Sleeps With Angels (1994). The album’s title track was inspired by the suicide of Nirvana’s lead singer Kurt Cobain (1967–1994), who shot himself in the head in 1994. Young subsequently toured with Pearl Jam, who backed him on his 1995 release Mirror Ball. Broken Arrow (1996) and both an album and a documentary entitled Year of the Horse (1997) were collaborations with Crazy Horse, the latter following an extensive tour. A CSNY reunion album entitled Looking Forward was released in 1999. Young’s first album of the new millennium was the low-key Silver and Gold (2000). Are
You Passionate? (2002) was more up-tempo. In 2003, Young released an experimental concept album entitled Greendale (2003) with Talbot and Molina. The album recounts the story of an extended family in a small town called Greendale. Young recorded an accompanying video of it and took the act on the road. During the recording of Prairie Wind (2005), Young suffered a brain aneurysm. He had written the majority of its songs beforehand but finished off the record after his recovery. Returning to his often pointed political commentary, Young released Living with War (2006), an album of protest songs against America’s involvement in Iraq and President Bush. His latest album of new material, Chrome Dreams II, is slated for release in October 2007. Young has long contributed to charity and benefit concerts. He performed at Live Aid in 1985, which raised money for African famine relief. He was also a founding member—with American rocker John Mellencamp (1951– ) and American country singer Willie Nelson (1933– )—of the annual Farm Aid concerts begun in 1985 and designed to raise money for American farmers. Young and his wife, who have disabled children, host the annual Bridge School Concerts in Mountain View, California, to raise money for the advancement of technology to assist disabled children. Young was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 as a solo performer and in 1997 as a member of Buffalo Springfield. He has also received honorary doctorates. Young currently resides on his large ranch, “Broken Arrow,” in Woodside, California, and his aggressive recording and touring schedule shows no signs of slowing. Reprise records plans to release the first volume of The Archives, a long-planned, multivolume retrospective of Young’s music, in 2008.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Downing, David, A Dreamer of Pictures: Neil Young, the Man and His Music, 1995; Einarson, John, Neil Young: Don’t Be Denied, 1993; Heatley, Michael, and Young, Neil, Neil Young: In
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His Own Words, 1997; McDonough, Jimmy, Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography, 2002; Williams, Paul, Neil Young: Love to Burn—Thirty Years of Speaking Out, 1966–1996, 1998; www.neilyoung.com.
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Zangwill, Israel (February 14, 1864–August 1, 1926) Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Translator n his mature years, Israel Zangwill embraced a vision of a united brotherhood of humanity blind to race, sex, and religion, a theme that dominates many of his plays. The other major focus of Zangwill’s work was his portrayal of Jewish life in England, most evident in his novels. Zangwill also devoted much of his energy to the activities of the Jewish Territorial Organization, which sought to establish a Jewish homeland and was flexible in its location. Zangwill was born to a Polish mother and a Latvian father in the Whitechapel ghetto in London. His family moved to Bristol when he was young, and he attended school there before they returned to Whitechapel in 1872. Zangwill studied at the Jews’ Free School, where he eventually became a teacher and began to write. He later attended the University of London, earning his degree in 1884.
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Israel Zangwill (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-33436)
His first writing success came in 1882, when he won an award for his story “Professor Grimmer.” In the 1880s and early 1890s, he edited and contributed to a variety of publications, including The Jewish Standard, the humor journal Ariel, Purim, and the Jewish Quarterly Review. His first novel The Premier and the Painter, was written with Louis Cowen and published in 1888. With The Bachelor’s Club (1891), Zangwill achieved his first success as a novelist. The story, narrated by Paul Pry, is comprised of the adventures of the members of a bachelor’s club, each of whom fails to live up to the club’s rule not to marry. The Big Bow Mystery followed in 1891. Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People (1892), one of Zangwill’s major early works, presents a detailed portrait of London Jews living in the Whitechapel ghetto. Through a multitude of characters, Zangwill examines generational conflicts, differences in adherence to traditions and religious beliefs, and the struggle of Jews to succeed amidst these forces. Another novel on Jewish themes, the comic The King of Schnorrers followed in 1894. Its protagonist, Manasseh Bueno Barzillai Azevedo da Costa, is an expert in the art of schnorring, or begging, and by the sheer force of his charcter is able to establish his ascendancy over a successful businessman. The Master (1895), about the development of London artist Matthew Stang, turned away from the Jewish setting, as did The Mantle of Elijah (1900). The latter addresses political corruption in England in the character of Bob Broser. Broser’s wife, Allegra Marshmont, was attracted to her husband’s idealism. Broser, a radical and a pacifist, compromises his ideals in pursuit of political power. Zangwill also wrote several collections of short stories, including The Grey Wig: Stories and Novel-
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ettes (1903); Ghetto Tragedies (1893); and Ghetto Comedies (1907). In 1895, Zangwill met Theodor Herzl and for a time became active in the Zionist movement. However, Zangwill rejected the notion that Palestine was the only acceptable Jewish homeland. He broke with the movement to form the Jewish Territorial Organization, which sought to establish a Jewish homeland in other locations. In 1903, Zangwill married the author and feminist Elizabeth Ayrton. Around the turn of the century, Zangwill embarked on the second phase of his writing career, primarily producing plays instead of novels. The Melting Pot (1898), a play in four acts, addresses racial and religious discord. The Jewish David Quixano, who was orphaned in a pogrom in Russia and has since moved to the United States, falls in love with Vera Revendal, of Russian Christian background. Both David and Vera are dismayed to learn that Vera’s father was responsible for the murder of David’s family in the pogrom. The two must overcome their prejudices and resentment for their relationship to succeed. Merely Mary Ann (1903) was one of Zangwill’s first successes in the theater. In The Next Religion (1912), banned in England, the main character, the Anglican minister Stephen Trame, envisions a new religion based on the progress of science and an impersonal God whom human beings can only come to know as they progress. Trame’s beliefs plunge his family into poverty and he at first wins few converts. However, support money from the wealthy munitions manufacturer Thomas MacFadden helps spread the religion, which develops an organized structure with all of the trappings Trame rejected in the first place.
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The comedy Too Much Money (produced 1918; published 1924) is a satire on the English upper class. Annabel Broadley, wife of the extraordinarily wealthy Thomas Broadley, has taken to giving a lot of money to a painter with whose work she is fascinated. Her husband tries to stop her obsession by pretending to have lost his money. When they move to an apartment and ostensibly live in poverty, Annabel surprises everyone by earning money on the stock market. From then on she is obsessed with the stock market and earns a fortune, only to find out that her husband lied to her about losing his money. The greedy Annabel is not upset, however; she sees the extra money as an opportunity to earn more on the market. Zangwill’s other plays include The Moment of Death (1900); The Revolted Daughter (1901), a comedy; Jinny the Carrier (1905), which formed the basis for his 1919 novel of the same title; Nurse Marjorie (1906); The War God (1911), a play in blank verse; Plaster Saints (1914), an exploration of religious hypocrisy; The Cockpit (1921); and We Moderns (1924). His other writings include many essays on politics, women’s rights, people, and other subjects; these are collected in Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898), The War for the World (1916), and other works. Zangwill also translated Hebrew poetry and compiled a volume of his own verse, Blind Children (1903). He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1926 and died the same year.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Elsie Bonita, Israel Zangwill, 1971; Udelson, Joseph H., Dreamer of the Ghetto: The Life and Works of Israel Zangwill, 1990.
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Zeffirelli, Franco (February 12, 1923– ) Director, Producer, Designer sort of “jack of all trades” in the theater and cinema, Franco Zeffirelli has acted in, directed, and designed sets for both the stage and screen. He is particularly noted for his lavish opera productions in both arenas. His major films include several Shakespearean dramas, operas, and the television epic Jesus of Nazareth. Zeffirelli was born Gianfranco Corsi in Florence. As the offspring of an adulterous affair—both of his parents were married to others—he was forced to take an assumed surname. His mother intended to use “Zeffiretti” from a Mozart aria, but the name was misspelled “Zeffirelli” on the register. Because of the scandalous circumstances of his birth, Zefferelli lived first with a peasant family and then with various relations. A rebellious child but a good student, he was sent to a Catholic school and took private English lessons on the side.
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When he was a child Zeffirelli’s aunt took him to the Florence Opera House and to the cinema, both of which made deep impressions. Zeffirelli admired the set designs at the opera house and began to dream of making his own. He was eventually sent to the University of Florence, where he studied architecture and delved into the school’s theater culture. The German occupation of Italy during World War II forced Zeffirelli to suspend his studies. During the war he joined the partisans who were opposing the Nazis and, having learned English, interpreted for the Scots Guard. When the war ended Zeffirelli moved to Rome to pursue a career in the theater. In 1946 he began working for the Neorealist director LUCHINO VISCONTI. Before he directed he appeared in acting roles—his first came in 1947 with Luigi Zampa’s L’onorevole Angelina (The Honorable Angelina).
Franco Zeffirelli (쑖 Lewis Morley/ArenaPal / Topham / The Image Works)
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Zeffirelli worked with Visconti on many of the latter’s films, including La terra trema (1948; The Earth Trembles). However, he soon began to direct his own plays and operas as well as to focus his energies on stage design. He designed his first stage set in 1949— for the European premiere of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Visconti. In the 1950s and 1960s he was particularly known for his opera productions, including Gioacchino Rossini’s L’Italiana for La Scala in Milan (1952–1953), La traviata (1958), Lucia di Lammermoor (1959), La Bohe`me (1963), and La lupa (1965). (He repeated La Bohe`me in 1981.) Zeffirelli’s biggest success as a director came with a 1960 production of Romeo and Juliet at London’s Old Vic Theatre. Zeffirelli also began to direct his own films; he is especially noted for his Shakespearean and opera films. His first film, Camping, was released in 1957. He scored major successes with The Taming of the Shrew (1967; with RICHARD BURTON and Elizabeth Taylor) and
Romeo and Juliet (1968), which was nominated for an Academy Award. Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973), a sympathetic portrayal of the life of St. Francis of Assisi, was less well received. Endless Love appeared in 1981, along with the opera film I Pagliacci. La traviata (1982) and Otello (1986), both starring PLA´ CIDO DOMINGO, rank among his bestknown opera films. On stage and on the screen, Zeffirelli’s productions are known for their elaborate design and spectacle. His later films include Hamlet (1990; starring Mel Gibson), Jane Eyre (1996), Tea with Mussolini (1998), and Callas Forever (2002). In 1977 Zeffirelli finished his epic television series Jesus of Nazareth, starring LAURENCE OLIVIER as Nicodemus, Peter Ustinov as Herod, and Michael York as John the Baptist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Zeffirelli, Franco, Zeffirelli: The Autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli, 1986.
Zukerman, Pinchas (July 16, 1948– ) Violinist, Violist, Conductor, Teacher he Israeli-born violin and viola virtuoso Pinchas Zukerman is best known for his individual performances and his work with chamber orchestras. Although based in the United States, he has appeared and toured with many of the world’s major orchestras. Zukerman also conducts and was an early advocate of distance teaching through videoconferencing. Zukerman was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. He began playing music at a young age, receiving his first instruction from his father on the recorder, the clarinet, and the violin. When he
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was eight he entered the Tel Aviv Academy of Music, and he studied under Ilona Feher (whom he later honored with the Ilona Feher Music Center in Holon, Israel). In 1962, with the sponsorship of the Ukrainian-American violinist ISAAC STERN, Zukerman traveled to New York to study at the Juilliard School under Ivan Galamian. In 1967 Zukerman won the Levintritt Memorial Competition (which his close friend and frequent coperformer Itzhak Perlman had won three years before). Two years later came his New York debut as a solo perform-
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er, with the New York Philharmonic. In 1970 Zukerman made his conducting debut with the English Chamber Orchestra, marking the beginning of his long association with that group. Since the 1970s Zukerman has performed with and conducted many of the major orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Israel, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, and the London Symphony. From 1980 to 1987 he served as musical director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota. In 1998 he was made Music Director at the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Canada, and the following year he was appointed Artist in Residence at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. In 2005 and 2006, he both toured with Perlman and played with many international orchestras. As a performer on both the violin and the viola, Zukerman has appeared and recorded with many world-renowned musicians, including the pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, Perlman, Daniel Barenboim, and Jacqueline du Pre´. He has performed more than five hun-
dred concerts with the composer and pianist Marc Neikrug. The numerous awards and honors he has received include Grammy awards for Best Chamber Performance (1980) and Best Classical Performance, Instrumental Soloist without Orchestra (1981), an honorary doctorate from Brown University, and a Medal of Arts (1983) presented to him by President Ronald Reagan. A pioneer in musical instruction through videoconferencing, Zukerman founded to this end MasterVision International and heads the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music. At the latter he was the primary force behind the implementation of a distance learning program that links students from around the world and enables him to teach while he tours. While undergoing instruction from Zukerman, a student sees two monitors, one showing Zukerman and one showing the student. BIBLIOGRAPHY Zukerman, Pinchas, and Friesen, Eric, The Concerto According to Pinchas, 2006.
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Places to Visit
Alvar Aalto Places to Visit Alvar Aalto Museum Alvar Aallon katu 7 Box 461, 40101 Jyväskylä, Finland Open Tue-Sun 11 a.m.-6 p.m. tel. +358 14 - 624 809 www.alvaraalto.fi Email:
[email protected] Exhibitions, design seminars, preservation, archive materials, and research library. Everett Moore Dormitory Massachusetts Institute of Technology 362 Memorial Dr. Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel: 617-253-1000 Books, correspondence, and other documents relating to Aalto and to Baker House are available for research in several of the MIT Libraries, including the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
ARCHITECT Mon-Thurs 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Fri : 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Sat : 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Sun: 1:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. www.mtangel.edu
Further Reading Profile: Time Magazine, October 5, 1955 (available to read online) Alvar Aalto: The Early Years, by Goran Schildt Rizzoli, New York, 1984 Alvar Aalto: The Complete Catalogue of Architecture, Design and Art, by Goran Schildt Rizzoli, New York, 1994
Mount Angel Abbey Library One Abbey Drive St. Benedict, Oregon 97373 Tel. 503-845-3303
Finnish Pavilion, 1939 New York World’s Fair, designed by Aalto. Ezra Stoller © Esto.
Michelangelo Antonioni Places to Visit Lapari Islands Sicily The setting for Antonioni’s 1960 film “L’Avventura.” Zabriskie Point Death Valley National Park Death Valley, CA 92328 Scenes from Antonioni’s films. San Domenico Palace Hotel Piazza San Domenico 5 Taormina 98039, Italy Tel: +39 0942 61 31 11 Scenes from Antonioni’s films.
DIRECTOR/PRODUCER Blow-Up, starring Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Warner Home Video DVD, 2004
Web www.monicavitti.com
Further Reading Obituary: Michelangelo Antonioni, by Penelope Houston, The Guardian, July 31, 2007 The Films of Michelangelo Antonioni, by Peter Brunette, Cambridge Film Classics, Cambridge University Press, 1998
Filmography www.imdb.com www.filmitalia.org
Video L’Avventura, starring Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti , Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, Criterion DVD, 2001
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Places to Visit
Diane Arbus’ Strange Faces and Places, CNN.com, Oct. 28, 2003
Aperture Gallery 547 W. 27th St., 4th Floor New York, NY 10001 Tel: (212) 505-5555 Email:
[email protected]
Looking Back: Diane Arbus, by Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, March 21, 2005 Double Exposure, by David Segal, Washington Post, May 12, 2005
The New School 65 W. 11th St. New York, NY 10011 Tel: 212-229-5665 Arbus taught here in the 1960s.
Video Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, directed by Steven Shainberg, DVD, New Line Home Video, 2007, starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey, Jr.
Web www.dianearbus.net Large selection of photographs: www.artphotogallery.org Diane Arbus Revelations: www.metmuseum.org
Further Reading Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph, by Marvin Israel, 25th Anniversary Edition, Aperture Books
Fred Astaire Places to Visit 1155 San Ysidro Drive Beverly Hills, CA 91210 Astaire was neighbors with Danny Kaye, Rex Harrison, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtin. The Paramount Studio Tour 5555 Melrose Ave. Hollywood, CA 90038 Tel: 323-956-5575 Oakwood Memorial Park 22600 Lassen St. Chatsworth, CA 91313 Tel: 818-341-0344 Gravesite.
ACTOR Tel: 617-353-3696 Letters, photographs.
Video www.youtube.com
Audio The Essential Fred Astaire, Sony CD, 2003
Web http://themave.com/Astaire/www.alsodances.com
Mann’s Chinese Theatre 6925 Hollywood Blvd. Hollywood, CA 90078 Tel: 323-464-8111 See Astaire’s star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center Boston University 771 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 02215
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Fred Astaire and sister Adele. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-35642
Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor
POET/NOVELIST
Places to Visit The United Nations First Ave. and 46th St. New York, NY 10017 Tel: 212-963-1234 From 1990 to 1994 Awoonor was Ghana’s Ambassador to the United Nations where he headed the committee against apartheid. University of Cape Coast Cape Coast, Ghana Awoonor is a professor at the University.
Web Introduction to Anlo-Ewe Culture: www.cnmat.berkeley.edu~ladzekpo/Intro.html Information on Ghana: www.ghanaweb.com The Environmental Film Festival of Accra: www.effaccra.org
Leon Bakst
PAINTER/DESIGNER
Places to Visit St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts Universitetskaya Naberezhnaya 17 St. Petersburg, Russia Tel: +7 (812) 213-6496 Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The State Russian Museum 4 Inzhenernaya Str. Mickhailovsky Palace St. Petersburg, Russia Tel: 595-4248 www.rusmuseum.ru/eng/ Open daily, except Tuesdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., on Mondays from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco Golden Gate Park 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr. San Francisco, CA 94118 Web: www.thinker.org
Further Reading Bakst: The Art of Theatre and Dance, by Elisabeth Ingles, New Line Books, 2005
‘Odalisque’ design for Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s ballet Scheherazade by Leon Bakst . Photo ©Lebrecht Music & Arts / The Image Works
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George Balanchine Places to Visit The George Balanchine Foundation 161 West 61st Street New York, NY 10023 Tel: 212-262-0700 www.balanchine.org The foundation offers a broad range of activities and programs, including concentrated research, ballet reconstructions, publications, lectures, archive videos, and other projects. The School of American Ballet 70 Lincoln Center Plaza New York, NY 10023 Tel: 212-769-6600 www.sab.org The official training academy of the New York City Ballet was established in 1934 by Balanchine and philanthropist Lincoln Kirstein as the first step in their quest to create an American classical ballet company.
CHOREOGRAPHER/DANCER Further Reading Obituary: George Balanchine, 79, Dies in New York, The New York Times, by Anna Kisselgoff, May 1, 1983
Web Chronological list of the works of George Balanchine: www.balletmet.org/Notes/Balanchine.html
George Balanchine & Suzanne Farrell. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-120878
Video PBS DVD American Masters Series: Balanchine (156 minutes)
Brigitte Bardot Places to Visit The Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals 28 rue Vineuse 75116 Paris 33 145 05 1460 www.fondationbrigittebardot.fr Works directly in the field to help animal refuges, animal rescue, and stray cat sterilization campaigns.
Video “Faite pour Dormir” www.youtube.com Brigitte Bardot: A Biography by Barnett Singer, McFarland & Company, 2006
Further Reading And God Created A Dream Job, by Liz Balmaseda, The Palm Beach Post, June 8, 2007
Web Brigitte Bardot on Cannes, celebrity and career, May 24, 2007, www.cnn.com
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George Balanchine & Suzanne Farrell in Don Qixote. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-129045
ACTRESS
Béla Bartók Places to Visit 3 Cerbului St. Sânnicolau Mare Banat, Romania Bartók’s Birthplace. Music History Museum 7 Táncsics Mihály út Budapest, Hungary A permanent exhibition on the stages of Bartók’s career.
COMPOSER/PIANIST Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-473-2400 Contains Bartók’s folk music collections. The International Bartók Festival Szombathely Upper Pannonia, Hungary Web: www.bartokfestival.hu Annual festival held in July.
Web Béla Bartók Memorial House Csalan ut 29 1025 Budapest II, Hungary Tel: +06-1-394-2100 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.bartokmuseum.hu
Bartók Records and the New York Bartók Archives: www.bartokrecords.com
Bartók Archives Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Science Táncsics Mihály utca 7 Budapest I., H–1250 Pf. 28., Hungary Tel: +36 1 375-2139 Web: www.zti.hu The Museum of Ethnography Kossuth Lajos ter 12
Peter Behrens Places to Visit
Photo courtesy of Magyar Posta (Hungarian Post) © Copyright UPU WADP
ARCHITECT/GRAPHIC ARTIST Century, by Stanford Anderson, The MIT Press, 2002
Casa Behrens Alexandraweg Darmstadt Germany Designed by Behrens. A. E. G. High Tension Factory Corner of Hutten Street Berlin, Germany Designed by Behrens. New Ways 508 Wellingorough Rd. Northampton, UK Designed by Behrens. Former German Embassy (now the St. Petersburg Tourist Company and the Bank of Dresden.) St. Isaac’s Square Leningrad, Russia Designed by Behrens.
Further Reading Peter Behrens and a New Architecture for the Twentieth
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Hilaire Belloc
POET/NOVELIST/CRITIC
Places to Visit Balliol College Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BJ, UK An 1895 graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, Belloc was a noted figure within the University, being President of the Oxford Union, the undergraduate debating society. From Belloc’s The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts: Do not as evil children do, Who on the slightest grounds Will imitate the Kangaroo, With wild unmeaning bounds: Do not as children badly bred, Who eat like little Hogs, And when they have to go to bed Will whine like Puppy Dogs: Who take their manners from the Ape, Their habits from the Bear, Indulge the loud unseemly jape, And never brush their hair. But so control your actions that Your friends may all repeat. “This child is dainty as the Cat, And as the Owl discreet.”
Web A short history of the Fabian Society: www.fabian-society.org.uk
Rudolf Bing Places to Visit The Metropolitan Opera Lincoln Center West 62nd and 65th St. and Columbus and Amsterdam Ave. New York, NY 10023 Tel: 212-362-6000 Impresario here.
IMPRESARIO Edinburgh Festival (three weeks in mid August) The Hub Castle Hill Edinburgh EH1 2NE Scotland Web: www.eif.co.uk Impresario here.
Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin State Opera) Unter den Linden 7 10117 Berlin-Mitte, Germany Tel.: +49 30 20 35 40 Web: www.staatsoper-berlin.org Impresario here.
Web
Glyndebourne Festival Opera Lewes East Sussex BN8 5UU, UK Tel: +01 273 81 2321 Web: www.glyndebourne.com Email:
[email protected] Impresario here.
Rudolf Bing, Titan of the Met, Dies at 95, by James R. Oestreich, The New York Times, Sept. 3, 1977
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Bing anecdeotes: www.anecdotage.com
Audio Metropolitan Opera Gala Honoring Sir Rudolf Bing, Deutsche Grammophon CD, 2007
Further Reading
Lost Together in Paradise, by James Kelly, Time, Feb. 23, 1987
Algernon Blackwood
NOVELIST/WRITER
Places to Visit Bishopsteignton, Kent UK Birthplace.
Further Reading List of short stories to read online: www.horrormasters.com/Themes/Blackwood.htm Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life, by Mike Ashley, CraigCarroll & Graf, 2002 Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood, by Algernon Blackwood , Dover Publications, 1973 A. Blackwood, 82, British Novelist; Author of Books Dealing With Supernatural Dies, The New York Times, Dec. 11, 1951
Web A Short Treatise on the History, Culture and Practices of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: www.osogd.org/library/biscuits/history.html
Georges Braque Places to Visit Centre Pompidou Place Beaubourg 75191 Paris, France Tel: +44 78 12 33 Open every day from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., except Tuesdays and May 1.
PAINTER/SCULPTOR Varengeville Church Saint-Valery, Normandy France Braque and his wife are buried here. The church, dating back to 600 A.D, has a stained glass window designed by the artist.
Further Reading Georges Braque: A Life, by Alex Danchev, Arcade Publishing, 2005
Guggenheim Museum 1071 5th Ave. New York, NY 10128 Tel: 212 423 3500 Open Sat. to Wed 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. , Fri 10 a.m.–7:45 p.m. , closed Thurs. The Museum of Modern Art 11 W. 53rd St. New York, NY 10019 Tel: (212) 708-9400 Web: www.moma.org Open Sat., Sun, Mon., Wed., Thurs. 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Fri. 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Tuesday.
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Bertolt Brecht
PLAYWRIGHT/DIRECTOR/POET
Places to Visit
Web
The Story of Berlin Museum Kurfürstendamm 207-208 Berlin, Germany Tel: +030 887 20100 Open daily from 10 a.m -8 p.m. Permanent exhibit of Brecht and his time.
Synopsis, history, audio, posters, music: www.threepennyopera.org The International Brecht Society: http://german.lss.wisc.edu/brecht/
Timeline http://www.salisbury.edu/theatre/Epic%20Theatre/brecht.htm
Brecht-Weigel-Museum Chausseestrasse 125 Berlin, Germany Tel: +030 282 9916 Open Tues. – Fri. 10 a.m. – noon, Thurs. 5 – 7:30 p.m.. Sat 10:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m., and Sun 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Visits by guided tour only. The former apartment of Brecht and his wife Helen Weigel displays the artists’ living and working rooms and the Brecht and Weigel archives, containing 350,000 manuscripts, typescripts, and collections of his printed works, press cuttings, and playbills.
Further Reading Brecht Collected Plays: Two: Man Equals Man, the Elephant Calf, the Threepenny Opera, the Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and the Seven Dea; Methuen World Classics, 1994
DVD The Farewell, directed by Jan Schutte, 2000. The story of Brecht’s final days, in 1956 East Germany. The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, directed by Brian Large, Kultur Video, 2001 (in German)
Anthony Burgess
NOVELIST/CRITIC
Places to Visit
Web
Adderbury Oxford, UK Burgess lived in the village with his wife in the early 1950s, wrote for the town’s newspaper, and frequented the local pub, the Bell and the Red Lion.
http://prideofmanchester.com www.filmsite.org
Malay College Kuala Kangsar Perak, Malaysia The author taught at the prestigious prep school in the 1950s and published his first novels later known as The Malay Trilogy.
Books of the Times: A Clockwork Orange, The New York Times, March 19, 1963
Further Reading The Burgess File Reopened, by John Gross, The Telegraph, Dec. 6, 2005
Anthony Burgess, 76, Dies; Man of Letters and Music, by Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times, Nov. 26, 1993
Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque Bandar Seri Begawan Sultanate of Brunei The mosque is the centerpiece of Burgess’ novel Devil of a State. The International Anthony Burgess Foundation 10 Tatton Grove Withington Manchester M20 4BP UK Tel: + 44 (0) 161 434 1748 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.anthonyburgess.org
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Photo ©International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Richard Burton
ACTOR/DIRECTOR
Places to Visit Birthplace Pontrhydyfen, Wales, UK (10 miles east of Swansea) Burial site Protestant Churchyard, Celigny, Vaud, Switzerland BBC Written Archives Centre Peppard Road Caversham Park Reading, RG4 8TZ, UK Tel: 0118-948-6281 E:
[email protected]
Further Reading Letters, Diaries The University of Wales in Swansea will house a private collection of diaries, letters and books belonging to the actor in the Richard Burton Centre for Film and Popular Culture; the collection is currently under development.
Web The official Richard Burton site: www.richardburton.com Contains an extensive biography; film, television, stage, radio works, and a photo gallery. www.welshwales.co.uk/burton.htm
Enrico Caruso Places to Visit 7 Via San Giovanella agli Ottocalli Naples, Italy Caruso’s birthplace. Sainta Maria del Pianto Cemetery Naples Campania Italy Caruso’s grave site. Enrico Caruso Museum of America 1942 East 19th St. Brooklyn, NY 11229 Tel: (718)-368-3993 Web: www.enricocarusomuseum.com Open only by appointment.
SINGER Mainspring Press specializes in high-quality, peer-reviewed books for researchers, librarians, archivists, and advanced collectors of historic sound recordings. The Complete Recordings, 1902-1920, Naxos, 12 audio CDs, 2004
Timeline www.henryrosner.org/caruso/caruso_timeline.html
Further Reading Caruso Was Brave in His Last Hours, The New York Times, Aug. 6, 1921
DVD Enrico Caruso: Voice of the Century, A&E Biography series, 1998
Discography and recordings The Caruso Archive from Mainspring Press 9230 S Buttonhill Court Littleton, CO 80130
Enrico Caruso. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-61518
Victor Record advertisement. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-31635
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Charlie Chaplin
ACTOR
Places to Visit
Further Reading
287 Kennington Rd. London SE11 6BY, UK One of Chaplin’s childhood residences.
Chaplin: His Life and Art, by David Robinson, McGraw-Hill, 2001
Manoir de Ban 1804 Corsier Vevey, Switzerland Chaplin’s home from 1952 until his death in 1977. Outbuildings on the estate have been converted into exhibit halls.
Charlie Chaplin, Comic Genius, Dies, Washington Post, Dec. 26, 1977
Corsier Cemetery Corsier-Sur-Vevey Switzerland The actor James Mason is also buried here. Hollywood Walk of Fame 6751 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90028
Video Google Video and YouTube
Web Official website: www.charliechaplin.com www.chaplinmuseum.com Charlie Chapline FBI Files: www.fadetoblack.com
Charlie Chaplin. Limelight photograph. © Roy Export Company Establishment
Agatha Christie Places to Visit Agatha Christie Collection Torquay Museum 529 Babbacombe Rd. Torquay Devon TQ1 1HG, UK Tel: +01 803 293 975 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.torquaymuseum.org Hours: Mid July to Sept.: Mon. - Sat. 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Sun. 1:30 p.m. - 5 p.m.
NOVELIST/WRITER Video Agatha Christie - A Life in Pictures, starring Olivia Williams, Anna Massey, dir. Richard Curson Smith, Acorn Media DVD, 2006 Agatha Christie Classic Mystery Collection, starring Helen Hayes, Peter Ustinov, Warner Home Video, 2006 Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple - The Classic Mysteries Collection, starring Joan Hickson, Juliette Mole, dir. Martyn Friend, A&E Home Video, 2006
Web The official Agatha Christie site: http://us.agathachristie.com
Greenway House Greenway Rd. Devon TQ5 0ES, UK Tel: +01 803 842 382 Email:
[email protected] Cholsey Churchyard Cholsey OX10 9QL, UK Burgh Island Bigbury-on-Sea South Devon TQ7 4BG, UK The island based on the setting in Then There Were None.
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Further Reading Masterpieces in Miniature: The Detectives: Stories by Agatha Christie, St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2005
Colette Places to Visit Musée Colette Château de Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye F-89520 Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye France Tel: +33.3864.561.95 Open from April to November.
NOVELIST/WRITER Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman, Ballantine Books, 2000
A walking tour of Colette’s village Wandering in Colette’s World, The New York Times, April 26, 1987. 62 Boulevard Suchet 75016 Paris, France Colette lived here from 1917 to 1927.
Gravesite Cimetière du Père Lachaise 16 rue du Repos 75020 Paris France Final resting place of Colette, Chopin, Jim Morrison, Proust, Isadora Duncan, Edith Piaf, Balzac and others.
Further Reading Obituary, The New York Times, August 4, 1954
Aaron Copland Places to Visit Long Island Music Hall of Fame PO Box 1274 Lake Grove NY 11755 Tel: 631-780-6079 Email:
[email protected] Copland House Rock Hill Lower Washington St. PO Box 2177 Cortlandt Manor, NY 10567 Tel: (914) 788-4659 Email:
[email protected] Where the composer lived and worked for the last 30 years of his life.
COMPOSER narrated by Michael Tilson Thomas, music director, San Francisco Symphony (www.keepingscore.org/flash/copland/index.html) Sextet (1937). Listen to the complete concert performed by the Atlanta Chamber Players: http://artofthestates.org The Library of Congress: American Memory, The Aaron Copland Collection 1900-1990 (http://memory.loc.gov)
Further Reading Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man, by Howard Pollack, Faber & Faber, 2001 Suite by Copland Heard at Concert, by Olin Downes, The New York Times, April 11, 1946
Audio Aaron Copland: The Essence of America, San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, 2000 Weekend Edition, Saturday, Feb. 5, 2000: Martin Goldsmith talks about the artistic journey of the composer in honor of the 100th year of his birth. (www.npr.org)
Web Copeland and the American Sound: Multimedia presentation
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Noel Coward Places to Visit The Noel Coward Theatre St Martin’s Lane London WC2N 4AU UK
PLAYWRIGHT/COMPOSER/ACTOR The Complete Lyrics of Noel Coward, by Noel Coward, Methuen Drama, 2002
Firefly Port Maria Jamaica Tel: 876-960-8134 Open Mon.-Thurs. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sat. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Tours include the photo gallery and a walk through the house and grounds, and the viewing of a video on Coward.
Web The Noel Coward Society: www.noelcoward.net www.musicals101.com
DVD The Noel Coward Collection (BBC), 2007
Sheet Music The Noel Coward Songbook, Methuen, 1984
Further Reading
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-38534
Noel Coward: A Biography, by Philip Hoare, University of Chicago Press, 1998
Xavier Cugat Places to Visit Teatro Nacional de Cuba Paseo and Calle 39 Vedado Havana Cuba Tel: 7/879-6011 Where Cugat trained to be a musician.
MUSICIAN Eet ees Deesgosting!, Time Magazine, Dec. 28, 1942 (www.time.com)
Xavier Cugat Plaza Barcelona 08174 Spain
Discography www.cduniverse.com
Lyrics www.lyricsdownload.com
Sheetmusic Xavier Cugat’s Favorite Collection of Tangos and Rhumbas, Robbins Music Corp., 1936
Further Reading Bandleader Xavier Cugat, ‘Rumba King,’ Dies at 90, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 28, 1990
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Photo © Lebrecht Music & Arts / The Image Works
Roald Dahl Places to Visit Roald Dahl Children’s Gallery Bucks County Museum Church St. Aylesbury HP20 2QP, UK Tel: +01 296 331441 Email:
[email protected] Call for opening hours.
NOVELIST/WRITER Roald Dahl, Writer, 74, Is Dead; Best Sellers Enchanted Children, The New York Times, July 17, 2005 The Fantastic Mr. Dahl, by Stephen King, The Washington Post Bookworld, Apr 10, 1994 The Candy Man, The New Yorker, July 11, 2005
Gipsy House Whitefield Lane Great Missenden, UK Tel: +01 494 890465 Dahl’s home and gardens.
Audio The Roald Dahl Audio CD Collection: Charlie, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Enormous Crocodile, Magic Finger; HarperChildrensAudio; Abridged edition, 2007
Web The official Roald Dahl website: www.roalddahl.com
Further Reading Roald Dahl: A Biography, by Jeremy Treglown, Harvest/HBJ BookHarvest/HBJ Book, 1995
Salvador Dali Places to Visit
PAINTER/DESIGNER Artists of the 20th Century: Salvador Dali, Kultur Video DVD, 2004
Dali Museum 1000 Third Street South St. Petersburg, FL 33701 Tel: 727-823-3767 Web: www.salvadordalimuseum.org Hours: Mon., Tue., Wed. 9:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., Thurs. 9:30 a.m. -8 p.m., Fri. 9:30 a.m. - 6:30 p.m., Sat. 9:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., Sun. noon – 5:30 p.m.
Audio
Dali Theatre-Museum Plaza Gala y Salvador Dali 5 Figueras, Spain Tel: +972 677 500
U.S. Accuses 4 of High Profits In Fake Dali Art, by Arnold H. Lubasch, The New York Times, Oct. 4, 1988
Salvador Dali on “What’s My Line?”: www.youtube.com
BBC4 Interviews: www.bbc.co.uk
Further Reading Salvador Dali: An Illustrated Life, by Gala- The Dali Foundation, Tate Publishing, 2007
House-Museum Salvador Dali Portlligat E-17488 Cadaqués, Portugal Tel: +34 972 251 015
Web Biography, publications, videos, online collection: www.salvador-dali.org Paintings, photos, biography, posters: www.virtualdali.com
Video
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-133965
Un Chien Andalou, a Film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, Transflux Films DVD, 2004
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Marlene Dietrich Places to Visit Friedenau Cemetery Städtischer Friedhof III i Stubenrauchstrasse 43-45 Berlin, Germany Museum fur Film und Fernsehen Potsdamer Strasse 2 10785 Berlin Germany Tel.: +49-30-247 49-888 Open Tues. through Sun. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thurs. 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Mon. Photos, costumes, props, letters, documents relating to the actress in the permanent exhibit.
ACTRESS Judgment at Nuremberg, directed by Stanley Kramer, MGM DVD, 2004
Audio www.reelclassics.com
Further Reading Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend, by Steven Bach, Da Capo Press, 2000 Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945, by David Welch, I. B. Tauris; Revised edition, 2001 Marlene Dietrich Dies; Actress, Singer Was Epitome of Glamour, Washington Post, May 7, 1992
Web Biography, discography, photos, filmography: www.marlene.com American Film Institute: www.afi.com Photos: http://www.stanford.edu/~brooksie/Marlene/Dietrich.HTML
Video Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song, directed by David Riva, MGM DVD, 2002
Marcel Duchamp Places to Visit Philadelphia Museum of Art The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street Philadelphia, PA 19130 Tel: 215-763-8100 Open Tues. to Sun. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Fri. until 8:45 p.m. Closed Mondays and major holidays.
Web Anemic Cinema, a film by Marcel Duchamp; 1961 interview (in French); the Music of Marcel Duchamp: www.ubu.com Making Sense of Modern Art, Marcel Duchamp, Fountain: Quicktime video: www.sfmoma.org
Further Reading View Magazine’s Marcel Duchamp Special Issue, 1945 Marcel Duchamp in Perspective, by Joseph Masheck, Da Capo, 2002 Art in Theory 1900-2000, by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell Publishers, 2003
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PAINTER/SCULPTOR
Bob Dylan
MUSICIAN
Places to Visit
Video
2425 7th Avenue East (now Dylan Drive) Hibbing, MN 55747 Birthplace.
No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese, Paramount DVD, 2005
Dylan Days Festival Hibbing, MN 55747 Tel: 218-262-7213 Annual festival held in May.
Classic footage: http://video.google.com/dylan.html
Greenwich Village Walking Tour www.interferenza.com/bcs/villagesights.htm
Biography, articles, album reviews, photos, videos, discography: www.rollingstone.com
Music videos: www.mtv.com
Web Tour dates, music, video, lyrics, essays: www.bobdylan.com
Minnesota Music Hall of Fame Museum New Ulm, MN 56073 Tel: 507-354-7305
Further Reading Chronicles: Volume One, by Bob Dylan, Simon & Schuster, 2005
The Vineyard Fellowship 6642 Reseda Blvd. Reseda, CA 91335 Tel: 818-776-9696 www.vineyardusa.org Religious cult headquarters Dylan joined briefly.
Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, by Jonathan Cott, Wenner, 2007
Timeline and Song Clips www.bbc.co.uk also reviews, biography, video
Audio www.bobdylanroots.com
Umberto Eco
Photo © Hans Arne Nakrem, Oslo, Norway
NOVELIST/WRITER
Places to Visit Abruzzo, Italy Much of the movie based on Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose was filmed in this region.
Web Semiotics for Beginners: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/ Documents/S4B/semiotic.html Conspiracy theories and literary ethics: Umberto Eco, Danilo Kis and The Protocols of Zion, from Comparative Literature, Spring 1999. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_qa3612/is_199904/ai_n8 Official site: http://www.umbertoeco.com/ with biography, bibliography, news, interviews, lectures and critiques.
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Sergei Eisenstein
DIRECTOR/ESSAYIST
Places to Visit Novodevichy Cemetery 1 Novodevichy pr. Moscow, Russia Eisenstein is buried here alongside Anton Chekov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Boris Yeltsin.
DVD Eisenstein: The Sound Years (Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible I & 2), 3 discs, Criterion, 2001
Further Reading Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict, by Ronald Bergan, Overlook, 1999 Eisenstein’s Monster, Time Magazine, May 2, 1932 (www.time.com)
Web www.sensesofcinema.com
Federico Fellini Places to Visit The Trevi Fountain Rome, Italy Where Sylvia in La Dolce Vita takes her midnight swim. Legend has it you will return to Rome if you toss a coin over your shoulder into the water with your back to the fountain. Cinecittà Studios Piazza di Cinecittà Rome, Italy
DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER Fellini’s films and a documentary Fellini - I’m a Born Liar 2003: www.netflix.com
Further Reading The Cinema of Federico Fellini by Peter Bondanella, Princeton University Press, 1992 The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations, by Tony Reeves, Titan Books, 2006 Il Maestro, The Economist, Nov. 6, 1993 (obituary)
The Venice Film Festival Held at the end of August through the first week of September. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 8949 Wilshire Boulevard Beverly Hills, CA 90211 Tel: 310-247-3000
Web The English translation of The Satyricon by Petronius www.sacred-texts.com/cla/petro/satyr/ The Films of Federico Fellini: www.egothemag .com (March 8, 2005)
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Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT &S Collection, LC-USZ62-121239
Ian Fleming Places to Visit Goldeneye Oracabessa St Mary, Jamaica Tel: 876-975-3354 Email:
[email protected] The former estate of the writer, now a resort hotel. Boodle’s 28 St. James St. London SW1A 1HB, UK Tel: +020-7930-7166 Fleming’s private club in London, called Blades in the Bond novels, where the author found ideas for the Bond character and settings. Churchill Archives Centre Churchill College Cambridge CB3 0DS, UK Tel: +44 1223 336087 Email:
[email protected] Contains the archives of Admiral John Godfrey, former Director of Naval Intelligence, and one of the models , along with Charles Maxwell Knight, for ‘M,’ 007’s boss.
Anatole France
NOVELIST Lilly Library University of Indiana 1200 E. Seventh St. Bloomington, IN 47405 Tel: 812-855-2452 Email:
[email protected] Original manuscripts of 11 of Fleming’s novels, and the author’s personal book collection.
Web News, articles, features, discussion forum, previews, on all James Bond films and novels: www.mi6.co.uk Polish-born Special Operations spy Krystyna Skarbek aka Christine Granville (the model for the first Bond girl) biography: www.64-baker-street.org Ian Fleming and the World of James Bond: www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/fleming/home.html
Further Reading Ian Fleming, by Anthony Lejeune, National Review, Aug. 12, 1996 Obituary: Ian Fleming, by Timothy Hyman, The Independent, April 1, 1998
NOVELIST/POET/CRITIC
Places to Visit Cimètiere Ancien de Neuilly-sur-Seine 3 rue Victor Noir 92200 Neuilly sur Seine Hauts de Seine France
Web The French Academy: www.academie-francaise.fr (in French only) Collection of works in French and English: www.gutenberg.org
Further Reading Anatole France, Nobel Prize Winner, by Herbert S. Gorman, New York Times Book Review & Magazine, Nov. 20, 1921
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-17674
Notes on Life and Letters, by Joseph Conrad (www.etext.library.adelaide.edu.au) Obituary, Anatole France, Time Magazine, Oct. 20, 1924 (www.time.com)
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Carlos Fuentes
NOVELIST/PLAYWRIGHT
Places to Visit Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Tel: (401) 863-1000 Fuentes is a Professor at Large at the school.
Web Audio interview: http://wiredforbooks.org/carlosfuentes/ Alan Cheuse reviews Fuentes’ novel The Eagle’s Throne, July 10, 2006: www.npr.org Jorge Luis Borges at 100: A Lecture by Carlos Fuentes given at the 92nd Street Y, New York City, October 18, 1999: www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_100.html Mexico’s Greatest Novelist: Video interview with Carlos Fuentes, The Academy of Achievement: www.achievement.org
John Galsworthy
NOVELIST/WRITER
Places to Visit
Web
University of Birmingham Special Collections Main Library Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT UK Web: www.special-coll.bham.ac.uk/ Letters between Galsworthy and his wife, documents, diaries, notebooks, playscripts.
Works of John Galsworthy (including the complete text of The Forsyte Saga): www.gutenberg.org Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: www.oxforddnb.com
Blue Plaque (English Heritage Blue Plaques). Photo © P. Riley, www.perfumefromprovence.com
Grove Lodge Admirals Walk London NW3 6RS UK
Video The Forsyte Saga - The Complete Series (1969), BBC Warner, DVD, 2003 The Forsyte Saga Series 1, Series 2 (2003), Acorn Media, 2004
Further Reading For the Love of Ada, by David Robinson, The Scotsman, April 1, 2002 (http://thescotsman.scotsman.com)
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Grove Lodge, Galsworthy home. Photo © P. Riley, www.perfumefromprovence.com
Judy Garland Places to Visit The Judy Garland Museum 2727 US Hwy 169 South Grand Rapids, MN 55744 Web: www.judygarlandmuseum.com Previous Homes 1231 Stone Canyon Rd. Bel Air, CA 90077 934 Bel-Air Rd. Bel Air, CA 90077
ACTRESS Soundtrack Performances 1936-1963, Rhino CD, 1998
Web The Judy Garland Database: www.jgdb.com The Judy Room: www.thejudyroom.com
Video Judy Garland: Beyond the Rainbow, A&E Biography, 2006
Further Reading Judy, by Gerold Frank, Da Capo, 1999
Ferncliff Cemetery 280-284 Secor Rd. Hartsdale, NY 10530 James Baldwin, Joan Crawford, Oscar Hammerstein, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, Jerome Kern, Thelonious Monk, and Paul Robeson are also buried here.
Discography www.thejudyroom.com/discography/index.html
Audio Judy at Carnegie Hall: Fortieth Anniversary Edition, Capitol CD, 2001 Judy Garland In Hollywood: Her Greatest Movie Hits - Original
Alberto Giacometti Places to Visit Museum of Modern Art 11 W. 53 St. New York, NY 10019 Tel: 212-708-9400 Hours: Sat., Sun., Mon., Wed., Thurs. 10:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m., Fri. 10:30 a.m. – 8 p.m. Closed Tuesday and major holidays. Musée de l’Homme Palais de Chaillot, 17 place du Trocadéro 75116 Paris, France Tel: +22 30 3263 7282 Hours: 9.45 a.m. - 5.15 p.m., closed Tue. and bank holidays.
SCULPTOR/PAINTER Eternal Gaze, directed by Sam Chen: www.eternalgaze.com (available to view on YouTube)
Further Reading Giacometti: A Biography, by James Lord, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997 Alberto Giacometti, The Museum of Modern Art, 2002 The Giacometti Legacy: A Struggle for Control, by Marc Spiegler, ArtNews, Oct. 2004 Diego Giacometti, 82, Artist, and a Designer of Furniture, by Michael Brenson, The New York Times, July 17, 1985
Giacometti’s Studio (1927-1965) 46 rue Hippolyte-Maindron Paris, France Church of San Giorgio Borgonovo, Switzerland
Video (in French) Man Among Men: Alberto Giacometti (1963): http://www.ubu.com/film/giacometti.html
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Andre Gide
NOVELIST/WRITER
Places to Visit
Further Reading
La Roque-Baignard Calvados Normandy France Gide became mayor of the town in 1895.
Andre Gide is Dead; Noted Novelist, 81, The New York Times, Feb. 19, 1951
Chateau de Cuverville Cuverville-en-Caux Normandy France Once the home of the author, now a private residence. The chateau was the model for Fongueusemare in Strait is the Gate.
Whatever Happened to Andre Gide?, The New York Review of Books, Dec. 31, 1969 (www.nybooks.com) Gide's Africa, by Phyllis Clark, South Central Review, Vol. 14 No. 1, Spring 1997
American Academy of Arts and Letters 633 W. 155th St. New York, NY 10032 Tel: 212-368-5900 Email:
[email protected] Gide became an honorary corresponding member in 1950.
Web www.andregide.org
Philip Glass
COMPOSER
Places to Visit
verbal full-length feature film. Koyaanisqatsi is now preserved in the National Film Registry.
The Tibet House 22 West 15th St. New York, NY 10011 Tel: 212-807-0563 E:
[email protected] Founded by Glass, Richard Gere and Robert Thurman, father of Uma, the Tibet House presents to the West Tibet’s ancient traditions of art and culture by means of creating a permanent cultural center, with gallery, library, and archives, and developing traveling exhibitions, print publications and media productions. The BMI Foundation, Inc. A not-for-profit corporation founded in 1985, is dedicated to encouraging the creation, performance and study of music through awards, scholarships, internships, grants, and commissions. Glass was the winner of the Student Composer award in 1959: www.bmifoundation.org
Discography and featured recordings www.phillipglass.com DVD: Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance (1983). Created between 1975 and 1982, with music by Glass, Koyaanisqatsi is an apocalyptic vision of two different worlds - urban life, and technology versus the environment, and is was the first non-
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Audio An Interview With Composer Philip Glass, Fresh Air from WHYY, July 6, 2001. www.nrp.org. An interview with composer Philip Glass by his cousin Ira Glass, the host of This American Life.
Duncan Grant
PAINTER/DESIGNER
Places to Visit Fitzroy Square London W1T 6EL, UK Grant’s studio was located at 22 Fitzroy Square. Other Bloomsbury group neighbors included Virginia Woolf (29 Fitzroy Square), Roger Fry (33 Fitzroy Square), Roger Fry (21 Fitzroy Square) and the home of Grant and Maynard Keynes (26 Fitzroy Square). It was also the setting of much of Ian McEwan’s 2005 novel Saturday.
Futher Reading The Letters of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes, edited by Polly Hill and Richard Keynes, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1990).
Web Tate Gallery: Extensive collection of photographs, drawings, paintings, newspaper clippings, letters. www.tate.org.uk
National Portrait Gallery, London. Photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell.
Günter Grass
NOVELIST/PLAYWRIGHT
Places to Visit
Further Reading
Lelewela. N°13 Gdaƒsk Poland Birthplace.
Grass’s Fact and Fiction, Fighting to a Draw, by William Grimes, The New York Times, June 27, 2007
Wrzeszcz Gdaƒsk Poland Neighborhood where Grass grew up and the scene in many novels.
Peeling the Onion, by Günter Grass, Harcourt, 2007 War and Rememberance, by Ian Buruma, The New Yorker, Sept. 18, 2006
Walking tour www.inyourpocket.com
Audio Interview with Günter Grass: http://wiredforbooks.org
Video Interview by Horace Engdahl: http://nobelprize.org Interview by Charlie Rose: www.charlierose.com The Tin Drum, starring Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, Criterion DVD, 2004
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Grateful Dead Places to Visit Kelper’s Books 1010 El Camino Real Menlo Park CA, 94025 Tel: 650-324-4321 Where Garcia met bandmate David Nelson. Haight-Ashbury San Francisco, CA 94102 Neighborhood where band first performed.
Audio Live music archive: www.archive.org/details/gratefuldead The Grateful Dead Channel, Sirius Satellite Radio
MUSICIANS 1880 Route 70 East Cherry Hill, NJ 08003 Tel: 800-741-8845 www.woodstocktradeco.com
Further Reading A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally, Broadway 2003 Living with the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus with Garcia and the Grateful Dead, by Rock Scully, Cooper Square Press, 2001 Conversations with the Dead: The Grateful Dead Interview Book, by David Gans, Da Capo Press, 2002 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, Bantam 1982
The Golden Road (1965 - 1973), Rhino CD, 2001
Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip, by Robert Hunter, DK Adult, 2003
Video www.vh1.com
The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, by David Dodd, Free Press, 2007
The Grateful Dead Movie, Monterey Video DVD, 2004
Web Official site: www.dead.net
Lyrics www.thegratefuldeadlyrics.com
History of Haight-Ashbury music: www.rockument.com
Memorabilia
The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco: www.sfmuseum.org
Woodstock Trading Co.
Walter Gropius Places to Visit The Bauhaus-Archiv (cq) Museum of Design Klingelhöferstraße 14 10785 Berlin, Germany Tel: 0049.030.254.00/20 E:
[email protected] Open daily except Tuesday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. www.bauhaus.de/ The Bauhaus-Archiv Museum houses the most complete existing collection focused on the history of the school. It’s housed in a building drafted by Walter Gropius, the founder of the school. The Metlife Building 200 Park Ave. New York, NY 10166 Designed by Gropius and formerly the Pan Am Building. This building is infamously known for blocking views down Park Avenue. The Gropius House 69 Baker Bridge Rd. Lincoln, MA 01773 Tel: 781-259-8098 Open: June 1 - October 15: Wednesday - Sunday October 16 - May 31: Saturday and Sunday. Tours available.
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ARCHITECT Gropius designed this as his family home in 1937, when he came to America to teach at Harvard’s School of Design. www.historicnewengland.org Thacher Elementary School 7 James Street Attleboro, MA 02703 Tel: 508-226-4162 Designed by The Architects’ Collaborative with Walter Gropius, the school opened in 1948. Considered one of Gropius’ notable works, in 1989 it was converted to an elementary school.
Further reading Streetscapes/The MetLife Building, Originally the Pan Am Building; Critics Once Called It Ugly; Now They’re Not Sure, The New York Times, Oct. 7, 2001 Walter Gropius: 1883- 1969 the Promoter of a New Form, Taschen, 2004
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, LC-G613-T01-44578
Jorge Guillen
POET/CRITIC/SCHOLAR
Places to Visit Cementerio Inglés de Málaga Málaga Andalucia, Spain Biblioteca Nacional de España Paseo de Recoletos 20-22 28071 Madrid Spain Tel: + 91 580 7800
Poems in English Horses in the Air and Other Poems, by Jorge Guillen, City Lights Books, 1999
Poems in Spanish www.poesia-inter.net
Further Reading Jorge Guillen’s Cantico, by Andrew P. Debicki, PMLA Journal of the Modern Language Association of America, Oct. 1966
Web The Generation of 1927: www.sispain.org The Jorge Guillen Foundation: www.fjguillen.es (in Spanish)
Tyrone Guthrie
DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/ACTOR
Places to Visit The Guthrie Theater 818 South 2nd Street Minneapolis, MN 55415 Tel: 612-377-2224 www.gutherietheater.org
Tours, classes, and camps The Tyrone Guthrie Centre Newbliss Co. Monaghan, Ireland Tel: 353 (0)47 54003 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.tyroneguthrie.ie Letters, family history, archives, artists-in-residence programs. The Centre’s website includes a downloadable file of funeral address given by Sir Alec Guinness in June 1971.
Further Reading Tyrone Guthrie, A Titan of the Theatre, by Ian McKellen, Sunday Telegraph Magazine, September 11, 1983.
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Jimi Hendrix Places to Visit Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum One Key Plaza 751 Erieside Ave Cleveland, Ohio 44114 Tel: 216-781-7625 Open 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. daily, except holidays. Café Wha? 115 MacDougal St. New York, NY 10012 Tel: 212- 254-3706 Where Hendrix performed. The Cheetah Club 12 W. 21st St. New York, NY 10010 Tel: 212-206-7770 Where Hendrix performed.
MUSICIAN Hendrix Shokan House Traver Hollow Rd. (end of street) Boiceville, NY 12412 Where Hendrix lived during and after Woodstock Festival. Electric Lady Studios 52 W. 8th St. New York, NY 10011 Tel: 212-677-4700 Created by Hendrix and still operating.
DVD Monterey Pop Criterion Collection, directed by D. A. Pennebaker Jimi Hendrix - The Dick Cavett Show
Experience Music Project 325 5th Ave. N Seattle, WA 98109 Tel: 206-367-5483 Open daily 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
David Hockney
PAINTER/PHOTOGRAPHER
Places to Visit
Audio
The Tate Museum David Hockney Collection Millbank London SW1P 4RG, UK Email:
[email protected] www.tate.org
National Public Radio, All Things Considered, July 17, 2006: L.A. Exhibit Spotlights Hockney Portraiture (www.npr.org)
Salts Mill Shipley Saltaire West Yorkshire BD18 3LA, UK Tel: +01274 531163 Email :
[email protected] www.saltsmill.org.uk Open Mon. to Fri. 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. and Sat. & Sun. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Permanent exhibition of Hockney’s opera sets, early lithographs, and film archive. Los Angeles County Museum of Art 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90036 Tel: 323-857-6000 Open Mon., Tue., Thurs. noon to 8 p.m., Closed on Wednesdays. Fri. noon to 9 p.m. Sat. & Sun. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. www.lacma.org
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Web Hockney says the iPod has turned young people off art. So why are our galleries packed with children? (June 13, 2007): www.guardian.co.uk.
Further Reading The Turner Surprise, The Sunday Times, by A.A. Gill, June 17, 2007 Hockney’s Pictures: The Definitive Retrospective, by Gregory Evans, Bulfinch, 2004 David Hockney by Paul Melia and Ulrich Luckhardt, Prestel Publishing, 2007
Billie Holiday
SINGER
Places to Visit
Audio
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum One Key Plaza 751 Erieside Ave Cleveland, Ohio 44114 Tel: 216-781-7625 Web: www.rockhall.com Open 10 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. daily (until 9 p.m. on Wednesdays), closed Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Billie Holiday The Ultimate Collection, audio CD, Hip-O Records, 2005
Harlem Heritage Tourism & Cultural Center 104 Malcolm X Blvd. New York, NY 10026 Tel: 212-280-7888 Web: www.harlemheritage.com
Video Lady Sings the Blues, directed by Sidney J. Furie, starring Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, and Richard Pryor; 1972, DVD
Further Reading Lady Sings the Blues the 50th Anniversary Edition, by Billie Holiday, Harlem Moon Classics, 2006
The Jazz Museum in Harlem 104 E. 126th St. Suite 2D New York, NY 10035 Tel: 212-348-8300
Web The official Billie Holiday site: www.cmgww.com/music/holiday/ Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-116612
Timeline www.cmgww.com/music/holiday/about/timeline.htm
L. Ron Hubbard
WRITER
Places to Visit
Web
The Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization 503 Cleveland Street Clearwater, FL 33755 Email:
[email protected]
www.lronhubbard.org
The L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition 6331 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 100 Los Angeles, CA 90028 Tel: 323-960-3511 Open 9:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily.
L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman, by Bent Corydon and Brian Ambry, Barricade Books, 1995
L. Ron Hubbard’s House 5501 N. 44th St. Phoenix, AZ Tel: 800-574-4687
What Is Scientology?, by L. Ron Hubbard, Bridge Publications, 1998
US government FBI files: www.thesmokinggun.com Critique of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology: www.clambake.org
Further Reading
A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed, by Joh Atack, Lyle Stuart, 1990
Saint Hill Manor Saint Hill Road East Grinstead West Sussex RH19 4JY UK Tel: +44 (0)1342 326 711 Email:
[email protected] Open 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. daily, except holidays.
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Frida Kahlo
PAINTER
Places to Visit Museo Frida Kahlo Londres 247 Col. Del Carmen Coyoacán 04100 Mexico Tel: 55+5554-5999 www.museofridakahlocasaazul.org Home to the artist where she grew up and lived with her husband Diego Rivera.
Further Reading Frida Inc., by Gretchen Giles, Metro, November 14-20, 2002 Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, by Hayden Herrera, Perennial 2002
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-103971
The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait, by Frida Kahlo, Abrams, 2005
DVD The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo, directed by Amy Stechler. Available at www.shopPBS.org Frida, directed by Julie Taymor (2002)
Web www.fridakahlo.com
Alexander Korda
DIRECTOR/PRODUCER
Places to Visit
Korda Dies at 62, The New York Times, Jan. 24, 1956
Golders Green Crematorium Hoop Lane London NW11 7NL, UK Korda is buried alongside Sigmund Freud, Rudyard Kipling, Ivor Novello, Peter Sellers, Bram Stoker, and H.G. Wells.
Alexander Korda, by Ian Dalrymple, The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television, Vol. 11, No. 3, Spring, 1957
British Academy of Film and Television Arts 195 Piccadilly London, W1J 9LN Tel: +44 [0]20 7734 0022 Email:
[email protected]
Filmography www.fandango.com
Web A guide to Britain’s film and TV history: www.screenonline.org.uk/ Biography of Korda/Denham Studios: http://britmovie.co.uk
Further Reading What is a Producer?, by Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1956
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Milan Kundera
NOVELIST/PLAYWRIGHT
DVD The Unbearable Lightness of Being, directed by Phillip Kaufman, 1987, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin.
Web A chrononlogy of events leading up to the 1968 invasion of Prague from Radio Free Europe: www.rferl.org. An explanation of the 1989 Velvet Revolution: www.prague-life.com
Further Reading The Most Original Book of the Season, by Phillip Roth, The New York Times, Nov. 30, 1980. An interview with Kundera. Greetings from Prague, by Milan Kundera, Granta 11, March 1, 1984 Unbearable Lightness Lifts Czechs, by Hela Balínová, The Prague Post, Nov. 1, 2006 (www.praguepost.com)
D.H. Lawrence Places to Visit D. H. Lawrence Ranch San Cristobel Taos, NM 87564 Tel: 505-776-2245 The D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum 8a Victoria St. Eastwood Nottinghamshire, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1773 763312 Nottinghamshire County Council County Hall, West Bridgford Nottingham NG2 7QP, UK Tel +44 (0) 1159 823823 Web: www.lawrenceinnotts.org.uk/ The Frieda Lawrence Collection Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center University of Texas 21st and Guadalupe Austin, Texas 78713-7219 Tel: 512-471-8944 Correspondence, etc. between D.H. and wife Frieda.
NOVELIST/POET Ravello, 84010, Italy Tel: +39 089 858072 Lawrence and rest of Bloomsbury Group were frequent visitors.
Web The Rananium Society: http:// web.ukonline.co.uk Texts, bibliographies, radio scripts, letters, oral history recordings. http://www.dh-lawrence.org.uk
Audio Lady Chatterley’s Lover: UAA Audio Books (public domain) http://blog.urbanartadventures.com
Further Reading The D. H. Lawrence Review is published at the University of Texas three times annually as a forum for criticism, scholarship, reviews, and bibliography of the work of D.H. Lawrence and his circle. D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, by John Worthen, Counterpoint, 2007
Hotel Villa Cimbrone Via Santa Chiara 26,
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Halldor Laxness Places to Visit Gljúfrasteinn Pósthólf 250 - 270 Mosfellsbær Iceland Tel: 354-586 8066 Email:
[email protected] Laxness’ home for more than 50 years – now a museum, unchanged from when the writer lived there.
NOVELIST/PLAYWRIGHT Laxness the Great, by Brad Leithauser, The New York Review of Books, Oct. 10, 2002
National Theatre of Iceland Lindargata 7 Reykjavik 101 Iceland Tel: 354-551-1200
Web Bibliography, biography, video , speeches: www.nobelprize.org
Further Reading Halldor Laxness and the CIA, The Grapevine, Feb. 9, 2007 (http://grapevine.is) Under the Glacier, by Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com, March 30, 2005.
Timothy Leary
AUTHOR
Places to Visit
A Biography: www.rusiriusradio.com
Danhein Castle/Hitchcock Estate Route 44 and Franklin Ave Millbrook, NY 12545 Rented by Timothy Leary in the 60’s and has been mentioned in several articles and books by or about Leary. It is now a private residence owned and occupied by Thomas Mellon.
The Harvard Crimson: search for stories on Leary’s misadventures at the university (1962-1973) www.thecrimson.com
10106 Sunbrook Drive Beverly Hills, CA 90210 Leary’s last residence and where he died.
Leary’s ashes were launched into orbit in 1997. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had his ashes go out on the same flight.
The Timothy Leary Collection Harry Ransom Humanities Center 21st & Guadalupe Austin, TX 78713 Tel: 512-471-8944 Monday-Friday 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Saturday 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Correspondence, manuscripts, printed material, galley proofs, illustrations, notes, and contracts relating to Leary’s publication The Politics of Ecstasy in addition to other works dating 1963-1973.
Web Show #47: If You Meet Timothy Leary by the Side of the Road: an interview with Robert Greenfield, author of Timothy Leary:
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Turn On, Tune In, Rat Out: Documents from Leary’s FBI file www.thesmokinggun.com
Gravesite
Andrew Lloyd Webber Places to Visit The Palace Theatre 109-113 Shaftesbury Ave. London, W1V 8AY, UK Tel: +44 20 74945555 Webber’s The Woman in White received its world premiere at the Palace Theatre on September, 15, 2004. Webber bought the Palace in 1983 and now owns seven London theaters.
COMPOSER publishing firm, publishes more than 250 Webber selections for voice, instruments, and full orchestra.
Video www.broadwaymusicalhome.com
Reality TV In 2007 Webber launched a television talent show in Britain (Any Dream Will Do) to find a Maria to lead his production of The Sound of Music. In 2007 he sought a Joseph to star in a revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Videoclips, podcasts, contestant information and Webber’s video diary can be found on the BBC’s website.
DVD Andrew Lloyd Webber Masterpiece: The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber (2005). Elaine Paige headlines the international cast in a September concert in Beijing. Paige sings songs from her roles in Lloyd Webber’s musicals Evita, Cats, and Sunset Boulevard.
Sheetmusic Hal Leonard Corp. (www.halleonard.com), the giant music
Edwin Lutyens Places to Visit Munstead Wood Heath Lane Surrey GU7 1UN, UK Designed by Lutyens. Castle Drogo Drewsteignton Devon EX6 6PB, UK Tel: + 01647 433306 The last castle to be built in England; designed by Lutyens. Knebworth House Knebworth SG3 6PY, UK Tel: + 44 01438 812-661 Designed by Lutyens. Greywalls Hotel Muirfield, Gullane East Lothian Scotland, EH31 2EG Tel: +44 (0) 1620 842144 Designed by Lutyens.
ARCHITECT Tel: +44 01797 252878 Email:
[email protected] Designed by Lutyens.
Web The Lutyens Trust: www.lutyenstrust.org.uk
Further Reading Sir Edwin Lutyens: Designing in the English Tradition, by Elizabeth Wilhide, Harry N. Abrams, 2000 Lutyens’ Delhi Under Threat From Developers, by Maseeh Rahman, The Guardian, Oct. 7, 2003 (www.guardian.co.uk)
Garden Bench, designed by Edwin Lutyens. Photo courtesy of American Furniture Design Company
Great Dixter Northiam, Rye East Sussex TN31 6PH, UK
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René Magritte
PAINTER
Places to Visit
Further Reading
Kanokke Casino Canadasquare Kanokke Belgium There is a large mural in the casino by Magritte.
The Portable Magritte, by Robert Hughes, Universe Publishing, 2001 Magritte, by Jean-Michel Goutier, Renilde Hammacher, Bernard NoIl, and Jean Roudaut; Distributed Art Publishers, 2003
Rene Magritte Museum Rue Esseghem135 Brussels Belgium Tel.: + 32 2 428 26 26 E-mail:
[email protected] Open Wednesday to Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm. The museum occupies the house that the artist lived in for nearly a quarter century.
Web 300 of the 1,300 artist’s paintings available to view: www.magritte.com Magritte Foundation: http://www.magritte.be
CD ROM The Mystery of Magritte (Mac and Windows), available in Dutch, English, and French
Kazimir Malevich Places to Visit The State Russian Museum Inzhenernaya str., 4 St. Petersburg, Russia Open: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. - on Monday. Closed on Tuesdays. E:
[email protected]
Web The Hermitage Museum, The Black Square: www.hermitagemuseum.org
Further Reading Victory Over the Sun, by Anna Kisselfoff, The New York Times, January 27, 1981 The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910-1934, The Museum of Modern Art/Abrams, 2002 Malevich and Film, by Alexandra Shatskikh, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 135, No. 1084 (July, 1993), pp. 470-478
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PAINTER/DESIGNER
Laszló Moholy-Nagy Places to Visit Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Zugligeti ut 9-25 Budapest 1121, Hungary Tele: + 36 1 392 1193 Email:
[email protected] Houses works of Moholy-Nagy. The Getty Center 1200 Getty Center Drive Los Angeles, CA 90049 Tel: 310-440-7300 Hours: Tue. - Thur. and Sun.: 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 10:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m. Closed Mon. and major holidays. Houses works of Moholy-Nagy.
PAINTER/PHOTOGRAPHER Graceland Cemetery 4001 N. Clark St. Chicago, IL 60613 Tel: 773-525-1105 Gravesite of Moholy-Nagy. Also the burial place of architects Mies Van der Rohe and Louis Sullivan.
Web The Moholy-Nagy Foundation: www.moholy-nagy.org The Official Bauhaus Website: www.bauhausmusik.com Lazlo was a teacher at Bauhaus School.
Further Reading In Focus: László Moholy-Nagy, J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995
George Eastman House 900 East Ave. Rochester, NY 14607 Tel: 585-271-3361 Web: www.eastmanhouse.org Tue. – Sat. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Thurs. evenings until 8 p.m., Sun. 1 p.m. – 5 p.m., closed Mon. and major holidays. Houses works of Moholy-Nagy.
Mark Morris
DANCER
Places to Visit The Mark Morris Dance Group 3 Lafayette Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11217-1415 Tel: 718-624-8400 Email:
[email protected]
Video Yo-Yo Ma - Inspired by Bach Vol. 2, Falling Down Stairs, Sony DVD, 2000 Purcell - Dido and Aeneas / Mark Morris Dance Group, Image Entertainment, 2000, starring Jennifer Lane and Russell Braun
Web www.markmorrisdancegroup.org An Online NewsHour Special Report: Mark Morris: www.pbs.org/newshour Biography, video excerpts
Further Reading Mark Morris: The Salon Interview (www.salon.com) Mark Morris, by Joan Acocella, Wesleyan University Press, 2004
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Anaïs Nin
NOVELIST
Places to Visit
Web
Anais Nin & Rupert Pole’s House 2335 Hidalgo Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90039 2 bis, rue Monbuisson Louveciennes, France The home of Anais Nin and her husband from 1931-1935, not far from the home of Auguste Renoir.
The Official Anais Nin Website: www.anaisnin.com
Further Reading Anais Nin: A Biography, by Deirdre Bair, Penguin, 1996
3 Washington Square Village New York, NY 10012 Nin’s home in New York. Henry Miller Library Hwy 1 Big Sur, CA 93920 Tel: 831-667-2574 Anais Nin Video Diary Festival.
Audio
Photo © John Pearson
Anais Nin Husband, Rupert Pole Dies in L.A.; NPR All Things Considered, July, 29, 2006
Video Henry and June, directed by Philip Kaufman, Universal Studios DVD, 1999, starring Fred Ward, Uma Thurman, and Kevin Spacey
Kenzaburo Oe Places to Visit Ose Shikoku Uchiko, Ehime Japan Island where Kenzaburo Oe grew up.
Web Biography and bibliography: www.kirjasto.sci.fi/oe.htm Art & Healing, Conversation with Kenzaburo Oe, Institute of International Studies, University of California Berkeley: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Oe/oe-con0.html
Further Reading A Personal Matter, by Kenzaburo Oe: Google books online (in English) Nobel in Literature Goes to Kenzaburo Oe of Japan, by James Sterngold, The New York Times, Oct. 14, 1994 Start From the Personal, by Caroline Moseley, Princeton Weekly Bulletin, March 3, 1997 Somersault, by Kenzaburo Oe, Grove Press, 2003
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NOVELIST/WRITER
Eugene O’Neill Places to Visit Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site The Tao House Danville, CA 94526 Tel: (925) 838-0249 Open Wednesdays through Sundays, excluding holidays, with guided tours at 10:00 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Where O’Neill lived with his third wife Carlotta Monterey, between 1937 and 1944. O’Neill wrote some of his most famous works here.
PLAYWRIGHT The New York Public Library 188 Madison Ave. New York, NY 10016 Tel: 212-592-7053 The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection: Manuscripts, letters and photographs, as well as manuscripts and letters.
Web Letters, archives, essays by O’Neill scholars, photographs: www.eoneill.com
The Eugene O’Neill Theater 230 West 49th Street New York, NY 10038
Gravesite Forest Hills Cemetery 95 Forest Hills Avenue Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 Tel: 617-524-0128 Also burial ground of E.E. Cummings and Anne Sexton.
The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center 305 Great Neck Rd. Waterford, CT 06385 Tel: 860.443.5378 Home to six programs: O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Music Theater Conference, Puppetry Conference, National Theater Institute, Critics Institute and the Monte Cristo Cottage; O’Neill’s childhood home in neighboring New London. Provincetown Playhouse 501 Commercial St Provincetown, MA 02657 Tel: (508) 487-0955 The 28-year-old O’Neill had his first play produced here.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-116607
Carl Orff
COMPOSER
Places to Visit
Web
Andechs Monastery Bergstraße 2 82346 Andechs, Germany Tel: +49-(0)8152–376-0 Email:
[email protected] Home of the annual summer Carl Orff festival and the burial site of the composer.
The official Carl Orff website: www.orff.de
Orff Center Munich State Institute for Research and Documentation Kaulbachstr. 16 D-80539 München, Germany Tel: +49-89-28 81 05-0 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.orff-zentrum.de
Audio
Music Education: Classical Composer Carl Orff: http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/orff.html
DVD Carmina Burana: Zubin Mehta (1993) - DVD-Audio , Warner Music
Andalusian Images of Carmina Burana: An interview with the show’s producer: www.bbc.co.uk Music for Children, Orff-Schulwerk, Hall/Walter Edition , Schott Music, CD
Carl Orff Museum Hofmark 3 D – 86 911 Diessen, Germany Tel: + 49–(0) 88 07–919 81 Open Sat. & Sun. 2 – 5 p.m. Bavarian State Library Ludwigstr. 16 80539 München, Germany Tel: +49 89 28638-2200
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Amos Oz
NOVELIST/WRITER
Places to Visit Ben-Gurion University Beer Sheva Israel 84105 No. 18 Amos St. Kerem Avraham Jerusalem, Israel Oz’s birthplace and neighborhood setting of many of his novels.
Audio An interview with Amos Oz: http://wiredforbooks.org
Photo by Mariusz Kubik.
Further Reading The New York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com) archives Israeli writer Amos Oz wins Spain’s Prince of Asturias Prize, International Herald Tribune, June 27, 2007 Oz was a visiting writer at the New York State Writers Institute in 1997: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/oz.html
Marcel Pagnol Places to Visit La Treille Avignon, Provence France Saint-Loup District Marseilles, France Walking Tour (in French): www.terresdecrivains.com
Filmography www.imdb.com
Video The Fanny Trilogy, Kino DVD, 2007
Further Reading Jean De Florette and Manon of the Spring, by Marcel Pagnol, North Point Press, 1988
Web Visions of Provence: Cézanne and Pagnol: www.nationalgallery.org.uk Film reviews, summaries, biography, cast: http://filmsdefrance.com
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DIRECTOR/PLAYWRIGHT
Luciano Pavarotti
SINGER
Places to Visit
Video
Modena, Italy Pavarotti’s birthplace and gravesite.
www.youtube.com
La Scala Theater Museum Largo Ghiringhelli 1, Piazza Scala 20121 Milano Italy Tel: +39 0288 792 473 Hours: Daily from 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The King and I: The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti’s Rise to Fame by His Manager, Friend and Sometime Adversary, by Herbert Breslin, Doubleday, 2004
Further Reading
Web Official site (audio, video, photos, biography, discography) : www.lucianopavarotti.com Cigar Aficionado: www.cigaraficionado.com Jeremy Paxman interview with Pavarotti, video concert in Hyde Park: www.bbc.co.uk
Audio Romantica: The Very Best of Luciano Pavarotti, Decca CD, 2002 The Best of the Three Tenors, Decca CD, 2002
Anna Pavlova
DANCER/CHOREOGRAPHER
Places to Visit
Gravesite
Mariinsky Theatre 1 Theatre Square St. Petersburg 190000 Russia Tel: +7 812 326 4141 Email:
[email protected] In 1891 Pavlova entered the theater ballet academy. Also at the school at the time were Tamara Karsavina and a young Vaslav Nijinsky.
Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum Hoop Lane Barnet London NW11 UK Also buried here are Neville Chamberlain, Peter Sellers, Ivor Novell, Sigmund Freud, Keith Moon, H.G. Wells, and Kingsley Amis.
The Pavlova Statue Victoria Palace Theatre Victoria Street London SW1E 5EA UK
Web Anna Pavlova in Australia, Australian Performing Arts Archives: www.nla.gov.au/collect/prompt/pavlova.html The dessert Pavlova was named in honor of the Russian ballerina who visited Australia in the 1920s. Although Australia is credited with inventing this dessert, New Zealand also lays claim to it as a similar dessert was being served in that country around the same time as it was said to have been invented in Australia. A Google search will reveal thousands of recipes for the meringue treat.
Welcome for Pavlova, 1923. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-36430.
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Octavio Paz
POET/CRITIC
Web Complete poems, essays, literary criticism (in Spanish): www.letraslibres.com Nobel lecture (English translation): www.nobelprize.org The Voice of Mexico, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript: www.pbs.org
Further Reading In Memory of Octavio Paz (1914-1998), by Enrique Krauze, The New York Review of Books, May 28, 1998 The Labyrinth of Solitude, by Octavio Paz, Grove Press, 1985 The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics, by Gilbert M. Joseph (Ed.), Duke University Press, 2002 The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge, by Paul Preston, W. W. Norton, 2007 (Rev. Ed.) Mexico and the U.S.: Ideology and Reality, by Octavio Paz, Time Magazine, Dec. 20, 1982
Harold Pinter
PLAYWRIGHT/DIRECTOR
Places to Visit
Audio
The British Library St Pancras 96 Euston Road London, NW1 2DB, UK Tel: +44 (0)870 444 1500 Web: www.bl.uk Sixty boxes of manuscripts of plays, screenplays, poems and prose were donated by Harold Pinter to the British Library in September 1993.
BBC Radio 4 interviews, news, comments, plays, timeline: www.bbc.co.uk
Further Reading The Life and Work of Harold Pinter, by Michael Billington, Faber & Faber 2001 Harold Pinter Complete Works Vol. 1-4, Grove Press, 1994 Passionate Pinter’s Devastating Assault on US Foreign Policy, by Michael Billington, The Guardian, Dec. 8, 2005
Pinter Centre for Performance and Creative Writing Goldsmiths, University of London New Cross London SE14 6NW, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7919 7414 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/pintercentre/
Web Official website: www.haroldpinter.org Harold Pinter Society: www.pintersociety.org National Secular Society: www.secularism.org.uk
Video Pinter’s Nobel lecture, Dec. 7, 2005 (text also available) http://nobelprize.org
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PA Photos © Press Association
Sylvia Plath
POET
Places to Visit
Web
Smith College Mortimer Rare Book Room Neilson Library Northampton, MA 01063 Tel: (413) 584-2700 The library houses 4,000 pages of Plath’s personal and literary papers. In 1982, when Smith College acquired all of Plath’s journals, her husband Ted Hughes sealed two of them until Feb., 11, 2013, 50 years after Plath’s death.
Collected poems, novels (complete text of The Bell Jar) at Google Scholar.
Audio The Bell Jar, read by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Caedmon Unabridged edition, 2006
DVD Sylvia, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Blythe Danner, and Daniel Craig, Universal Studios, 2004
Newnham College University of Cambridge Cambridge CB3 9DF , UK Tel: +01223 335700 Plath attended the college (as did actress and writer Emma Thompson) as a Fulbright Scholar. 23 Fitzroy Road Camden Town, London Where Plath ended her life, also once the home of William Butler Yeats.
Further Reading The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, by Sylvia Plath, edited by Karen V. Kukil
Jackson Pollock Places to Visit The Art Students League 215 W. 57th St. New York, NY 10019 Tel: 212-247-4510 Email:
[email protected] The Pollock-Krasner House 830 Fireplace Road East Hampton, NY 11937 Tel: 631-324-4929 Open to the public on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from May 1 – October 31 by appointment.
PAINTER Jackson Pollock - Love & Death on Long Island, directed by Teresa Griffiths, BBC DVD, 2002
Further Reading Jackson Pollock, by Ellen G. Landau, Thames & Hudson, 2005
Web Times Topics: Jackson Pollock. News about the artist, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com Online exhibit: www.nga.gov Pollock’s Obituary in Time Magazine, August 20, 1956.
Peggy Guggenheim Collection Palazzo Venier dei Leoni Dorsoduro 701 I-30123 Venezia, Italy Tel: +39.041.2405.411 Email:
[email protected] Open daily 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Closed on Tuesdays and December 25.
Video Pollock, directed by Ed Harris, Sony Pictures DVD, 2001, starring Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?, directed by Harry Moses, New Line Home Video, 2007, starring Teri Horton
Pollock painting being auctioned. PA Photos © Press Association
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Marcel Proust
NOVELIST/WRITER
Places to Visit
Further Reading
Musée Marcel Proust 4 rue du Docteur Proust 28120 Illiers Combray, France Tel : + 02.37.24.30.97
The Way the Cookie Crumbles: How Much Did Proust Know About Madeleines?, by Edmund Levin, Slate, May 11, 2005, www.slate.com
The Proust Society of America The Mercantile Library Center for Fiction 17 E. 47th St. New York, NY 10017 Tel: 212.755.6710 Email:
[email protected]
Proust’s English, by Daniel Karlin, Oxford University Press, 2005
Cimetière du Père Lachaise 6, rue du Repos Paris, France Web: www.pere-lachaise.com
Web A literary walk with Proust through Illiers-Combray: www.retaworks.com A literary walk with Proust through Paris: www.nysoclib.org The Kolb-Proust Archive for Research, University of Illinois Champagne/Urbana: www.library.uiuc.edu/kolbp Bibliography, summaries, timeline, list of characters, book downloads, reading groups: www.tempsperdu.com
Arthur Ransome
WRITER/NOVELIST
Places to Visit
Further Reading
Windermere Lake and Coniston Water Lake District National Park Cumbria, UK Windemere is England’s largest lake, and is the inspiration for many of Ransome’s locations in the Swallows and Amazon series.
The full texts of The Crisis in Russia, Old Peter’s Russian Tales and Russia in 1919 are available on the Gutenberg Project (www.gutenberg.org)
Museum of Lakeland Life Abbot Hall Kirkland, Kendal Cumbria, LA9 5A UK The Museum has a special Ransome Room permanent exhibit which houses the author’s desk, some of his books, many of his mementoes and various papers.
Web
East Anglia Counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, UK The setting for other Ransome novels. The University of Southern California Fullerton Pollak Library- Special Collections 800 N State College Blvd. Fullerton, CA 92834-4150 Tel: 714-278-2633 The university purchased Ransome’s library at his death.
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Secret Waters: Reliving Author Arthur Ransome’s Literary Journey Along the Essex Coast, The Independent, June 2, 2007
The Arthur Ransome Society: http://arthur-ransome.org Security Service files on Ransome while in Russia: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Maurice Ravel
COMPOSER/PIANIST
Places to Visit Belvédère Musée Maurice Ravel 5, rue Maurice Ravel 78490 Montfort L’Amaury France Tel: + 01 34 86 00 89 Ravel’s home from 1921 to 1937, where he composed Boléro and other works. Cimetière Levallois-Perret Rue Baudin Emplacement 16 Levallois Perret 92300 France Also the burial ground of Gustave Eiffel, who designed the Paris tower in his name.
Party hosted by Eva Gauthier for Ravel’s birthday, March 7, 1928. Eva and Ravel seated, George Gershwin at far right. Photo, Library and Archives Canada/Eva Gauthier fonds/MUS 81 copyright Public Domain nlc-2475
Audio Downloads of a large selection of Ravel’s work: www.classicalarchives.com
Video Bolero interpreted: Torvill and Dean 1984 Olympics, Daniel Barenboim Berlin Philharmonic, Frank Zappa and more: www.youtube.com
Norman Rockwell Places to Visit The Normal Rockwell Museum 9 Glendale Road, Route 183 Stockbridge, MA 01262 Tel: 413-298-4100 Hours: Open daily except for major holidays. The Norman Rockwell Museum of Vermont 654 Rt. 4 East Rutland, VT 05701 Tel: 877-773-6095
PAINTER/ILLUSTRATOR The Saturday Evening Post covers: www.curtispublishing.com
Further Reading Artist Norman Rockwell Dies, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 9, 1978 Rethinking Rockwell, The Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 29, 1999 Norman Rockwell 332 Magazine Covers, by Christopher Finch, Abbeville Press, 2005 Norman Rockwell: A Life, by Laura Claridge, Modern Library 2003
The National Museum of American Illustration Vernon Court 492 Bellevue Ave. Newport, RI 02840 Tel: 401-851-8949 Advance reservations necessary, general admission Fri. 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Stockbridge Cemetery Stockbridge, MA 01262 Gravesite.
Web Magazine cover art, paintings, prints and posters: www.best-norman-rockwell-art.com
“The Party Wire”. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-699
“Helping Mother”. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-697
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Jean-Paul Sartre
NOVELIST/PLAYWRIGHT
Places to Visit Cimetière du Montparnasse 3 boulevard Edgar Quinet Paris France Also the resting place of Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, Serge Gainsbourg, Eugene Ionesco, Guy de Maupassant, Man Ray, and Susan Sontag.
Further Reading The Sartre of Stalag 12D (1940-1941), by Alfred R. Desautels, The French Review, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Dec., 1981), pp. 201-206 The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, by Christina Howells, Cambridge University Press, 1992
Web News, pictures, articles, interviews, works, quotes, societies, book reviews, writings biography, and academic descriptions and course notes: www.sartre.org The Existential Primer: www.tameri.com/csw/exist/
Rod Serling
TELEVISION/SCREENWRITER
Places to Visit
CD
The Twilight Zone Convention Check www.tzconventin.com for dates and location of this annual summer event.
The 78 episodes of The Zero Hour radio show are available at www.rod-serling.com
Twilight Zone Tower of Terror Walt Disney World Orlando, FL. 32830
The Twilight Zone Companion, by Marc Scott Zicree, SilmanJames Press, 1992
The Rod Serling Archives Ithaca College 953 Danby Road Ithaca, NY 14850 Tel: (607) 274-3011 Rod Serling Archive The Wisconsin Historical Society Rod Serling Papers 1943-1991 816 State St. Madison, WI 53706 Content List: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/eadidx?c=shs&id=uw-whs-us0043an Correspondence, scripts, speeches and articles, reports, press releases, and clippings.
DVD Twilight Zone: The Complete Definitive Collection, 28 DVDs, Released 2006
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Further Reading
As Timeless As Infinity: The Complete Twilight Zone Scripts of Rod Serling, Vol. 1-4, Edited by Tony Albarella, Gauntlet Press, 2004
Edith Sitwell
POET/NOVELIST
Places to Visit
Gravesite
Renishaw Hall Renishaw, Sheffield, S21 3WB UK Tel: + 01246 432310 Open the end of March through the end of September Thursday - Sunday 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The family home of the Sitwells for more than 350 years, and its present owner Sir Reresby Sitwell, seventh baronet. The BBC version of Pride and Prejudice used footage from Renishaw. D.H. Lawrence is said to have used the local village of Eckington and Renishaw Hall as inspiration for his novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Saint Mary and Saint Peter, Weedon Lois Northampton Northampton, UK Sitwell is buried in the cemetery extension, across the road from the church.
Web Works of Edith Sitwell: www.oldpoetry.com Quotes, such as “The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.” www.bartleby.com
The Letters of Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell 1917-1972 Washington State University Libraries Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections Pullman, WA 99164 Tel: 509-335-6691 The Sitwell-Searle Collection Georgetown University Library 37th and N Streets, N.W. Washington, D.C., 20057 Tel: (202) 687-7452
Georg Solti
CONDUCTOR/PIANIST
Places to Visit
CD
The Hungarian State Opera House 1061 Budapest Andrássy út 22 Hungary Tel: +332-7914 Guided tours in English daily at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.
Orchestra! With Sir Georg Solti and Dudley Moore, Polygram Records, 1991
The Royal Opera House Covent Garden Bow Street London WC2E 9DD, UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 7304 4000
Web More than 1,000 multi-media materials available in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s online catalog of the Rosenthal Archives: www.cso.org Discography and reviews: www.classicstoday.com
Chicago Symphony Orchestra 220 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60604 Tel: (312) 294-3000 The Office of Georg Solti contains correspondence, subject and planning files, and some personal memorabilia. The bulk of the collection dates from 1969 through 1978, and documents Solti’s first decade as CSO music director.
Further Reading Solti and Chicago, Time Magazine, May 7, 1973
DVD Sir Georg Solti: The Making of a Maestro, 1997
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Stephen Sondheim Places to Visit San Remo Apartments 145-146 Central Park West New York, NY 10023
COMPOSER All Sondheim, Volume 1-4, by Stephen Sondheim, The Sondheim Review Quarterly, Alfred Publishing, 1999
Web www.sondheim.com
George School 1690 Newtown-Langhorne Rd. Newtown, PA 18940 Other alumni include actress Blythe Danner, actor George Segal, and civil rights activist Julian Bond.
Discography www.sondheim.com/discography/
Audio and Video Stephen Sondheim Interview, Academy of Achievement www.achievement.org Sondheim interview: Fresh Air , Sept. 14, 2000 www.npr.org The Stephen Sondheim Collection (Into the Woods / Sunday in the Park with George / Follies in Concert / Passion / Sweeney Todd in Concert / A Celebration at Carnegie Hall),DVD, Image Entertainment , 2003
Further Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Life, by Meryle Secrest, Delta, 1999
Muriel Spark
NOVELIST/POET
Places to Visit
Video
The National Library of Scotland The Muriel Spark Archive George IV Bridge Edinburgh EH1 1EW Scotland, UK Tel: +44 (0)131 623 3700 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.nls.uk Letters, manuscripts, photographs, scripts, awards, faxes, videotapes, notebooks.
Muriel Spark Dies in Italy, BBC video, April 15, 2006 (www.bbc.co.uk)
Barnbougle Castle Dalmeny Estate Firth of Forth Scotland, UK Featured in the film, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Civitella della Chiana Tuscany, Italy The village where Spark spent the last 30 years of her life with artist and sculptor Penelope Jardine.
DVD The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, directed by Ronald Neame, 1969, starring Maggie Smith.
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Web The Muriel Spark Society: www.murielsparksociety.org The entire text of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is available to read online at Google Scholar.
Further Reading Dame Muriel Spark Dies Aged 88, by Ian Rankin, The Scotsman, April 16, 2006.
Tom Stoppard
PLAYWRIGHT/SCREENWRITER
Places to Visit
Further Reading
Bristol Old Vic King St. Bristol BS14ED UK
Czechs and Thugs and Rock’n’Roll, The Times (UK), June 11, 2006
University of Texas Harry Ransom Center Tom Stoppard Papers 21st and Guadalupe Austin, TX 78713 Tel: 512-471-8944 Correspondence, manuscripts, production files, fan mail, galleys, photographs, reviews.
The Coast of Utopia, by Tom Stoppard, Grove Press, 2003 The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard, by Katherine E. Kelly, Cambridge University Press, 2001
Web Radio Prague, Interviews with the playwright: www.radio.cz
Video Shakespeare in Love, directed by John Madden, Miramax, 1999, starring Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Gwyneth Paltrow Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, directed by Tom Stoppard, Image Entertainment, 2005, starring Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, Richard Dreyfuss
Audio John Tusa Interviews Tom Stoppard, BBC Radio 3 (www.bbc.co.uk). Also Stoppard reviews, news, and biography.
Igor Stravinsky
Tom Stoppard (center). PA Photos © Press Association
COMPOSER/CONDUCTOR
Places to Visit 1 Place Igor Stravinsky 75004 Paris, France (Across the street from the George Pompidou Center.) 1260 N. Wetherly Dr. West Hollywood, CA 90069 Stravinsky’s home in California.
Web List of works, ballets, film scores, etc.: www.igorstravinsky.com Getting Hooked on the ‘Rite’ Sound, March 23, 2007, National Public Radio: www.npr.org
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-32393
MP3s www.karadar.it/
Further Reading Stravinsky: The Last Interview, The New York Review of Books, Vol. 16, No. 12, July 1, 1971 (available to read online www.nybooks.com) The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky, by Jonathan Cross, Cambridge University Press, 2003
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Meryl Streep
ACTRESS
Places to Visit American Film Institute 2021 N. Western Ave. Los Angeles, CA 9002 Tel: 323-856-7600
Filmography www.imdb.com
Web Official site: www.merylstreeponline.net
Further Reading Meryl Streep, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Oct. 28, 1990 Meryl Streep, The Ken Burns Interview, USA Weekend, Dec. 1, 2002 Master Class, by Laura Winters, Vogue Magazine, December 2002
Video
PA Photos © Press Association
Inside the Actors Studio, Season 4, Episode 415, original airdate Nov. 22, 1998 Streep on Letterman, American Film Institute tribute, on Ellen, movie trailers, photos, Live with Regis and Kelly, awards ceremonies: www.youtube.com
Rabindranath Tagore
POET/WRITER
Places to Visit
Web
Visva-Bharati University Santiniketan Birbhum, West Bengal 731235 India
Biography, interviews, speeches, web links, photos, articles: http://nobelprize.org
Jorasanko Tagor House Chitpur Road and the Vivekananda Road Calcutta 700007 India Open Mon. to Fri. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday to 2 p.m. Closed Sunday.
Audio Rabindranath & Bangladesh, Hello Washington, by Anis Ahmed, www.voanews.com, May 9, 2007 (in Bengali) Shades of Tagore, audio CD, Rhyme Records, 1996 (audio clips available on www.amazon.com)
Further Reading Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, by Rabindranath Tagore, St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998. Selected Poems of Rabindranath Tagore, Penguin Classics, 2005
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Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-95518
Rufino Tamayo
PAINTER/SCULPTOR
Places to Visit Palacio de Bellas Artes Avenida Hidalgo 1 Centro, Deleg Cuauhtémoc CP 06050 Mexico Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo Reforma y Gandhi Bosque de Chapltepec Mexico City 11580 Mexico Tel: +5255 5286 6519 Web: www.museotamayo.org
Tamayo with guitar. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-103674
Rufino Tamayo Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art Morelos 503 Oaxaca, Mexico Tel: +951 516 4750
Further Reading Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted, by Diana C. Du Pont, Turner, 2007
Web www.artcyclopedia.com Exhibit poster. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WPA Poster Collection, LC-USZC2-897
Kiri Te Kanawa
SINGER
Discography http://hul.harvard.edu/~robin/kiridisc.html
Audio Dame Kiri Te Kanawa: Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4, Nov. 21, 2006 and other news, concerts, and interviews (www.bbc.co.uk)
DVD My World of Opera: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, 2006 An Evening with Kiri Te Kanawa, directed by Charles Dutoit 1987 Mozart: Le Nozze Di Figaro, directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, 2005
Web Search the Royal Opera House site for videos, synopses and musical highlights of favorite and classic operas: http://info.royaloperahouse.org
PA Photos © Press Association
The Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation: http://www.kiritekanawa.org Opera broadcasts on the Internet: www.operacast.com Links to more than 100 Internet opera radio feeds from around the world.
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Hunter S. Thompson Places to Visit Owl Farm Woody Creek, CO 81657 Universal Life Church Monastery 1425 Broadway, Suite 67 Seattle, WA 98122 www.themonastery.org Thompson received his Doctor of Divinity from the church for a small fee.
AUTHOR Remembering Gonzo, by Emily Larocque, Outside Magazine, November 2006 Thompson’s collection of more than 20,000 letters will be released in 2008.
Web Articles, essays, photographs, interviews, transcripts: www.gonzo.org Official website of Ralph Steadman, friend and collaborator of Thompson: www.ralphsteadman.com Archive of Doonesbury comic strips featuring characters such as The Duke, based on Thompson: www.doonesbury.com
Audio The Paris Review (audio interviews) www.parisreview.com
Further Reading Hunter S. Thompson Dies, by James Sullivan, Rolling Stone Magazine, Feb. 21, 2005 (www.rollingstone.com)
J.R.R. Tolkien
NOVELIST/ILLUSTRATOR
Places to Visit
Further Reading
5 Wake Green Rd. Sarehole (outside of Birmingham), UK The childhood home of the author. It is claimed that the woods surrounding his childhood home were the inspiration for Old Forest.
John Garth reviews The Children of Húrin by J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. by Christopher Tolkien, Daily Telegraph, April 26, 2007 (www.telegraph.co.uk)
Perrott’s Folly Waterworks Road Edgbaston Birmingham, UK Tokien’s model for The Two Towers.
Focus: Tolkien sold film rights to Lord of the Rings to avoid taxman, The Sunday Times (London), December 15, 2002 (www.timesonline.co.uk)
Pembroke College St. Aldates Oxford, OX1 1DB, UK Tel: +44 1865 276444 Founded in 1624, Tolkien taught Anglo-Saxon literature here from 1925 to 1959.
Web Virtual tours of everything Middle Earth: http://fan.theonering.net/middleearthtours/ The Tolkien Society: www.tolkiensociety.org
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W.H. Auden reviews The Return of the King, The New York Times, January 22, 1956 (www.nytimes.com)
Video Tolkien video interviews: www.talkingabouttolkien.com/e_tolkien3_docs.html
Ernst Toller
POET/PLAYWRIGHT/SCREENWRITER
Further Reading Toller Plays One: Transformation, Masses Man, Hoppla, We’re Alive!, by Ernst Toller, Oberon Books, 2001 Ernst Toller (obituary), The Washington Post, May 24, 1939 I Was a German: The Autobiography of Ernst Toller, by Ernst Toller, Kessinger Publishing, 2007 Ernst Toller and His Critics: A Bibliography, by John M. Spalek, The German Quarterly, Jan. 1970
Web The Ernst Toller Society: www.neusob.de/toller/english/01.htm The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century: www. pbs.org/greatwar/
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-37042
Francois Truffaut Places to Visit Musée du Cinéma Palais de Chaillot Place du Trocadéro 75116 Paris France Cimetière de Montmartre 20 Avenue Rachael 75018 Paris France Tel: + 01 45 53 74 39 Truffaut’s final resting place along with Emile Zola, Nijinsky, Edgar Degas, Alexandre Dumas, and Hector Berlioz.
Poster for Toller’s play. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WPA Poster Collection, LC-USZC2-914
DIRECTOR/ACTOR From French Stars to Frenchmen in Postwar National Culture, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Volume 19, Issue 1. January 2002, pages 43 – 57.
Video Close Encounters of the Third Kind, directed by Steven Spielberg, 1977. Truffaut plays the French scientist Claude Lacombe.
Web www.e-cahiersducinema.com www.cinematheque.fr
Further Reading Shoot the Piano Player, by David Goodis, Vintage Reissue, 1990 Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, Del Ray Reissue, 1987 Adèle Hugo: La Misérable, by Leslie Smith Dow, Goose Lane Editions, 1993
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Gore Vidal
NOVELIST/PLAYWRIGHT
Places to Visit St. Albans School Mount St. Alban Washington, DC 20016 Tel: 202-537-6435 La Rondinaia Rovello, Italy Vidal’s home for 30 years.
Bibliography www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/v/gore-vidal/
Web The Gore Vidal Index: www.pitt.edu/~kloman/vidalfintro.html
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-94219
American Masters: Gore Vidal: www.pbs.org
Further Reading Yours for £9 Million, The Scotsman, Sept. 11, 2004 www.living.scotsman.com Palimpsest: A Memoir, by Gore Vidal, Penguin, 1996 A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr., Esquire, Sept. 1969 (http://www.columbia.edu/~tdk3/vidalesquire69.html)
Andy Warhol
PAINTER
Places to Visit
Further Reading
The Andy Warhol Museum 117 Sandusky St. Pittsburgh, PA 15212 Tel: 412-237-8300 Hours: Daily, except Mon. (closed) 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Andy Warhol: Giant Size, by editors of Phaidon Press, Phaidon Press, 2006
The Factory 33 Union Sq. West, 6th Floor New York, NY 10011
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again), by Andy Warhol, Harvest Books, 1977 Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties, by Steven Watson, Pantheon, 2003 Edie: American Girl, by Jean Stein, Grove Press, 1994
The Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art A Warhol St. 06801 Mezilaborce Slovakia
Gravesite St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery Connor Rd. & Pa. State Rt. 88 Bethel Park, PA 15102
Prints Warhols.com 418 W. 15th St. New York, NY 10011
Video I Shot Andy Warhol, directed by Mary Harron, MGM DVD, 2001
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Andy Warhol, second from left, and Tennessee Williams. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT & S Collection, LC-USZ62-121294
H.G. Wells
NOVELIST/JOURNALIST
Places to Visit 13 Hanover Terrace Regents Park London NW1, UK The Rare Book & Manuscript Library. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1408 West Gregory Dr. Urbana, IL 61801 Tel: 217-333-3777 The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame 325 5th Ave. N. Seattle, WA 98109 Tel: 206-770-2700 Hours: Daily from 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. Golders Green Crematorium Hoop Lane London NW11 7NL UK
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-33279
Web Fabian Society: http://fabians.org.uk The H.G. Wells Society: www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com Audio and online books (all works of Wells published during his lifetime are in the public domain): www.gutenberg.org
Patrick White Places to Visit Tudor House School Illawarra Highway Moss Vale NSW 2577 Australia The author attended the school for two years and it is where he wrote his first play, aged 10. Cheltenham College Bath Road Cheltenham Gloucestershire GL53 7LD, UK Where White attended prep school. Dogwoods: The Patrick White House 20 Martin Rd. Sydney, Australia The house, which White shared with his life partner Manoly Lascaris for 25 years, and its neighborhood were an inspiration for White’s work.
NOVELIST/PLAYWRIGHT Houses the papers of Patrick White (1912 - 1990), including notebooks, manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence, photographs, publications and ephemera. There are also papers following White’s death, and personal papers of Manoly Lascaris, White’s partner.
Web Why Bother With Patrick White? Audio clips, timeline, biography, synopses of novels, speeches, plays, excerpts, short stories from the Australian Broadcasting Corp: http://arts.abc.net.au/white Patrick White Readers’ Group: http://patrickwhite.ozewriters.com/
Further Reading Patrick White: A Bibliography, by Vivian Brian Smith and Brian Hubber, Oak Knoll Press, 2004 Our Invisible Colossus, by Elizabeth Webby, The Australian, May 2, 2007 (www.theaustralian.news.com.au)
The National Library of Australia Canberra, ACT 2600 Australia Tel: + 61 2 6262 1111 Web: www.nla.gov.au
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Hank Williams
MUSICIAN
Places to Visit
Video
Hank Williams Boyhood Home & Museum 127 Rose St. Georgiana, AL 36033 Tel: 334-376-2396 Hours: Mon. – Sat. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed Sundays.
Hank Williams, Sr.: Along for the Ride, directed by June Mack.
The Official Hank Williams Museum 119 Commerce St. Montgomery, AL 36104 Tel: 334-262-3600 Web: www.xaust.com/hank/homepage.htm Hours: Mon. – Sat. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Sun. 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Audio The Ultimate Collection, Remastered, Mercury Nashville CD, 2002
Grand Ole Opry 2802 Opryland Dr. Nashville, TN 37214 Tel: 615-871-0009
www.cduniverse.com
Alabama Department of Archives & History 624 Washington Ave. Montgomery, AL 36130 Tel: 334-242-4435
American Masters, Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues, PBS DVD, 2007 www.cmt.com
Web Official site: www.hankwilliams.com
Further Reading Hank Williams: The Biography, by Colin Escott, George Merritt, and William MacEwen, Back Bay Books, 2004 Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams, by Paul Hemphill, Viking, 2005
Gravesite Oakwood Cemetery Annex Upper Wetumpka Rd. Montgomery, AL 36107
Tennessee Williams
PLAYWRIGHT
Places to Visit
Web
722 Toulouse St. New Orleans, LA 70130 Where the playwright first lived in New Orleans.
Featured Author Tennessee Williams: News, play reviews, audio readings by author, archived news stories: www.nytimes.com/books
1431 Duncan St. Key West, FL Where Williams lived from 1949 until his death.
American Masters Series: Tennessee Williams: www.pbs.org
632 St. Peter St. New Orleans, LA 70130 Where Williams lived when he wrote Streetcar Named Desire. Sewanee, The University of the South 735 University Ave. Sewanee, TN 37383 Tel: 931-598-1000 Annual Williams Festival: Tennessee Williams Center. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center University of Texas 21st and Guadalupe Austin, TX 78713 Tel: 512-471-8944 Manuscripts, correspondence, bibliographies, clippings, scrapbooks, academic papers, etc.
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DVD Tennessee Williams Film Collection, Warner Home Video, 7 DVDs, 2006
Further Reading Memoirs, by Tennessee Williams, Doubleday, 1975 Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980, Library of America, 2000 Tennessee Williams Is Dead at Age 71, by J.Y. Smith, The Washington Post, Feb. 26, 1983
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NYWT & S Collection, LC-USZ62-128957
Oprah Winfrey
TV/ACTRESS/CELEBRITY/PRODUCER
Places to Visit
Further Reading
Kosciusko, Mississippi Buffalo Road, now named Oprah Winfrey Road, makes a loop off Hwy. 12 and passes Winfrey’s first church, the Buffalo Community Center, her family cemetery and the site of her birthplace.
Oprah Winfrey’s Charities Worth More Than $200 Million, by Roger Friedman, Fox News, Jan. 5, 2007 (www.foxnews.com) The Oprah Phenomenon, by Robert J. Thompson, Jennifer Harris and Elwood Watson, 2007
The Promised Land 1633 E. Valley Rd. Montecito, CA Winfrey’s estate in Southern California. Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls Henly-on-Klip Meyerton South Africa
Web The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah’s Book Club, philanthropy, Oprah & Friends Radio; O, The Oprah Magazine, show archives: www.oprah.com Fan site: www.oprah-fansite.com
Audio XM Satellite Radio, channel 156
Photo courtesy of Oxmoor House, Inc.
William Butler Yeats
POET/PLAYWRIGHT
Places to Visit
Web
Thoor Ballylee Gort County Galway, Ireland Tel: +353 (0)91 631436 Open in the summer months from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Saturday. Summer home of the poet and one of the filming locations for The Quiet Man starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
www.yeatssociety.org
Yeats Exhibition National Library of Ireland Kildare St. Dublin 2 Ireland Tel: +01 6030346 The National Library of Ireland: The Life & Works of William Butler Yeats. The Yeats Collection at the library includes more than 2000 items, stored in 100 archival boxes. Online tour: www.nil.ie/yeats Yeats Festival Sponsored by the Yeats Society Sligo Hyde Bridge Sligo, Ireland Tel: +353 (0)71 9142693 Email:
[email protected]
Large collection of the poet’s work: www.poetryfeast.com Further Reading William Butler Yeats, by Louise Bogan, The Atlantic Monthly, May 1938 (www.theatlantic.com) The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, Scribner, 2nd Edition, 1996 The Gonne-Yeats Letters 1893-1938, The Economist, April 25, 1992
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ggbain-30166
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List of Leaders by Occupation Actor Barrault, Jean-Louis Baryshnikov, Mikhail Brando, Marlon Burton, Richard Cash, Johnny Chaliapin, Feodor Chaplin, Sir Charles Spencer Chevalier, Maurice Coward, Noël Craig, Gordon Crosby, Bing Cusack, Cyril De Sica, Vittorio DeMille, Cecil B. Domingo, Pla´cido Duchamp, Marcel Eastwood, Clinton Fassbinder, Rainer Werner Fo, Dario Forman, Milosˇ Fry, Christopher Fugard, Athol Gabin, Jean Gable, William Clark Gielgud, John Golding, William Granville-Barker, Harley Guinness, Alec Guthrie, Tyrone Harrison, Rex Helpmann, Robert Heston, Charlton Kazan, Elia Marx Brothers, The Mason, James Massine, Léonide Morley, Robert Newman, Paul Leonard Nureyev, Rudolf O’Toole, Peter Olivier, Laurence Osborne, John Pasolini, Pier Paolo Peck, Gregory Poitier, Sidney Presley, Elvis Aaron Redgrave, Michael Reed, Carol
Richardson, Ralph Sinatra, Francis Albert Stanislavsky, Konstantin Stewart, James Maitland Sydow, Max von Truffaut, François Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
Actress Angelou, Maya Bardot, Brigitte Bergman, Ingrid Dietrich, Marlene Evans, Edith Ffrangcon-Davies, Gwen Fields, Gracie Garland, Judy Guilbert, Yvette Hepburn, Katharine Houghton Leighton, Margaret Moreau, Jeanne Streep, Meryl Tebaldi, Renata Thorndike, Sybil Winfrey, Oprah Gail
Architect Aalto, Alvar Behrens, Peter Gehry, Frank Gropius, Walter Hoffmann, Josef Horta, Victor Jacobsen, Arne Johnson, Philip Kahn Louis I. Le Corbusier Loos, Adolf Lutyens, Edwin Mackintosh, Charles Rennie Mendelsohn, Erich Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig Neutra, Richard Rietveld, Gerrit Tatlin, Vladimir Velde, Henry van de Wright, Frank Lloyd
Author de Mille, Agnes
Heston, Charlton Morris, Mark Thompson, Hunter Stockton Warhol, Andy
Bandleader Basie, Count Cugat, Xavier Goodman, Benjamin David Mingus, Charles
Bassist Lesh, Phil Mingus, Charles
Cartoonist Schulz, Charles Monroe Trudeau, Garretson Beekman
Cellist Casals, Pablo Rostropovich, Mstislav
Ceramicist Dufy, Raoul Picasso, Pablo Rouault, Georges
Chamber Musician Rubinstein, Arthur
Choreographer Ashton, Frederick Astaire, Fred Balanchine, George Baryshnikov, Mikhail Cranko, John de Mille, Agnes Fokine, Michel Graham, Martha Helpmann, Robert Jooss, Kurt Massine, Léonide Morris, Mark Nijinsky, Vaslav Nureyev, Rudolf Pavlova, Anna Petit, Roland Robbins, Jerome Tharp, Twyla Wigman, Mary
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LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
City Planner Aalto, Alvar Gropius, Walter Le Corbusier
Comedian Allen, Woody Chaplin, Sir Charles Spencer Marx Brothers, The
Composer Balanchine, George Barber, Samuel Bartók, Béla Basie, Count Bax, Arnold Berg, Alban Berlin, Irving Bernstein, Leonard Blake, James Hubert “Eubie” Bliss, Arthur Blitzstein, Marc Boulez, Pierre Britten, Benjamin Burgess, Anthony Casadesus, Robert Copland, Aaron Coward, Noël Debussy, Claude Delius, Frederick Elgar, Edward Ellington, Duke Falla, Manuel de Furtwa¨ngler, Wilhelm Gershwin, George Gillespie, Dizzy Glass, Philip Henze, Hans Werner Hindemith, Paul Holst, Gustav Ives, Charles Edward Kern, Jerome David Lloyd Webber, Andrew Maderna, Bruno Messiaen, Olivier Milhaud, Darius Mingus, Charles Monk, Thelonious Sphere Orff, Carl Porter, Cole Albert Poulenc, Francis Prokofiev, Sergei
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Puccini, Giacomo Rachmaninoff, Sergei Ravel, Maurice Rodgers, Richard Charles Rorem, Ned Satie, Erik Schnabel, Artur Schoenberg, Arnold Shostakovich, Dmitry Sibelius, Jean Sondheim, Stephen Joshua Stockhausen, Karlheinz Strauss, Richard Stravinsky, Igor Tagore, Rabindranath Tippett, Michael Vaughan Williams, Ralph Waller, Fats Walton, William Webern, Anton von Weill, Kurt
Conductor Beecham, Thomas Bernstein, Leonard Boulez, Pierre Britten, Benjamin Casals, Pablo Copland, Aaron Domingo, Pla´cido Furtwa¨ngler, Wilhelm Karajan, Herbert von Koussevitzky, Serge Leinsdorf, Erich Maderna, Bruno Rachmaninoff, Sergei Rampal, Jean-Pierre Richter, Sviatoslav Rostropovich, Mstislav Solti, Georg Strauss, Richard Stravinsky, Igor Tippett, Michael Toscanini, Arturo Walter, Bruno Webern, Anton von Weill, Kurt Zukerman, Pinchas
Costume Designer Bakst, Léon Balthus
Chagall, Marc Dalí, Salvador Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delvaux, Paul Grant, Duncan Manzu`, Giacomo Picasso, Pablo
Critic Amis, Kingsley Ashbery, John Auden, W. H. Beckett, Samuel Belloc, Hilaire Bennett, Arnold Blackburn, Thomas Breton, André Robert Burgess, Anthony Chesterton, G. K. Clark, John Pepper Colette Debussy, Claude Eco, Umberto Eliot, T. S. Feuchtwanger, Lion Ford, Ford Madox Forster, E. M. France, Anatole Fuentes, Carlos Gide, André Giraudoux, Jean Godard, Jean-Luc Golding, William Granville-Barker, Harley Guillén, Jorge Heaney, Seamus Hesse, Hermann Housman, A. E. Hughes, Ted Huxley, Aldous Kraus, Karl Larkin, Philip Lewis, Wyndham Mandelstam, Osip Mann, Thomas Moore, George Paz, Octavio Priestley, J. B. Proust, Marcel Seferis, George Shaw, George Bernard
LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Sitwell, Edith Spark, Muriel Spender, Stephen Symons, Arthur Unamuno, Miguel de Vargas Llosa, Mario Wain, John Walpole, Hugh Warner, Rex Wells, H. G. Woolf, Virginia
Dancer Angelou, Maya Ashton, Frederick Astaire, Fred Balanchine, George Baryshnikov, Mikhail Cranko, John de Mille, Agnes Fokine, Michel Fonteyn, Margot Graham, Martha Helpmann, Robert Jooss, Kurt Karsavina, Tamara Markova, Alicia Massine, Léonide Nijinsky, Vaslav Nureyev, Rudolf Pavlova, Anna Petit, Roland Robbins, Jerome Tharp, Twyla Wigman, Mary
Decorator Bacon, Francis Vuillard, E´douard
Designer Aalto, Alvar Behrens, Peter Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delvaux, Paul Derain, André Dufy, Raoul Eames, Charles Eames, Ray Gehry, Frank Grant, Duncan Jacobsen, Arne
Klimt, Gustav Malevich, Kazimir Manzu`, Giacomo Nolan, Sidney Picasso, Pablo Rietveld, Gerrit Tatlin, Vladimir Zeffirelli, Franco
Diplomat Asturias, Miguel A´ngel Awoonor, Kofi Nyidevu Fuentes, Carlos Giraudoux, Jean Havel, Va´clav Mistral, Gabriela Neruda, Pablo Paz, Octavio Perse, Saint-John Seferis, George Senghor, Léopold Sédar
Director Allen, Woody Angelou, Maya Anouilh, Jean Antonioni, Michelangelo Ashton, Frederick Barrault, Jean-Louis Baryshnikov, Mikhail Bergman, Ingmar Brecht, Bertolt Brook, Peter Burton, Richard Buñuel, Luis Capra, Frank Clair, René Cocteau, Jean Coppola, Francis Ford Craig, Gordon Cusack, Cyril De Sica, Vittorio DeMille, Cecil B. Duchamp, Marcel Eastwood, Clinton Eisenstein, Sergei Fassbinder, Rainer Werner Fellini, Federico Fo, Dario Forman, Milosˇ Fry, Christopher Fugard, Athol
Gance, Abel Gielgud, John Godard, Jean-Luc Granville-Barker, Harley Grierson, John Guinness, Alec Guthrie, Tyrone Harrison, Rex Helpmann, Robert Heston, Charlton Hitchcock, Alfred Ivens, Joris Kazan, Elia King, Stephen Korda, Alexander Kurosawa, Akira Lean, David Leigh, Mike Lucas, George Walton Léger, Fernand Mailer, Norman Kingsley Malle, Louis Moreau, Jeanne Morley, Robert Newman, Paul Leonard Olivier, Laurence Osborne, John Pagnol, Marcel Pasolini, Pier Paolo Pinter, Harold Poitier, Sidney Redgrave, Michael Reed, Carol Renoir, Jean Richardson, Ralph Robbins, Jerome Rossellini, Roberto Scorsese, Martin Spielberg, Steven Allan Stanislavsky, Konstantin Sternberg, Josef von Stoppard, Tom Sydow, Max von Tarkovsky, Andrei Truffaut, François Vigo, Jean Visconti, Luchino Zeffirelli, Franco
Drummer Hart, Mickey Kreutzmann, Bill
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LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Editor Ashbery, John Chesterton, G. K. Clark, John Pepper Dennis, Nigel Diaghilev, Sergei Eliot, T. S. Ford, Ford Madox Forster, E. M. Garnett, David Gide, André Hesse, Hermann Kraus, Karl O’Faolain, Sean Okigbo, Christopher Paz, Octavio Sassoon, Siegfried Sitwell, Edith Spender, Stephen
Essayist Arp, Jean Auden, W. H. Beauvoir, Simone de Belloc, Hilaire Bellow, Saul Blasco Iba´ñez, Vicente Borges, Jorge Luis Brendel, Alfred Breton, André Robert Brodsky, Joseph Camus, Albert Cavafy, Constantine Cela, Camilo José Chesterton, G. K. Conrad, Joseph Craig, Gordon Douglas, Norman Dürrenmatt, Friedrich Eco, Umberto Eisenstein, Sergei Ford, Ford Madox Forster, E. M. Fowles, John Fuller, Roy Galsworthy, John Gide, André Gill, Eric Giraudoux, Jean Golding, William Gordimer, Nadine Gorky, Maxim
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Grass, Günter Havel, Va´clav Heaney, Seamus Henze, Hans Werner Hesse, Hermann Hughes, Ted Huxley, Aldous Kraus, Karl Kundera, Milan Larkin, Philip Laxness, Halldór Le Corbusier Lessing, Doris Lewis, C. S. Lewis, Wyndham MacNeice, Louis Maeterlinck, Maurice Mann, Thomas Marinetti, F. T. Maugham, Somerset Moore, George Moravia, Alberto Naipaul, V. S. O’Faolain, Sean Oe, Kenzaburo Orwell, George Oz, Amos Paton, Alan Paz, Octavio Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis Powell, Anthony Priestley, J. B. Ransome, Arthur Renoir, Jean Sartre, Jean-Paul Schoenberg, Arnold Seferis, George Shaw, George Bernard Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Soyinka, Wole Spender, Stephen Unamuno, Miguel de Valéry, Paul Vargas Llosa, Mario Vidal, Gore Wain, John Warner, Rex Wells, H. G. White, T. H. Zangwill, Israel
Filmmaker Eames, Charles Eames, Ray Warhol, Andy
Flutist Rampal, Jean-Pierre
Graphic Artist Beckmann, Max Behrens, Peter Boccioni, Umberto Bonnard, Pierre Braque, Georges Chagall, Marc Chillida, Eduardo Craig, Gordon Derain, André Dubuffet, Jean Dufy, Raoul Ernst, Max Gill, Eric Grass, Günter Gris, Juan Grosz, George Hockney, David Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig Klee, Paul Kollwitz, Ka¨the Lehmbruck, Wilhelm Liebermann, Max Maillol, Aristide Marc, Franz Matisse, Henri Miró, Joan Morandi, Giorgio Munch, Edvard Nolde, Emil Pascin, Jules Picasso, Pablo Rouault, Georges Schiele, Egon Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl Sutherland, Graham Villon, Jacques Vuillard, E´douard Warhol, Andy
Guitarist Diddley, Bo Garcia, Jerry Hendrix, James Marshall
LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Johnson, Robert Leroy King, B. B. Springsteen, Bruce Waters, Muddy Weir, Bob Williams, Hank Young, Neil
Harmonica Player McKernan, Ron “Pigpen”
Illustrator Bakst, Léon Barlach, Ernst Bonnard, Pierre Chillida, Eduardo Dalí, Salvador Deighton, Len Denis, Maurice Derain, André Dubuffet, Jean Gill, Eric Gris, Juan Grosz, George Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig Manzu`, Giacomo Matisse, Henri Ransome, Arthur Rockwell, Norman Percevel Sendak, Maurice Tatlin, Vladimir Tolkien, J. R. R. Warhol, Andy
Impresario Bing, Rudolf Diaghilev, Sergei Graham, Bill Ponnelle, Jean-Pierre
Journalist Beauvoir, Simone de Belloc, Hilaire Betjeman, John D’Annunzio, Gabriele Deighton, Len Dennis, Nigel Feuchtwanger, Lion Forster, E. M. Fuller, Roy García Ma´rquez, Gabriel Hemingway, Ernest Miller Huxley, Aldous
Kraus, Karl Levi, Carlo Mailer, Norman Kingsley Murrow, Edward R. Orwell, George Priestley, J. B. Ransome, Arthur Sandburg, Carl Sassoon, Siegfried Spender, Stephen Thompson, Hunter Stockton Wells, H. G. Wolfe, Tom
Keyboardist Contanten, Tom Godchaux, Keith McKernan, Ron “Pigpen” Mydland, Brent Welnick, Vince
Lyricist Hart, Lorenz Milton Hunter, Robert
Mime Chaplin, Sir Charles Spencer
Musician Allen, Woody Armstrong, Louis Beatles, The Dolmetsch, Arnold Dylan, Bob Ellington, Duke Gillespie, Dizzy Rolling Stones, The
Novelist Achebe, Chinua Alain-Fournier Amis, Kingsley Andric’, Ivo Angelou, Maya Asturias, Miguel A´ngel Awoonor, Kofi Nyidevu Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones) Baroja y Nessi, Pío Barrie, J. M. Beauvoir, Simone de Beckett, Samuel Belloc, Hilaire Bellow, Saul
Bennett, Arnold Blackburn, Thomas Blackwood, Algernon Blais, Marie-Claire Blasco Iba´ñez, Vicente Bowen, Elizabeth Breton, André Robert Bunin, Ivan Burgess, Anthony Calvino, Italo Camus, Albert Cary, Joyce Cela, Camilo José Chesterton, G. K. Christie, Agatha Clair, René Cocteau, Jean Colette Compton-Burnett, Ivy Conrad, Joseph Corta´zar, Julio Coward, Noël D’Annunzio, Gabriele Dahl, Roald Dalí, Salvador Day-Lewis, C. De la Mare, Walter Deighton, Len Dennis, Nigel Dinesen, Isak Douglas, Norman Doyle, Arthur Conan Du Maurier, Daphne Durrell, Lawrence Eco, Umberto Faulkner, William Cuthbert Feuchtwanger, Lion Firbank, Ronald Fleming, Ian Ford, Ford Madox Forster, E. M. Fowles, John France, Anatole Fuentes, Carlos Fuller, Roy Galsworthy, John García Ma´rquez, Gabriel Garnett, David Genet, Jean Gide, André Giraudoux, Jean Golding, William
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LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Gordimer, Nadine Gorky, Maxim Grass, Günter Graves, Robert Greene, Graham Guilbert, Yvette Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson Hauptmann, Gerhart Head, Bessie Hemingway, Ernest Miller Hesse, Hermann Huxley, Aldous Ionesco, Eugène Jacobson, Dan Joyce, James Kafka, Franz Kazan, Elia Kerouac, Jack Kesey, Kenneth Elton King, Stephen Kipling, Rudyard Kundera, Milan Larkin, Philip Lawrence, D. H. Laxness, Halldór Laye, Camara Le Carré, John Lehmann, Rosamond Lessing, Doris Levi, Carlo Lewis, C. S. Lewis, Wyndham Lowry, Malcolm Mailer, Norman Kingsley Mann, Thomas Manning, Olivia Marinetti, F. T. Maugham, Somerset Molna´r, Ferenc Moore, George Moravia, Alberto Naipaul, V. S. Nin, Anaïs O’Faolain, Sean Oe, Kenzaburo Orton, Joe Orwell, George Oz, Amos Pasolini, Pier Paolo Pasternak, Boris Paton, Alan Plath, Sylvia
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Powell, Anthony Priestley, J. B. Proust, Marcel Ransome, Arthur Remarque, Erich Maria Renoir, Jean Richardson, Henry Handel Rilke, Rainer Maria Roth, Philip Milton Rulfo, Juan Perez Sandburg, Carl Sartre, Jean-Paul Sassoon, Siegfried Schnitzler, Arthur Shaw, George Bernard Sillitoe, Alan Sitwell, Edith Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Soyinka, Wole Spark, Muriel Spender, Stephen Stephens, James Thomas, Dylan Tolkien, J. R. R. Unamuno, Miguel de Vallejo, César Vallé-Incla´n, Ramón del Vargas Llosa, Mario Vidal, Gore Wain, John Walpole, Hugh Warner, Rex Waugh, Evelyn Welch, Denton Wells, H. G. Werfel, Franz White, Patrick White, T. H. Wilder, Thornton Niven Woolf, Virginia Yevtushenko, Yevgeny Zangwill, Israel
Organist Basie, Count Waller, Fats
Painter Arp, Jean Bacon, Francis Bakst, Léon Balthus
Beckmann, Max Behrens, Peter Boccioni, Umberto Bonnard, Pierre Braque, Georges Chagall, Marc Chirico, Giorgio de Cocteau, Jean Dalí, Salvador Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delvaux, Paul Denis, Maurice Derain, André Dubuffet, Jean Duchamp, Marcel Dufy, Raoul Ernst, Max Giacometti, Alberto Grant, Duncan Gris, Juan Grosz, George Hockney, David Hofmann, Hans Hélion, Jean John, Augustus John, Gwen Johns, Jasper Kahlo, Frida Kandinsky, Wassily Kiefer, Anselm Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig Klee, Paul Klimt, Gustav Kline, Franz Kokoschka, Oskar Le Corbusier Lehmbruck, Wilhelm Levi, Carlo Lewis, Wyndham Liebermann, Max Léger, Fernand Magritte, René Maillol, Aristide Malevich, Kazimir Manzu`, Giacomo Marc, Franz Matisse, Henri Miró, Joan Mitchell, Joni Modigliani, Amedeo Moholy-Nagy, La´szló
LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Mondrian, Piet Monet, Claude Morandi, Giorgio Munch, Edvard Nicholson, Ben Nolan, Sidney Nolde, Emil O’Keeffe, Georgia Totto Pascin, Jules Picasso, Pablo Pollock, Paul Jackson Rockwell, Norman Percevel Rivera, Diego Rothko, Mark Rouault, Georges Schiele, Egon Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl Schwitters, Kurt Sickert, Walter Spencer, Stanley Sutherland, Graham Tagore, Rabindranath Tamayo, Rufino Tatlin, Vladimir Tàpies, Antoni Villon, Jacques Vlaminck, Maurice de Vuillard, E´douard Warhol, Andy Welch, Denton
Percussionist Hart, Mickey
Philosopher Beauvoir, Simone de Camus, Albert Sartre, Jean-Paul
Photographer Adams, Ansel Easton Arbus, Diane Hockney, David Kiefer, Anselm Moholy-Nagy, La´szló Rulfo, Juan Perez Stieglitz, Alfred Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
Pianist Bartók, Béla Basie, Count Bernstein, Leonard
Blake, James Hubert “Eubie” Brendel, Alfred Britten, Benjamin Casadesus, Robert Copland, Aaron Debussy, Claude Delius, Frederick Dolmetsch, Arnold Franklin, Aretha Louise Leinsdorf, Erich Mingus, Charles Monk, Thelonious Sphere Poulenc, Francis Rachmaninoff, Sergei Ravel, Maurice Richter, Sviatoslav Rostropovich, Mstislav Rubinstein, Arthur Schnabel, Artur Solti, Georg Stockhausen, Karlheinz Stravinsky, Igor Waller, Fats Walter, Bruno
Playwright Albee, Edward Allen, Woody Anouilh, Jean Asturias, Miguel A´ngel Auden, W. H. Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones) Barlach, Ernst Barrie, J. M. Beauvoir, Simone de Beckett, Samuel Bellow, Saul Bennett, Arnold Blackburn, Thomas Blais, Marie-Claire Blasco Iba´ñez, Vicente Brecht, Bertolt Brodsky, Joseph Christie, Agatha Clark, John Pepper Cocteau, Jean Colette Coward, Noël D’Annunzio, Gabriele Dahl, Roald Day-Lewis, C. De la Mare, Walter
Dennis, Nigel Du Maurier, Daphne Durrell, Lawrence Dürrenmatt, Friedrich Eliot, T. S. Fassbinder, Rainer Werner Faulkner, William Cuthbert Feuchtwanger, Lion Firbank, Ronald Fo, Dario Friel, Brian Fry, Christopher Fuentes, Carlos Fugard, Athol Galsworthy, John García Lorca, Federico Genet, Jean Gide, André Giraudoux, Jean Gorky, Maxim Granville-Barker, Harley Grass, Günter Greene, Graham Hauptmann, Gerhart Havel, Va´clav Hellman, Lillian Florence Ionesco, Eugène Joyce, James Kokoschka, Oskar Kraus, Karl Kundera, Milan Kushner, Tony Lawrence, D. H. Laxness, Halldór Leigh, Mike MacNeice, Louis Machado, Antonio Maeterlinck, Maurice Mailer, Norman Kingsley Marinetti, F. T. Maugham, Somerset McNally, Terrence Miller, Arthur Asher Molna´r, Ferenc Moore, George Morley, Robert O’Casey, Sean O’Neill, Eugene Gladstone Orton, Joe Osborne, John Pagnol, Marcel Pinter, Harold
1129
LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Powell, Anthony Priestley, J. B. Rattigan, Terence Remarque, Erich Maria Sartre, Jean-Paul Schnitzler, Arthur Shaw, George Bernard Simon, Marvin Neil Soyinka, Wole Spark, Muriel Spender, Stephen Stephens, James Stoppard, Tom Symons, Arthur Synge, John Millington Tagore, Rabindranath Thomas, Dylan Toller, Ernst Trudeau, Garretson Beekman Unamuno, Miguel de Vallé-Incla´n, Ramón del Valéry, Paul Vargas Llosa, Mario Vidal, Gore Wain, John Walcott, Derek Werfel, Franz White, Patrick Wilder, Thornton Niven Williams, Tennessee Wilson, August Yeats, William Butler Yevtushenko, Yevgeny Zangwill, Israel
Poet Achebe, Chinua Akhmatova, Anna Amis, Kingsley Andric’, Ivo Angelou, Maya Arp, Jean Ashbery, John Asturias, Miguel A´ngel Auden, W. H. Awoonor, Kofi Nyidevu Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones) Belloc, Hilaire Betjeman, John Blackburn, Thomas Blais, Marie-Claire Blok, Alexander
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Borges, Jorge Luis Brecht, Bertolt Breton, André Robert Brodsky, Joseph Brooke, Rupert Bunin, Ivan Cavafy, Constantine Cela, Camilo José Celan, Paul Chesterton, G. K. Clark, John Pepper Cocteau, Jean Corta´zar, Julio Coward, Noël D’Annunzio, Gabriele Dahl, Roald Day-Lewis, C. De la Mare, Walter Douglas, Keith Durrell, Lawrence Eliot, T. S. E´luard, Paul Faulkner, William Cuthbert Ford, Ford Madox Fowles, John France, Anatole Frost, Robert Fuller, Roy Galsworthy, John García Lorca, Federico Genet, Jean Ginsberg, Allen Grass, Günter Graves, Robert Greene, Graham Guillén, Jorge Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson Hauptmann, Gerhart Heaney, Seamus Hesse, Hermann Housman, A. E. Hughes, Ted Huxley, Aldous Jennings, Elizabeth Jiménez, Juan Ramón Joyce, James Kerouac, Jack Kipling, Rudyard Kokoschka, Oskar Kraus, Karl Kundera, Milan Larkin, Philip
Lawrence, D. H. Laxness, Halldór Lehmbruck, Wilhelm Lowry, Malcolm MacNeice, Louis Machado, Antonio Maeterlinck, Maurice Mandelstam, Osip Mansfield, Katherine Marinetti, F. T. Mistral, Gabriela Moore, George Neruda, Pablo Okigbo, Christopher Owen, Wilfred Pasolini, Pier Paolo Pasternak, Boris Paton, Alan Paz, Octavio Perse, Saint-John Pinter, Harold Plath, Sylvia Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis Remarque, Erich Maria Rilke, Rainer Maria Sandburg, Carl Sassoon, Siegfried Schwitters, Kurt Seferis, George Senghor, Léopold Sédar Sillitoe, Alan Sitwell, Edith Soyinka, Wole Spark, Muriel Spender, Stephen Stephens, James Symons, Arthur Tagore, Rabindranath Thomas, Dylan Toller, Ernst Unamuno, Miguel de Vallejo, César Vallé-Incla´n, Ramón del Valéry, Paul Wain, John Walcott, Derek Warner, Rex Werfel, Franz White, Patrick White, T. H. Yeats, William Butler Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Zangwill, Israel
Politician Blasco Iba´ñez, Vicente Moravia, Alberto Toller, Ernst Vallé-Incla´n, Ramón del Vargas Llosa, Mario
Printmaker Johns, Jasper
Producer Antonioni, Michelangelo Barrault, Jean-Louis Brook, Peter Coppola, Francis Ford Craig, Gordon Deighton, Len DeMille, Cecil B. Eastwood, Clinton Forman, Milosˇ Gielgud, John Goldwyn, Samuel Granville-Barker, Harley Grierson, John Guinness, Alec Guthrie, Tyrone Heston, Charlton Hughes, Howard Korda, Alexander Lucas, George Walton Olivier, Laurence Osborne, John Pagnol, Marcel Peck, Gregory Redgrave, Michael Scorsese, Martin Selznick, David O. Serling, Rod Spielberg, Steven Allan Zeffirelli, Franco
Scholar Eco, Umberto Eliot, T. S. Graves, Robert Guillén, Jorge Housman, A. E. Lewis, C. S. Tolkien, J. R. R.
Screenwriter Allen, Woody Bennett, Arnold Bergman, Ingmar Coppola, Francis Ford Dahl, Roald Fassbinder, Rainer Werner Fellini, Federico Forman, Milosˇ Fry, Christopher Gance, Abel García Ma´rquez, Gabriel Giraudoux, Jean Leigh, Mike Lucas, George Walton Léger, Fernand Mailer, Norman Kingsley McNally, Terrence Pinter, Harold Rattigan, Terence Rulfo, Juan Perez Scorsese, Martin Serling, Rod Simon, Marvin Neil Spielberg, Steven Allan Stoppard, Tom Toller, Ernst Williams, Tennessee
Sculptor Arp, Jean Barlach, Ernst Boccioni, Umberto Bourdelle, E´mile-Antoine Brancusi, Constantin Braque, Georges Calder, Alexander Caro, Sir Anthony Chillida, Eduardo Chirico, Giorgio de Derain, André Dubuffet, Jean Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp-Villon, Raymond Ernst, Max Giacometti, Alberto Gill, Eric Hepworth, Barbara Johns, Jasper Kiefer, Anselm Kollwitz, Ka¨the Lehmbruck, Wilhelm
Maillol, Aristide Manzu`, Giacomo Marini, Marino Matisse, Henri Milles, Carl Miró, Joan Modigliani, Amedeo Moore, Henry Nicholson, Ben Pascin, Jules Picasso, Pablo Tamayo, Rufino Tatlin, Vladimir Warhol, Andy
Short-Story Writer Alain-Fournier Andric’, Ivo Arp, Jean Asturias, Miguel A´ngel Baroja y Nessi, Pío Beauvoir, Simone de Bellow, Saul Blackwood, Algernon Blasco Iba´ñez, Vicente Borges, Jorge Luis Bowen, Elizabeth Bunin, Ivan Calvino, Italo Cela, Camilo José Christie, Agatha Colette Conrad, Joseph Corta´zar, Julio Coward, Noël D’Annunzio, Gabriele Dahl, Roald De la Mare, Walter Deighton, Len Dinesen, Isak Doyle, Arthur Conan Du Maurier, Daphne Durrell, Lawrence Dürrenmatt, Friedrich Firbank, Ronald Fleming, Ian Friel, Brian Fuentes, Carlos Galsworthy, John García Ma´rquez, Gabriel Gide, André Giraudoux, Jean
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LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Golding, William Gordimer, Nadine Grahame, Kenneth Graves, Robert Greene, Graham Head, Bessie Heaney, Seamus Hemingway, Ernest Miller Hesse, Hermann Hughes, Ted Jacobson, Dan Kafka, Franz Kesey, Kenneth Elton King, Stephen Kipling, Rudyard Kokoschka, Oskar Kundera, Milan Lawrence, D. H. Laye, Camara Lessing, Doris Lewis, Wyndham Lowry, Malcolm Mandelstam, Osip Mann, Thomas Manning, Olivia Mansfield, Katherine Maugham, Somerset Molna´r, Ferenc Moore, George Moravia, Alberto Naipaul, V. S. Nin, Anaïs O’Faolain, Sean Oe, Kenzaburo Oz, Amos Pasolini, Pier Paolo Pasternak, Boris Paton, Alan Plath, Sylvia Priestley, J. B. Proust, Marcel Richardson, Henry Handel Roth, Philip Milton Rulfo, Juan Perez Schnitzler, Arthur Sillitoe, Alan Spender, Stephen Stephens, James Symons, Arthur Tagore, Rabindranath Vallejo, César Wain, John
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Walpole, Hugh Welch, Denton Wells, H. G. White, Patrick Williams, Tennessee
Singer Angelou, Maya Armstrong, Louis Astaire, Fred Caballé, Montserrat Carreras, José Caruso, Enrico Cash, Johnny Chaliapin, Feodor Chevalier, Maurice Crosby, Bing Diddley, Bo Dietrich, Marlene Domingo, Pla´cido Dylan, Bob Evans, Geraint Ferrier, Kathleen Fields, Gracie Fitzgerald, Ella Franklin, Aretha Louise Garcia, Jerry Garland, Judy Godchaux, Donna Guilbert, Yvette Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson Hendrix, James Marshall Holiday, Billie Johnson, Robert Leroy King, B. B. Lesh, Phil Mitchell, Joni McKernan, Ron “Pigpen” Mydland, Brent Pavarotti, Luciano Presley, Elvis Aaron Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth Sinatra, Francis Albert Springsteen, Bruce Sutherland, Dame Joan Te Kanawa, Kiri Tebaldi, Renata Teyte, Maggie Vaughan, Sarah Lois Waters, Muddy Weir, Bob Williams, Hank
Young, Neil
Songwriter Berlin, Irving Blake, James Hubert “Eubie” Cash, Johnny Crosby, Bing Diddley, Bo Dylan, Bob Franklin, Aretha Louise Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson Hendrix, James Marshall Mitchell, Joni Porter, Cole Albert Springsteen, Bruce Williams, Hank Young, Neil
Teacher Aalto, Alvar Amis, Kingsley Ashbery, John Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones) Bartók, Béla Beckmann, Max Bernstein, Leonard Blackburn, Thomas Borges, Jorge Luis Brendel, Alfred Clark, John Pepper Day-Lewis, C. Eco, Umberto Elgar, Edward Friel, Brian Fuller, Roy Golding, William Grierson, John Gropius, Walter Guillén, Jorge Heaney, Seamus Hindemith, Paul Hofmann, Hans Holst, Gustav Housman, A. E. Hughes, Ted Kandinsky, Wassily Karsavina, Tamara Klee, Paul Kundera, Milan MacNeice, Louis Maderna, Bruno Markova, Alicia
LEADERS BY OCCUPATION
Mendelsohn, Erich Messiaen, Olivier Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig Milles, Carl Mistral, Gabriela Moholy-Nagy, La´szló Moore, Henry Morandi, Giorgio Oz, Amos Pagnol, Marcel Pavlova, Anna Rubinstein, Arthur Schoenberg, Arnold Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth Spender, Stephen Tatlin, Vladimir Tolkien, J. R. R. Walcott, Derek Warner, Rex Webern, Anton von Yevtushenko, Yevgeny Zukerman, Pinchas
Television Personality Carson, Johnny Sullivan, Edward Vincent Winfrey, Oprah Gail
Theorist Brecht, Bertolt Craig, Gordon Eisenstein, Sergei
Granville-Barker, Harley Gropius, Walter Hindemith, Paul Kandinsky, Wassily Klee, Paul Le Corbusier Schoenberg, Arnold Senghor, Léopold Sédar Stanislavsky, Konstantin
Delius, Frederick Dolmetsch, Arnold Zukerman, Pinchas
Translator
Capote, Truman Eames, Charles Eames, Ray Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald Leary, Timothy Francis Miller, Henry Rorem, Ned Rowling, J. K. Sendak, Maurice Tippett, Michael Wolfe, Thomas Wolfe, Tom
Akhmatova, Anna Asturias, Miguel A´ngel Burgess, Anthony Celan, Paul Clark, John Pepper Corta´zar, Julio Feuchtwanger, Lion Fry, Christopher Gide, André Heaney, Seamus Hughes, Ted Jiménez, Juan Ramón Laxness, Halldór Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis MacNeice, Louis Rilke, Rainer Maria Seferis, George Warner, Rex Zangwill, Israel
Violinist Cugat, Xavier
Violist Hindemith, Paul Stern, Isaac Zukerman, Pinchas
Writer
Writer of Children’s Books Dahl, Roald De la Mare, Walter Fleming, Ian Grahame, Kenneth Hughes, Ted Lewis, C. S. Ransome, Arthur Tolkien, J. R. R.
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Glossary Abbey Theatre Founded in 1904 in Dublin, the Abbey Theatre evolved from the Irish Literary Theatre that W. B. Yeats and Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory founded in 1899. The theater and its company were central to the Irish Renaissance (see Irish Renaissance) and initially staged many plays by Yeats, John Millington Synge, and other Irish playwrights. It later helped popularize Sean O’Casey’s plays and expanded its repertory to include non-Irish works. The modern Abbey Theatre was built in 1966 at the same location as the original, which suffered damage in a fire in 1951. Abstract Expressionism A movement in midtwentieth-century painting, centered in New York, that evolved during the World War II era from both Expressionism in Germany and Surrealism in France. The work of early-twentieth-century artists such as Hans Hofmann, Paul Klee, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, and Wassily Kandinsky contributed heavily to the movement’s development. The term Abstract Expressionism applies loosely to varied painting styles that share in common free use of abstract forms and intense, spontaneous emotion conveyed through the use of bold color, paint pouring, thick paint, and other techniques. Absurdism See Theater of the Absurd Academy Award An award given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, California, that recognizes excellence and achievement in various aspects of filmmaking. Also known as an “Oscar,” the Academy Award is one of the most prestigious awards in the motion picture industry worldwide. Acmeism A movement in pre-Soviet Russian verse that stressed clear, plainspoken language in poetry and was in part a reaction to Symbolism. Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam were two of the movement’s central figures.
Analytic Cubism Influenced by the Postimpressionist painter Paul Ce´zanne’s (1839–1906) treatment of volume and space, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque evolved their first phase of Cubism, Analytic Cubism. The style is marked by its emphasis on underlying geometric forms, fragmented subjects, and monochromatic color schemes. Picasso and Braque experimented with Analytic Cubism between 1908 and 1911. See also Cubism and Synthetic Cubism. Angry Young Men The British playwright John Osborne established himself as Britain’s first “Angry Young Man” with the publication of his play Look Back in Anger in 1956. Kingsley Amis and John Wain also earned that label, and their work is characterized by its animosity toward prevailing social values. Apollo Theatre, the A famous popular music club in New York City traditionally associated with African-American music. The Apollo and its amateur nights helped launch the careers of many African-American musicians, including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, and Billie Holiday. Art Nouveau In English, “New Art.” With roots in the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries originated in Belgium and affected a broad range of arts, handicrafts, and architecture. The hallmarks of Art Nouveau were its use of undulating lines, combined with its emphasis on decorative elements. The term originated from a Paris store called Maison de l’Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau was embraced by architects such as the Scot Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Belgians Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta, and it manifested itself as Jugendstil in Munich. Arts and Crafts Movement Originated by the designer William Morris in the later part of the nineteenth century in England, the Arts and Crafts Movement was a reaction against an increasing tide of mass production. Adher-
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ents emphasized the importance of handcrafted furniture, wallpaper, and other items. The movement anticipated the development of Art Nouveau and influenced many architects of the early twentieth century, notably the Scot Charles Rennie Mackintosh. atonality In musical composition, the lack of a fixed tonal key. Atonality was a major force in twentieth-century music, particularly in the work of experimental composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. automatic writing In automatic writing, the emphasis is on what is unseen or not conscious. The writer is a channel either for subconscious thought from within him- or herself or for words given by supernatural forces. Automatic writing was central to Surrealist literature in early-twentieth-century Paris. BAFTA Award An award bestowed annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for excellence in the art forms of the moving image. The awards have expanded from three annually to more than one hundred each year for film, television, and video games awarded in five annual ceremonies in London, England. The Academy was founded in 1947 by Alexander Korda, David Lean, Carol Reed, and others. Bauhaus, the A highly influential school in the development of modern graphic art, theater, and especially architecture and the chief force behind the International Style. Located first in Weimar and then in Dessau, Germany, it was founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius and shared with the Arts and Crafts Movement a belief that craftsmanship is the basis of art. Many of the twentieth century’s leading figures in abstract and functional art and architecture studied or taught at the Bauhaus, including Wassily Kandinsky, La´szlo´ Moholy-Nagy, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Beale Street A street in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, that is traditionally associated with American jazz and blues music. Louis
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Armstrong, Muddy Waters, and B. B. King all played in Beale Street clubs. Beat Generation, the See Beat Movement, the. Beat Movement, the An anti-conformist movement in American literature that emerged during the 1950s. Jack Kerouac coined the term “beat” to refer both to being beaten down by societal conformity and to being personally upbeat and musically on the beat. Allen Ginsberg was also a major figure in the Beat Movement. Members and followers of the movement are sometimes called the Beat Generation and beatniks. beatnik See Beat Movement, the. bebop A form of American jazz that emerged during the decline of the Big Band and Swing eras in the mid-1940s. Improvisation and fast tempos are prime characteristics of bebop, also known as bop. Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk were important innovators in the bebop genre. Berlin Secession An avant-garde group of painters originally led by Max Liebermann that rejected formal academic art in Germany and held the first of its exhibitions in 1899. The Berlin Secession exhibitions displayed the work of many Expressionist painters in pre–World War I Germany. Big Band era A period in American music that lasted roughly between the mid-1930s and the late 1940s. Big band music was characterized by large musical ensembles that played jazz-inspired music. See also Swing era and Jazz Age, the. Blaue Reiter, der In English, “the Blue Rider.” A short-lived group of Expressionist painters that formed in Munich in 1911 and disbanded during World War I. Its members included Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Franz Marc, and the group took its name from blue horses and riders that appeared in the paintings of both Marc and Kandinsky. Der Blaue Reiter members sometimes exhibited with Die Bru¨cke painters (see Bru¨cke, die).
GLOSSARY
Bloomsbury Group A group of progressiveminded painters, writers, and other intellectuals in early-twentieth-century Britain. Named after London’s Bloomsbury district, where the group was centered, its members included the authors Leonard and Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and the art critics Clive Bell and Roger Fry. blues In broad terms, a form of vocal and instrumental music based on the use of blue notes and rooted in the song traditions of African-American communities in the United States. Electric and acoustic guitars, as well as the harmonica, are used prominently in blues music. Blues was a precursor to the development of many other musical genres, including rhythm and blues and rock and roll. See also Delta Blues, Chicago Blues, and Beale Street. bop See bebop. bottleneck guitar A type of guitar playing often used in blues music in which the musician runs a ring made from glass or metal and worn on the finger up and down the guitar neck to alter the string pitch. Bottleneck guitar is also known as slide guitar. British Invasion, the A term used to describe the period between 1964 and 1967 when British rock and roll bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones attained enormous success in the United States. Broadway The name of a street on which the Theater District of Manhattan in New York, New York, in the United States stands. Broadway is the most well-known theater district in the English-speaking world. The venues collectively termed “Broadway” currently consist of thirty-nine theaters with five hundred or more seats each that host the world’s most commercially successful plays. A play that makes it to Broadway is considered successful in its own right, and plays that are successful on Broadway rank among the world’s most popular shows. Broadway plays general-
ly cater to mainstream and not experimental tastes. Broadway theaters date back to the 1800s, when Broadway was New York City’s main thoroughfare, and rose to prominence in the twentieth century. The thoroughfare originated as a Native American trail called the Wickquasgeck Trail. See also Off Broadway. Bru¨cke, die In English, “the Bridge.” The first German Expressionist group and the most important early force in modern German art. Founded in 1905 in Dresden, the group relocated to Berlin in 1910 and disbanded three years later. Among its members were Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (who was the central figure in the group), and Karl SchmidtRottluff. Caldecott Medal, the Named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott, an award presented annually by the Association for Library Service to Children to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children. Maurice Sendak won the Caldecott Medal in 1964 for Where the Wild Things Are. Chicago blues A form of American blues music that developed in the 1940s in Chicago, Illinois, that electrified the acoustic sound of the Mississippi Delta blues style. Muddy Waters was a central figure in the development of the Chicago blues style. See also Mississippi Delta blues. chromaticism In music, using tones that are not part of the scale in which a work is written. Late Romantics such as Richard Strauss extended chromaticism to its limits and anticipated the atonal works of later composers such as Arnold Schoenberg. commedia dell’arte An early form of theater that originated in sixteenth-century northern Italy. Small troupes of commedia dell’arte actors and actresses traveled around entertaining broad audiences with a highly theatrical blend of humor, music, and spontaneity. Characters usually represented particular stereotypes and wore masks. Commedia dell’arte
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heavily influenced the Nobel Prize–winning Italian playwright and director Dario Fo.
home of the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera.
concept album An album, particularly popular in rock and roll music, in which the songs are bound together by a common theme.
crooner A term given to American male singers who sang popular songs, often from the Great American Songbook. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Fred Astaire have all been called crooners. See also Great American Songbook, the.
confessional songwriting A form of songwriting that reads like a heartfelt confession from the artist’s pen. The Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell helped popularize confessional songwriting, and it was an influence in American folk music. Constructivism Established by the Russian sculptor and painter Vladimir Tatlin, Constructivism was born in early-twentieth-century Russia and derived its name from the construction of its abstract forms from materials such as metal and plastic. Constructivism’s emphasis on functionality harmonized with the ideals of the Soviet state as well as those of the International Style, and Tatlin’s ideas had a significant impact on both. Country Music Hall of Fame Located at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, a hall that displays plaques of country and western musicians honored by the Country Music Association. Hank Williams was among its first inductees in 1961, and Johnny Cash was inducted in 1980. country A genre of American music that developed in the Southern United States during the 1920s from folk, blues, old-time, and other traditional forms of music. Covent Garden The location of the Royal Opera House, Britain’s oldest and most prestigious opera house. The Covent Garden Theatre in London, which was established in 1732 and burned down, and was rebuilt several times, has over the years been a major center for theater and opera. It was a center of activity for the eighteenth-century composer George Frideric Handel as well as the twentieth-century conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Sir Georg Solti. Covent Garden was also the home of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company, later the Royal Ballet, and it remains the
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Cubism A highly influential movement in abstract art that developed in France in the early twentieth century. A critic who described the forms as being made of “little cubes” gave Cubism its name. The chief theorists and proponents of Cubism were Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. See also Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism. Dada A nihilistic and short-lived movement in art and literature that originated in the World War I era in Zu¨rich, Switzerland, with a group that included the Romanian-born writer Tristan Tzara and Jean Arp. Dada artists outright rejected all conventional methods of presentation and objected to conformity and the militarism of the war. Tzara is usually credited with coining the movement’s name, the French word for “hobbyhorse,” which he allegedly chose at random from a dictionary. Dada was particularly influential in Switzerland, Germany, and the United States, and many of its adherents later involved themselves with the Surrealists. Delta blues See Mississippi Delta blues. Depression, the See Great Depression, the. Depression Era See Great Depression, the. De Stijl See Neoplasticism. Dianetics A set of ideas and practices that teaches that the reactive mind—the hidden part of people’s minds that stores painful experiences and uses them against them—is the single source of human problems, stress, unhappiness, and self-doubt. Developed by the American L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics aims to rid a person of the reactive mind in order to help one attain fullness and happiness.
GLOSSARY
distortion In music, particularly rock and roll, an intentional alteration of electric guitar sound using an amplifier, lending to the music a high-energy, aggressive sound. Bo Diddley and Jimi Hendrix were pioneers in the use of distortion. See also rock and roll. Dust Bowl, the A series of dust storms that caused severe ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s. The Dust Bowl coincided with the Great Depression in the United States and inspired many songs by the folk singer Woody Guthrie. See also Great Depression, the. Edinburgh Festival The original Edinburgh Festival, called the Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama, was founded in 1947 to showcase the talents of the world’s leading performers in theater, music, dance, and opera. Held during the months of August and September, it now consists of multiple festivals and is one of the most important annual international artistic expositions. Emmy Award An award given annually by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for excellence in various categories in the television industry. epic theater A style of dramatic presentation primarily advanced by the German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht in which devices are used to establish distance between the actors and the audience to prevent identification with the play’s characters. Existentialism In broad terms, Existentialism emphasizes individual freedom and the importance of personal choice. Existentialist thinkers reject the idea of objective, universal truth that applies to everyone. Existentialism found religious and moral expression in the ideas of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), who asserted that morality was unique to each individual and to be determined by an earnest, personal search for truth. Another strain of Existentialism also emerged in French thought in the twentieth century. Jean-Paul Sartre believed that human
beings required an authentic basis for existence that they should seek on an individual level with free choice; Sartre saw this search as necessary but futile. Expressionism A highly influential movement in the development of modern art that flourished in the early 1900s. Expressionist painters—such as Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner—used bold colors and expressive lines to capture the subjective, emotional elements of their subjects. Expressionism had international dimensions but was particularly strong in Germany, where groups such as Die Bru¨cke and Der Blaue Reiter held regular exhibitions. Ernst Barlach and others applied Expressionist principles to sculpture, while dramatists such as Ernst Toller brought Expressionism to theater. Farm Aid A benefit concert for American family farmers founded in 1985 by country singer Willie Nelson (1933– ), rock and roll singer John Mellencamp (1951– ), and Neil Young. Since its inaugural show, Farm Aid has grown into a large-scale, annual concert featuring a variety of musicians along with an organization that aims to promote awareness of the importance of family farms in America. Nelson, Mellencamp, Young, and rock and roll singer Dave Matthews (1967– ) serve on Farm Aid’s board of directors. Fauvism A movement in early-twentieth-century painting characterized by the use of bold, shocking color, derived from the work of the Postimpressionists. Henri Matisse was the leading figure in the group, and other members included Andre´ Derain, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, and Maurice de Vlaminck. When the group held its first exhibition in 1905, a critic dubbed them les fauves, or “the wild beasts,” thus giving the movement its name. Fauvism evaporated around 1908, and its adherents went on to pursue other styles. feedback In music, particularly rock and roll, a special effect that occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output. Bo Diddley, Jimi Hendrix, Neil
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Young, and other rock and roll guitarists have experimented with and used feedback as an artistic technique in their music. See also rock and roll. folk A genre in American popular music that arose when performers began to commercialize traditional American folk-style songs. Woody Guthrie was a pioneer in the genre, and Bob Dylan began his career as a folk musician. Folk-rock developed as a type of rock and roll music during the 1960s and is still performed within rock and roll today. French New Wave A movement in mid-twentieth-century French cinema that shared the Soviet director Sergey Eisenstein’s emphasis on the centrality of the director as opposed to the scriptwriter and challenged traditional notions of dramatic presentation. Franc¸ois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were the leading figures in the movement. Futurism Espoused by the Italian writer F. T. Marinetti (the movement’s chief theorist) and the Italian sculptor Umberto Boccioni, Futurism emerged in the early part of the century in Italy. The Futurists championed the modernization, dynamism, velocity, and speed of the twentieth century. Generation of ’98, the A generation in latenineteenth-century Spanish literature and drama. The Generation of ’98 was a diverse rather than cohesive group whose unifying element was the time at which their talents emerged, contributing to a revival in Spanish literature. Miguel de Unamuno, Pı´o Baroja, the prolific playwright Jacinto Benavente, Ramo´n del Valle-Incla´n, and Antonio Machado were all members of the Generation of ’98. Generation of 1927 The Andalusian poet and dramatist Federico Garcı´a Lorca was the leading figure in this movement of the late 1920s and early 1930s, which heralded a revival in Spanish poetry and also included Jorge Guille´n. Glyndebourne Festival A world-famous annual opera festival held in East Sussex, England.
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Golden Age (Hollywood) A period in American cinema that lasted from the end of the silent film era in the late 1920s to the late 1950s during which masses of popular, formulaic films were released by flourishing studios in Hollywood, California. The release of The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length talkie film, in 1927 is often cited as the beginning of Hollywood’s Golden Age. See also talkies and silent film era, the. Golden Globe Award One of a number of prestigious American awards, run as a fundraiser by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) since 1944 for entertainment-related charities, scholarships, and other programs for future film and television professionals. Golden Globe Awards are awarded annually at a dinner hosted by the HFPA. Along with an Academy Award or Oscar, a Golden Globe Award ranks among the highest honors for actors and actresses. See also Academy Award. gonzo journalism A style of subjective journalism popularized by the American writer Dr. Hunter S. Thompson that mixes fact and fiction and includes the reporter as part of the story. Gothic Romance A form of Romantic novel that originated in England, characterized by ghostly, mysterious atmospheres. Grammy Award An American award given annually by The Recording Academy for artistic achievement, technical proficiency, and overall excellence in the recording industry. The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to those who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording. Bing Crosby was the first winner of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1962, and others who have won the honor include Leonard Bernstein, Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan, Bo Diddley, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Guthrie, B. B. King, Joni Mitchell, Frank Sinatra, Arturo Toscanini, Muddy Waters, Arthur Rubinstein, Fred Astaire, Count
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Basie, Johnny Cash, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, The Grateful Dead, Robert Johnson, Led Zeppelin, Thelonious Monk, Elvis Presley, Isaac Stern, Irving Berlin, Enrico Caruso, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, The Rolling Stones, Fats Waller, Igor Stravinsky, and Hank Williams. Grand Ole Opry A weekly, Saturday evening country music program from Nashville, Tennessee, broadcast live on WSM radio, on the Great American Country (GAC) television network, and on the Internet at www.opry.com. The Grand Ole Opry is one of country music’s oldest and most famous institutions, having begun in 1925. Great American Songbook, the A term that loosely refers to American popular music produced between the 1920s and 1960 for Broadway shows, Hollywood musicals, and Tin Pan Alley. See also Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. Great Depression, the A severe, worldwide economic slump that began in 1928. In the United States, the beginning of the Great Depression is generally considered to be “Black Tuesday,” October 29, 1929, when the stock market crashed. The Great Depression lasted through the 1930s and into the 1940s in the United States and is also known simply as “the Depression.” Greenwich Village A community in Manhattan in New York City historically known as a center for the Beat Movement, 1960s folk music, and other countercultural movements and activity. Gruppe 47, Die In English, “The Group 47.” A movement in German literature founded by German prisoners of war in the United States in 1947. In an attempt to recapture the spirit of German literature they felt the Nazis had destroyed, they advocated a realistic literary style. The group awarded an annual prize and helped launch the career of the Nobel Prize–winning German novelist Gu¨nter Grass. gymnasium A common type of German, government-run school that provides secondary
education. The first gymnasium was established in what is now Strasbourg, France, in 1537. The gymnasium eventually adopted a humanistic, secular approach to education. The highly structured curriculum, which typically covered nine years, emphasized classics, science, and the liberal arts. As an educational institution, the gymnasium declined in influence after the division of Germany in the post–World War II period. Three types of gymnasia exist: the Oberschule, which emphasizes science and mathematics; the classical gymnasium, in which the focus is on Latin and Greek; and the Realgymnasium, or modern gymnasium, the curriculum of which includes two languages in addition to Latin. Hans Christian Andersen Award, the A Danish award presented every other year by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children’s literature. Maurice Sendak won the award for illustration in 1970. hippie-counterculture movement, the A broad term for a movement originating in the United States and dating roughly between 1960 and 1973 that rejected conservative social norms, repression of individual freedoms during the McCarthy era, and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Advocates embraced issues such as sexual liberation, racial equality, and psychedelic drug use. Rock and roll, including the British Invasion, and folk music were closely associated with the hippie-counterculture movement. See also British Invasion, the, McCarthy era, the, rock and roll, and folk. Hollywood A district in Los Angeles, California, in the United States famous as the world’s most prominent seat of lucrative movie studios, high-profile film stars, and largebudget, popular films. Cecile B. DeMille directed The Squaw Man, the first feature film made in Hollywood, in 1914. See also Golden Age (Hollywood).
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honorary degree An academic degree, usually a doctorate, awarded to a recipient who has not met the customary criteria for earning the degree at the bestowing institution. An honorary degree customarily acknowledges a distinguished figure’s contributions to society or, perhaps, to a more specific field. A university receives mutual benefit by associating itself with well-known figures through awarding honorary degrees. honorary doctorate See honorary degree. H.O.R.D.E. Festival A summer rock and roll festival, with the longer name of Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere, that was founded by the American rock band Blues Traveler held a number of times between 1992 and 1998. The festival helped revive the jam band movement (see jam band movement, the ), raised money for local charities in the cities in which it played, and promoted local bands in those cities. Neil Young was among many performers in the festival. Ideogrammic Method A method in poetry that served as a precursor to Imagism, both of which were developed by Ezra Pound. With the Ideogrammic Method, Pound sought to use concrete images to treat abstract subject matter. Pound’s study of the works of the American orientalist Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908) inspired the Ideogrammic Method. Imagism A movement in early-twentieth-century British and American poetry that placed primary importance on the use of clear imagery and wording as well as free forms and subjects. The American poet Ezra Pound led the Imagists, and D. H. Lawrence also embraced Imagism in his poetry. impasto A technique used in painting in which paint is either applied heavily to or mixed directly on the canvas to provide distinctive texture that protrudes from the painting. Jackson Pollock and Antoni Ta`pies experimented with impasto in their work. Impressionism A term that applies to both music and painting. Impressionism developed
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in late-nineteenth-century France as a reaction to academic painting and music. In painting, Impressionists such as Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, inspired by the effects of light on subjects (which often included landscapes and outdoor scenes), aimed to transfer an impression rather than an actual representation of a subject onto the canvas. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel were the leading figures in musical Impressionism, which abandoned formal tonal structures for compositions that emphasized tonal color and mood. interior monologue A writing technique, similar to but more structured than stream of consciousness, that conveys the thoughts of a writer or character in a continuous stream. International Style The dominant style in modern architecture, marked by strict functionality; rejection of decorative elements; and use of modern materials such as metal, concrete, and glass. The International Style was popularized by the Bauhaus in Germany and by such architects as Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. Irish Renaissance Also known as the Irish Literary Renaissance and the Irish Literary Revival. A movement that began in the late nineteenth century and flourished in Irish theater and literature in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Irish Renaissance encompassed strong nationalistic political elements, a renewed interest in traditional Irish culture and literature in both Gaelic and English, and to some extent mystical and occult influences. Among its central figures were W. B. Yeats, John Millington Synge, and James Stephens. jam band movement, the A movement that spans a broad spectrum of music types, including many forms of rock and roll, bluegrass, blues, folk, jazz, and country, and that is characterized by long, improvised musical performances. The Grateful Dead pioneered the jam band movement and culture in the United States in the 1960s.
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Jazz Age An era in American music in the 1920s in which jazz music first rose to prominence. The Big Band and Swing eras had their roots in the Jazz Age. Duke Ellington was a noted musician associated with the Jazz Age. jook house Also known as jook joint, juke joint, and juke house, a type of establishment prominent in the early twentieth century American Southeast. Jook houses mixed dancing, alcohol. live music, and juke boxes and were run by African-Americans. Jook houses were important spots for early American Delta Blues music (see Delta Blues), a precursor to both Chicago Blues music (see Chicago Blues) and rock and roll (see rock and roll). jook joint See jook house. juke house See jook house. juke joint See jook house. Jugendstil See Art Nouveau. Kennedy Center Honors, the Established in 1978, a prestigious American award given by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to five recipients annually for contributions to the culture of the American people over a lifetime of excellence in music, dance, theater, opera, film, or television. Many figures in this volume, too numerous to list, are recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors. Live Aid An international, multivenue rock concert organized by Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof (1951– ) and the Scottish guitarist and singer-songwriter Midge Ure (1953– ) that took place on July 13, 1985, as a benefit concert for famine relief in Ethiopia. B. B. King, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, and members of The Rolling Stones were among the many performers at the concert, and Bill Graham was the key promoter of the U.S. portions of the concert. Lost Generation, the A circle of American literary figures who lived in Paris and other parts of Europe largely in the 1920s. Gertrude Stein coined the term “Lost Generation,” and
other members included Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway. Louisiana Hayride, the A radio and later television program broadcast from Shreveport, Louisiana, in the United States from the late 1940s to 1960. The show’s flagship station was KWKH in Shreveport, and broadcast coverage expanded into a larger network that covered much of the American South. The popular show helped launch the careers of Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, and many other American singers. Luminism A movement in nineteenth-century American art that focused on the clarity and atmospheric effects of light on a subject—which usually included landscapes, seascapes, and outdoor scenes. lyce´e A popular type of secondary school in France that prepares students for further study in a university. The first lyce´e appeared in 1801, and for many years the curriculum consisted of seven years of study with one of three emphases: classics, science, or modern. The lyce´es underwent a dramatic change in the late twentieth century, with the period of study reduced to three years and a new focus on one of two broad areas: academic or vocational. Madison Square Garden A famous performance venue in New York City that has been located in four different places since its original inception under that name in 1879. Madison Square has been and remains the site of many famous concert performances in various musical genres. magical realism In Hispanic literature, a style that consists of a unique blend of realism and fantasy, particularly evident in the work of the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcı´a Ma´rquez. Maxwell Street A street in Chicago, Illinois, considered the birthplace of the Chicago blues. See also Chicago blues. Metropolitan Opera The most prestigious opera house in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world, located in New
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York City. “The Met,” as it is popularly known, opened in 1883 and has since given many world premieres and hosted innumerable world-famous singers, performers, and conductors. Sir Rudolf Bing managed the Met after the retirement of Edward Johnson in 1950 and retired himself in 1972. McCarthy era, the Also known as McCarthyism, an anticommunist political era that was prominent in the post-World War II years in the United States. Named for U.S. (Wisconsin) Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957), a key figure in the anticommunist government activities during that time, the term nevertheless applies to the broader scope of anticommunist political persecution of actual and suspected communists or communist sympathizers. Along with union activists, educators, and employees of the government, many members of the entertainment industry were questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and other investigative bodies for suspected political beliefs and subsequently blacklisted in their professions. Marc Blitzstein, Woody Guthrie, Lillian Hellman, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, and Gregory Peck were all either questioned and/or blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow helped put an end to McCarthyism. Modernism A broad term that applies to a variety of early-twentieth-century cultural movements in poetry, art, music, literature, dance, and architecture that held in common an optimistic perception of emerging technological innovations of industrial and mechanized society. Modernismo A movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Spanish and Latin American literature first advanced by the Nicaraguan poet Rube´n Darı´o. Modernismo, which drew from the French Parnassians and Symbolists, was marked by its use of vivid, sensuous imagery; its rejection of Naturalism; and its individualistic character. Modernismo helped shape the work of Antonio Machado,
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Gabriela Mistral, Juan Ramo´n Jime´nez, and Pablo Neruda. Monterey Pop Festival, the Also known by the longer name Monterey International Pop Music Festival, a musical festival that took place between June 16 and June 18, 1967. Held at Monterey, California, it preceded the more famous Woodstock Music Festival and was a key event in the emergence of the hippiecounterculture movement. Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead, along with Neil Young (as part of Buffalo Springfield) performed at the festival. See also Woodstock Music Festival, the and hippie-counterculture movement, the. Montreux Jazz Festival, the An international music festival founded by Claude Nobs (1936– ) held annually since 1967 in Montreux, Switzerland. The festival was originally dedicated to jazz performances but has since expanded to include artists from many other popular musical genres. Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan, Bo Diddley, Dizzy Gillespie, and B. B. King all performed at the festival in the past. Movement, the A name given to a loose-knit group of British poets who rose to prominence in the 1950s. They include Elizabeth Jennings, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, and John Wain, and their verse was characterized by its intimate, plainspoken style and traditional form. They were labeled the Movement after their verse appeared in the anthology New Lines in 1956. Munich Secession The first of the “secession” movements in German and Austrian cities that reacted against formal academic strictures in art, founded in 1892. musical In both theater and film, a type of production that combines music, singing, dance, and dialog. Nabis A group of French painters led by Maurice Denis and also including E´douard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard that, drawing from the influences of both the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, used flat areas of
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bold color and forged a highly decorative style. The Nabis flourished during the 1890s, and the individual members later went on to pursue their own styles. Naturalism A literary and artistic style that emerged from France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Naturalism resembled Realism but replaced its moral dimension with a deterministic and Darwinian view. Naturalists attempted to apply the tenets and methods of natural science to painting, sculpture, theater, and literature. Neoclassicism A term that applies to modern works of art inspired by the ancient classical art of Greece and Rome. Neo-Expressionism A movement in abstract art, of which Anselm Kiefer is a prominent member, that developed in the 1980s as a reaction against the informal and impersonal nature of abstract art. Neo-Expressionism employs heavy brush strokes and bold color to create figurative yet subjective forms. Neoplasticism The Dutch artists Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesberg were the primary theorists behind Neoplasticism, also known as De Stijl (“The Style”), a movement in modern abstract art that rejected all forms of representation and sought to convey only the bases of the underlying reality of a subject. Mondrian conveyed his visions of these bases through flat planes of primary color intersected by straight lines. Neorealism A movement in film that emerged in post–World War II Italy. Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Luchino Visconti were leading Neorealist directors, and the famed director Federico Fellini had roots in Neorealism as well. Aiming to convey as realistic an atmosphere as possible, the Neorealists shot on location rather than in the studio. Neorealism contributed to the development of the French New Wave in the 1950s. New Deal, the A series of federally funded social improvement programs initiated by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression in the 1930s with the
aim of bringing “relief, recovery, and reform” to the ailing American people and economy. See also Great Depression, the. New Journalism A style of journalism and newswriting that developed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and incorporated literary techniques into traditional straight reporting. Tom Wolfe is generally regarded as the pioneer of New Journalism, and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer were all key figures in the movement. See also gonzo journalism. Newport Folk Festival, the An annual American music festival held in Newport, Rhode Island, and founded in 1959 by music impresario George Wein (1925– ), his partner Albert Grossman (1926– ), and several folk musicians. B. B. King has performed at the festival, but perhaps its most famous highlight came in 1965 when Bob Dylan played electric music for the first time there. Newport Jazz Festival, the An American music festival founded in 1954 by music impresario George Wein (1925– ) and currently held annually at two sites—in Newport, Rhode Island, and in New York City. Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, and Muddy Waters all performed at the festival. New Wave See French New Wave. New York Philharmonic, the Founded in 1842 in New York City, the oldest and most internationally prestigious active symphony orchestra in the United States. Noh plays A form of Japanese musical drama that dates back to the fourteenth century. Japanese Noh plays influenced the work of poets Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats. Off Broadway A term that refers to theaters in New York City that seat one hundred to 499 people and generally host productions that have not gained sufficient popularity to appear in Broadway theaters. Off-Broadway productions are often more experimental in nature than popular, conventional Broadway
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shows. Off-Off Broadway theaters have fewer than one hundred seats. See also Broadway.
evolved into one of the world’s most famous opera spots.
Old Vic Company The acting company first associated with the Old Vic Theatre. After World War II, when the Old Vic was severely damaged, the Old Vic Company performed at the New Theatre until 1950. Although first and primarily known for classic productions of Shakespearean dramas, the Old Vic Company later diversified the repertory to include other dramatic works. After the war, the company flourished in the hands of Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Ralph Richardson, and others. It dissolved in 1963.
Pictorialism A movement in photography that lasted from the late 1800s to the early 1900s that aimed to elevate photography to an art form. Its adherents, including Alfred Stieglitz, believed photography should emulate paintings and drawings and employed numerous darkroom techniques toward that end.
Old Vic Theatre This famed London theater first opened in 1818 as the Royal Coburg. In 1833 it became the Royal Victoria and acquired its popular nickname of “the Old Vic.” In the twentieth century, the Old Vic was the center—under the management of Lilian Baylis beginning in 1912—of a revival of Shakespeare plays and the home of the Old Vic Company. Noted figures associated with the Old Vic include Sir Tyrone Guthrie. After World War II, the Old Vic housed the Old Vic School and the Young Vic company, and later the National Theatre and other groups.
Pittura Metafisica In English, “Metaphysical Painting.” A painting style founded in Italy by Giorgio de Chirico and also advanced by Giorgio Morandi and Carlo Carra` (1881–1966). It had its strongest influence in the decade between 1910 and 1920, and its bizarre juxtapositions of images influenced the subsequent development of Surrealism in France. Pointillism A method of painting originated in the late nineteenth century by the French painters Paul Signac (1863–1935) and Georges Seurat (1859–1891) in which small dots of pure color are applied to a canvas. When seen from a distance, the dots blend to give the effect of a different color and luminosity. Pointillism influenced the light and color theories of the Impressionists.
papier colle´ Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque began constructing papier colle´s, or canvases with bits of paper glued to them, during their experiments with Cubism in 1912.
Polar Music Prize, the An international music prize originally endowed by ABBA lyricist Stig “Stikkan” Anderson in 1989 and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music to individuals, groups, or institutions in recognition of exceptional achievements in the creation and advancement of music. Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, B. B. King, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bob Dylan, Isaac Stern, Bruce Springsteen, Pierre Boulez, Mstislav Rostropovitch, Dizzy Gillespie, and Paul McCartney have all won the Polar Music Prize.
Paris Ope´ra France’s center of opera, of international importance. The Paris Ope´ra (its proper title is the Acade´mie Nationale De Musique, or National Academy of Music), began during the reign of Louis XIV in the seventeenth century as the Acade´mie Royale de Musique (Royal Academy of Music) and
Pop art A movement in art, particularly in the English-speaking countries, that emphasized commercial and banal aspects of life. Pop art was a reaction to what the artists deemed elitist art that catered to high society and academia. Noted figures in Pop art include Andy Warhol, David Hockney, and Jasper Johns.
Orphism The French painters Robert and Sonia Delaunay [This husband and wife team both founded Orphism. I’m not sure if you’re just using persons from the book.] and others developed Orphism out of Cubism in 1912, placing heavy emphasis on the use of color. Oscar See Academy Award.
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Postimpressionism A movement in painting that developed out of Impressionism in France in the 1880s and 1890s, principally advanced by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Paul Ce´zanne (1839–1906), Georges Seurat (1859–1891), Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901). The Postimpressionists retained the short brush strokes and brilliant color palettes of Impressionism but rejected its focus on the rendering of light and sought a greater freedom of form. Prohibition In United States history, the period between 1920 and 1933 during which the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution banned the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages. Prohibition ended with the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933. Prohibition era See Prohibition. psychedelic music A type of American and British music generally associated with 1960s rock and roll and the hippie-counterculture movement. Sometimes inspired by the use of psychedelic drugs, psychedelic music was characterized by its surreal lyrics, exotic studio sound effects, and incorporation of Eastern music. The early music of The Grateful Dead and the later music of The Beatles is considered psychedelic rock. See also hippiecounterculture movement, the, and rock and roll. R&B See rhythm and blues. Realism A broad term that encompasses all of literature and the visual arts. Simply put, Realists aim to present, in as accurate detail as possible, a realistic reproduction of their subjects. A formal Realist movement in both painting and literature developed in earlynineteenth-century France as a reaction against Romanticism and Classicism. reverb The continuation of a sound in a given space after the original sound has ceased. Rock and roll musicians such as Bo Diddley experimented with and employed reverb as
an artistic technique in their music. See also rock and roll. revue A type of irreverent American theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches and was most popular from the World War I years to the early 1930s. Revues often satirized contemporary personalities, news, or literature. rhythm and blues A genre in popular music, also known as R&B, dating to the late 1940s that was first performed by African-American singers. Aretha Franklin has long been a popular R&B artist, and B. B. King and Muddy Waters have had hits on the R&B charts. R&B has expanded over the years to include a number of sub-genres and remains a very popular style of music. rockabilly A term coined from “rock and roll” and “hillbilly” (country music) that refers to a combination of those styles of music originating in the Southern United States during the 1950s. See also Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the; country; and rock and roll. Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the A hall of fame founded in 1997 and located in Burns, Tennessee, to honor pioneers in early rock and roll history as well as modern performers who continue the style of music. Johnny Cash, Bo Diddley, and Elvis Presley have all been inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. rock and roll A style of popular music that first developed in the United States in the late 1940s and grew enormously popular during the 1960s. Rock and roll emerged from a variety of influences, including folk, country, rockabilly, and blues, and the term has since come to encompass a large number of subgenres. During the 1950s, Elvis Presley was a key figure in popularizing rock and roll, while Bo Diddley was an innovator in bridging blues and rock and roll. Rock and roll remains one of the most popular forms of music in the English-speaking world. See also Woodstock Festival, the; hippie-counterculture movement, the; folk, blues, rockabilly, and Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the.
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Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Housed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honors major figures (both performers and nonperformers) in the music industry. Several members a year have been inducted annually since 1986. Elvis Presley was among the first group of inductees, and subsequent members include Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Bill Graham, Louis Armstrong, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, B. B. King, Bo Diddley, Hank Williams, and Robert Johnson. Romanticism A term that applies, in the broadest sense, to a large and diverse movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that highlighted the subjective and emotional in art, literature, theater, and music. Romantic literature and art often idealized nature and carried a strong sense of drama. Romanticism also applies to music, particularly the work of nineteenth-century composers such as Franz Schubert (1797–1828) and Richard Wagner (1813–1883). Schubert, Wagner, and others rejected the strictures of classical music and turned to literary and other sources for inspiration for both the form and content of their compositions. The symphonic poem, further refined by Richard Strauss, was an outgrowth of Romanticism in music. Romanticism re-emerged in the twentieth century in the work of the British composer Sir William Walton, whose style is sometimes called “neoromantic.” Royal Ballet, the The Royal Ballet evolved from the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and acquired its name in 1956. The original Sadler’s Wells Ballet was founded by Ninette de Valois and Lilian Baylis, who was the director of the Old Vic Theatre. Baylis also became director of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, and in 1931 she joined forces with de Valois’s ballet school to create the Vic-Wells Ballet. The company, which later became the Sadler’s
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Wells Ballet, performed at both of Baylis’s theaters, and it flourished with such noted dancers as Alicia Markova, Robert Helpmann, and Margot Fonteyn in lead roles and choreography in the hands of Sir Frederick Ashton and de Valois. Sadler’s Wells Ballet See Royal Ballet. Salzburg Festival An important festival held in Salzburg, Austria, and founded in 1917 by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss, and others. The Salzburg Festival showcases international talent in many forms of music, opera, and drama. The music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), who was born in Salzburg, plays a central role in the festival. San Francisco Renaissance, the A surge in avant-garde poetic activity centered in San Francisco, California, that rose to prominence in the 1950s and was also associated with the Beat Movement. See also Beat Movement, the. Scala, La One of the world’s most famous and influential centers of opera, located in Milan, Italy. The archduchess Maria Theresa built the original La Scala in 1778. It underwent remodeling in 1867 and 1921 before it was nearly destroyed in World War II. The modern La Scala opened after the war in 1946. scat singing A type of singing popular in American jazz music in which noises are either vocalized with nonsense words or no words at all. Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald sang in the scat style. serialism In music, a method of composing that involves arranging elements of a composition in a series. In formulating his twelvetone method, Arnold Schoenberg established a formal method for arranging tones in a series. However, composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen serialized pitch, rhythm, and other elements of the musical composition. silent film era, the A period in early cinema sometimes called the Age of the Silver Screen during which films were produced without synchronized, recorded sound. The silent film
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era lasted roughly from the early 1900s to the late 1920s, when “talkies” were introduced. Charlie Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier were popular silent film stars, and Rene´ Clair, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Renoir, and Abel Gance established their reputations as directors in the silent film era. See also talkies. Six, Les A group of six French composers unified by their penchant for musical experimentation. The six composers—Louis Durey, Darius Milhaud, Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc, and Arthur Honegger—received their name after a critic disparagingly compared them to a group of Russian composers known as “The Five.” They gathered around the experimental composer Erik Satie and the multitalented Jean Cocteau. slide guitar See bottleneck guitar. Socialist Realism A propagandistic artistic and literary style forged in the Soviet Union during the reign of Josef Stalin. The Soviet writer Maxim Gorky was a theorist behind the literary style, which called for a realism that supported the collectivist aims of the Soviet state. Although some strictures loosened after Stalin’s death, Socialist Realism was the only officially sanctioned literary and artistic style in the Soviet Union until it collapsed. song plugger A piano player employed by music stores in the early twentieth century to promote new music. A song plugger generally played whatever sheet music was given to him by a music store clerk. Thus, a potential buyer could listen to music before deciding on the purchase. George Gershwin, as well as Chico and Groucho Marx, worked as song pluggers before becoming famous. spiritualism A religious movement that espouses the idea that disembodied spirits who inhabit a separate spirit world communicate with humans using a variety of methods. A medium bridges the gap between the spirit and earthly worlds. Although the idea of disembodied spirits has existed since earliest times, modern spiritualism began in 1848
when Kate Fox, a farmer’s daughter in New York, said she had communicated with a being who claimed to be the disembodied spirit of a man who had been murdered. Fox and her sister Margaret later became mediums and, with others, did much to kindle interest in communicating with the spirit world. Spiritualism was particularly popular in Britain and influenced such noted authors as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Spontaneous Prose A free-form style of writing similar to stream of consciousness developed by Jack Kerouac and associated with the Beat Movement in the United States during the 1950s. See also Beat Movement, the, and stream of consciousness. St. Petersburg Ballet The original name for the internationally renowned Russian ballet company that was established in St. Petersburg in 1738. Firmly rooted in classical Russian ballet, the company produced such noted dancers and choreographers in the twentieth century as Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, Anna Pavlova, George Balanchine, and Michel Fokine—all of whom gained international acclaim working with the impresario Sergey Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Known as the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Kirov Ballet (during the bulk of the Soviet era), the company is now called the Mariinsky Ballet and is associated with the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Stanislavsky Method, the A highly influential style of acting promoted by the Russian theater director Konstantin Stanislavsky that attempted to make characters appear as real as possible through intense training and by forcing the actor to connect with a character’s psychological motivations. stream of consciousness An enormously popular literary technique in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Similar to interior monologue, stream-of-consciousness writing reflects a stream of impressions recorded as they occur and before they can be organized into coherent thoughts. The Irish writer
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James Joyce’s Ulysses is perhaps the bestknown example. See also interior monologue. stride piano A jazz piano style that originated in Harlem, New York, during World War I and is characterized by its use of blue notes, swing rhythms, and improvisation. Count Basie, Eubie Blake, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Fats Waller were all noted stride pianists. string scratching In guitar playing, dragging the guitar pick down the length of a string to produce a unique sound. Bo Diddley was noted for his use of string scratching. Surrealism A movement that developed in Paris in the early twentieth century that seeks to reflect the unconscious through bizarre juxtapositions of images. Surrealism had its strongest center in Paris, but movements developed elsewhere, notably around the painter Rene´ Magritte in Belgium. Andre´ Breton and Paul E´luard led a group of Surrealist writers and poets in Paris, and Surrealism found expression in painting most strongly in the work of Salvador Dalı´ and in film in the work of Luis Bun˜uel, both Spaniards who settled in Paris. Swing era A movement in American popular jazz music that had its roots in the 1920s and rose to prominence in the mid-1930s. Its strong, upbeat rhythms helped give rise to the big band musical ensembles of the 1930s and 1940s. See Big Band era and Jazz Age. Symbolism An influential movement in literature and the visual arts that emerged from France in the late nineteenth century. Originally a movement in poetry, Symbolism encouraged the imaginative expression of emotion through the use of symbols and symbolic language rather than direct statement. Synthetic Cubism The second phase of Cubism, developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Synthetic Cubism brightened the color palette, replacing the monochromatic schemes of Analytic Cubism, and presented
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an object from the perspective of different angles. Synthetism A term coined by the French painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) that refers to a painting style that attempted to synthesize form and emotion in a painting. To this end Gauguin, in the 1880s, used two-dimensional forms and large, flat areas of bold color. talkies A term that refers to early films with fully synchronized dialogue sound that followed the silent film era. Talkies were also known as “talking pictures.” While synchronized sound had been introduced to commercial film as early as 1923, The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first feature-length commercial film to use synchronized sound sequences. See also silent film era, the. Theater of the Absurd A movement in modern theater that sought to reflect the seeming absurdity of everyday life and situations with sparse, illogical plots and dialog and other nontraditional theatrical devices. Chief Theater of the Absurd playwrights include Euge`ne Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. Theater of Cruelty A form of modernist theater meant to expose the darker elements in humanity. In Theater of Cruelty, spoken dialog, which directors such as Peter Brook believe limits communication on account of the language barrier, is replaced with attempts at universal language the actors convey with expressive body movements and sounds. Theosophical Society See Theosophy. Theosophy A spiritual movement that profoundly influenced twentieth-century mystical thought. A central idea of theosophy is that people come to know God through direct, individual experience. Founded in 1875 in New York by the Russian-born mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and by Henry Steel Olcott, the Theosophical Society was the twentieth century’s main driving force behind theosophy. Through the Theosophical Society, Blavatsky and others contributed to the popularization of Eastern thought and spirituality (and
GLOSSARY
particularly concepts that derive from Indian spiritual texts) in the West as well as to interest in the occult. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine ranks among the most important theosophical writings. The term theosophy comes from the Greek words theos (god) and sophos (wise). Theosophy had a major influence on Irish Renaissance (see Irish Renaissance) figures such as W. B. Yeats and James Stephens as well as many other artists, musicians, and writers. Tin Pan Alley A term used of a group of music publishers based in New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Tin Pan Alley publishers originally established their businesses in the same district in Manhattan and were the dominant force in popular music during that time period. Irving Berlin and George Gershwin were among the most famous Tin Pan Alley songwriters. Tony Award The most prestigious award that recognizes excellence in various aspects of American theater. The American Theatre Wing and the League of American Theatres and Producers, Inc., present the Tony Awards annually in New York City. Transadvantguardia movement, the A movement in twentieth-century Italian art connected with Neo-Expressionism. Andy Warhol promoted art from the Transadvantguardia movement in his later life. tremendismo A movement in Hispanic literature founded by the Spanish writer Camilo Jose´ Cela that is marked by its brutal realism. tremolo In music, a rapid repetition of one note or a rapid alternation between two or more notes. Bo Diddley’s experiments with tremolo on the guitar influenced many rock and roll musicians during the 1960s. See also rock and roll. twelve-tone method A method of composing music developed by Arnold Schoenberg and further advanced by Alban Berg, Anton von Webern, and others. In the twelve-tone method, compositions are formed from a row or series of the twelve tones of the chromatic
scale, each of which is thought of in terms of its relationship with the others. These rows can be played forward, upside down (inversion), backward (retrograde), or backward and upside down (retrograde inversion), allowing for forty-eight transformations. In developing the twelve-tone method, Schoenberg gave formal structure to atonality. ultraı´smo An avant-garde movement in Hispanic poetry that used forceful imagery, free verse, and complex metrical schemes. Ultraı´smo originated with the poet Guillermo de Torre in Madrid in 1919. Two years later the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges introduced the style to South America, where it was embraced by the Chilean Pablo Neruda and other poets. vaudeville A type of variety entertainment popular in North America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unrelated vaudeville acts were often grouped together for a single night’s show and included magicians, impersonators, comedians, dancers, actors, and musicians. Count Basie, Judy Garland, the Marx Brothers, Ed Sullivan, and Fats Waller all had backgrounds in vaudeville. Vic-Wells Ballet, the See Royal Ballet, the. Vorticism A World War I–era movement in art principally advanced by the English author and painter Wyndham Lewis. Vorticism employed abstract, dynamic forms and had roots in Imagism, Cubism, and Futurism. Ezra Pound lent the movement its name. West End theatre A term for popular, mainstream commercial theater productions in London, England. West End theatre productions rival Broadway theatre shows in popularity and public esteem. See also Broadway. Woodstock Festival, the A rock and roll music festival held on a farm in Bethel, New York (near Woodstock), from August 15 to August 18, 1969. The Woodstock Festival is generally regarded as a key historic moment in rock and roll, and it was closely associated with the hippie-counterculture movement. Joni Mitchell penned the song “Woodstock” about
1151
GLOSSARY
the event, and it became a popular hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Performers included the Grateful Dead; Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young; and Jimi Hendrix. See also hippie-counterculture movement, the and rock and roll. zarzuela A traditional form of Spanish musical play that originated in the 1600s. Often hu-
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morous and satirical, the zarzuela featured song, dance, and improvisation and appealed to popular audiences, particularly in the 1800s. Later zarzuelas generally fell into two categories: the humorous, one-act ge´nero chico, and the longer and more serious grande.
Index Aalto, Alvar, 3–4 Abbey Theatre, 219, 335, 688, 725, 939, 944, 1054 Abbott, Jack Henry, 627 Above the Clouds I, 731 Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 847 Absalom, Absalom!, 306 Abstract Art, 28, 151, 445, 470, 552, 604, 628, 670, 678, 689, 717, 765, 774, 837, 865, 949 Abstract Expressionism, 473–474, 507, 524–525, 552, 548, 773 Abstraction, 729 Academy Award for Best Actor, 353, 457, 465 Academy Award for Best Director, 484 Academy Award for Best Music, 531 Academy Award for Best Picture, 484 Academy Award for lifetime achievement, 529 Academy Award for Special Visual Effects, 560 Academy Award, 243, 283, 484, 611, 647 The Academy of American Poets, 30 Academy of Arts & Letters Award, 50 Academy of Arts and Sciences, 955 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Irving G. Thalberg Award, 612 Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in Prague, 326 Accidental Death of an Anarchist, 320 Achebe, Chinua, 5–6, 732 Ackland, Rodney, 804 Acmeists, 8, 109, 631, 632 The Actor’s Life: Journals, 465 Actors Studio, 529 Acuff, Roy, 1035 Adagio for Strings, 51
Adamov, Arthur, 493 Adams, Ansel Easton, 6–7 Adams, Carolyn, 535 Adams, George, 669 Adams, Pepper, 669 Adaptation, 930 Adler, Guido, 1020 Adler, Oskar, 859 Adler, Stella, 123 The Adventurer, 184 The Adventures of Augie March, 80, 81 Aeppli, Eva, 961 The Aerodrome, 1015 Aeschylus, 1015 Afro-Cuban Music, 378 After Hours, 986 After the Hit Hold Your Man, 352 The Age of Anxiety, 38 Agonies of Our Time, 56 Ahna, Pauline de, 926 Ahrens, Lynn, 655 Aiken, Conrad, 609–610 “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” 1005 Airborne Symphony, 109 Aissa Saved, 166 Akhmatova, Anna, 8–9, 109, 134, 631, 632 Akhnaten, 385 Akutagawa, Ryu Nosuke, 564 Alain-Fournier, 9–10, 291 Alamein to Zem-Zem, 258 Albee, Edward, 11–12 , 144, 458, 654 Albe´niz, Isaac, 841 Alberta College of Art and Design, 674 Alberti, Rafael, 358 Alda, Alan, 14 Aldeburgh Festival, 817 Alden, Ginger, 787 Aleskeyev Circle, 911 Alexander Nevsky, 286, 288, 792 “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, 91 The Alexandria Quartet, 269, 270 Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, 975, 981
All Quiet on the Western Front, 810, 811 Allan, Lewis, 475 Allegret, Marc, 53 Allegro, 232, 827 Allen, Irwin, 712 Allen, Steve, 163 Allen, Woody, 12–15 , 384, 401, 742, 884, 929 Allende, Isabel, 930 Allgemeine Elektricitats Gesellschaft, 77 Allman, Duane, 538 Almanac Singers, 429 “Aloha from Hawaii”, 787 Altenberg, Peter, 86–87, 553 Altes, Henri, 800 Alvar Aalto Museum, 4 Always the Young Strangers, 847 Amadeus, 325, 326, 955 Amar-Hindemith Quartet, 465 Amazing Grace, 333 Ambush at Cimarron Pass, 282 America, America, 529 American Academy of Arts and Letters, 382, 731, 831 American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1040 American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 243 American Arts and Crafts, 1048 American Ballet Company, 46 American Ballet Theatre, 62, 385 American Film Institute, 612 American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, 160 American Graffiti, 208 American Madness, 159 American National Medal of the Arts, 19 American Pastoral, 834–835 American Pop art, 1011 American Recordings, 173 Amis, Kingsley, 15–16, 99, 319, 502, 571, 1001 An American in Paris, 367 An American Place, 921
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INDEX
“An Old Man’s Winter Night”, 338 An Unfinished Woman, 447 Anabasis, 763 Anastasia, 89, 90 Anatol, 857, 858 And God Created Woman, 53 An Andalusian Dog, 140, 225 Andersen, Hans Christian, 872 Anderson, Hedli, 928 Anderson, Marian, 98 Anderson, Maxwell, 1023 Andersson, Harriet, 87 Andrae, Doris, 922 Andre’s Mother, 655 Andreas-Salome, Lou, 819–820 Andreev, Leonid, 629 Andreeva, Maria, 396 Andreevskaya, Nina, 525 Andrei Rublev, 947 Andrews, Julie, 436 Andric, Ivo, 17 Andy Razaf, 104 Andy Warhol, 1013 Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes, 1013 Angel, 1042 Angelou, Maya, 18–20 Angry Young Men, 15, 16, 571, 740, 1001 Animal Crackers, 646 Animal Farm, 738–739 Anka, Paul, 163 Anmer Hall Company, 426–427 Anna Christie, 735 Anna Lucasta, 771 Anna of the Five Towns, 83 Annie Get Your Gun, 93 Annie Hall, 13 Anno Domini MCMXXI, 8 Annovazzi, Napoleone, 149 Another Side of Bob Dylan, 274 Anouilh, Jean, 20–21, 53, 340, 436, 447, 694, 742 Ansell, Mary, 59 Answered Prayers, 157 Antheil, George, 781 Anthills of the Savannah, 5 Anthroposophy, 963 Antigone, 20 The Antitheater, 304 Antonio, Emile de, 1012
1154
Antonioni, Michelangelo, 21–23, 22, 89, 209, 694 Anvil of Dreams, 190 Anything Else, 14 Anything Goes, 776 Apartheid, 342–343, 393–394, 442, 500, 755 Aperture, 7 The Apes of God, 604 Aplichalova, Olga, 440 Apocalypse Now, 122, 124, 207, 398 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 126, 191, 198, 237, 246, 266, 779, 879 Apollo and Daphne, 404 Apollo Theater, 315, 685, 984 Apollon Musagete, 46 Appalachia, 240 Appalachian Spring, 206 Arabesque, 773 The Arabian Nights, 753 Aragon, Louis, 295, 779 Arbus, Diane, 24–25, 24 Archera, Laura, 490, 716 Architectural Research Group, 523 The Archives, 1059 Are You Experienced, 453 Arensberg, Walter, 266 Arias, Roberto Emilio, 323 Ariel, 770, 1063 Armageddon, 992 Armstrong, Louis, 25–28 , 26, 315, 476, 668, 932, 1004 Arnold, Joan, 99 Arnold, Judith, 488 Arnold, Matthew, 52 Arp, Jean, 28–29, 130, 297, 460, 865 Arrow of God, 5 Art brut, 264 Art Institute of Chicago, 729 Art Nouveau, 54, 77, 113, 244, 417, 472, 478–479, 524, 550, 581, 608, 676, 854–855, 989 Art Student’s League, 150, 729, 837 Artaud, Antonin, 135 Artek Company, 4 Arti et Amicitiae, 682 Artigas, Llorens, 671
Arts and Crafts Movement, 472, 618, 989 As I Lay Dying, 306 “Asbury Park (Sandy)”, 909 Asch, Moses, 429 Ashbery, John, 29–31 Ashcroft, Peggy, 733 Ashkenazy, Vladimir, 1066 Ashley, Sylvia, 353 Ashton, Frederick, 31–32, 107, 323, 448, 456, 643 Asquith, Anthony, 299, 805 Association AbstractionCreation, 29, 445, 683, 714 Astafieva, Serafima, 323 Astaire, Fred, 33–35 , 33, 92, 208, 367, 531, 776 Asturias, Miguel A´ngel, 35–36 Aswell, Edward, 1043 AT&T building, 510 “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”, 317 Auden, W.H., 36–39, 37,132, 228, 344, 456, 619, 830, 903–904, 929, 1055 Augustine, Saint, 340 Auric, Georges, 661, 779 Austin, Gene, 1005 Australian Ballet, 448 Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, 50 Avery Hopwood Award, 662 The Aviator, 867 Awoonor, Kofi Nyidevu, 39–40 Aymar, Zenobia Camprubi, 504 Ayrton, Elizabeth, 1064 Azbe, Anton, 524 Azorin, 55 B. B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, 540 Baal, 127 Babbitt, Irving, 291 Babbitt, Milton, 896 Babes in Arms, 826 Babette’s Feast, 253 Babi Yar, 1056 Babic, Milica, 17 “Baby I Love You”, 333 “Baby, Let’s Play House”, 785 Bach Commemorative Festival, 170 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 834, 915, 963
INDEX
Bachman, Richard, 541 Back to Methusaleh, 877 Bacon, Francis, 43–44 The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, 79 “Badlands”, 909 Baden-Baden Festival, 1022 Badia, Conchita, 149 Baez, Joan, 274, 275, 675 Bailey, William, 902 Baker, Elizabeth, 960 Baker, George Pierce, 735 Baker, Josephine, 103 Bakst, Le´on, 44–45, 45, 179, 228, 247, 528 Balanchine, George, 46–47, 249, 643, 827 Balat, Alphonse, 478 Balcon, Jill, 229 The Bald Soprano, 493 Baldwin, Stanley, 544 Balestier, Caroline, 545 Balestier, Wolcott, 545 Balkan Trilogy, 634 Ball, Hugo, 28 Ball, Lucille, 646 Balla, Giacomo, 111, 641 The Ballad and the Source, 591 “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”, 172 Ballet Caravan, 46 Ballet de Marseilles, 765 Ballet Rambert, 529, 644 Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, 46, 644 Ballet Theatre, 644 Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit, 764 Ballets Jooss, 513 Ballets Russes, 32, 45, 46, 65, 76, 192, 228, 238, 239, 247, 297, 303, 322, 404, 527, 528, 643, 649–650, 714, 715, 758, 807, 853, 926, 927, 928 Balthus, 47–48 Balzac, Honore de, 687, 815 Bambi, 558 The Banana Boat Song, 985 Bananas, 13 Bancroft, Anne, 695 Bancroft, George, 916 The Band, 275 Barajas, Manuel, 256
Baraka, Amiri (Leroi Jones), 49–50 , 49 Barbary Shore, 626 Barber, Samuel, 51–52 , 51, 401, 915, 950 Barbizet, Pierre, 800 Bardot, Brigitte, 53–54, 53, 694, 919 Barenboim, Daniel, 1067 Barlach, Ernst, 54–55 Barn Theatre, 963 Barnacle, Nora, 513 Barnet, Charlie, 378 Barney Google, 861 Barnum & Bailey Circus, 150 Baroja y Nessi, Pı´o, 55–56 , 981 The Baron in the Trees, 153 Baroque Ensemble of Paris, 802 Barrault, Jean-Louis, 57–58, 57, 117 Barrie, J.M., 58–60, 59, 65, 435 Barry, Kathleen, 933 Barth, Karl Heinrich, 841 Barto´k, Be´la, 2, 60–62, 893, 894, 915, 922, 1009 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 62–63 , 697, 955 Basel Opera, 149 Basie, Count, 63–64 , 392, 475, 888, 985 Basil, Wassily de, 650 The Basket of Bread, 225 Baskin, Leonard, 487 Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 1013 Bassani, Giorgio, 752 Bathing Women, 592 Battle of the Angels, 1037 Battlefield Earth, 481 The Battleship Potemkin, 44, 286, 287, 416 Baudelaire, Charles, 87, 175, 839, 938 Baudrier, Yves, 658 Bauhaus, 418–419, 499, 509, 549, 629, 659, 678–679, 818, 989, 1045 Bauzi, Maurio, 378 Bavarian State Opera, 893 Bax, Arnold, 65–67, 66 Bax, Clifford, 65 Baxter, John, 416 Baylis, Lilian, 427
Bayreuth Festival, 347, 775 Bazille, Frederic, 684 Bazin, Andre, 971 Baziotes, William, 773 Bazzini, Antonio, 795 Beardsley, Aubrey, 937 Beat Generation, 532, 1044 Beat Movement, 49, 379 Beat the Devil, 157 Beatles, The, 27, 67–69, 454, 738, 1005 Beaulieu, Priscilla, 786 Beauty and the Beast, 199 Beauvoir, Simone de, 69–71, 70, 849 Beaux-Arts, 522 Bebop, 317, 685, 985 Bechet, Sidney, 26 Beck, Jeff, 587 Beckett, Samuel, 58, 71–73, 72, 136, 371, 384, 440, 493, 665, 741 Beckmann, Max, 74–75 Becquer, Gustavo Adolfo, 503 Beecham, Thomas, 75–76, 76, 182, 240, 881, 954 Beer, Theodor, 608 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 118, 129, 347, 856, 857, 894, 915, 963, 969, 1008 Before and After and Marvin’s, 930 Begeer, C. J., 817 The Beginners, 501 Behr, Therese, 856 Behrens, Peter, 77–78, 418, 659 Being and Nothingness, 848 Bekessy, Imre, 558 Belafonte, Harry, 772 Belcher, Muriel, 43 The Bell Jar, 770 The Bell, 729 Bell, Angelica, 364 Bell, Clive, 403, 1046 Bell, Joseph, 260 Bell, Vanessa, 403, 404 Bellavista Housing Estate, 499 Belle de Jour, 141 Bellini, Vincenzo, 162, 935 Belloc, Hilaire, 78–80, 79, 186, 1026 Bellow, Saul, 80–82 , 835
1155
INDEX
Belmondo, Jean-Paul, 386 Belzunce, Pili de, 190 Benchley, Peter, 906 Benedetta, Mary, 679 Benesch, Heinrich, 854 Ben-Hur, 465, 991 Benjamin, Arthur, 132 Benjamin, Dorothy, 165 Bennett, Arnold, 83–85, 83, 375 Benny, Jack, 646 Benton, Thomas Hart, 773 Bentsen, Ivar, 499 Benz, Maria (Nusch), 296 Berberian, Cathy, 621 Berg, Alban, 85–87, 85, 117, 133, 441, 859, 860, 878, 929, 1010, 1020 Berg, Charley, 85 Bergen, Candice, 631 Berger, Georgette, 624 Bergman, Ingmar, 13, 87–89, 88, 871, 897 Bergman, Ingrid, 88, 89–91, 90, 468, 832, 871 Bergson, Henri, 793 Berio, Luciano, 621 Berkeley, Busby, 34 Berkshire Music Festival and Center, 557 Berlin Academy, 605 Berlin Alexanderplatz, 304 Berlin Municipal Opera, 1009 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, 346, 557, 856, 857 Berlin Secession, 74, 554, 751 Berlin State Opera, 86, 347, 554 Berlin Wall, 95, 236, 675, 834 Berlin, Brigid, 1013 Berlin, Irving, 34, 91–93 , 92, 429, 646 Berliner Tageblatt, 710 Berlioz, Hector, 375, 954 Bernac, Pierre, 779 Bernadette, Saint, 1027 Bernanos, Georges, 779 Bernhard, Sarah, 422 Bernoulli, Maria, 461 Bernstein, Aline, 1042 Bernstein, Leonard, 93–96 , 94, 108, 206, 392, 456, 557, 823, 830–831, 896, 915, 950 Berry, Chuck, 829
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Bertolluci, Bernardo, 124, 742 Bertrand, Aloysius, 806 Besant, Annie, 876 Best, Pete, 67 Betjeman, John, 96–97, 679 Betti, Ugo, 48 Beuys, Joseph, 537 Beyond the Horizon, 735 The Bicycle Thief, 233, 866 Big Bird, 151 Big Sur, 534 Bigard, Barney, 27, 294 A Bigger Splash, 471 Billboard magazine Century Award, 676 Billboard’s R&B, 538 Billetdoux, Francois, 595 Billy Budd, 328 Bing, Albert, 1022 Bing, Henry, 751 Bing, Rudolf, 97–98, 952 Bing, Samuel, 989 Binoche, Juliette, 631 Binyon, Lawrence, 290 Biomorphic abstraction, 671 “Birches”, 338 The Birds, 94 Birmingham Repertory Company, 733, 815 Bishop, Joey, 163 Bitter Lemons, 270, 271 The Bitter Tea of General Yen, 159 Bizet, Georges, 1009 Black Arts Movement, 49 Black House, 542 Black Nationalist Movement, 1039 Black Offerings, 873 Black Orpheus (journal), 197, 577, 732 Black, Bill, 785 Blackboard Jungle, 771 Blackburn, Thomas, 99 The Blacks, 369 Blackwood, Algernon, 100–101 Blackwood, Arthur, 100 Blackwood, Basil T., 79 Blaine, Vivian, 390 Blais, Marie-Claire, 101–103 Blake, James Hubert “Eubie”, 103–104
Blake, William 99, 187, 379, 1054 Blakemore, Michael, 655 Blakey, Art, 686, 985 Blanche, Jacques-Emile, 403 Blanco, 760 Blanco, Josefina, 981 Blanton, Jimmy, 294 Blasco del Cacho, Maria, 104 Blasco Iban˜ez, Vincente, 104–106, 105 Blast—The Review of the Great English Vortex, 604 Blavatsky, Helena P., 100, 1053 Bleyl, Fritz, 546 Blin, Roger, 72 Blind Fireworks, 619 “Blinded by the Light”, 909 Blinder, Naoum, 914 Bliss, Arthur, 106–107, 106, Blithe Spirit, 436 Blitzstein, Marc, 108–109 , 384 Blixen-Finecke, Bror, 253 Bloch, Ernest, 834 Blogg, Frances, 186 Blok, Alexander, 9, 109–110 Blonde on Blonde, 275 The Blood Knot, 342 Blood Wedding, 358, 487 Blood, Sweat, & Tears, 172 “Bloomdido”, 686 Bloomsbury Group, 363, 364, 403, 591, 604, 903 Blossoms, Gin, 398 “Blowin’ in the Wind”, 273, 274 Blow-up, 23 Bloy, Le´on, 838 The Blue Angel, 251, 252, 916 The Blue Bird, 622, 623 The Blue Moon Boys, 785 Blue Note, 685 “Blue Suede Shoes”, 785 The Blues Brothers, 333 Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 49 Blum, Barbara, 586 Blunden, Edmund, 744 Bly, Robert, 820, 1053 “Bo Diddley”, 250 Boberg, Ferdinand, 667 “The Bobolink Waltz”, 775 Boccioni, Umberto, 111–113 , 111, 266, 604, 641, 691
INDEX
Bo¨cklin, Arnold, 191 Bogart, Humphrey, 458 Boito, Arrigo, 150, 182, 952 Bole´ro, 805, 807 Bolitho, Hector, 804 Bolm, Adolph, 247, 758 Bolshoi Ballet, 649 Bolshoi Opera Studio, 912 Bolshoi Theatre, 182, 800, 833 Bolt, Robert, 583 Bolton, Guy, 530 Bond, Christopher, 897 Bond, Edward, 456 Bond, James, 16, 224, 236, 318–319, 839 The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1045 Bonham, Jason, 588 Bonham, John, 587–588 Bonnard, Pierre, 113–114 , 237, 244, 625, 997 Bono, 174 Bonynge, Richard, 935 The Book of Monkish Life, 819 bop, 378 Borges, Jorge Luis, 114–115 , 152, 209, 709 Boris Godunov, 117, 181, 182, 247, 950 Born in the USA, 908 Born to Run, 908, 909 Born to Win, 430 Borodin, Aleksandr, 234 Borzage, Frank, 918 Bosnian Story, 17 Boston Lyric Opera, 952 Boston Symphony Orchestra, 52, 62, 94, 206, 556, 557, 596, 598, 792 Boston University, 551 Boswell, Connee, 315 Both Sides Now, 675 Botta, Mario, 962 Boudin, Euge`ne Louis, 684 Boulanger, Nadia, 206, 384 Boulez, Pierre, 116–118 , 116, 455, 583, 621, 658, 861 Bound East for Cardiff, 735 Bound for Glory, 429 Bourdelle, E´mile-Antoine, 118–119 , 370, 625 Boursin, Maria, 114
Bowen, Elizabeth, 119–120 Bowen, Stella, 325 Bower, Rhoda, 937 Bowie, David, 384 The Boy with a Cart, 339 A Boy’s Will, 337 Boyer, Jean, 53 Boys’ Life, 824 Bradbury, Ray, 972 Bradley, David, 465 Bradley, F. H., 291 Brahm, Otto, 857 Brahms, Johannes, 95, 347, 841, 856, 859, 864, 915, 954, 969 Bram Stoker awards, 543 Brancusi, Constantin, 120–122 , 371, 460, 592, 678, 689 Brandane, John, 426 Brandeis University, 670 Brando, Marlon, 122–125 , 123, 185, 208, 390, 529, 888 Brandt, Willy, 408 Braque, Georges, 125–127 , 237, 249, 266, 267, 371, 417, 589, 683, 691, 713, 764, 765, 855, 994, 996 See also Cubism Bratt, Edith, 964 Brave New World, 487–489 Brazilian Romance, 986 The Break of Day, 241 Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 156 Bream, Julian, 1011 Breathless, 385, 971 Brecht, Berthold, 108 Brecht, Bertolt, 127–129 , 128, 135, 271, 311, 426, 467, 931, 1021 Bremen Opera, 149 Brendel, Alfred, 129–130 Breslau Staddtheater, 1008 Bresson, Robert, 630 Bretherton, Judith, 427 Breton, Andre´ Robert, 35, 130–131 , 238, 246, 295, 521, 624, 670, 759, 767 Breton, Jacqueline, 131 Breuer, Marcel, 419 Breur, Marcel, 509 Briand, Aristide, 763 The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, 265, 266 Brideshead Revisited, 733, 1019
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1031 The Bridge on the Drina, 17 The Bridge on the River Kwai, 425, 583 “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, 333 The Bridge, 494 Bridge, Frank, 131 The Bridge. See Die Bru¨cke The Bridges of Madison County, 930 Bridges, Jeff, 283 Bridgman, George, 824 Bridie, James, 435 Bright Day, 788–789 Brilliant Corners, 686 Bringing It All Back Home, 274 Brinkley, Douglas, 959 British Book Award for Best Children’s Book of the Year, 840 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 5, 99, 100, 355, 426, 619, 739, 768, 790, 804, 914, 960, 963, 1011 British National Opera Company, 76 Britten, Benjamin, 38, 94, 131–133 , 132, 215, 290, 310, 328, 457, 620, 744, 790, 834, 962, 1011 Broadway Danny Rose, 14 Brod, Max, 519 Brodsky, Joseph, 9, 134–135 , 1003 Brodsky, Valentina, 180 Bronte¨, Anne, 340 Bronte¨, Emily, 48 Brook, Peter, 107, 135–136 , 425, 663, 694, Brooke, Rupert, 137–138 , 137, 314, 337, 403, 850 Brookfield, Ann, 387 Brooks, Harvey, 293 Brooks, James, 955 Brooks, Mel, 884 Brooks, Richard, 712, 1038 Broonzy, Big Bill, 784 Brossa, Joan, 946 Brother Sun, Sister Moon, 1066 Brown, Charlie, 861
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INDEX
Brown, Clarence, 918 Brown, Ford Madox, 324, 325 Brown, Fred, 506 Brown, Lawrence, 294 Brown, Louis, 293 Brown, Willie, 511 Browning, Arthur Montague, 262 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 831 Browning, Robert, 187, 937 Bruant, Aristide, 422 Brubeck, Dave, 661 Bruce, Henry James, 528 Bruch, Max, 841, 987 Bruckner, Anton, 347, 856, 1008 Bruhn, Ada, 659 Bru¨tt, Ferdinand, 77 Brutus’s Orchard, 344 Bryggman, Erik, 3 Bryn Mawr College, 457 Bubaidulina, Sofia, 834 Bu¨chner, Georg, 86 Buckley, William F. Jr., 534 Budapest Opera, 893 Buddenbrooks, 633 Buddhism, 533 Buffalo Springfield Again, 1057 Bugsy, 399 Bukharin, Nikolay, 632 Bullivant and the Lambs, 202 Bu¨low, Hans von, 925 Bunin, Ivan, 138–139 Bun˜uel, Luis, 140–142 , 140, 225, 297, 694, 916 Bunyan, John, 602, 988 Burgee, John, 510 Burgess, Anthony, 142–143 , 561, 1013 Burgtheater, 857 Buried Alive, 84, 270 Burne-Jones, Edward, 544 Burnett, T-Bone, 275 “Burning Love”, 787 The Burning Plain, 843 Burroughs, William S., 379, 532, 533, 585 Burton, Philip, 143 Burton, Richard, 143–145 , 144, 234, 263, 282, 299, 339, 436, 578, 741, 742, 1066 Bush, George W., 971 Busoni, Feruccio, 112, 880, 1022 Bussler, Ludwig, 1008
1158
Bustini, Alessandro, 621 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 712 Butler, Rhett, 870 Byard, Jaki, 669 The Byrds, 275 Byrne, David, 955 Byron, 139 Caballe´, Montserrat, 149–150 , 149, 162 Caesar, Julius, 436, 464, 1014, 1033 Caesar, Sid, 884 Caesar’s Hour, 13 Cafe´ Society, 475 Cage, Nicholas, 209, 930 Cahen, Germaine, 423 Cahiers du Cine´ma, 386, 971 Cain, James M., 995 Caine, Michael, 733 Calandri, Max, 621 Calder, Alexander, 150–152 , 151 California Hall of Fame, 284 California Institute of Technology, 158, 484 Callaghan, Morley, 450 Callahan, Harry, 283 Callas, Maria, 98, 150, 526, 655, 952, 995 Calmese, Charles, 1017 Calvino, Italo, 152–154 Camden Town group, 404, 881 Camelot, 145, 1030 Camera and Lens, 7 The Camera, 7 Cameron, Alan Charles, 119 Campbell, John W., 482 Campbell, Joseph, 515 Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1012 Campion, Edmund, 1019 Campogalliani, Ettore, 757 Camus, Albert, 58, 69, 154–156 , 155, 329, 339, 849 “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” 786 Candid Camera, 13 Candide, 94 “Candy’s Room”, 909 The Canterbury Tales, 753 Canticles, 423 Cantos., 781 The Capeman, 1003
Capital of Grief, 296 Capote, Truman, 156–158 , 157, 626 Capra, Frank, 158–160 , 353, 458, 888, 918 Carbonero, Jose´ Maria, 417 Cardin, Pierre, 695 Cards of Identity, 245 The Caretaker, 768 Carlton, Larry, 675 Carmichael, Hoagy, 315 Carmina Burana, 736 Carne´, Marcel, 22, 58 Carnegie Mellon University, 1012 Carney, Harry, 294 Caro, Sir Anthony, 160–161 Caro¨e, William, 376 “Carolina Moon”, 686 Caron, Leslie, 34 Carousel, 827 Carr, Lucien, 379, 533 Carra`, Carlo, 112, 191 Carre´, Louis, 994 Carreras, Jose´, 149, 161–162 , 257, 757, 950 Carrie, 541 Carril, Delia del, 709 Carrington, Dora, 363, 364 Carson, Johnny, 162–164 , 539, 647 Carter, Benny, 378 Caruso, Enrico, 51, 149, 161, 164–166 , 165, 218, 756 Cary, Clive, 935 Cary, Joyce, 166–167 , 427 Casablanca, 89, 90, 885 Casadesus, Robert, 167–168 Casals Festival, 170 Casals, Pablo, 168–170 , 169, 833 Casanova, Giacomo, 742 The Case for the Flying Saucers, 701 Case, Ken, 163 Cash, Johnny, 170–174 , 275, 674 Cash, June Carter, 170 Casino Royale, 13 Cassady, Neal, 379, 533, 536, 1044 Cassirer, Paul, 474 Casson, Lewis, 960 The Castiles, 908
INDEX
The Castle, 519–520 Castle, Irene, 91 Castle, Vernon, 91 Castro, Fidel, 70, 378 Castro, Rosalia de, 503 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 712, 1037 Cathay, 781 Catlett, Sidney, 27 Cats, 607 The Caucasian Chalk Circle, 128 Cavafy, Constantine, 175–176 , 471 Cavalcanti, Alberto, 416, 812 The Caves of the Vatican, 373 Cecchetti, Enrico, 643 Cela, Camilo Jose´, 176–177 Celan, Paul, 177–178 The Centaur, 101 Central Intelligence Agency, 535 Cercle et Carre´, 29 Cerha, Friedrich, 86 Cervantes, Miguel de, 57, 176, 358, 742 Cervoni, Dominic, 204 Ce´zanne, Paul, 125, 244, 246, 265, 403, 626, 651, 676, 684 Chagall, Marc, 44, 179–181 , 179, 589, 644, 650, 807 “Chain of Fools”, 333 The Chairs, 493 Chaliapin, Feodor, 75, 76, 181–182 , 181, 247, 528 Chaloff, Serge, 64 Chamber Concerto, 86 Chambers, Jessie, 573 Chamisso, Adelbert von, 547 Chaplin, Sir Charles Spencer, 124, 183–185, 183, 735, 916 Chappaqua, 384 Char, Rene´, 117 Charisse, Cyd, 34 Charles Egan Gallery, 552 “Charleston Rag”, 103 Charley Is My Darling, 166 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 223, 224 Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, 224 Charlottenberg Opera, 98 Charo, 218 Charrier, Jacques, 53
Chase Art School, 824 Chase, William Merritt, 729 Checkmate, 107 Chekhov, Anton, 58, 139, 298, 336, 396, 427, 447, 620, 637, 808 Chelsea Girls, 1013 Che´ri, 201 Chermayeff, Serge, 657 Chess, Leonard, 1016 Chess, Phil, 1016 Chesterton, Cecil, 80 Chesterton, G. K., 79, 186–187 , 186, 377 Chetwode, Penelope Hester, 96–97 Chevalier, Maurice, 187–189 , 188, 195, 437, 765, 826 Chicago Blues movement, 1015 Chicago Civic Opera Company, 182 Chicago Daily News, 847 Chicago Opera Ballet, 720 Chicago Opera Company, 791 Chicago Poems, 847 Chicago School, 608 Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 117, 347, 622, 893, 963 Chichester Festival Theatre, 733 The Chieftains, 757 The Child of Pleasure, 227 Child with a Toy Hand Grenade, 25 Child, Calvin G., 165 Children of the Game, 198 Children of the Ghetto, 1063 Children of Violence, 599 The Children’s Hour, 446 Childs, Harold, 988 Chillida, Eduardo, 190–191 Chirico, Giorgio de, 191–192 , 191, 241, 297, 624 Chitlin Circuit, 453 Chiu, Gheorghe, 121 Chopin, Fre´de´ric, 322, 841 Chotzinoff, Samuel, 969 Christ in the Wilderness, 903 Christ Stopped at Eboli, 600 Christian, Charlie, 685 Christianity, 601–603 Christie, Agatha, 90, 192–194 , 193, 195, 252
Christie, Archibald, 193 The Chronicles of Narnia, 602 Chronicles, 277 Church of Scientology, 481, 483 Churchill, Winston, 145, 933 CIAM. See International Congresses of Modern Architecture Cilea, Francesco, 165 Cimino, Michael, 283 Circus Barker, 824 Cirque Calder, 151 The Cistern, 868 Citti, Franco, 752 The City and the Pillar, 990, 991 City College of New York, 664 City Lights, 184 City Night, 730 The City Rises, 112 “The City,‘ 175 Clair de lune, 235 Clair, Rene´, 53, 189, 194–195 , 194, 853 Clamor, 423 Clapton, Eric, 453, 512, 539, 587, 867, 1017 Clarinet Sonata, 94 Clark, John Pepper, 196–197 Clark, Petula, 208 Clark-Bekederemo, J. P. See Clark, John Pepper Clarke, Kenny, 378 Clarke, Lydia Marie, 465 The Clash, 250 Claudel, Paul, 57, 660, 763 Claudine series, 199 Claudius the God, 412 Clavell, James, 772 The Clayhanger Family, 84 Clayton, Jack, 769 Cle´ment, Rene´, 207 Clemons, Clarence, 539 Cleopatra, 144, 436 Cle´opaˆtre (ballet), 44, 238, 239, 322 Cleveland Orchestra, 117, 597 Clockface, 552 A Clockwork Orange, 142, 559, 561, 1013 Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 906 Close, Chuck, 385
1159
INDEX
Clouzout, Henri-George, 54 The Cloven Viscount, 153 Clurman, Harold, 529 Clytemnestra, 401 Cobden, Ellen Melicent, 881 Cochin, Denys, 244 Cochran, C. B., 211 The Cocoanuts, 92, 646 Cocteau, Jean, 46, 58, 135, 178, 192, 197–199 , 197, 249, 369, 650, 661, 678, 778, 842, 853 Cohen, Eve, 270 Cohen, Fritz, 513 Cohen, Harriet, 67 “Cold, Cold Heart”, 1035 Coleman Hawkins Quartet, 685 Coleman, Ornette, 669 Coles, Johnny, 669 Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle Claudine, 199–201 , 200 Collage, 297 Collected Poems, 338 The Collected Poems, 770 Collected Stories, 306 The Collector, 329 College of the Holy Cross, 584 Collet, Henri, 778 Collier Trophy, 485 Collingwood, Charles, 700 Cologne Opera, 1008 “Colonel” Tom Parker, 785 The Color of Money, 712 The Color Purple, 906, 1041 The Colossus and Other Poems, 770 Colton, John, 917 Coltrane, John, 378, 686 Columbia Symphony Orchestra, 168 Columbia University, 30, 365, 436, 532, 566, 654 Columns, 122 Come´die-Franc¸aise, 57 Comic Mystery, 320 The Communicating Vessels, 131 Communist Party, 9, 109, 131, 153, 229, 296, 320, 331, 379, 421, 430, 447, 529, 562, 590, 663, 709, 720, 752, 767, 821, 903–904, 963, 982, 995
1160
Compagnie M. Renaud-J.L. Barrault, 57 Complete Poems, 847 Compton-Burnett, Ivy, 202–203 Congressional Gold Medal, 485, 862 A Connecticut Yankee, 437 Connery, Sean, 579, 805 Connolly, Cyril, 904 The Conquest of Mexico, 336 Conrad, Joseph, 5, 122, 153, 203–205 , 204, 208, 324, 354, 364, 398, 742, 810, 937, 1007 Constantine the Great, 1019 Constructivists, 589, 714 Contanten, Tom, 409 Contemporary Art Society, 717 Contempt, 54, 386 Conversation in the Cathedral, 983 The Conversation, 207, 208 Cooper, Gary, 389, 916 Cooper, Merian C., 869 Copland, Aaron, 95, 205–207 , 231, 384, 392, 401, 557, 830, 831, 905 Coppola, Francis Ford, 122, 158, 207–209 , 398, 611, 866, 905 Coppola, Sofia, 209 Corinth, Lovis, 74 Corman, Roger, 207 Cormon, Fernand, 994 Corot, Camille, 605 Corso, Gregory, 379, 533 Corta´zar, Julio Florencio, 209–210 Cortot, Alfred, 129, 169, 954 Cosby, Bill, 772 Costner, Kevin, 283 Cotten, Joseph, 810 Cotton, James, 1017 The Count Basie Orchestra, 64 Count, Basie, 985 Counter-Attack, 851 Counterparts, 344 The Country Gentleman, 824 Country Life building, 613 Country Music Hall, 173, 787, 1036 Coupeau, Jacques, 20, 57, 404 Courbet, Gustave, 684 Court Theatre, 405, 406, 877
Cousteau, Jacques-Yves, 630 Covent Garden, 76, 107, 133, 165, 249, 299, 300, 310, 324, 456, 718, 757, 864, 893, 934, 935, 950, 1011 Coverdale, David, 588 Coward, Noe¨l, 145, 210–212 , 211, 298, 374, 582, 595, 733 Cowell, Henry, 366 Cowen, Louis, 1063 Cox, Billy, 453 Crabbe, George, 132 The Cradle Will Rock, 94, 108 Craft, Calleta ‘Callie”, 511 Craft, Robert, 929 Craig, Gordon, 136, 212–215 , 213, 405 Cranbrook Academy of Art, 281 Crane, Stephen, 204 Cranko, John, 133, 215–216 , 963 Cranston, Catherine, 618 Crawford, Cheryl, 529 Crawford, Joan, 33, 352, 906 Crazy Horse, 1057 The Creation of the World, 62, 661 Creative Approach Studio, 7 Creighton, Anthony, 740 Cret, Paul Philippe, 522 Crews, Laura Hope, 352 Crichton, Michael, 907 The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, 141 “Criss Cross”, 686 The Crock of Gold, 913 Cromwell, John, 918 Cronin, A. J., 809 Cronkite, Walter, 702 Croquet Party, 113 Crosby, Bing, 27, 34, 92, 160, 216–217 , 315, 886 Crosby, Bob, 362 Crosby, David, 674 Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (CSNY), 1057 Crossing the Water, 770 Crowley, Aleister, 588, 653 Crozier, Eric, 328 Crudup, Arthur, 784 Cruise, Tom, 561 “Cry Cry Cry”, 171
INDEX
Cry, the Beloved Country, 755, 771 CSNY, 1057 Cubism, 112, 125–126, 179, 237, 246, 265–267, 269, 365, 445, 580, 589, 640, 683, 713, 750–751, 765–766, 773, 821, 854, 855, 945, 993 Cugat, Xavier, 218 Cukor, George, 363, 458, 870, 918 Cunningham, Merce, 955 The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, 14 Curson, Ted, 669 Curtis Institute, 51, 830 Curtiz, Michael, 92 Cusack, Cyril, 219 Cutting Up, 955 D. W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievement, 561 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 226–228, 227, 672, 996 d’Indy, Vincent, 776, 852 da Rosa, Faustino, 842 da Vinci, Leonardo, 979 Dadaism, 28, 265, 295, 297, 507, 583 Dahl, Nikolai, 28, 265, 295, 297, 507, 853 Dahl, Roald, 223–224 , 223 The Daily Worker; 430 Dalı´, Salvador, 130, 140, 225–226 , 225, 241, 295, 358, 371, 624, 650 Dallesandro, Joe, 1013 Dameron, Tadd, 985 A Dance in the Sun, 501 A Dance of the Forests, 899 A Dance to the Music of Time, 782 The Dancer, 551 Dandre´, Victor, 758–759 Dangerous Corner, 789 Dangerous Liaisons, 326 Dangling Man, 81 Dante, 291 Danzig Trilogy, 407 Daphnis and Chloe, 32, 44, 45, 180, 322, 323, 528, 688, 805, 807 Darı´o, Ruben, 503, 617, 672, 981 The Dark Child, 576–577
The Dark Is Light Enough, 298, 340 The Dark Tower, 543, 620 Darlu, Alphonse, 793 Darwin, Charles, 987 Dass, Ram, 585 Daubigny, Charles-Franc¸ois, 605 Daughters and Sons, 202 Daumier, Honore´, 838 Davies, Sylvia Llewellyn, 59 Davila, Carol, 121 Davis, Colin, 950 Davis, Hermine, 751 Davis, Miles, 685, 985 Davoli, Ninetto, 753 A Day at the Races, 646 “Day Dreaming”, 333 Day, Doris, 436 Day-Lewis, Cecil, 37, 96, 228–229, 591, 619, 620, 744, 903, 1014 Day-Lewis, Daniel, 664 Dayrell-Browning, Vivien, 414 Days of Glory, 761 de Havilland, Olivia, 263 De Jong, Meindert, 872 De la Mare, Walter, 230–231 de Mille, Agnes, 231–232 , 232 De Niro, Robert, 866 De Palma, Brian, 866 De Sica, Vittorio, 233–234, 832, 866, 995 De Stijl. See Neoplasticists de Valois, Ninette, 448 Dean, Basil, 809 Dean, Laura, 696 Death in the Afternoon, 450–451 Death of a Naturalist, 443 The Death of Artemio Cruz, 341 The Death of Bessie Smith, 11 The Death of the Heart, 120 Debussy, Claude, 61, 117, 228, 234–235, 235, 249, 303, 367, 392, 623, 796, 806, 852, 953 Decadents, 937 The Decameron, 753 Decca, 64, 317 Decroux, E´tienne, 57 The Deer Hunter, 929 The Defiant Ones, 771 Degas, Edgar, 606, 684, 881
Dehmel, Richard, 77, 856, 859, 1020 Deighton, Len, 236–237, 635 Delaunay, Robert, 28, 237–238, 549, 589 Delaunay, Sonia, 237, 238–239 Delbard, Georges, 953 Delbos, Claire, 658 A Delicate Balance, 11 Delius, Frederick, 75, 76, 240–241, 1010 Delvaux, Paul, 241–242 Demian, 461 DeMille, Cecil B., 231, 242–243 , 389, 463, 762 Deming, Barbara, 102 Demuth, Charles, 730 Deneuve, Catherine, 53, 141, 694 Denis, Maurice, 113, 237, 243–245, 625, 997 Dennis, Nigel, 245 The Departed, 866 Depp, Johnny, 958 Der Blaue Reiter, 28, 297, 547, 549, 640, 656, 860 Derain, Andre´, 48, 125, 246–247, 269, 592, 652, 996 Derme´e, Paul, 581 Descartes, Rene, 72 The Descent from the Cross, 74 Deschevaux-Dumesnil, Suzanne, 73 Desjardins, Paul, 793 Destin, Emmy, 165 Deutsch, Ernst, 858 Deutscher Werkbund, 418, 473, 659 Deutsches Theater, 857 Devallie`res, Georges, 244 Devi, Mrinalini, 944 Devil Fish, 151 The Devil, 680 Devils & Dust, 910 De-Wolf, Ronald, 483 Dezelic, Sofia, 129 Dhokime´s, 869 Di Prima, Diane, 49 Dia, Mamadou, 873
1161
INDEX
Diaghilev, Sergei, 32, 44, 45, 46, 76, 192, 198, 228, 246, 247–249, 248, 527, 643, 649, 714, 758, 766, 779, 791, 853, 926, 927 Diamant-Berger, Henri, 189 Diamond, David, 557 Dianetics, 481, 482 The Diary of a Chambermaid, 141, 813 The Diary of Anaı¨s Nin, 716 Diary of Newly Married Poet, 504 Dı´az, Porfirio, 759 DiCaprio, Leonardo, 930 Dickens, Charles, 187, 583, 1019 Dickens, John and Aida, 935 Diddley, Bo 249–251 , 539, 932 Die Bru¨cke, 546–547, 854, 855 Die Fackel, 558 Die Gruppe 407 Die Meistersinger von Nu¨rnberg, 299 Die´mer, Louis, 168 Dietrich, Marlene, 251–253, 252, 811, 916, 918 Diez, Wilhelm von, 639 Dinesen, Isak, 253–254, 254 Dirty Harry, 283 Distributivism, 79–186 Division of Subsistence Homesteads, 523 Divisionists, 111 Dixon, Willie, 1016 DMT, 535 Do I Hear a Waltz?, 897 Do¨blin, Alfred, 304 Doctor Zhivago (film), 425, 582, 583, 753, 754, 816 Doctorow, E. L., 326 Documentary filmmaking, 415 Dodes’-ka-den, 565 Doesburg, Theo van, 445, 590, 683, 817 Dohna´nyi, Erno¨, 60 Dolby, Thomas, 675 Dolin, Anton, 643 Dolmetsch, Arnold, 254–255 Dolmetsch, He´le`ne, 255 Dolores Claiborne, 542 Dolphy, Erick, 669 Domaine Musicale, 117
1162
Domingo, Pla´cido, 150, 161, 256–257, 256, 757, 775, 952, 1066 Don Giovanni, 149, 182, 299, 598, 823, 950 “Don’t Cry Daddy, 786 Don’t Drink the Water, 13 Donahue, Troy, 1012 Donizetti, Gaetano, 149, 527, 935 Donne, John, 134, 291 Donner, Richard, 906 Donovan, 542 Doolittle, Hilda, 780 Doonesbury, 969, 970 The Doors, 250, 398 Doran, Charles, 815 Dos Passos, John, 451 Dostoeyevsky, Fyodor, 298, 425, 494, 565, 791, 916, 995 Doucieux, Camille, 684 Douglas, Alfred, 372 Douglas, Keith, 257–258 Douglas, Kirk, 560 Douglas, Norman, 258–260, 259 Dove, Arthur, 730 Dover Beach, 52 Dow, Arthur Wesley, 730 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 260–262, 261 Dr. Zhivago (novel), 753, 754 Drama League Award for Sustained Achievement, 955 Dream Days, 401, 402 A Dream of Africa, 577 The Dream of Gerontius, 289 Dream on Monkey Mountain, 1003 Dreamcatcher, 542 Dreiser, Theodore, 287 Dresden State Opera, 1022 Dreyfus, Alfred, 331 Dreyfuss, Richard, 906 Drifting Cowboys, 1034 “drip technique.” , 774 Druten, John Van, 123 Du Maurier, Daphne, 262–263 du Pre´, Jacqueline, 1067 Dubliners, 514 Dubuffet, Jean, 264, 947 Duchamp, Marcel, 130, 151, 265–266 , 265, 267, 507, 781, 994
Duchamp-Crotti, Suzanne, 994 Duchamp-Villon, Raymond, 265, 267, 994 “The Duchess”, 250 Duck Soup, 646 Duel in the Sky, 761 Dufy, Jean, 267 Dufy, Raoul, 267–269 , 268, 661, 996 Duino Elegies, 820 Dujardin, E´douard, 688 Dukas, Paul, 658, 660, 841 The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition, 294 Duke Ellington. 378 The Duke’s Serenaders, 294 Dukes, Ashley, 32 Dulac, Germaine, 993 Dullin, Charles, 57 Dumas, Alexandre, 654 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 18 Duncan, Isadora, 119, 214, 400 Dunne, John William, 789 Dupre´, Marcel, 658 Du¨rer, Albrecht, 370, 546 Durey, Louis, 197, 661, 779 Durrell, Lawrence, 175, 269–271 , 665 Du¨rrenmatt, Friedrich, 271–273 Duse, Eleonora, 214, 227 Du¨ss, Father, 763 Du¨sseldorf Academy, 549 Dust Bowl Ballads, 429 Dust Bowl, 428 Dutch Interiors, 671 Dutchman, 49 Dutilleux, Henri, 834 Dyer, George, 43 The Dying Swan, 321, 758 Dylan, Bob, 68, 69, 172, 273–277 , 381, 397, 428, 430, 452, 675, 867, 955, 1016 Dylan, Jakob, 277 Dymling, Carl-Anders, 87 Dyson, Hugo, 965 E Street Band, 908 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, 905, 906 Eagles, 831 The Eames chair, 281 Eames, Charles, 281–282 Eames, Ray, 281–282
INDEX
Earl Hines, 378 Easter Rising of 635, 725, 728 Eastwood, Clinton, 282–284 , 686 Ebb, Fred, 654–655 Ebert, Carl, 98 Eckstine, Billy, 985 The Eclipse, 23 Eco, Umberto, 284–286 , 285 E´cole Normale de Musique, 169, 178 Ed Sullivan Show, 13, 785, 823, 908, 931, 932 Edelmann, Heinz, 69 Edgar Box, 991 Edinburgh Festival, 98 Edmonds, Elga, 1016 educational television, 702 Edward VIII, King of England, 571, 881 Edward, My Son, 695 The Eighth Day, 1033 Einarsdo´ttir, Inga, 575 Einaudi, Giulio, 153 Einstein on the Beach, 384 Einstein Tower, 656 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 825 Eisenstein, Sergei Mikhaylovich, 286–288 , 287, 494, 611, 792, 812, 948 Eisler, Hans, 494 Eisner, Kurt, 966 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1044 Electronic music, 922 Elegaic Trio, 799 Elgar, Edward, 106, 131, 288–290 , 289, 309 Eliot, Andrew, 290 Eliot, T. S., 36, 37, 96, 175, 230, 290–293 , 502, 545, 595, 604, 607, 665, 732, 763, 780, 868, 904, 937, 1003, 1046, 1053 Elizabeth II, Queen of Britain, 69, 185, 229, 1011 Elizabethan Stage Society, 255 “Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra”, 317 Ellen, Vera, 34 Ellington, Duke, 293–295 , 294, 317, 378, 392, 889, 932 Elliott, Ramblin’ Jack, 275, 430
E´luard, Gala, 225, 295 E´luard, Paul, 47, 130, 225, 295–296 , 295, 624, 767, 779 Emerich, Paul, 596 Emmanuel Burden, 79 Emmy Award, 458, 567, 885, 955 The Empty House, 100 Encounter, 899 Encounters, 119 Endgame, 73 English Chamber Orchestra, 1067 The English Hymnal, 987 English Review, 259, 325, 573 engrams, 482 Enigma Variations, 289 Ennis House, 1049 Eno, Brian, 757 Ensor, James, 548, 719 The Entertainer, 733, 740 Entertaining Mr. Sloane, 737 Epic theater, 127–128 Epstein, Brian, 68 Epstein, Jacob, 690 Erkel, La´szlo´, 60 Erlich, Heinrich, 1008 Ernest “Big” Crawford, 1016 Ernst, Max, 29, 296–298 , 624, 671 Ervin, Booker, 669 “Esmerelda,” , 776 E Street Band, 1058 Esmond, Jill, 733 Esperpento, 980, 981 Essen Opera House, 513 Esther Waters, 687 Eubie!, 103 Euripides, 426, 1015 Eurydice, 20 Eurythmics, 333 Evans, Edith, 298–299 , 312, 340, 804, 808 Evans, Geraint, 299–300 Evenings of Modern Music, 791 “Every Day I Have the Blues”, 63 “Every thing I Have Is Yours”, 985 Everyman, 836 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, 13 Evidence of Things, 831 “Evidence”, 686
Evil Angels, 930 Evita, 607 Except the Lord, 167 The Executioner’s Song, 627 Existentialism, 178, 760, 849 An Experiment with Time, 789 Expressionism, 28, 127, 468, 473, 524, 547, 548, 552, 605, 697, 750, 751, 838 expressionistic paintings, 836 The Exterminating Angel, 141 Exultations, 780 Ezra, Giovanna Marie The´re`se Babette, 619 f/64 group, 7 Fabian Society, 137, 376, 415, 876, 1025 A Fable, 306 Fac¸ade, 31, 32, 82, 1011 The Face of Half Dome, 7 “The Factory”, 1012 Fainlight, Ruth, 882 Fairbanks, Douglas Jr, 159, 184 Falguie`re, John-AlexandreJoseph, 118 The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 382 Falla, Manuel de, 249, 303, 358, 650, 841 Fallen Figure, 445 Falling Leaves, 139 Fallingwater, 1049 The False Mirror, 624 False start, 508 Falstaff, 95, 300, 969 The Family of Pascual Duarte, 176 The Family Trilogy, 342 Fancy Dress Party, 692 Fancy Free , 822 Fanfare for the Common Man, 206 A Farewell to Arms, 450 Farlow, Tal, 668 Farnsworth, Edith, 659 Farrow, Mia, 14 Fascism, 600, 605, 620, 634, 640, 642, 904, 1015. See also Franco, Francisco; Hitler, Adolf; Mussolini, Benito; Nazis Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 304 Fats Waller’s Rhythm Club, 1005
1163
INDEX
Faulkner, William Cuthbert, 57, 305–307 , 305, 1042 The Faun and the Shepherdess, 927 Faure, Francine, 154 Faure´, Gabriel, 168, 806, 954 Fauvism, 179, 237, 265, 524, 547, 629, 767, 838, 996 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 958 Fechner, Gustav, 101 Federici, Danny, 909 Feher, Ilona, 1066 Feld, Eliot, 696 Felling, 672 Fellini, Federico, 14, 21, 307–309 , 308, 992 Fellini-Satyricon, 307–308 Fenby, Eric, 241 Fences, 1039 Fenollosa, Ernest, 781 Ferber, Edna, 531 Ferrer, Mel, 761 Ferri, Dominico, 691 Ferrier, Kathleen, 309–310 , 309 Ferroud, Pierre-Octave, 779 Feˆtes Musicales, 817 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 32, 310–311 , 647, 1022 Feuilletonistic writing, 558 Fever Pitch, 542 A Few Late Chrysanthemums, 97 Ffrangcon-Davies, DavidThomas, 312 Ffrangcon-Davies, Gwen, 312, 374, 881 Fı´at Lux, 7 Fiat Modes Pereat Ars, 297 Fiddler on the Roof, 823 Fielding, Henry, 740 Fields, Dorothy, 531 Fields, Gracie, 313, 313 Fields, Herbert, 826 Fields, Lew, 436, 826 Fiesta Melons, 770 Figure in a Landscape, 43 Film Liga, 494 Filosofov, Dima, 44 Finian’s Rainbow, 34, 208 Finlandia, 880 Finnegan’s Wake, 515
1164
Finneran, Richard J., 914 Firbank, Ronald, 314–315 The Firebird, 45, 180, 322, 927 First Studio, 1048 First Symphony, 347, 456 Fischer, Edwin, 129 Fischer, Helma, 865 Fisher, Adeline, 987 Fisker, Kay, 499 A Fistful of Dolars, 282 Fitzgerald, Edward, 413 Fitzgerald, Ella, 27, 64, 315–318 , 316, 378, 985 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 208, 450, 1043 Fitzgibbon, Elsa, 259 “Five Feet High and Rising”, 171 Five Short Stories, 834 Flaherty, Stephen, 655 Flaubert, Gustave, 83, 328, 687, 812, 849 Fleming, Ian, 236, 318–319 Fletcher, Valerie, 293 Flint, F. S., 337 Flo¨ge, Emilie, 550 Floyd, Pink, 675 Fo, Dario, 319–321 Fogarty, Thomas, 824 Fogerty, Elsie, 733 Fokina, Vera, 322 Fokine Ballet, 322 Fokine, Michel, 44, 247, 321–322 , 324, 527, 643, 650, 715, 758, 928 Fold According to Fold, 117 Foley, Red, 784 Folies-Berge`re, 351 Folkwang Tansbu¨hne, 513 Folkways Records, 429 “Folsom Prison Blues”, 171 Fonda, Henry, 123, 917 Fonda, Jane, 929 Fontaine, Jean de La, 180 Fontaine, Joan, 263, 468, 871 Fontaine, Joan, 871 Fontana, Ferdinando, 795 Fonteyn, Margot, 31, 107, 323–324 , 323, 448, 529, 720 For a Few Dollars More, 282 For Me and My Gal, 362 For Whom the Bell Tolls, 451 Ford, Betty, 401
Ford, Ford Madox, 204, 259, 324–325 , 337, 364, 573, 780 Ford, Henry, 655 Ford, John, 159 Foreman, Carl, 694 Forester, C. S., 223 “Forever Young”, 275 Forman, Milosˇ, 325–326 , 535, 955 Forster, E. M., 133, 137, 175, 229, 325, 327–328 , 583, 1015, 1046 The Forsyte Saga, 354 Fort, Gertrud von le, 779 Fortner, Wolfgang, 445 The Fortnightly, 7 The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, 813 Fortunio, 749 The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, 1027 Forum, 900 Foss, Lukas, 834 Foster, Stephen, 495 Foucault’s Pendulum, 285 The Fountainhead, 711 Four Freedoms, 825 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 104 400 Blows, 971 400 Jokes of the Devil, 286 Four Quartets, 292 Four Saints in Three Act, 697 “4th of July”, 909 Fowles, John, 328–329 Frampton, David, 487 France, Anatole, 228, 330–332 , 330 Francescatti, Zino, 168 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 1066 Franc-Nohain, 807 Franco, Francisco, 421, 451, 605 Frank, Ise, 418 Frank, Robert, 534 Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, 465 “Franklin and Jefferson” exhibition, 281 Franklin, Aretha Louise, 332–334 Franklin, Benjamin, 824 Frantic, 630 Fraser, Eliza, 718 Free Berlin Art Exhibition, 554
INDEX
Free Stage Society, 438 Freed, Arthur, 243 Freedom Morning, 109 The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, 274 Freire, Dido, 812 The French Lieutenant’s Woman, 329, 769 French Wind Quintet, 802 Freni, Mirella, 775 Freud, Lucian, 43, 902 Freud, Sigmund, 37, 130, 225, 481, 584, 634, 716, 857, 1046 Freudenberg, Phillip, 474 Friedkin, William, 695 Friel, Brian, 334–336 Friendly, Fred W., 701 Friesz, E´mile-Othon, 267 Frohman, Charles, 530 Frohnknect, Anne, 596 From a Buick 8, 542 From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, 915 From the Cotton Club, 294 Frost, Robert, 31, 336–339 , 336, 780, 782 Fry, Christopher, 143, 298, 339–340 , 383, 804, 964, 991 Fry, Maxwell, 419 Fry, Roger, 1046 Fuchs, Robert, 880 Fuchs-Robettin, Hanna, 86 Fuentes, Carlos, 341–342 Fugard, Athol, 342–344 , 1039 Fuller, Roy, 344–345 Functional Style. See International Style “Fun in Hi Skule”, 645 Functionalism, 580–581 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 896 Furay, Richie, 1057 A Further Range, 338 Furtwa¨ngler, Wilhelm, 345–347 , 346, 467, 526 Futurism, 111–112, 266, 604, 641, 642 Futurist Manifesto, 112, 641 Gabin, Jean, 351, 351 Gable, William Clark, 352–353 , 870 Gabler, Milt, 475
Gabo, Naum, 714, 949 Gabory, George, 246 Gabrial, Jan, 609 Gabriel, Peter, 675 Gaiety Theatre, 960 Gaisberg, Fred, 165 Galamian, Ivan, 1066 Galanis, Demetrios, 751 Galerie Billet, 151 Gallagher, Rory, 1017 Gallis, Yvonne, 581 Galsworthy, John, 58, 354–356 , 354, 364 Game, Set, Match, 236 Gance, Abel, 356–357 Gandhi, Mahatma, 944 Garcı´a Lorca, Federico, 225, 303, 357–359 , 487, 621, 709, 779, 879, 924 Garcı´a Ma´rquez, Gabriel, 359–361 , 359, 835, 843 Garcia, Jerry, 409 Garcı´a, Jose´, 169 The Garden of Fand, 65 The Garden Party (Havel), 440 The Garden Party (Mansfield), 637 Garden, Mary, 953 Gardner, Evelyn, 1018 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 968 Garland, Judy, 34, 92, 361–363 , 649, 825, 918 Garnett, David, 363–364 , 404, 607, 1030 Garnett, Edward, 363 Garro, Elena, 759 Gaslight, 89, 90 Gaspard de la nuit, 805, 806 Gather Together in My Name, 18 Gatty, Hester, 851 Gaudier-Brzeska, Henri, 780 Gauguin, Paul, 113, 239, 244, 625, 651, 653, 708, 997 Gauthier-Villars, Henri, 199 Gay Divorce, 776 Gay, John, 124, 441 Ge´dalge, Andre´, 806 Geer, Will, 430 Gehry, Frank, 364–365 , 510, 1049 Geissler, Lotti, 271 Gelbart, Larry, 884, 897
Gellhorn, Martha, 451 Gemignani, Elvira Bonturi, 795 General Delia Rovere, 832 Generation of ‘98, 55, 104, 617, 975, 980, Generation of the ‘30s, 868 Genet, Jean, 135, 368–369 , 694, 844 Gente del Po, 22 “The Gentleman of San Francisco,‘ 139 Gentleman’s Agreement, 761 George Polk Award, 628, 702 George V, King of Britain, 944 George VI, King of Britain, 1011 George Washington University, 481 George, Ernest, 613 George, Jessie, 204 Georgia, 19 Gerdt, Pavel, 528 German Expressionists. See Expressionism “Gerontion,‘ 291 Gershwin Live!, 986 Gershwin, George, 13, 33, 34, 95, 206, 317, 365–368, 366, 390, 531, 1005 Gershwin, Ira, 367, 1023 Gerstl, Richard, 860 Gewandhaus Orchestra, 1009 Geyer, Stefi, 61 The Ghost Goes West, 195, 556 The Ghost of Tom Joad, 910 Giachetti, Ada, 165 Giacometti, Alberto, 47, 369–371 , 370 Giacometti, Diego, 372 Gibon, Jean de, 658 Gibson, Mel, 1066 Gibson, Walter B., 532 Gide, Andre´, 47, 244, 344, 369, 372–373 , 372, 625, 694, 759, 979 Gielgud, John, 135, 312, 340, 374–375 , 374, 425, 464, 733, 742, 804, 814 “The Gift Outright”, 338 Gil, Susana, 1011 Gilbert, W. S., 960 Gill Sans Serif, 375 Gill, Eric, 375–377
1165
INDEX
Gillespie, Dizzy, 317, 377–378 , 377, 534, 668, 685, 985 Gilliam, Terry, 816, 924 Gilmore, Gary, 627 Ginsberg, Allen, 49, 275, 379–382 , 397, 410, 532, 533, 536, 585 Giordano, Umberto, 165, 952 Giorno, John, 1013 Giraud, Albert, 860 Giraudoux, Jean, 312, 340, 382–384 , 808 Girl Crazy, 367 The Girl from Utah, 530 The Girl Who Loved, 542 Girling, Sheila, 160 Giroux, Robert, 533 Gitanjali, 943, 944 “The Glasgow Four,” 541 Glasgow Herald Building, 618 Glasgow School of Art, 618 Glass House, 509 The Glass Menagerie, 1036 Glass, Philip, 206, 384–385 , 600 Glazunov, Aleksandr, 878 Gleyre, Charles, 684 Glie`re, Reinhold, 790 Glob, P. V., 443 Globe Theatre, 340, 425, 804, 805, 815 Go Down, Moses, 306 The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, 12 The Go-Between, 596, 769 Gobillard, Jeannie, 979 A God and His Gifts, 203 “God Bless America”, 91, 92 The God Smiles, 481 “The God’s Script,” 115 Godard, Jean-Luc, 55, 385–387 , 386, 829, 832, 971, 993 Godchaux, Donna, 409 Godchaux, Keith, 409 Goddard, Paulette, 34, 184, 811 Godden, Rumer, 813 The Godfather III, 122, 124, 207, 208, Godwin, Edward William, 214 Goebbels, Joseph, 467 Goethe, 563 Gogol, Nikolay, 180, 878, 912 Gold Medal of the National Institute, 207
1166
The Gold Rush, 184 Goldberg, Whoopi, 906 The Golden Age (Bunuel), 140 The Golden Age (Grahame), 401 Golden Age (Spain), 617 The Golden Boat, 943 Golden Cockerel Press, 376 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical, 363 Golden Globe Awards, 611 The Golden Notebook, 599 Golden Scroll Award for Best Science Fiction Film, 465 Golding, William, 387–388 Goldman and Salatsch building, 608 Goldmark, Karl, 880 Goldmark, Rubin, 206, 366 Goldsmith, Oliver, 961 Goldstone, James, 712 Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, 389 Goldwyn, Samuel, 243, 389–390 Gone With the Wind, 352, 869, 870 Gonne, Maud, 1054 Gonzaga University, 216 Gonzo journalism, 957 The Gonzo Papers, 959 The Good Companions, 788 “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, 785 The Good Soldier, 325 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 282 Goodbye Columbus and Five Short Stories, 835 Goodbye Columbus, 834 Good-Bye to All That, 412 Goodis, David, 972 Goodman, Benjamin David, 391–393 , 391 Goodman, Benny, 475, 886 Goossens, Eugene, 206, 935 Gorbachev, Raisa, 834 Gordimer, Nadine, 393–395 , 393 Gordon, E. V., 965 Gorky, Maxim, 134, 139, 395–397 , 395, 632, 1046, 1055 Gorodetsky, Sergei, 791 Gorsky, Alexander, 649
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 752 Gospel Music Hall, 787 Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus, 173 The Gospel Soul of Aretha Franklin, 332 Gosse, Edmund, 850 Gostick, Alice, 689 Gottlob, Kay, 499 Goudeket, Maruice, 201 Gouge, Alphonse, 255 Gould, Eileen, 728 Goya’s Ghosts, 326 Gozzi, Carlo, 791 Graceland, 785 The Graduate, 695 Graf, Vera, 598 Graham, Bill, 173, 397–399 , 410, 454, 539 Graham, John, 961 Graham, Martha, 206, 399–401 , 400, 721, 761, 955 Grahame, Kenneth, 401–403 Grammy Award for Best Historical Album, 294 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word, 702 Grammy Award, 19, 28, 64, 251, 431, 476, 540, 670, 675, 686, 787, 843, 915, 1005 Gramps at the Plate, 824 Granados, Enrique, 841 Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, 720 Grand Illusion, 351, 812 Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Poe´sie, 31 Granner, Olga, 667 Grant, Cary, 90, 458, 469, 649, 918 Grant, Duncan, 364, 403–404 , 903 Grant, Marshall, 171 Grant, Peter, 587 Granville-Barker, Harley, 59, 375, 405–406 , 405, 877, 960 The Grass Harp, 157 Grass, Gu¨nter, 406–408 , 407 Grateful Dead, 250, 276, 398, 409–412 , 535, 536, 540 Graterolle, Elizabeth, 244
INDEX
Grautoff, Christiane, 967 Graves, Robert, 412–413 , 851, 882 Gray, Simon, 768 The Great Aretha Franklin, 332 The Great Dictator, 184 The Great Gatsby, 208 The Great Weaver from Kashmir, 575 The Greatest Show on Earth, 243 The Greatest Story Ever Told, 463, 936 Grech, Rick, 1017 Greco-Turkish War, 450 The Green Mile, 542 Green Song, 892 The Green Table, 512, 513 Green, Alfred E., 531 Green, Benny, 985 Green, F. L., 649, 809 Green, Paul, 1023 Greenberg, Clement, 773 Greene, Graham, 413–415 , 414, 556, 805, 810, 815, 871, 924 Greenwich Village, 475 Greet, Philip Ben, 960 Greetings from Asbury Park, N. J., 909 Gregory, Andre´, 630 Gregory, Isabella Augusta, 1054 The Gremlins, 223, 224 Gresham, Joy Davidman, 603 Grey, Earle, 815 Grieg, Edvard, 240 Griepenkerl, Christian, 854 Grierson, John, 415–416 Griffin, Johnny, 686 Griffin, Marcia, 611 Griffin, Rex, 1035 Griffith, Arthur, 913 Griffith, D. W., 184, 356 Gris, Juan, 317, 417–418 , 678, 994 Gritzenko, Lubov Pavlovna, 44 Gropius, Manon, 86, 418 Gropius, Walter, 77, 86, 418–420 , 472, 499, 509, 609, 629, 657, 659, 679, 818, 989, 1027, 1049 Grosz, George, 74, 420–421 Grotowski, Jerzy, 135 Group Theatre, 38, 334, 529, 904
Growing Up in Germany, 967 Gruberova, Edita, 775 Gru¨newald, Mathias, 467 Grunwald, Anatole de, 804 Guarneri Quartet, 842 Guernica, 671, 767, 945 A Guest of Honour, 394 Guest, Barbara, 30 Guevara, Che, 157, 495 Guggenheim Bilbao, 365 Guggenheim fellowship, 7, 81, 656, 831 Guggenheim Foundation, 30, 50, 670 Guggenheim Museum, 1049 Guggenheim, Pegeen, 445 Guggenheim, Peggy, 297, 445, 773 Guilbert, Yvette, 422 Guiler, Hugo, 716 Guillaume, Paul, 372, 678 Guille´n, Jorge, 190, 422–424 Guillerman, John, 712 Guinness, Alec, 424–426 , 424 Guiraud, Ernest, 234 Guitar and Fruit-Dish, 126 The Gulag Archipelago, 894, 895 Gullichsen, Mairea, 4 Gumilyov, Lev, 9 Gumilyov, Nikolay, 8, 632 Gummer, Don, 929 The Gunfighter, 761 Gunn, Thom, 487 The Guns of Navarone, 762 Gu¨nther School, 736 Gu¨nther, Dorothee, 736 Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch, 101, 135 Gurrelieder, 860 Guth, Paul, 98 Guthrie, Arlo, 430 Guthrie, Tyrone, 335, 375, 425, 426–427 , 733, 808, 809, 1033 Guthrie, Woodrow Wilson, 428–431 , 428 Guthrie, Woody, 274, 1016 Guys and Dolls, 124 Gypsy, 896 Hackford, Taylor, 955 Hackl, Gabriel, 639 Hackman, Gene, 208, 283 Hagenaar, Maria Antonieta, 709
Hague´, Rene´, 376 Haifa, 710 Haigh-Wood, Vivien, 291 Hail and Farewell, 687, 688 Hair, 955 Hale, Patricia Ann, 707 Haley, Alex, 19 “Half as Much”, 1036 Half Dome, 6 Hall, Adelaide, 1005 Hall, Peter, 963 Halliwell, Kenneth L., 737 A Halt in the Wasteland, 134 Hambitzer, Charles, 366 Hamilton, George IV, 674 Hamilton, Jimmy, 294 Hamilton, Juan, 731 Hamlet, 57, 214, 298, 312, 373, 733, 923, 1066 Hammarskjo¨ld, Dag, 460 The Hammer without a Master, 117 Hammerstein, Oscar II, 93, 437, 531, 826, 826, 827, 827, 896 Hammett, Dashiell, 446 Hammond, John, 274, 475, 512, 909 Hampton, Lionel, 668 Hamsun, Knut, 936 Hancock, Herbie, 675, 985 Handel, George Frideric, 214, 935 A Handful of Dust, 1019 “Handful of Keys”, 1005 Hands Around, 857 Hands Up, 776 Handy, John, 669 Hannah and Her Sisters, 13 Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration, 872 Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, 474 Hansberry, Lorraine, 771 Hanya Holm School, 1031 Happy Valley, 1028 Harbach, Otto, 531 Hard Again, 1017 The Hard Nut, 697 “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”, 273, 274 Harden, Marcia Gay, 774
1167
INDEX
Hardy, Thomas, 325, 505, 653, 938 Harlan, John Marshall Harlan II Justice, 586 Harlequin, 418 Harlow, Jean, 159, 352 Harmon Trophy, 485 Harms, Edith, 854 Harnoncourt, Nicholas, 775 Harper’s Bazaar, 1012 Harris, Emmylou, 867 Harris, Jet, 587 Harris, Mark, 567 Harris, Max, 707 Harris, Richard, 283 Harrison, George, 67, 68, 276 Harrison, Isobel, 477 Harrison, Lou, 496 Harrison, Rex, 435–436 , 435 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 839 Hart, Charles, 607 Hart, Lorenz Milton, 436–437 , 437, 826 Hart, Mickey, 409 Hart, Moss, 776 Hart-Davis, Rupert, 803 Hartleben, Otto Erich, 77 Hartley, L. P., 596 Hartley, Marsden, 730 Hartman, Elizabeth, 772 “Harvard University”, 30, 337, 365, 509, 626, 735, 1042 Hasenaur, Carl von, 472 Hasenclever, Walter, 679 Hastings, Beatrice, 678 Hatton, Denys Finch, 253 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 123, 214, 438–439 , 438, 554, 912 Hausmann, Raoul, 865 Havel, Va´clav, 440–441 , 440, 924 Havelock-Allan, Anthony, 583 The Hawk in the Rain, 486 Hawkes, Jacquetta, 790 Hawkins, Coleman, 378 Hawkins, Roy, 539 The Hawks, 274 Hawn, Goldie, 906 Hay Fever, 211, 298 Hayde´e, Marcia, 216 Haydn, Joseph, 791
1168
Hayes, Helen, 34 Haystacks, 685 Hayworth, Rita, 34, 531 Head of Apollo, 118 Head to Toe, 737 Head, Bessie Amelia Emery, 441–442 Head, Harold, 442 Heads, 43 Heaney, Seamus, 135, 442–444 Heap, Jane, 135 Heart of Darkness, 5, 122, 124, 204, 205, 208 “Heartbreak Hotel”, 785 The Heat of the Day, 120 Heatherley School of Art, 551 Heavensgate, 731 Hebrew National Opera, 256 He´buterne, Jeanne, 678 Hecht, Ben, 389 Heckel, Erich, 546, 855 Heidegger, Martin, 190, 849 Heifetz, Jascha, 842, 1011 Heimann, Philip, 804 Heine, Heinrich, 558 Hekking, Anton, 856 Heldar, Dick, 545 He´lion, Jean, 445–446 Hell’s Angels, 484 Hellman, Lillian Florence, 109, 389, 446–448 Helm, Levon, 275 Helpmann, Robert Murray, 107, 323, 448–449 , 644, 650, 721 Hemingway, Ernest Miller, 56, 90, 143, 446, 449–452 , 494, 495, 781, 871, 991, 1032, 1043 Henderson the Rain King, 81 Henderson, Fletcher, 26, 474 Hendrix, James Marshall, 452–455 Henley, Don, 675 Henley, William Ernest, 402 Henly, W. E., 545, 1053 Henri-Christophe, 1003 Henson, Jim, 612 Henze, Hans Werner, 38, 455–457 , 456, 775 Hepburn, Audrey, 34, 157, 189, 436
Hepburn, Katharine Houghton, 159, 457–459 , 485, 583, 596, 696, 733, 742, 771, 918 Hepworth, Barbara, 29, 122, 459–461 , 459, 689, 713 Herbert (Zeppo) , 645 Herbert, George, 988 Herbert, Laura, 1019 Herbert, Victor, 366 Hercules the Archer, 118 Herko, Freddie, 1013 Hermann, Theo, 299 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 101, 1053 Hermetic Society, 913 Hernandez, 7 Herna´ndez, Efre´n, 843 Herself Surprised, 167 Herzl, Theodor, 558, 1064 Herzog, 81 Hesse, Hermann, 461–462 Hessel, Jos, 998 Hessling, Catherine, 812 Heston, Charlton, 463–465 , 936, 991 Heurschling, Andre´e, 812 “Hey Porter”, 171 Heyman, Moritz, 750 “Hidden Things,‘ 175 Hie´, Simone, 130 154 Highway 61 Revisited, 274 Hildebrand, Adolf von, 667 Hill, George Roy, 712, 1038 Hiller, Wendy, 219 The Hills Beyond, 1043 Hindemith, Paul, 392, 465–467 , 466, 878, 915, 1010, 1022 Hines, Earl, 26, 985 Histoire naturelle, 297 History of the Spanish Revolution, 104 Hitchcock, Alfred, 85, 90, 262, 468–470 , 468, 870, 918–919, 972, 1033 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, 509 Hitchcock, Raymond, 776 Hite, Le, 378 Hitler, Adolf, 184, 397, 407, 421, 447, 537, 605, 700, 842, 851. See also Nazis The Hobbit, 964–966 Hobsbaum, Philip, 443
INDEX
Hockney, David, 470–471 Hodges, Johnny, 294 Hoelzel, Adolf, 719 Hoelzer, Max, 190 Hoffman, Dustin, 663, 907, 930 Hoffmann, E. T. A., 256 Hoffmann, Josef, 472–473 , 550, 581, 608 Hoffmann, Trudy, 107 Hofmann, Albert, 585 Hofmann, Hans, 281, 473–474 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 926 Hofmeyr, Jan, 755 Hofstra University, 207 Hogan, Elodie, 78 Hogarth Press, 1046 Hogarth, William, 471 Hohenof, 989 Holden, William, 583 Holgerloef, Elmy, 526 Holiday Inn, 92 Holiday, Billie, 64, 474–476 , 475, 1005 Holly, Buddy, 163, 453 Hollywood Ending, 14 Hollywood Hotel, 392 Holmelun, Else, 872 Holmes, Henry, 255 Holmes, John Clellon, 379, 533 Holmes, Sherlock, 183, 260 Holocaust, 929 Holsøe, Poul, 499 Holst, Gustav, 476–478 , 987 Holst, Imogen, 478 Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems and Songs, 382 The Holy Stone, 99 Homage to New York, 962 Homages, 422, 423 Home, William Douglas, 961 Homeland, 110 Honegger, Arthur, 779 Honeyman and Keppie, 680 “Honeysuckle Rose”, 1005 Honorary Academy Award, 185, 713, 772 “Hoochie Coochie Man,”, 1016 Hooker, John Lee, 453 A Hope for Poetry, 229 Hopkins, Anne, 756 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 502 Hopkins, Louise, 260
Hoppla! Such Is Life! 967 Hopscotch, 209, 210 Horizon, 904, 1024 Horney, Karen Dr., 584 Horniman, Annie, 960 Horse Feathers, 646 Horse in the Landscape, 640 Horse, Crazy, 1056 The Horse’s Mouth, 167 Horta, Victor, 478–479 , 989 Horton, Walter, 1017 Hoschede´, Alice, 684 Hot Chocolates, 1004 Hoˆtel Tassel, 278 The Hotel, 119 The Hothouse, 768 Hottelet, Richard, 700 Hotter, Hans, 526 Houdini, Harry, 655 “Hound Dog”, 785 The Hours, 930 House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC), 447, 529, 663, 822 The House I Live In, 887 The House of Bernarda, Alba, 358, 359 The House of the Spirits, 930 “House Taken Over,‘ 209 “The House that Jack Built”, 333 House, Son, 1016 Housman, A. E.,479–480 , 479, 924, 988 Houtzagers, P., 817 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 485 Howard University, 49 Howard, Elizabeth Jane, 15 Howard, Frances, 390 Howard, Leslie, 89 Howard, Ron, 612 Howard, Sidney, 389 Howard’s End, 327 Howe, George, 523 Howl, 379, Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, 482 Hubbard Electrometer, 483 Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald, 481–484 Hudson, Hugh, 816 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, 781
Hughes, Howard, 484–486, 867, 917 Hughes, Langston, 673, 831, 899 Hughes, Langston, 831 Hughes, Ted, 136, 258, 444, 486–487 , 770 Hugo Gallery, 1012 Hugo, Victor, 8 Hull-Warriner Award, 656 Hulme, T. E., 291, 337, 604, 780 The Human Stain, 835 Human Touch, 910 Humboldt’s Gift, 82 Humperdinck, Engelbert, 872, 1022 “Humph”, 686 Huncke, Herbert, 379, 533 The Hundred Headless Women, 297 Hunter, Robert, 409 Huntington, Helen, 406 Hurry on Down, 1001 Husserl, Edmund, 848–849 Huston, Anjelica, 14 Huston, John, 124, 157, 283, 353, 1038 Hutchinson, John, 618 Hutton, Betty, 34 Huxley, Aldous, 413, 487–490 , 488, 585, 716, 892 Huxley, Julian, 487, 1026 Huxley, Leonard, 487 Huxley, Thomas, 487 Huyck, Willard, 612 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 838 Hyde-Lees, Georgie, 1059 Hym, Hans, 240 Hyrtl, Anton, 60 I Accuse! 356, 357, 793 I Can Hear It Now, 701 “I Can’t Be Satisfied”, 1016 “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love”, 27 I Cried for You, 985 “I Feel Like Going Home”, 1016 “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”, 785 “I Got Rhythm”, 367 “I Just Want to Make Love to You”, 1016 “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)”, 333
1169
INDEX
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 18 I Love Brazil, 986 I Married a Communist, 835 I Married a Witch, 195 “I Say a Little Prayer”, 333 “I Shall Be Free #10”, 274 “I Surrender, Dear”, 217 “I Walk the Line”, 171 I, Claudius, 412 “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”, 1036 I’ll Say She Is, 646 “I’m a Man”, 250 “I’m Crazy to Love You”, 985 “I’ve Got a Crush On You”, 985 “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling”, 1005 “I’ve Never Loved a Man”, 332 IBM Building, 660 Ibsen, Henrik, 214, 240, 340, 405, 438, 463, 595, 699, 808, 876, 998, 1032, 1037 Ice on Ellery Lake, 7 Iceland’s Bell, 575 The Iceman Cometh, 735 Identical Twin, 25 Ideogrammic, 781 Idol, Billy, 675 “If You Can’t Sing It”, 317 “If You Could See Me Now,” 985 Ilarik, 190 Illinois, 1047 The Imaginary Voyage, 194 Imagism, 780 Imagists, 291, 70, 781 The Immaculate Conception, 13, 296 The Immigrant, 184 Imperial Ballet, 758 Imperial Opera, 1009 The Importance of Being Earnest, 298, 299, 312, 808 Impressionists, 77, 125, 179, 234, 235, 267, 268, 403, 404, 504, 548, 606, 639, 651, 683, 684, 691, 729, 997 In a Free State, 707 “In a Sentimental Mood”, 293 In Cold Blood, 156 In Praise of Sky, Sea, Earth, and Heroes, 227
1170
In side the Walls of Folsom Prison, 172 In the Arena: An Autobiography, 465 In the Clearing, 338 In the Dark, 411 In the Ghetto, 786 In the Heat of the Night, 772 In the Night Kitchen, 871 In the Seven Woods, 1054 In Youth Is Pleasure, 1023–1024 The Incredible Jewel Robbery, 647 Index on Censorship, 904 India, 832 Indiana Jones trilogy, 906 Indiana Jones, 612 Inejiro, Asanum, 727 The Infernal Machine, 694 Infidels, 276 Inge, William, 712 Ingle, Jose, 924 The Inklings, 965 Innes, James Dickson, 504 The Innocents, 157 Intermezzo, 89, 857 International Business Machines, 281 International Centre of Theatre Research, 136 International Congresses of Modern Architecture, 581 International Literary Prize, 81 International PEN, 663 International Society for Contemporary Music, 1010 International Style, 3, 77, 509, 522, 579, 618, 819 interpersonal circumplex model, 584 Intimisme, 113 Intruder in the Dust, 306 Ionesco, Euge`ne, 11, 57, 72, 339, 440, 493–494 , 493, 767, 923 The Ipcress File, 236 Ireland, John, 131 Irish Literary Theatre, 688, 938, 1054. See also Abbey Theatre Irish Renaissance, 65, 219, 687, 688, 938, 1053 Irish Republican Army, 444 The Irish Review, 913
Irons, Jeremy, 631 Ironweed, 930 Irving G. Thalberg Award, 243, 284, 469, 908 Irving, Clifford, 485 Irving, Henry, 214 Irving, John, 1045 Isaac, Heinrich, 1020 Isherwood, Christopher, 36, 37, 38, 471, 903, 904 The Island of the Day Before, 285 Isley Brothers, 453 Israel Philharmonic, 915, 969 Israe¨ls, Josef, 605 Isreali, Esther, 523 “It Ain’t Me Babe”, 274 “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing!”, 293 It Happened One Night, 159, 353 It Is Written, 271 It’s a Wonderful Life, 159, 918 “It’s All Your Fault”, 103 “It’s Magic,” 985 Italian Ministry of Public Instruction Prize, 552 Itten, Johannes, 419 Ivan the Terrible, 181, 286, 288, 792 Ivens, Joris, 416, 494–495 Ives, Charles Edward, 94–95, 495–496 Ivogu¨n, Maria, 864 Ivory, James, 327, 713 Izquierdo, Leonor, 617 Jack Valenti Humanitarian Award, 284 Jackson, Barry, 448, 594, 733 Jackson, Mahalia, 332 Jacob, Max, 28, 417, 670, 678, 765, 779, 924 Jacob’s Room, 1046 Jacobs, Walter, 1016 Jacobsen, Arne, 499–500 Jacobsen, Jens Peter, 240–241 Jacobson, Dan, 500–502 Jacque, Charles, 684 Jaeger, Jahns, 698 Jagger, Mick, 398, 828–829 Jaglom, Henry, 326 Jailhouse Rock, 786 Jamaica Inn, 262–263
INDEX
“Jambalaya”, 1036 Jambay, 536 James and the Giant Peach, 262–263 James, Clifton, 250 James, Eirian, 1001 James, Henry, 133, 151, 158, 204, 206, 325 James, Louisa, 151 James, Rick, 1057 Jammes, Frances, 661 Jannings, Emil, 916 Janssen, Karl, 592 Jaques-Dalcroze, Imile, 1031 Ja¨rnefelt, Aino, 880 Jawlensky, Alexey von, 524 Jaws, 905 Jazz, 749 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, 713, 762 Jean, Marcel, 29 Jeanmaire, Rene´e, 764 Jeanneret, Pierre, 581 Jefferson, Arthur Stanley, 183 Jekyll, Gertrude, 613 Jennings, Elizabeth, 15, 502–503 , 571 Jennings, Mary, 428 Jennings, Waylon, 173 Jerusalem Prize, 664 Jesus Christ Superstar, 606 Jesus of Nazareth, 733, 816, 1065–1066 Jewish Quarterly Review, 1063 The Jewish Standard, 1063 Jewish Territorial Organization, 1063–1064 Jewison, Norman, 772 Jime´nez, Juan Ramo´n, 423, 503–504 The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 453 Jimmy James and The Blue Flames, 453 Jitney, 1039 “Jitter bug Waltz”, 1005 Joachim, Joseph, 841 Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, 1040 Joel, Billy, 955 Johannson, Christian, 528 John Silence, 100
John Wesley Harding, 275 John XXIII, Pope, 639, 661 John, Augustus, 314, 404, 504–505 , 505, 506, 604 John, Dr., 539 John, Gwen, 504–505, 506 Johns, Jasper, 507–508 , 510, 1012 Johnson, Georgia Douglas, 19 Johnson, J. J., 985 Johnson, James P., 1004 Johnson, Lyndon B., 825 Johnson, Philip, 508–510 , 509 Johnson, Robert Leroy, 453, 511–512 , 1016 Johnson, Samuel, 1002 Johnston, Edward, 376 The Joke, 562 Jolivet, Andre´, 658 Jolson, Al, 332, 366 Jone, Hildegard, 1021 Jones, Brian, 455, 828, 829 Jones, Jennifer, 871 Jones, John Paul, 587 Jones, Leroi, 49 Jones, Meredith, 143 Jones, Quincy, 64, 986 Jongkind, Johan Barthold, 684 Jonze, Spike, 930 Jooss, Kurt, 512–513 Joplin, Janis, 455 Jordan, Clifford, 669 The Josephus Trilogy, 311 Jourdain, Margaret, 202 The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 770 The Journey Down, 1042 A Journey to Jerusalem, 915 Jouvenel, Henry de, 201 Jouvet, Louis, 20, 127 Joyce, James, 72, 360, 505, 513–515 , 514, 609, 780, 913, 937 Judge, 824 The Judgment of Paris, 991 The Judy Garland Show, 363 Jugendstil. See Art Nouveau Jules et Jim, 524, 639, 854 Juliet of the Spirits, 307 Jullian, M., 687 Julliard School of Music, 384, 830
Jumbo, 826 Jump To It, 333 “Jumpin’ at the Woodside”, 64 Jung, Carl, 461, 746, 963 Jungle Book (film), 556 The Jungle Books, 544–545 “Jungle Music”, 294 Juno and the Paycock, 725 Jurassic Park, 905, 907 Just So Stories, 544, 545 Kaan, Ludovika von, 129 Kabuki theater, 287 “Kaddish”, 379 Kafka, Franz, 58, 63, 360, 440, 519–520 , 519, 769, 835, 1026 Kahlo, Frida, 131, 520–522 , 521, 821 Kahn, Louis I., 522–524 , 522 Kahn, Robert, 841 Kahnweiler, Daniel Henry, 126, 246, 417, 589 Kainz, Josef, 857 Kaiser, Georg, 1022 Kajiro, Yamamoto, 564 Kallman, Chester, 38, 929 Kammerer, David, 533 Kander, John, 654 Kandinsky, Wassily, 28, 238, 419, 524–525 , 547, 629, 640, 656, 860 The Kandy-Kolored TangerineFlake Streamline Baby, 1044 Karajan, Herbert von, 98, 162, 300, 525–527 , 526, 864 Karas, Alexander, 810 Karina, Anna, 386 Karno, Fred, 183 Karsavin, Platon, 321, 527 Karsavina, Tamara, 44, 65, 247, 321, 527–529 , 528, 715 Kaufman, Boris, 993 Kaufman, Charlie, 931 Kaufman, George S., 646 Kaufman, Rosa, 753 Kaufmann, Anita, 592 Kawaida, 50 “Kaw-Liga”, 1036 Kazan, Elia, 122, 123, 529–530 , 662, 695, 1037 Keaton, Buster, 185 Keaton, Diane, 14 Keats, John, 743
1171
INDEX
“Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now”, 1005 Keitel, Harvey, 866 Kellino, Pamela, 647 Kelly, Gene, 362, 531, 888 Kemmeny, Eugenia, 149 Kempson, Rachel, 808 Kennedy Center Honors, 64, 284, 334, 540, 915 Kennedy, Edward, 833 Kennedy, John F., 825 Kennedy, Joseph, 811 Kepler, Johannes, 467 Kern, Jerome David, 34, 366, 530–532 , 887, 896 Kerouac, 378 Kerouac, Jack, 49, 379, 381, 410, 532–534 , 536, 585 Kerr, Alfred, 558 Kerry, John, 959 Kesey, Ken 326, 381, 410, 535–536 , 712, 1044 Kessler, Count, 214, 625 Kessler, Harry, 214 Keyes, Sidney, 963 Keynes, John Maynard, 327, 364, 404, 1046 The Keys of the Kingdom, 761 Khachaturian, Aram, 834 Kharms, Daniil, 949 Khazina, Nadezhda Yakovlevna, 631, 632 Khrushchev, Nikita, 338, 1056 Kidman, Nicole, 930 Kiefer, Anselm, 537–538 Kierkegaard, Søren, 38, 975 Kilgore, Merle, 171 Kim, 545 Kimbell Art Museum, 523 Kind Hearts and Coronets, 425 Kinderstu¨ck, 1021 Kinetic sculpture, 151, 679, 961 The King and I, 823, 827 The King Casuals, 453 King Creole, 786 King Hedley II, 1040 A King in New York, 185 The King of Kings, 243 King, B. B., 453, 538–540 , 784 King, Carole, 872 King, Constance Mary, 229 “The King of Rock and Roll”, 784
1172
King, Martin Luther, Dr. Jr, 19, 27, 890 King, Stephen, 541–543 , 561 Kipling, Rudyard, 127, 319, 544–546 , 544 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 420, 546–547 , 699, 719, 855 Kirkland, Frank, 250 Kirov Ballet, 62, 720, 765 Kirstein, Lincoln, 46 The Kiss (Brancusi), 121 The Kiss (Klimt), 550 Kiss Me Kate, 777 Klee, Paul, 297, 419, 525, 547, 548–549 , 656, 717 Kleffel, Arno, 1008 Kleiber, Erich, 86 Klein, Georges Antoine, 205 Klein, Larry, 675 Kleiser, Randal, 611 Klimt, Ernst, 550 Klimt, Gustav, 473, 550–551 , 854 Kline, Franz, 551–552 Knepper, Jimmy, 669 Knighthood, 702, 772, 843 Knirr, Heinrich, 558 Knox, John, 1023 Knox, Ronald, 1019 Knoxville: Summer of, 52 Kober, Arthur, 446 Koblun, Ken, 1057 Koch, Kenneth, 30 Koda´ly, Zolta´n, 61, 893 Koechlin, Charles, 779 Koklova, Olga, 766 Kokoschka, Oskar, 465, 473, 550, 552–554 Kolisch, Gertrud, 860 Kollwitz, Karl, 554 Kollwitz, Ka¨the, 554–555 Kolpakova, Irina, 62 Komauer, Edwin, 1020 Kommisarzhevski, Fyodor, 911 Komsomol, 494 Kootz Gallery, 552 Korda, Alexander, 252, 555–556 , 590, 679, 809 Korda, Vincent, 555 Korda, Zoltan, 555, 771 Korneck, Elsa, 1009 Kosakiewicz, Olga, 70 Kossenko, Catherine, 927
Kossuth, Lajos, 61 Koster, Henry, 54, 918 Kotschenreifurt, Hugo, 77 Koussevitzky Orchestra, 556 Koussevitzky, Serge, 94, 206, 556–557 , 834, 841, 928 Kovacs, Ernie, 163 Kramer vs. Kramer, 930 Kra¨mer, Lilli, 77 Kramer, Stanley, 771 Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? , 772 Krapp’s Last Tape, 73 Krasker, Robert, 810 Krasner, Lee, 773 Krasner, Louis, 86 Kraus, Karl, 558–559 , 608, 1026 Krause, David, 726 Kreutzmann, Bill, 409 Krishnamurti, 489 Kristiania Bohe`me, 698 Kristofferson, Kris 173, 172, 174 Kristol, Irving, 904 Krohg, Christian, 698 Kschessinskaya, Mathilde, 715 Kubrick, Stanley, 542, 559–561 , 906 Kufferath, Ferdinand, 255 Kulturpolitischer Bund der Jugend, 966 Kundera, Ludvik, 562 Kundera, Milan, 562–563 Kunstgewerbeschule, 989 Ku¨nstlerkolonie, 77 Kunstliefde, 682 Kuraki, Marie, 727 Kurosawa, Akira, 563–565 , 564, 612 Kurosawa, Heigo, 565 Kushner, Tony, 566–567 , 655, 872, 930 L.A. Confidential, 710 L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, 697 L’Atalante, 993 L’avventura, 23 L’Eplattenier, Charles, 581 L’Esprit Nouveau, 581 L’Hermine, 20 L’Histoire contemporaine, 331 L’Hote, Gaby, 168 L’Isle-Adam, Villiers de, 622
INDEX
La Barraca, 358 La Bohe`me, 76, 149, 150, 165, 299, 757, 795, 864, 950, 952, 954, 968, 1066 La Dolce Vita, 307 La Fin de Che´ri, 201 La Jeune France, 658 The La Jolla Play house, 761 La La Lucille, 366 “La Noche Triste”, 336 La Notte, 23 La nouvelle revue franc¸aise, 372, 373 La Scala, 95, 162, 165, 257, 299, 385, 527, 720, 864, 935, 952, 968, 969, 1066 La Strada, 307 Laban, Rudolf, 513, 1031 Labette, Dora, 76 Laboratory, 7 Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 572, 574 Lady for a Day, 159 Lady into Fox, 363, 364 The Lady’s Not for Burning, 143, 340 Laforgue, Jules, 266, 291 Lalo, Edouard, 168 Lambert, Constant, 1010 Lambert, Marie, 32 Lambkin’s Remains, 79 Lampedusa, Giuseppe di, 995 Lancaster, Burt, 684 Land of Hi-Fi, 985 Landis, John, 539 Landon, Margaret, 436 Landowska, Wanda, 779 Landseer, Edwin, 612, 613 Lane, Abbe, 218 Lang, J, B., 461 Langham, Ria, 352 Lanner, Max, 168 Lanois, Daniel, 276 Lansbury, Angela, 655 Lanza, Mario, 161 Lapine, James, 897 Lapointe, Jeanne, 102 Lapre´, Marcelle, 126 Larkin, Jim, 725 Larkin, Philip, 15, 502, 571–572 , 1001 Lascaris, Manoly, 1028
Laska, Edward, 530 Lasky, Jesse, 243 Lasky, Melvin J., 904 Lassen, Flemming, 499 Lassen, Mogens, 499 Last Judgment of Things, 445 Last Poems, 479, 480, 574, 1055 Last Tango in Paris, 124 The Last Waltz, 276 The Late Bourgeois World, 394 Late Night With David Letterman, 164 The Late Show with David Letterman, 931 Latil, Le´o, 661 Latitudinarian Community, 554 Laughton, Charles, 555 Laurence, Margaret, 713 Laurencin, Marie, 779 Laurens, Henri, 371, 678 Laurents, Arthur, 896 Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, 377 The Lavender Hill Mob, 425 Lavender Mist, 774 Lawrence of Arabia, 425, 582, 583, 741, 742 Lawrence, D. H., 325, 488, 489, 572–574 , 572, 604, 780 Lawrence, T. E., 363, 364, 413, 741, 805 Laxness, Halldo´r, 574–576 Laye, Camara, 576–578 Le Cahiers du Film, 749–750 Le Carre´, John, 145, 236, 578–579 , 578, 922 LeCorbusier, 77, 509, 523, 579–582 , 580 Le crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, 330–331 Le Morte d’Arthur, 1029 Le Visage Nuptial, 117 Lean, David, 425, 436, 582–584 , 754, 816 Leary, Timothy Francis, 381, 535, 584–587 Lebey, Edouard, 979 Leckie, Jean, 260 Lecomte, Euge´nie, 198 Lecoq, Jacques, 320 Led Zeppelin, 587–588 Lee, Harper, 156
Lee, William H., 523 Leeder, Sigurd, 513 Lefebvre, Jules, 244 Legat, Nikolai, 715 Le´ger, Fernand, 581, 589–590, 589, 592, 775, 781 Legge, Walter, 864 Le´gion d’honneur, 284 Legion of Honor, 294 Legrand, Michel, 986 Lehmann, John, 590 Lehmann, Rosamond, 590–591 , 590 Lehmbruck, Wilhelm, 592 Leiber, Jerry, 785 Leibowitz, Rene´, 117 Leigh, Janet, 917 Leigh, Mike, 593–594 Leigh, Vivien, 352, 435, 555, 733, 870, 871 Leighton, Margaret, 594–596 , 595, 733, 805 Leinsdorf, Erich, 596–598 , 597 Leitmotiv, 926 Lem, Stanislaw, 948 Lemor, Dominique, 296 Leningrad Institute of Artistic Culture, 629 Lennon, John, 67–69 Leno, Jay, 164 Lenora, 84 Lenya, Lotte, 1022 Leo Castelli Gallery, 507 Leonard, Robert Z., 918 Leoncavallo, Ruggero, 165 Leone, Sergio, 282 Lermontov, Mikhail, 110 Leroux, Xavier, 168 Les Auteurs Associes, 749 Les Ballets des Champs-Elysees, 764 Les Six, 197, 658, 661, 778, 779, 853 Les Sylphides, 247, 322, 528, 644, 715, 758 Les Temps Modernes, 70–71, 849 Leschetizky, Theodor, 855, 856 Lesh, Phil, 409 Leslie, Alfred, 534 Leslie’s Weekly, 824 The Less Deceived, 571 Lessing, Doris, 598–600 , 598
1173
INDEX
Lessing, Gottfried, 599 Lessingtheater, 857 Lestrange, Gise`le, 178 Lesur, Daniel, 658 “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love”, 776 Levander, Gustaf, 879 Le´vesque, Georges-Henri, 102 Levi, Carlo, 600–601 , 601 Levine, James, 98 Levinson, Barry, 399 Levy, Jacques, 275 Lewis, Alun, 963 Lewis, C. S., 115, 601–603 , 965, 1001, 1002 Lewis, Furry, 784 Lewis, Mary Holland Wyndham, 788 Lewis, Robert, 529 Lewis, Warren, 603 Lewis, Wyndham, 604–605 , 780 Lichtenstein, Roy, 1012 Liddy, G. Gordon, 585 Liebermann, Max, 238, 439, 605–606 Lieder, 863, 864, 1020 Lifar, Serge, 590, 718 Life Is Short, 303 The Life of Arsenyev, 139 The Life of Klim Samgin, 396 Life, 824 Lifetime Achievement Award, 843 Light in August, 306 “Like a Rolling Stone”, 274 Lilies of the Field, 771 Liliom, 680 Limelight, 185 Limits, 731 Linaret, Georges Florentin, 246 Linden, Stella, 740 Lindstrom, Peter, 89 Linson, Art, 958 Linus, 861 Lippmann, Walter, 416 The Listener, 376 Liszt Academy, 893 Liszt, Franz, 32, 61, 168, 926 Literarni noviny, 562 The Literary Digest, 824 Lithuania, 137 The Little Foxes, 109, 446
1174
Little John Special, 378 Little Kids Rock, 540 A Little Night Music, 896 Litvin, Natasha, 904 Live, 910 Liverpool Repertory Company, 808 Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 293, 606–607 Lloyd Webber, Julian, 609 Llubera, Lina, 792 Lo¨ffer, Marthe, 310 Logan, Joshua, 827, 917 Lohy, Jeanne-Augustine, 589 Lolita (film), 649 Lomax, Alan, 429, 1016 Lombard, Carole, 353 London Festival Ballet, 720 London Film Productions, 556 London group, 881 London Philharmonia, 527 London Philharmonic Orchestra, 76, 879, 894 London Symphony Orchestra, 117 London Symphony, 1067 The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 882 The Long Day Wanes, 142 Long Day’s Journey into Night, 735 Long Island Music Hall of Fame, 28 Long Pants, 158 The Long Walk, 542 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 139 Longhi, Robert, 752 Longley, Michael, 443 Look Back in Anger, 740 Look Homeward, 1042 Loos, Adolf, 472, 553, 559, 607–608 Looshaus, 608 Lopez, Vini, 909 Lopokova, Lyia, 404 Lord Jim (film), 742 Lord Jim (novel), 204 The Lord of the Flies, 136, 387 The Lord of the Rings, 964, 965, 966 Loren, Sophia, 185
Los Angeles Music Center Opera, 257 Losey, Joseph, 694, 1038 Losinska, Elizabeth, 993 Lost Generation, the 450 Lost in Yonkers, 885 The Lost Jockey, 624 Louis, Murray, 721 Louys, Pierre, 916, 979 Love and Death, 14 “Love and Kisses”, 317 “Love For Sale”, 776 Love Me Tender, 785 Love Me Tonight, 826 “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,‘ 291 Lovecraft, H. P., 100 Lovell Health House, 710 The Lovers, 192, 630, 694 Loves Hatty Perkins, 824 The Loves of Cass McGuire, 335 Lovesick Blues”, 1035 Loving You, 786 Lowe, Nick, 173, 174 Lowell, Robert, 769 The Lower Depths (film), 565 The Lower Depths (novel), 396, 912 Lowry, Malcolm, 609–610 Luba, Jake, 352 Lu¨bbucke-Job, Emma, 465 Lubitsch, Ernst, 918 Lubovitch, Lar, 696 Lucas, George Walton, 208, 610–612 , 866, 905, 906 Lucille Lortel Award, 656 Lucky Jim, 15, 16 Lucky Millinder, 378 Lucky Town, 910 Lucy, 861 Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, 995 Lugne´-Poe¨, Aure´lien, 113, 244 Luhan, Mabel Dodge, 730 A Lume Spento, 780 Lumet, Sidney, 712, 1038 Lunel, Armand, 661 Lupercal, 487 Lusted, Dorrie, 755 Luther, Martin, 740 Lutoslawski, Witold, 834 Lutyens, Edwin, 612–614 , 613 Lyles, Aubrey, 103
INDEX
Lynne, Jeff, 276 Lysistrata, 771 Lytton, Emily, 613 Ma Rainey, 1039 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 1039 Ma, Yo-Yo, 915 Maas, Louise, 656 MacArthur ‘Genius‘ Grant, 697 Macdonaid, Frances, 618 Macdonald, Alice, 544 MacDonald, George, 602 MacDonald, Jeanette, 189 Macdonald, Margaret, 618 MacDowell Medal, 448 Machado y Ruiz, Antonio, 55, 504, 617–618 Machado y Ruiz, Manuel, 617 Machiavelli, 604 “Mack the Knife,” 108, 109, 317, 1022 Macke, August, 297, 549, 640 Mackenzie, Campbell, 65 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie, 618–619 MacLaine, Shirley, 282 MacLeish, Archibald, 782 MacMillan, Kenneth, 324, 718 Macnamara, Caitlin, 956 MacNeice, Louis, 37, 96, 228, 619–620 , 903 “MacSpauday,” 903 MacWhirr, John, 204 Mad Shadows, 102 The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians, 647 Madame Butterfly, 149, 526, 775, 795, 864 Mademoiselle Pogany, 121 Maderna, Bruno, 620–622 Madero, Francisco, 759 Madonna and Child, 690 Madonna, 401 The Madwoman of Chaillot (film), 299, 595 The Madwoman of Chaillot (play), 383, 458 Maertelaere, Anne-Marie de, 242 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 87, 205, 234, 622–623 , 622, 912, 954 The Magic Mountain, 633 Magical realism, 359, 843 Magister Ludi, 461, 462
Magnani, Anna, 752, 995 Magnetic Fields, 130 The Magnetic Mountain, 229 Magritte, Rene´, 241, 624–625 The Magus, 328, 329 Mahabarata, 136 Mahler, Alma, 86, 418, 553, 1027 Mahler, Gustav, 86, 95, 133, 418, 496, 553, 859, 894, 1008, 1020, 1027 Maiastra, 121 Maiden Voyage, 1023 Mailer, John Buffalo, 628 Mailer, Norman Kingsley, 626–628 , 627, 665, 957, 959, 1045 Maillol, Aristide, 376, 625–626 Majani, Augusto, 691 Make Yourself Comfortable, 985 Making a Living, 183 Ma¨kiniemi, Elissa, 4 Malamud, Bernard, 109 Malanga, Gerard, 1012 Malcolm X, 19, 49 Male and Female, 773 Malevich, Kazimir, 628–629 Malipiero, Gian Francesco, 621 Mallarme´, Ste´phane, 117, 130, 234, 892, 937, 979 Malle, Louis, 54, 630–631 , 694 Malley, Ern, 717 Malory, Thomas, 1029 Malpaso, 282 Malraux, Andre´, 180 Mamontov Private Opera Company, 181 Man and His Desire, 660 Man and Superman, 312, 405, 742, 877 Man In Black, 173 The Man in Grey, 647, 648 The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, 762 A Man in the Zoo, 363 A Man of the People, 5–6 Man on the Moon, 326 Man Playing Santa, 824 The Man Who Was Thursday, 186 The Man Who, 136 The Man with the Golden Arm, 888
The Manchurian Candidate, 930 Mandelstam, Osip, 8, 109, 178, 631–632 Mandoki, Luis, 712 The Mandolin, 126 Mandyszewski, Eusebius, 856 Manet, E´douard, 606, 686, 687 Manfredi, Doria, 795 “The Mangler”, 541 Mangold, James, 174, 326 Manhattan Murder Mystery, 14 Manhattan, 13, 826 Mankiewicz, Joseph L., 771, 1038 Mankiewicz, Joseph, 649 Mankind, 376 Mann, Anthony, 918 Mann, Daniel, 1038 Mann, Erika, 37, 634 Mann, Heinrich, 252, 311, 421, 633 Mann, Klaus, 634 Mann, Thomas, 37, 133, 633–634 , 633 Mannheim Opera, 345 Manning, Olivia, 634–635 Manservant and Maidservant, 202 Mansfield, Katherine, 262, 636–637 , 636 The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange, 102 Manzu`, Giacomo, 637–639 , 638 Marable, Fate, 26 Marais, Jean, 198 Marat/Sade, 135 The Marble Faun, 306 Marc, Franz, 549, 639–640 , 656, 860 Mare´es, Hans von, 74 Margolin, Bob, 1017 Marı´a Cristina, Queen Regent, 169 Mariinsky Theatre, 46, 181, 321, 715, 927 Marinetti, F. T., 111, 266, 604, 640–642 , 641, 691 Marini, Marino, 642–643 Markova, Alicia, 323, 448, 643–644 Markova-Dolin Ballet, 644 Marmontel, Antoine Francois, 234
1175
INDEX
Marquet, Albert, 269 The Marriage of Maria Braun, 304 The Marrying of Ann Leete, 406 Marschalk, Margarete, 439 Marsh, Edwin, 850 Marshall, George, 918 Marshall, Ray, 264 Marsio, Aino, 3 Martı´, Bernabe´, 149, 150 Martin House, 1049 Martin, Dean, 277 Martin, Dewey, 1057 Martin, Frank, 921 Martin, George, 67 Martin, J. L., 714 Martini, Carla de, 968 Martyn, Edward, 688 Maru, 442 Marwood, Arthur, 325 Marx Brothers, The, 92, 163, 645–647 Marx, Adolph (Harpo), 645 Marx, Groucho, 163 Marx, Julius Henry (Groucho) , 645 Marx, Karl, 68 Marx, Leonard (Chico), 645 Marx, Milton (Gummo) , 645 Marxism, 37, 156, 396, 709, 752, 759, 849, 873, 876, 982, 995 Mascagni, Pietro, 165 Masina, Giulietta, 307 The Mask, 212, 214 Mason, James, 560, 647–649 , 648, 809 Mason, Marsha, 884 Massine, Le´onide, 31, 249, 322, 528, 643, 649–650 , 853 “Masters of War”, 274 MasterVision International, 1067 Mastroianni, Marcello, 995 Mathis the Painter, 467 The Mating Cal, 484 Matisse, Henri, 28, 45, 125, 246, 249, 265, 269, 643, 650, 651–652 , 651, 838, 920, 996 Matiushin, Mikhail, 629 Matsch, Franz, 550 Matson, Harold, 609 Maugham, Somerset, 652–654 , 653, 815, 933, 1007
1176
Maupassant, Guy de, 262, 422 Max, E´douard de, 198 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 629, 949 Mayfield, Curtis, 333 Maysles, David, 915 Mazia, Marjorie, 429 McCarey, Leo, 646, 712 McCarthy, Joseph Senator, 447, 762, 699 McCarthy, Lillah, 405 McCartney, Paul, 67–69, 816, 950 McClatchy, J. D., 831 McCleod, Norman Z., 531 McCormick, Edith Rockefeller, 514 McCracken, Esther, 805 McGovern, George, Senator, 958 McGuinn, Roger, 275 McGuire, Dorothy, 761 McKernan, Ron, “Pigpen”, 409 Mckuen, Rod, 381 McLean, Jackie, 668 McMahon, Ed, 162 McNair, J. Herbert, 618 McNally, Terrence, 654–656 McPherson, Charles, 669 The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, 772 Meck, Nadezhda Filaretovna von, 234 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, 628 Medal of Freedom, 825 Medea, 52, 753 The Mediterranean, 625 Meehan, Tony, 587 Meerson, Lazare, 194 Meet John Doe, 159 Meet Me in St. Louis, 362 Mehta, Zubin, 831 Meigs, Mary, 102 Melba, Nellie, 165 Melchior, Lauritz, 98 Me´le`is, Georges, 286 Melinda and Melinda, 14 Melis, Carmen, 952 Melville, Herman, 328 Memoirs of a Man of Action, 55 Memoirs of a Midget, 230 Memoirs, 1038 “Memories of You”, 104
Men of Maize, 35 Men Without Women, 450 Men’s Movement, 1053 Mendeleyeva, Liubov, 110 Mendelsohn, Erich, 656–657 Mendelssohn, Felix, 915 Mendelssohn, Mira, 792 Mengele, Josef Dr., 762 Menotti, Gian Carlo, 51 Mephisto Valse, 32 Mercer, Johnny, 317 Merchant, Vivien, 738 Mercie´, Antonin, 121 Meredith, George, 788, 851 Me´ric, Rosalie de, 99 Merman, Ethel, 93, 776, 896 “The Merry Pranksters”, 535, 536, 1044 Merz collages, 865 MERZ, 865 Merzbau, 865 Messiaen, Olivier Benedetti, 94, 117, 657–658 , 922 Messiaen, Pierre, 657 “The Metamorphosis,” 360, 520, 835 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 389 Metropolitan Ballet, 644 Metropolitan Opera, 46, 51, 76, 97, 165, 180, 182, 257, 384, 385, 427, 471, 596, 757, 775, 864, 893, 952, 968, 1009 Metz, Toba, 560 Metzner, Ralph, 585 Meunier, Marthe, 244 Mexican Revolution, 341, 520 Meyer, Adolph, 418 Michael, George, 333 Micheli, Guglielmo, 676 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 283 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 77, 509, 659–660 , 1049 Miles, Buddy, 454 Milestone, Lewis, 484, 811 Milestones, 84 Miley, Bubber, 294 Milhaud, Darius, 46, 198, 199, 206, 658, 660–662 , 660, 852, 853, 922 Milhaud, Madeline, 661 Milla´n, Elsa Astete, 115
INDEX
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 831 Millennium Approaches, 566 Miller, Ann, 34 Miller, Arthur Asher, 353, 529, 662–664 , 931 Miller, Floureny, 103 Miller, Henry, 664–666 Miller, Jonathan, 816 Miller, Marilyn, 531 Milles, Carl, 666–668 , 667 Millet, Jean-Franc¸ois, 605 Million Dollar Baby, 283 Mills, Florence, 103 Mills, Irving, 294 Milne, A. A., 402 Milton, John, 412, 1015 Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, 1067 The Mind Has Mountains, 502 “Mind Your Own Business”, 1035 Minelli, Vincente, 362 Mingus, Charles, 668–670 , 675 Minimalism, 507, 510 Minimalist, 662 Minnelli, Liza, 362 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, 584 Mirabeau, Octave, 625 Miro´, Joan, 48, 130, 151, 297, 650, 670–671 , 671 Mirrors, 805, 806 The Misfits, 353 Miss 1917, 366 Miss Calypso, 18 Mission Earth, 481, 483 Mister Johnson, 5, 166 Mistral, Fre´de´ric, 672 Mistral, Gabriela, 672–673 , 708 Mitchell, Joni, 172, 275, 669, 673–676 , 867, 889, 1057 Mitchell, Mitch, 1017 Mitchell, Stephen, 820 Mitchum, Robert, 917 Mitsou, 48, 201 Mkultra, 535 Moby Dick, 762 Model, Lisette, 24 Modern Architecture, 1049 A Modern Comedy, 355 Modern Times, 184 Modernism, 292, 503, 617, 640, 650, 981
Modernismo, 617, 981 The Modernists, 472, 503 Modernists, 730 The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America, 49 Modigliani, Amedeo, 9, 121, 592, 676–678 , 677 Modot, Gaston, 678 Modulor concept, 582 Moholy-Nagy, La´szlo´, 419, 678–680, 717, 865 Moise, Lionel Calhoun, 449 Moisiewitsch, Tanya, 427 Molina, Ralph, 1057 Molina, Tirso de, 358, 617 Molna´r, Ferenc, 680–682 , 681 Mondrian, Piet, 151, 590, 682–683 , 714, 817 Monet, Claude, 683–685 , 684 “Money Honey”, 785 Monk, Thelonious Sphere, 378, 534, 585, 685–687 Monkey Business, 646 Monolith, 7 Monroe, Marilyn, 317, 353, 663, 961, 1012 Montage, 184, 177, 194, 287, 494, 583, 611, 812 Montealegre, Felicia Cohn, 94 Monterey Pop Festival, 410 Monteverdi, 775 A Month in the Country, 91, 694, 808 Monument to the Third International, 949 “Mood Indigo”, 293 Moon for the Misbegotten, 735 Moon River, 1005 Moonrise, 7 Moore, Ethel Mary, 376 Moore, Gary, 540 Moore, George, 687–688 , 913 Moore, Gerald, 900 Moore, Grace, 916 Moore, Henry, 29, 122, 160, 459, 689–690 , 689 Moore, Julianne, 930 Moore, Tommy, 67 Moore, Winfield “Scotty”, 785 Moore-Robinson, Miriam, 924 Morandi, Giorgio, 191, 691 Morante, Elsa, 692
Morath, Ingeborg, 663 Moravia, Alberto, 386, 692–693 Mordkin, Mikhail, 758 Moreau, Gustave, 651, 838 Moreau, Jeanne, 53, 141, 630, 693–695 , 693 Morel, Marie, 255 Morelli, Cerlo, 256 Moreno, Manuel Penella, 256 Morgan, J. P., 655 Morgan, J. P., 655, 821 Morganfield, Big Bill, 1017 Morisot, Berthe, 684 Morley, Robert, 695–696 Morley, Sheridan, 696 Morning Glory, 458 Morning Heroes, 107 Morrell, Ottoline, 376, 488 Morris, Frank, 283 Morris, Mark, 63, 696–697 Morris, R. O., 963 Morris, William, 618, 989 Morrison, Anne, 334 Morrison, Jim, 455 Morrison, Van, 867 Morrissey, Paul, 1013 Mortimer, Penelope, 769 Mo¨rtl, Wilhelmine, 1021 Moscow Art Theatre, 214, 911, 912 Moscow Conservatory, 816, 833, 834 Moses und Aron, 860 Mosley, Nicholas, 769 Mosquitoes, 306 Mother and Child (Gill), 376 Mother and Child (Hepworth), 460 Mother Courage and Her Children, 128 Motherwell, Robert, 773 Mottl, Felix, 245 Moulin Rouge, 422 The Mousetrap, 192 The Movement, 15, 16, 73, 225, 226, 246, 322, 344, 385, 502, 571, 604, 1064 Movin’ Out, 955 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 167, 180, 326, 347, 872, 894, 915, 935, 950, 1008 Mr. Clutterbuck’s Election, 79
1177
INDEX
Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill, 1066 Mr. Sammler’s Planet, 81 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 159 “Mr. Tambourine Man”, 274 Mrs. Dalloway, 1046 Mu¨hr, Alfred, 967 Munch, Edvard, 74, 546, 697–699 , 698, 719 Munch, P. A., 697 Munich Opera, 893, 925 Munich Secession, 77 Munstead Wood, 613 Mu¨nter, Gabriele, 524, 547 Murals, 820–822, 945 Murder at the Vicarage, 193 Murder in the Cathedral, 448 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 193 Muromtseva, Vera, 139 Murray, Bill, 958 Murrow, Edward R., 699–703 “Murrow’s Boys”, 700 Murry, John Middleton, 636 Museum Jean Tinguely, 962 Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), 25, 281, 507, 509, 510, 552, 837, 837, 962 Museum of Pre-Hispanic Art (Oaxaca), 946 Music Corporation of America, 391 Music of the Heart, 930 The Musicalanders, 217 Musique concre`te, 922 Mussolini, Benito, 184, 288, 642, 692 Mussolini, Vittorio, 22, 832 Mussorgsky, Modest, 182, 234, 247, 816 Mutt and Jeff, 872 Muybridge, Eadweard, 44 “My Back Pages”, 274 “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It”, 1035 “The My Butterfly: An Elegy”, 336–337 My Child, My Sister, 345 My Dinner with Andre´, 630 My Fair Lady, 435, 436, 877 My First 79 Years, 915
1178
My Friend from Limousin, 382–383 My Life As a Man, 835 My Many Years, 842 “My Melancholy Baby”, 686 Mydland, Brent, 409 Myers, Nancy, 270 Myrick, Julian, 496 “Mystery Train”, 785 Mysz-Gmeiner, Lula, 864 The Myth of Sisyphus, 155 The Nabis, 113, 237, 244, 625, 997 Nabokov, Vladimir, 560, 631, 650, 924 Na´dherny, Sidonie, 559 Nadja, 130 Nahowski, Helene, 86 Naiad Fountain, 667 Naipaul, V. S., 707–708 The Naked and the Dead, 626 Naked Lunch, 381 Naked, 593, 594 The Name of the Rose, 284, 285 Name, Billy, 1013 Nance, Ray, 294 Nanton, ‘Tricky Sam’, 294 Napoleon as Seen by Abel Gance, 357 The Napoleon of Notting Hill, 186 Nash, Graham, 674 Nash, Ogden, 1023 Nash, Paul, 689, 714 National Academy of Design, 824 National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award, 430 National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 875 National Archaeology Museum (Mexico), 945 National Arts Centre Orchestra (Canada), 1067 National Book Award, 30, 81, 306, 447, 627, 835, 1033 National Book Critics Circle, 30 National Book Foundation Medal, 543
National Book Foundation’s Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, 836 National Center for Performing Arts, 510 National Endowment for the Arts, 50, 566, 670 National Institute of Arts and Letters, 448, 496 National Institute of Arts and Sciences, 666 National Medal of Arts, 12, 318, 334, 540, 731, 915, 955 National Medal of Technology, 612 National Opera (Mexico), 256 National Palace (Mexico), 822 National Rifle Association, 465 National Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, 430 National Symphony Orchestra (United States), 834 National Theatre (England), 219, 732, 733, 742 Nationalist movement (British music), 987 “A Natural Woman”, 333 naturalism, 920 Naturalist drama, 439 Nature Boy, 985 Naujok, Gustav, 554 Nausea, 848, 849 Nazarı´n, 141 Nazis, 38, 74, 128, 170, 177, 178, 180, 184, 228, 236, 310, 311, 328, 347, 407, 419, 421, 429, 447, 455, 513, 525, 547, 549, 553, 555, 600, 605, 619, 620, 634, 640, 642, 657, 659, 661, 679, 719, 762, 781, 810, 811, 832, 842, 851, 856, 860, 868, 903–904, 921, 967, 992, 1015, 1023, 1026, 1055, 1065. See also Fascism; Hitler, Adolf NBC Symphony, 968, 969, 1009 Neal, Larry, 50 Neal, Patricia, 223 Neame, Ronald, 583 Nebraska, 910 Ned Kelly, 829 The Negative, 7
INDEX
Negritude, 873, 874 Neikrug, Marc, 1067 Nelson, Willie, 173, 675 Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir, 911 Neoclassical style, 46, 52, 244, 478, 928 Neo-Dadaism, 507 Neo-Expressionism, 537 Neo-expressionists, 1013 Neo-Impressionism, 237, 546, 547 Neoplasticists, 589, 590, 683 The Neorealists, 21, 152, 752, 866 Neoromanticism, 476, 1010 Neruda, Pablo, 176, 672, 708–710 , 759 Nesbit, Edith, 602–603 A Nest of Simple Folk, 728 Nestroy, Johann, 559, 1033 Neue Freie Press, 558 Neufeld, Joseph, 180 Neuhaus, Heinrich, 816 Neukunstgruppe, 854 Neutra, Richard, 710–711 Neville, Aaron, 398 New Art Group. See Neukunstgruppe New Artists’ Association, 524, 640 New Bauhaus, 679 New Dance Stage, 513 New Delhi, 294, 613, 614 New English Art Club, 506, 881, 902 New Hampshire, 338 New Jersey, 25 New Journalism, 626 New Masses, 108 New Mexico, 7 New School, 24 New Symphony Orchestra, 75 The New Wave, 385, 630, 971, 993 New York Camera Club, 920 New York Chapter of the American Fiction Guild, 482 New York City Ballet, 32, 46, 47, 823 New York College of Music, 530
New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, 11, 437, 447, 566, 662, 663, 897, 1037 New York Film Critics, 561 New York Music Critics’ Circle Award, 207 New York Philharmonic, 76, 93, 94, 95, 117, 1009, 1067 New York Philharmonic, 93 The New York School of Art, 824 New York School of Poets, 30 “New York School”, 29 New York University, 566 New York, 730 The New Yorkers, 776 Newman, Paul Leonard, 536, 711–713 , 867 Newman, Paul, 536, 649, 867 The Next Religion, 1064 Nexus, 665 Nichols, Mike, 326, 695 Nicholson, Ben, 460, 689, 713–714 Nicholson, Jack, 326, 535, 542, 561 Nicholson, William, 713 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 99, 240, 633, 819, 855, 877, 989 The Nigger of the “Narcissus,” 204 A Night at the Opera, 646 The Night, 74 “Nihilist Cafe´,” 608 Nijinska, Bronislava, 46, 249 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 44, 198, 247, 321, 404, 527, 528, 644, 649, 714–715 , 715, 758, 928 Nikisch, Artur, 856 Nikolayev, Leonid, 878 Nin, Anaı¨s, 665, 716–717 , 991 The 1960 Masks, 898 1984, 489 Nivoix, Paul, 749 Nixon, Richard M., 584, 786, 825, 958 No Chaser, 686 No Count Sarah, 985 No Direction Home, 277 No Exit, 849 No Longer at Ease, 5 No Nukes, 909 No Way Out, 771
Nobel Prize for Literature, 80, 305, 449, 451, 734 Nochod, Hans, 860 Nolan, Sidney, 717–718 Nolde, Emil, 546, 719, 855 None but the Brave, 858, 889 The Nonexistent Knight, 153 Norman Rockwell Museum, 825 North by Northwest, 469 North of Boston, 337 North, 443 North, Edmund H., 208 Northrup, Sara, 482 Northwestern University, 81, 830 Norton, Edward, 326 Norvo, Red, 668 Nostromo, 204, 205 Not Honour More, 167 The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, 820 November Woods, 65 Novros, Lester, 611 Nude Descending a Staircase, 266 Nude on a Divan, 678 Nude with a Green Hat, 751 Nude with Violin, 212 Nureyev, Rudolf, 31, 323, 449, 720–721 Nurse Ratchet, 326 Nys, Maria, 489 O Magazine, 1041 O’Casey, Sean, 219, 725–726, 742, 804 O’Connor, Irene, 824 O’Faolain, Sean, 728–729 O’Hara, Frank, 30 O’Hara, John, 437 O’Keeffe, Georgia Totto, 729–731 , 921 Okigbo, Christopher, 5, 731–732 O’Neal, Ryan, 628 O’Neill, Eugene Gladstone, 185, 219, 312, 734–735 , 734 O’Neill, Louis, 444 O’Riordon, Dolores, 757 O’Rourke, Brefni, 219 O’Toole, Peter, 583, 741–742 , 742 Oak Park, 1047 Obenauer, Gustav, 77 Oberon, Merle, 555
1179
INDEX
Obie Award, 567 Obsession, 995 Occasion for Loving, 393 Octave Chanute Award, 485 Odd Man Out, 219, 649, 809 Odessa Opera, 816 Odette D’Antrevernes, 314 Odutola, Ebun, 196 Oe, Kenzaburo, 726–727 Of Human Bondage, 652, 653 Of Thee I Sing, 367 Of Time and the River, 1043 Offenbach, Jacques, 256, 935, 953 Ogilvie, Gertrude Margaret, 166 “Oh How That German Could Love”, 91 Okigbo, Christopher Ifekandu, 5, 731 Oklahoma!, 231, 437, 826 Okoli, Christie Chinwe, 5 Old Corner House Stockbridge Historical Society, 825 The Old Gringo, 341 The Old Man and the Sea, 451 Old Vic company, 298, 374, 375 425, 426, 448, 594, 733, 741, 742, 808, 815, 816, 960, 1066 “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester,” 137 The Old Wives’ Tale, 84 Oldham, Andrew, 829 Oliver! 809, 810 Oliver, Joe “King”, 26 Olivier, Fernande, 766 Olivier, Laurence, 263, 340, 424, 427, 556, 607, 732–734 , 732, 805, 808 809, 814, 961, 1011, 1066 The Olympians, 107 Omega Workshop, 404 On the Beach, 34 “On the Pulse of Morning”, 19 On the Road, 533 On the Town, 822 On the Waterfront, 122 On Your Toes, 826 The Once and Future King, 1929, 1030 Ondine, 1012 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 894
1180
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 325, 535 One Hundred Years of Solitude, 360 “One O’Clock Jump”, 63 One Touch of Venus, 1021, 1023 One True Thing, 930 Ono, Yoko, 68 Ope´ra-Comique, 953 “Operation Heartbreak”, 332 Operation, 7 Ophu¨ls, Max, 560, 857 Opportunity Gallery, 837 Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation, 1041 The Oprah Winfrey Show, 1041 Oprah Winfrey, 19 Oprah’s Angel Network, 1041 Oprah’s Book Club, 1041 Orange and Tan, 837 Orbison, Roy, 171, 276 Orchestra of Paris, 893 Order Of Arts And Letters, 382 Order of the Golden Dawn, 101, 1053 Order of the Rising Sun, 915 Orff, Carl, 527, 736 Orient Express, 414 Original Song, 531 Orlando, 1046 Orlean, Susan, 930 Orlovsky, Peter, 380 Ormandy, Eugene, 52, 831 Ornament and Crime, 581 Ornelas, Marta, 256 Orozco, Jose´, 773 Orphe´e, 198 Orphism, 237 Orquestra Pau Casals, 170 Orton, Joe, 737–738 Orwell, George, 145, 489, 665, 738–739 , 808 Ory, Kid, 26, 476 Osborne, John, 145, 733, 740–741 Oscar for Best Original Dramatic Score, 185 Osthaus, Karl Ernst, 989 Other Voices, Other Rooms, 157 Oud, J. J., 509 Our Gang, 835, 1031 “Our Golden Bengal,” 944
Our Lady of the Flowers, 368 Ouspensky, P. D., 789 Out of Africa, 253, 254, 930 Out of the Silent Planet, 115, 602 “Out, Out—”, 338 Outline of History, 80 “The Oven Bird”, 338 Over the Hills and Far Away, 240 Owen, Wilfred, 107, 132, 137, 257, 743–745 Oxford Playhouse, 374 Oz, Amos, 745–746 , 745 Ozenfant, Ame´de´e, 581 Ozidi Saga, 196, 197 Paderewski, Ignacy, 841 Paganini, Nicolo`, 800 Page, Geraldine, 712 Page, Jimmy, 587–588 Pagnol, Marcel, 749–750 Painted Bronze, 507 The Painted Desert, 352 The Painted Word, 1044 Pakenham, Violet, 783 Pakszwer, Isabella, 192 Pal Joey, 826 Palais Stoclet, 472 Paley, William S., 702 Palm d’Or at Cannes Film Festival 208 Palmer, Bruce, 1057 Palmer, Samuel, 933 Pan, Hermes, 34 Pantomime, 57, 61, 253, 320, 650, 926 Parade, 198, 471, 650, 853 Paramount Pictures, 243 Pareyson, Luigi, 284 Paris Conservatory, 234, 660, 661, 802, 806 The Paris Diaries, 830 Paris Opera Ballet, 720, 764 Paris Opera, 180, 195, 590, 658, 894 Paris, 776 Parker, Charlie “Bird”, 283, 378, 534, 668, 685, 985 Parker, Edie, 533 Parkes, Elizabeth, 78 Parlan, Horace, 669 Parnassians, 330, 709, 982 Parry, Hubert, 987
INDEX
Parsons, Elizabeth, 551 A Part of Speech, 134 The Party System, 79, 80 Pascin, Jules, 420, 750–751, 751 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 752–753 A Passage to India (film), 425 A Passage to India (novel), 328 Pasternak, Boris, 9, 753–754 , 754, 817 Pastorius, Jaco, 675 Pastors and Masters, 202 Pa´sztory, Ditta, 61 Patanjali, 100 Pater, Walter, 688, 938 The Path to Rome, 80 The Path to the Nest of Spiders, 152 Paton, Alan, 755–756 , 771 Patterns, 874 Patton, 208 Patton, Charlie, 511 Paul, Bruno, 659 Paumgartner, Bernhard, 525 Pavarotti, Luciano, 149, 161, 257, 756–757 , 756, 775 Pavlova, Anna, 31, 247, 321, 448, 528, 643, 715, 758–759 , 758 The Pawnshop, 184 Paz, Octavio, 759–761 , 760 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, 1033 Peacock, Thomas Love, 788 Peanuts and Schulz: A Biography, 863 Peanuts, 861 Pearlstein, Philip, 1012 Pears, Peter, 132, 963 Pearson, Ada, 354 Peasants’ War, 554 Pechstein, Max, 855 Peck, Carey, 762 Peck, Gregory, 401, 465, 761–762 Pedrell, Felipe, 303 Pedro Pa´ramo, 842, 843 Pedrollo, Arrigo, 621 Pe´ladan, Joseph, 852 Pelleas and Melisanda (play), 622, 623 Pelle´as et Me´lisande (opera), 136, 234, 527, 596, 658, 864, 953, 954, 968
Pen, Jehuda, 179 PEN/Faulkner Award, 50 PEN/Saul Bellow Award, 836 Pendlebury, Richard, 788 Pennebaker, D. A., 251, 274, 454 Penny, Rob, 1039 People in a Theatre Balcony, 824 The People vs. Larry Flynt, 325, 326 People’s World, 430 Peoples Popular Monthly, 824 Pepler, Douglas, 376 Perelman, S. J., 1023 Perevshchikova, Maria (Lilina), 912 A Perfect Peace, 745 Perkins, Carl, 171 Perkins, Luther, 171 Perkins, Maxwell, 1043 Perkins, Pinetop, 1017 Perlman, Itzhak, 915, 1066 Pero´n, Eva, 607 Perpetua, 375, 376 Perret, Auguste, 581 Perry, Oliver ‘Doc”, 293 Perse, Saint-John, 763–764 Persinger, Louis, 914 The Persistence of Memory, 226 Person to Person, 701 Personae, 780 A Personal Matter, 727 Pet Sematary, 542 Pete Kelly’s Blues, 318 Peter and the Wolf, 790, 792 Peter Grimes, 94, 131, 132, 300, 427, 557 Peter Pan, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, 59, 60 Peter, Eva, 421 Peters, Jean, 485 Petersen, Wolfgang, 283 Petipa, Marius, 322, 528, 649, 758 Petit, Roland, 242, 247, 471, 764–765 Petrushka, 322, 324, 528, 715, 928 Pettiford, Oscar, 668, 985 Petty, Tom, 174, 276, 675 Petunia, No. 2, 730 Pevsner, Antoine, 949 Pfeiffer, Pauline, 450 Pfitzner, Hans, 1009, 1020
The Phalanx, 524 The Phantom of the Opera, 606, 607 The Philadelphia Story, 918 Philadelphia, Here I Come! 334, 335 The Philip Glass Ensemble, 384 Phillipart, Georgette, 982 Phillips, Dewey, 785 Phillips, Sam, 171 Phillips, Sian, 742 Phillips, Wogan, 591 The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 1013 Phish, 540 The Phoebus, 310 Phoenix, Joaquin, 174 Photo Club of Paris, 920 The Physicist, 272 Piano Concert No. 1, 52 Piano Concerto No. 3, 61, 790, 791, 799, 914 Piano Concerto, 108 The Piano Lesson, 1040 Piano Sonata, 52, 108 Piatigorsky, Gregor, 842 Picabia, Francis, 266 Picasso, Pablo, 28, 45, 125, 191, 198, 225, 237, 246, 249, 265, 267, 271, 296, 303, 417, 589, 604, 629, 650, 651, 652, 670, 678, 683, 689, 691, 713, 765–767 , 766, 821, 842, 853, 855, 920, 921, 933, 945, 949, 994, 997 See also Cubism Picavea, Marı´a del Rosario Conde, 177 Pickford, Mary, 184 Pictoralism, 920 “Pictorialism”, 7 Pierre Matisse Gallery, 151 Pietzsch, Sybil, 679 The Pilgrim’s Progress, 300, 602, 988 Pinal, Silvia, 141 Pincher Martin, 388 Pineapple Poll, 215 Pink Triangle and Yellow Star, 992 Pinter, Harold, 375, 596, 767–769 Pinton Fre`res, 933
1181
INDEX
Pirandello, Luigi, 436 Pisk, Paul, 596 Pissarro, Camille, 651, 684, 881 Pissarro, Lucien, 881 Piston, Walter, 94, 557 Pittura metafisica, 191, 691 The Plague, 156 Planet Waves, 275 The Planets, 477 Plant, Robert, 587, 588 Platero and I, 504 Plath, Sylvia, 486, 769–770 Platinum Blonde, 159 Play Actors’ Society, 960 Play It Again, Sam, 13 The Playboy of Seville, 929 The Playboy of the Western World, 939 Plein air painting, 605, 984 Plexus, 665 Plomer, William, 132 The Plot Against America, 836 The Plough and the Stars, 725 Plowright, Joan, 733 Podmore, Frank, 100 Podro, Joshua, 413 Poe, Edgar Allan, 235, 800, 802 Poem without a Hero, 9 Poetry and Truth, 296 Poetry, 847 Pointillism, 237, 524, 989 Poirot, Paul, 269 Poitier, Sidney, 390, 771–773 Pola, Arrigo, 757 Polar Prize, 676 Pole, Rupert, 716 Polk Award, 627 Pollack, Jackson, 1012 Pollock, Paul Jackson, 470, 474, 773–774 Pollack, Sydney, 207, 253 Polyphonie X, 117 Ponchielli, Amilcare, 795 Ponnelle, Jean-Pierre, 774–775 Ponnelle, Pierre-Dominique, 775 Pop art, 470, 507, 510 POP-ism, 1013 Poppy and Memory, 178 Porgy and Bess, 157, 367 Porter, Cole Albert, 33, 34, 317, 775–777 Portland Museum of Art, 837
1182
Portman, Eric, 805 Portnoy’s Complaint, 834, 835 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, 956 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 514 Posada, Jose´ Guadalupe, 821 Post Mortem, 99 Postimpressionists, 239, 267, 268, 403, 404, 548, 600, 639, 651, 698, Postmodernism, 509 Pot o’ Gold, 918 Poulenc, Francis, 197, 206, 661, 777–779 , 778, 802 Poulsen, Johann, 214 Pound, Ezra Weston Loomis, 291, 337, 338, 450, 515, 604, 732, 780–782 , 1054 Poussin, Nicolas, 783 Powell, Anthony, 782–783 Powell, Bud, 668, 686 Powell, Marie, 412 The Power and the Glory, 414 Powers of Ten, 281 Poynter, Edward, 544 Pozo, Chana, 378 Prabhavananda, Swami, 489 Prague Spring, 440, 441 “Prairie Houses”, 1048 Pratella, Balilla, 641 The Pratt Institute of Fine Art, 293 Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, 49 Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, 234 Preminger, Otto, 712 Pre-Raphaelites, 902 The Present and the Past, 202 President of the Screen Actors Guild, 465 The President, 35 President’s Gold Medal, 294 Presidential Medal of Freedom, 7, 207, 294, 318, 334, 401, 465, 540, 702, 762, 890, 915, 1033 Presley, Elvis Aaron, 123, 171, 410, 784–788 Presley, Lisa Marie, 786 Pressburg Staddtheater, 1008 Pretty Baby, 630
Previati, Gaetano, 112 Previn, Andre´, 830 Pride, 121 Pridgeon, Lithofayne ‘Fayne”, 453 Priestley, J. B., 107, 230, 788–790 , 809, 815 Priestley, Joseph, 78 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 900–901 Primo de Rivera, Miguel, 975 The Prince of the Pagodas, 133, 215 Prince, Hal, 897 Prince, Harold (Hal), 896 Princet, Alice, 246 Princeton University, 482, 734, 917, 1032 Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature, 664 Pringsheim, Katia, 633 The Print, 7 Prinzhorn, Hans, 264 A Prisoner of Grace, 167 Pritzker Architecture Prize, 365 The Private Life of Henry VIII, 556 “The Promised Land”, 909 Private Lives, 145, 211, 733 The Prodigal Son, 46, 122, 133, 751, 761, 839 Prokofiev, Sergei, 288, 557, 790–792 , 791, 816, 834, 872, 878, 1009 Proust, Marcel, 72, 793–794 , 793 “Prove It All Night”, 909 Pryde, James, 713 Pryor, Richard, 772 Psaier, Pietro, 1013 psilocybin, 535 Psycho, 469 Public Industrial Art School, 522 Puccini, Giacomo, 150, 165, 757, 775, 794–796 , 795, 950, 952, 954, 968 Puig, Jaime Francisco, 161 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, 970 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, 686
INDEX
Pulitzer Prize, 30, 51, 206, 294, 306, 338, 367, 449, 451, 496, 566, 567, 627, 663, 847, 885, 897, 1033 Pull My Daisy, 534 Pullen, Don, 669 Pulszky, Romola de, 715 Purcell Operatic Society, 214 Purcell, Henry, 32, 133, 477 Purim, 1063 Purism, 581 Pursuit, 770 Push Comes to Shove, 955 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 8, 799 Pushkin, Alexander Ivanovich, 62 Pushkin, Alexander, 62, 215, 298, 720 “Putting in the Seed”, 338 Puvis de Chavanne, Pierre, 997 Puzo, Mario, 208 Pygmalion, 312, 436, 582, 877 The Quadriga, 642 Quartet for the End of Time, 658 Queen’s Hall Orchestra, 75 A Question of Power, 442 Quie´vrecourt, Yvonne de, 10 Quinn, Anthony, 307, 595 Quinn, John, 506, 751 Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 32, 182, 557, 583, 799–800 , 799 The Racket, 484 Radeke, Robert, 1008 The Radiance of the King, 577 Radiator Building—Night, 730 Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, 1044 Radiguet, Raymond, 198 Radio Symphony, 117 The Raft of the “Medusa,” 457 Rage, 542 Raging Bul, 867 Ragtime, 326, 955 Raiders of the Lost Ark, 906 The Rain People, 208 Raisin in the Sun, 771 Rambusek, Josef, 557 Rame, Franca, 320–321 Rampal, Jean-Pierre, 800–802, 801 Ramsay, Peggy, 737 Ran, 565
Rancho de Taos Church, 730 Rank, Otto, 716 Ransome, Arthur, 802–803 Rap Master Ronnie, 971 The Rape of Lucretia, 310 Rapper, Irving, 1038 Rashomon, 564 Rathenau, Emil, 77 Rattigan, Terence, 425, 435, 733, 737, 804–805 Raucheisen, Michael, 864 Rausch, Irma, 948 Rauschenberg, Robert, 507 Ravel, Maurice, 32, 168, 180, 235, 240, 249, 322, 367, 526, 528, 805–807 , 806 Rawhide, 282 Rawsthorne, Isabel, 43 Ray, Man, 266 Ray, Satyajit, 944 Razaf, Andy, 1004 The Razor’s Edge, 652 Realism, 77, 134, 139, 179, 291, 382, 395, 396, 525, 632, 729, 948, 1012, 1055 Reality: A Journal of Liberal Opinion, 756 The Reaper, 671 Rear Window, 469 Rebecca, 262, 263, 870 The Rebel, 156 Rebenstein, Anton, 46 Red Dust, 352 The Red Horses, 640 Red Hot and Blue, 776 The Red Shoes, 650 Redding, Otis, 333 Redgrave, Michael, 807–808 Redgrave, Vanessa, 23, 929 Redhead, 824 Reed, Carol, 219, 436, 649, 809–810 , 816, 871 Reed, John, 717 Reed, May, 809 Reese, Lloyd, 668 Regina, 109 Reich, Steve, 661 Reiner, Carl, 884 Reiner, Fritz, 51, 94 Reinhardt, Max, 252 The Reivers, 306
Remarque, Erich Maria, 810–811 Remembrance of Things Past, 769, 793 Renaldo and Clara, 275 Renard, Jules, 806 Renaud, Madeleine, 57 Rendell, E. D., 255 Renoir, Jean, 356, 812–813 , 972, 995 Renoir, Pierre, 356 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 356, 684, 691, 812 Requiem for a Heavyweight, 875 Requiem for a Nun, 306 Requiem, 8 Rerberg, Fedor, 628 Residence on Earth, 709 “Respect”, 333 Reszke, Jean de, 953 “Return to Sender”, 786 The Reunion, 55 Rexroth, Kenneth, 380 Reynolds, Eileen Carey, 725 Rhapsody, 107 Rhodes, Cecil, 545 Rhymers’ Club, 937 Rhythm, 636 “Rial to Ripples”, 366 Rice University, 484 Rice, Ella, 484 Rice, Elmer, 1023 Rice, Tim, 606 Rich, Buddy, 64, 163 Richard, Jean-Louis, 694 Richard, Little, 453 Richards, Keith, 512, 828–829 Richards, Lloyd, 1039 Richardson, Elizabeth Hadley, 450 Richardson, Henry Handel, 813–814 Richardson, Ralph, 733, 814–816 , 815 Richardson, Tony, 740 Richmond, Dannie, 669 Richter, Sviatoslav, 816–817 Ricordi, Giulio, 795 Ridling, Laura, 412 Rietveld, Gerrit, 817–818 Riga Staddtheater, 1009 The Right Stuff, 1045
1183
INDEX
Rilke, Rainer Maria, 47, 465, 506, 763, 818–820 , 819, 879, 966 Rimbaud, Arthur, 127, 130, 133, 457 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay, 182, 247, 322, 927, 928 Ring of Fire, 172 The Ring, 657, 659 The Rink, 184 Rinker, Al, 217 Riot in the Gallery 112 Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, 1022 The Rite of Spring, 249, 400, 850, 715, 718, 928 Ritt, Martin, 712 Ritter, Alexander, 926 Ritz, David, 540 Rivas, Olga Flores, 945 The River Wild, 930 Rivera, Diego, 131, 520, 773, 820–822 , 821 Rivers, Joan, 163 Rivie`re, Isabelle Fournier, 10 Rivie`re, Jacques, 9 Rizzoli, Angelo, 307 Roach, Max, 668 Road Work, 542 The Road, 899 “The Road Not Taken”, 338 Robbins, Amy Catherine, 1025 Robbins, Jerome, 94, 385, 822–823 , 823, 896 Roberta, 531 Roberts, Caroline Alice, 289 Roberts, Winifred, 714 Robertson, J. G., 813 Robertson, Robbie, 274 Robie House, 1048 Robinson, Bruce, 958 Robinson, Sylvia, 49 Robson, Mark, 712 Rocco and His Brothers, 995 Roche, Raoul La, 581 Rochester Philharmonic, 597 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 251, 334, 430, 476, 512, 540, 676, 787, 911, 1036 Rockabilly, 784 “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody”, 332
1184
Rockefeller Foundation Award, 50 Rockefeller Grant, 656 Rockefeller, Nelson, 590 The Rocking Kings, 453 Rockwell, Norman Percevel, 823–826 , 824 Rodchenko, Aleksandr, 949 Rodeo, 206, 231 Rodgers, Richard Charles, 93, 436, 531, 826–827, 826 Rodin, Auguste, 118, 121, 267, 506, 554, 592, 625, 638, 651, 666, 819, 989 Rodzinski, Arthur, 94 Roethke, Theodore, 830 Rogers and Hammerstein, 231 Rogers, Ginger, 33, 92, 531 Rogers, Jimmy, 1016 Rolling Stones, The, 68, 250, 251, 333, 387, 398, 409, 455, 512, 538, 539, 587, 828–830 , 828, 867, 958, 1013, 1016 Rollins, Sonny, 686 Roman Holiday (1953), 762 Romantic Piece for Orchestra, 108 Romanticism, 291, 439, 622, 853, 995, 1001 Romas, Mikhail, 395 Romashkov, Nikolay, 138 Romeo and Juliet, 215, 312, 324, 375, 449, 671, 720, 723, 792, 804, 1066 Romm, Mikhail, 947 Romulus the Great, 272 Ronald Reagan Rondeaux, Madeleine, 372 A Room of One’s Own, 1046 Room Service, 646 A Room with a View, 327 Rooney, Mickey, 362 Roosevelt, President Franklin D., 825 Roosevelt, Theodore, 867 Rootham, Helen, 890 Roots, 19 Rorem, Ned, 830–831 “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”, 909 A Rose Is Still A Rose, 334 Rose, David, 362
Rose, Fred, 1035 Rose, Tim, 587 Roselle, 25 Rosen, Jelka, 240 Rosenberg, Stuart, 712 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, 923, 924 Rosenfeld, Bella, 179 Ross, Diana, 476 Rossellini, Isabella, 628 Rossellini, Isotta, 90 Rossellini, Roberto, 21, 89, 153, 233, 307, 752, 832–833 , 995 Rossen, Robert, 712 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1019 Rossini, Gioacchino, 182, 950, 1066 Rostand, Edmond, 143, 340 Rostropovich, Mstislav, 133, 833–834 , 834, 1011 “Rosy Crucifixion”, 665 Roth, Philip Milton, 834–836 Rothenborg, Max, 499 Rothenstein, William, 689 Rothko, Mark, 510, 836–838 Rothschild, James de, 45 Rottenberg, Gertrud, 465 Rouault, Georges, 246, 838–839 Roubaud, Jacques, 760 Rouen Cathedrals, 685 Roundtrip, 466 Roussel, Albert, 168, 852 Roussel, Ker-Xavier, 997 Rowling, J. K., 839–840 Royal Academy of Dancing, 324, 529 Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, 374, 593, 695 Royal Ballet, 32, 107, 324 Royal Dramatic Theatre (Stockholm), 936 Royal Music Academy of Stockholm, 294 Royal Opera, 135, 324, 718, 893, 964 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 76 Royal Shakespeare Company, 312, 924 Ruax, Juan, 161 The Ruba´iya´t of Omar Khayyam, 413
INDEX
Rubens, Walter, 953 Rubenstein, Ida, 44, 807 Rubinstein, Arthur, 841–843 Rudepoeˆma, 842 Rudge, Olga, 781 Rufino Tamayo Museum, 946 The Rules of the Game, 812 Rulfo, Juan Perez, 843–844 The Rum Diary, 957 Runciman, Leslie, 591 Runnin’ Wild, 103 The Running Man, 542 Rush, Tom, 674 Ruskin, John, 613 Russell, George William, 913 Russell, Jane, 484, 917 Russian Beggar Woman, 55 Russian Music Publishing, 557 Russolo, Luigi, 112, 641 Rutgers University, 49 Ryder, Winona, 664 Ryskind, Morrie, 646 S.J. Wallace Truman Prize, 551 Saarinen, Eero, 281 Sachs, Gunther, 53 Sackler, Howard, 560 Sackville-West, Edward, 933 Sackville-West, Vita, 1046 Sacred and Profane Love, 84 Sadler’s Wells Ballet, 32, 215 Sadler’s Wells, 426, 427, 448, 815 Sagan, Carl, 163 Saint Joan, 877, 960 Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr, 976 Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, 1067 Saint Phalle, Niki de, 962 Saint, Eva Marie, 532 468, 469, 649 Saint-Denis, Michel, 425, 427 Saint-Sae¨ns, Camille, 914 Salamanca, University of, 975 Salem’s Lot, 541 Salmon, Kathleen, 255 Salome, 149, 150, 893, 926 Salten, Felix, 558 Salzburg Festival, 52, 347, 527, 596, 775, 864, 1022 Salzmann, Jeanne de, 135 Samizdat, 134 Samuel Goldwyn Studios, 390
San Diego State University, 761 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 508 San Francisco Opera, 596, 775, 864 Sanctuary, 306 The Sand from the Urns, 178 Sandburg, Carl, 847–848 , 847, 936 Sandor, Gluck, 822 Sanger, Margaret, 457 Sanguineti, Edoardo, 760 Sant’Elia, Antonio, 641 Santa Monica House, 365 Sarah Plus Two, 986 Sargent, Malcolm, 309 Sarnoff, David, 969 Saro-Wiwa, Ken, 900 Sartoris, 306 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 57, 69, 70, 135, 154, 156, 339, 369, 604, 848–850 , 848, 1033 Sassoon, Siegfried, 137, 258, 412, 743, 850–852 Satie, Erik, 32, 122, 194, 198, 650, 658, 660, 661, 777, 779, 852–853 , 1009 Satin, Natalie, 800 “Satisfaction,” 829 Satriani, Joe, 398 The Saturday Evening Post, 824, 862 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 882 Saturday Night, 896 Satyagraha, 385 Sauvage, Ce´cile, 658 Saved, 276 Saving Private Ryan, 907 The Savoy, 937 “Say Man”, 250 Sayonara, 124 Scalero, Rosario, 51, 830 Scarface, 484 Scarlatti, Domenico, 303 Scheele Monument, 667 Sche´he´razade, 45, 322, 528, 715 Schenker, Heinrich, 345 Scherchen, Hermann, 456, 621, 859 Schiele, Egon, 473, 550, 853–854 Schillinger, Joseph, 367
Schindler’s List, 907 Schippers, Thomas, 52 Schmeling, Max, 421 Schmidt, Lars, 90 Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl, 546, 854–855 Schmitt, Hans, 855 Schmitz , E. Robert, 496 Schnabel, Artur, 129, 855–856 Schnittke, Alfred, 834 Schnitzler, Arthur, 857–858 , 924 Schober, Johannes, 558, 559 Schoenberg, Arnold, 67, 85, 86, 108, 129, 206, 465, 494, 562, 608, 621, 855, 856, 858–861 , 859, 894, 922, 927, 969, 1010, 1020, 1021, 1022 Schoenberg, Mathilde, 860 Schola Cantorum, 658, 852 School for the Art of the Theatre, 214 School of American Ballet, 46 Schoonmaker, Thelma, 866 Schopenauer, Arthur, 633 Schreker, Franz, 860 Schro¨der House, 817 Schro¨der-Schra¨der, Truus, 817 Schubert, Franz, 129, 894 Schulberg, B. P., 869 Schuller, Gunther, 669 Schulz, Charles Monroe, 861–863 Schulz, Lucia, 679 Schumann, Robert, 834, 841 Schuyler, James, 30 Schwarz, Anna, 407 Schwarz, Willi, 473 Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth, 98, 526, 863–864 , 863 Schweitzer, Albert, 848 Schwitters, Kurt, 29, 679, 865 Schygulla, Hanna, 304 Scofield, Paul, 135, 694 Scorsese, Martin, 276, 277, 866–868 , 905, 1058 Scott, Tom, 675 Scott, Walter, 1007 The Scream, 697, 699 Screen Writers Guild Award, 885 Screwtape Letters, 602 Scriabin, Aleksandr, 557
1185
INDEX
Sculpture with Colour Deep Blue and Red, 460 Scythians, 110 Sdymonton Festivals, 607 A Sea Symphony, 987 Seagram Building, 509, 660 Seascape, 11 A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, 102 Seasons, 508 Second Piano Sonata (Boulez), 117 The Second Sex, 69, 70 Second String Quartet (Schoenberg), 860 Second Symphony, 496 Second Viennese School, 85 Secrets and Lies, 593, 594 Secret Service, 929 Section d’Or, 994 Sedgwick, Edie, 1012 Sedova, Julie, 528 See America First, 776 See It Now, 701 Seeds of Man, 430 Seeger, Pete, 429 Seferis, George, 270, 868–869 Seiter, William A., 531 Seize the Day, 81 Selassie, Haile, 1019 Seldes, Marian, 655 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, 30 Sellers, Peter, 13, 560, 742 Selznick, David O., 33, 89, 353, 458, 869–871 , 870 Semiotics, 284 Sendak, Maurice, 561, 871–873 Senghor, Le´opold Se´dar, 577, 873–874 Sennett, Mack, 183 Separate Tables, 595, 804 Serenade, 46 Sergel, S., 949 Serialism, 86, 116, 455, 921, 922 Serling, Rod, 874–875 Serov, Valentin, 44 Se´rusier, Paul, 997 Sessions, Roger, 207 Se`the, Maria, 989 Setsuko, wife of Balthus, 48
1186
Seurat, Georges, 651, 897, 989, 897 Sevareid, Eric, 700 Seven and Five Group, 714 Seven Guitars, 1040 Seven Samurai, 564 The Seventh Seal, 88, 936 The Seventh Veil, 647, 649 Severini, Gino, 641 Severinsen, Doc, 163 Sexus, 665 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 67, 68 Shadel, Bill, 700 The Shadow Box, 713 The Shadow of a Gunman, 725 Shadows and Fog, 14 Shadows on the Grass, 253 Shaffer, Peter, 326 Shah, Idries, 599 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company, 742, 816 Shakespeare, William, 58, 87, 298, 312, 374, 375, 489, 559, 658, 814, 815, 912 Shall Overcome: The Seeger Session, 910 Shankar, Ravi, 384 Shankar, Uday, 759 Sharif, Omar, 583, 754 Sharp, Ann, 578 Shavelson, Melville, 712 Shaw, Artie, 475 Shaw, George Bernard, 58, 59, 137, 187, 255, 298, 355, 374, 376, 415, 427, 505, 741, 804, 809, 815, 875–878 , 876, 960, 963, 1025 Shaw, Robert, 768 Shawn, Wallace, 630 Sheinberg, Sidney, 905 Shelepina, Evgenia, 803 Shepard, Audrey Mae, 1035 Sheriff, R. C., 733 Sherrard, Philip, 869 Shevelove, Bert, 897 Shields, Brooke, 630 Shileyko, Vladimir, 8 Shines, Johnny, 512 The Shining, 542 Ship Wheel, 824 Shire, Talia, 208
Shirer, William L., 700 Shoeshine, 233 Shorter, Wayne, 675 Shostakovich, Dmitri, 95, 1056 Shostakovich, Dmitry, 95, 133, 878–879 Shot of Love, 276 Show Boat, 530 Shriner, Herb, 13 A Shropshire Lad, 479, 480 Shuffle Along, 103 Sibelius, Jean, 76, 95, 879–880 , 880 Sickert, Walter, 881 Siddhartha, 461 Sieber, Rudolf, 252 Siegel, Don, 282 Siegfried, 382, 383 Sierra Club Bulletin, 6 Sierra Club, 6 Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, 7 Signac, Paul, 651 Silences, 731 Sillitoe, Alan, 882–883 Siloti, Aleksander, 799 Silver Medal of Military Valor, 450 The Silver Tassie, 725 Simmons, Jean, 390 Simon, Marvin Neil, 883–885 , 883, 889 Simon, Neil, 889 Simon, Paul, 367, 1003 Simons, James, 443 Simple Symphony, 131, 133 Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon, 237 Sinatra, Francis Albert, 64, 390, 437, 539, 885–890 , 886 Sinclair, Upton, 287, 575 Sing as We Go, 313 Singin’ in the Rain, 955 Sisley, Alfred, 684 Sissle, Noble, 103 Sitwell, Edith, 32, 744, 783, 890–892 , 891, 956, 1010, 1024 Sitwell, Osbert, 744, 890, 1010 Sitwell, Sacheverell, 890, 1010 “The Six Gallery Reading”, 380 Six Mascots, 645
INDEX
Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodi, 115 Sjoeberg, Alf, 87 Skeaping, John, 460 Skelton, Red, 163 The Skin of Our Teeth, 1031 Slater, Montagu, 132 Slattery, Mary, 662 Sleeper, 14 The Sleeping Beauty (ballet), 44, 45, 46, 62, 758 The Sleeping Beauty (poem), 892 Sleeping Beauty, 448 Sleeping Muse, 121 Sleeping Venus, 242 Slijper, S. B., 683 Slonimsky, Nicholas, 496 Slow Train Coming, 276 Smight, Jack, 712 Smith, Bessie, 1039 Smith, David, 160 Smith, Howard K., 700 Smith, Jack, 1013 Smith, Kate, 92 Smith, Kathleen, 344 Smith, Ludlow Ogden, 458 Smith, Reginald Donald, 635 Smith, Willie, 1004 Smithsonian Institution, 670 Snake River, 7 Snodgrass, W. D., 769 Snoopy, 861 Snopes trilogy, 306 Snyder, Gary, 534 So Forth: Poems, 134 Sobotka, Ruth, 560 Sobrino, Elsa, 65 Social realism, 600 Socialism, 79, 186, 396, 456, 876, 959, 1015 Socialist Realism, 134, 525, 632, 948, 1055 Society for Private Musical Performances, 1021 The Society of Art and Literature, 911 Socrate, 853 Soffici, Ardengo, 112 Søholm Housing Estate, 500 Sokolova, E. P., 758 Solanas, Valerie, 1013
Soldati, Mario, 752 “The Soldier,” 138 The Soldier’s Tale, 215, 928 Solitudes, Galleries, and Other Poems, 617 Solomon, Carl, 380 Solovyov, Vladimir, 110 Solti, Georg, 98, 300, 893–894 , 893, 963 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 833, 894–895 , 894 Somers, Jane. See Lessing, Doris The Song of Bernadette, 599 Sondheim, Stephen Joshua, 94, 827, 896–897 , 986 Song of the Cold, 892 Songs My Mother Taught, 125 Songs to the Beautiful Lady, 110 Sonnets to Orpheus, 820 Sons and Lovers, 572, 573 Sophie’s Choice, 930 Sorbonne, 626 Sorvino, Mira, 14 Soudeikine, Vera de Bosset, 928 Soulie, Marguerite, 84 Sound and the Fury, 306 Sound of Music, 827 “Sounds of Africa”, 103 Soupault, Philippe, 130, 295 South Pacific, 827 South Wind, 258–260 Soyinka, Wole, 898–900 , 898 Spaak, Claude, 242 Spamm, Otis, 250 Spanish Civil War, 56, 141, 149, 161, 168, 170, 176, 177, 359, 421, 423, 446, 451, 495, 504, 605, 617, 671, 709, 739, 767, 904, 946, 975, 981, 982 The Spanish Earth, 495 “Spanish Harlem”, 24, 333 Spann, Otis, 1016 Spark, Muriel, 900–902 , 900 Spark, S. O., 900 Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, 12 Speir, H. C., 511 Spell bound, 761 Spencer, Diana, 950 Spencer, Gilbert, 902 Spencer, Stanley, 902–903 Spender, J. A., 903
Spender, Margaret, 904 Spender, Stephen, 37, 228, 344, 486, 619, 759, 903–905 Spielberg, Steven Allan, 567, 610, 612, 866, 905–908 Spoleto Festival, 817 Spontaneous Prose, 534 Spreckels, Kay, 353 Springsteen, Bruce, 173, 430, 539, 908–911 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 145, 219, 578 The Squaw Man, 243 The Squires, 1057 St. Dominic’s Press, 376 St. Ignatius College, 469 St. Louis Walk of Fame, 1038 St. Lucia Arts Guild, 1003 St. Nicholas, 824 St. Peter’s Basilica, 639 St. Petersburg Ballet, 649 Staddtheater, 1008, 1009 The Stag King, 456 Stage Society, 405 “Stairway to Heaven,” 588 Stalin, Joseph, 131, 311, 632, 792, 817, 878, 894, 948 Stamp, Terence, 753 The Stand, 542 Standing at the Scratch Line, 18 Standup Comic and Nightclub Years, 13 Stanford University, 700 Stanford, Charles Villiers, 107, 477, 987 Stanislavsky Method, 911, 912 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 57, 123, 214, 256, 808, 911–913 , 912 A Star Is Born, 363, 647, 649, 870 Star Wars, 425, 610–612 Stardust Memories, 13 Starr, Ringo, 67–69, 1005 Steadman, Alison, 593 Steeple Bush, 338 Steer, Philip Wilson, 506 Steffeck, Karl, 605 Steichen, Edward, 730, 847 Stein, Gertrude, 417, 450, 581, 604, 652, 697, 1032 Stein, Leo, 652, 766 Stein, Michael, 581
1187
INDEX
Steinbeck, John 206 Steinberg, Maksimilian, 878 Steiner House, 608 Steiner, Rudolf, 963 Steinman, Jim, 607 Stella, Frank, 510 Stephen, Leslie, 1046 Stephen, Thoby, 1046 Stephen, Vanessa, 1046 Stephens, James, 65, 687, 728, 913–914 Steppenwolf, 461, 462 Stern Conservatory, 859 Stern, Isaac, 914–915 , 1066 Stern, Robert A. M., 825 Sternberg, Josef von, 251, 916–917 Steuermann, Eduard, 129 Stewart, James Maitland, 917–919 Stewart, Rex, 294 Stieglitz, Alfred, 730, 920–921 Stilgoe, Richard, 607 The Still Centre, 904 Still Life with Playing Cards, 126 Stills, Stephen, 674 Stir Crazy, 772 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 116, 117, 455, 621, 657, 921–923 Stoclet House, 550 Stoclet, Adolphe, 473, 550 Stoller, Mike, 785 Stone, 631 Stone, Oliver, 398 Stonorov, Oscar, 523 Stoppard, Tom, 923–925 “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, 338 The Story of Mankind, 647 Strachey family, 403 Strachey, Lytton, 137, 364, 403, 1046 Straight, 686 Strand, Paul, 7, 730 Strange Interlude, 735 The Stranger (film), 995 The Stranger (novel), 154 Strasberg, Lee, 529 Straub, Peter, 542 Strauss, Franz, 925
1188
Strauss, Richard, 61, 65, 86, 249, 289, 345, 856, 859, 880, 893, 925–926 , 925, 950 Stravinsky, Fyodor Ignatyevich, 927 Stravinsky, Igor, 38, 46, 52, 117, 198, 206, 215, 247, 322, 392, 477, 557, 642, 796, 915, 922, 927–929 , 927, 1009 Stravinsky, Igor, 52, 206, 392, 400, 915 Stream of consciousness, 514, 534, 609, 665, 1046 Streep, Meryl, 283, 929–931 Street Legal, 276 Street Songs, 892 A Streetcar Named Desire, 122, 123, 1036, 1037 “Streetcorner Man,” 114 The Strike, 287 Strindberg, August, 87, 699, 734, 966 String Quartet, 108 String Quartets (Barto´k), 61 String Symphony, 831 Stromboli, Land of God, 832 The Strong Man, 158 Strongman, 824 Strugatsky, Arkady and Boris, 948 The Struggle for Life, 56 Stuck, Franz von, 524, 548 Studio di Fonologia Musicale, 620, 621 Study for Skin, 507 Stumpf, Lily, 549 Sturges, Preston, 436 Stuttgart Ballet, 215, 216 Styne, Jules, 896 The Subterraneans, 534 Success, 311 Sufism, 413 The Sugarland Express, 906 Sullavan, Margaret, 918 Sullivan, Edward Vincent, 251, 785, 823, 931–932 Sullivan, Harry Stack Dr., 584 Sullivan, Louis, 710 Summoned by Bells, 97 The Sun Also Rises, 450 Sunday in the Park with George, 896, 897
Sunday Morning, 831 Suprematism, 628 Surrealism, 28, 131, 191, 265, 296, 297, 358, 624, 709, 760, 837, 853, 933, 956 Surrealist Manifesto, 130, 295 surrealist, 836 The Suspended Ball, 371 “Suspicious Minds”, 786 Sutherland, Barbara, 934 Sutherland, Graham, 932–933 Sutherland, Joan, 98, 256, 757, 934–935 , 934 Suzuki, D. T., 533 Swallows and Amazons, 802, 803 The Swan, 681 “Swanee”, 366 Sweeney Todd, 896 Swift, Jonathan, 892 Swing Era, 27, 475 The Swing era, 317 Sydow, Max von, 936 The Symbolists, 8, 109, 110, 139, 175, 198, 234, 372, 623, 628, 629, 698, 709, 763, 868, 937, 979 Symons, Arthur, 937–938 , 1053 Symons, W. T., 665 Symphonic poems, 799, 879, 880, 926 Symphonic Variations, 32, 65, 323 Symphony for Organ and Orchestra, 206 Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah, 95 Symphony No. 3: Kaddish, 95 Synge, John Millington, 67, 938–939 , 988 The Synthetists, 698 System, 847 Szell, George, 98 Szymanowski, Karol, 842 Tagore, Rabindranath, 8, 504, 744, 943–944 , 943 Tailleferre, Germaine, 197, 661, 779 “Take the ‘A’ Train”, 293 Take the Money and Run, 13 “Take These Chains From My Heart”, 1036 Talbot, Billy, 1057
INDEX
Talese, Gay, 959 The Talisman, 542 Talking Heads, 955 Tamayo, Rufino, 945–946 , 945 The Taming of the Shrew, 1066 Taneyev, Sergei, 790 Tanner 88, 971 Tanner on Tanner, 971 Taos Pueblo, 7 Ta`pies Foundation, 947 Ta`pies, Antoni, 946–947 Taris, Jean, 993 Tarkovsky, Andrei, 947–948 Tarkovsky, Arseny, 947 Tasso, Torquato, 457 Tate, Erskine, 1005 Tatlin, Vladimir, 679, 949 Tauber, Sophie, 29 Tavel, Ronald, 1013 Taxi Driver, 866 “Taxi War Dance”, 64 Taylor, A. J. P., 956 Taylor, Elizabeth, 143–144, 436, 712, 1012, 1066 Taylor, James, 172, 674 Taylor, Koko, 539 Taylor, Margaret, 416 Taylor, Mick, 828, 829 Taylor, Paul, 955 Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich, 45, 46, 525, 650, 799, 872, 878, 912, 928 Te Kanawa, Kiri, 162, 950–951 , 951 “Teach Your Children”, 1057 Teagarden, Jack, 27 Teatro Regio, 968 Tebaldi, Renata, 98, 150, 161, 952–953 Tee-Tot, 1034 Tempest, Pat, 788 Temple University, 523 “The Ten”, 837 The Ten Commandments, 243, 465 Tenderly, 985 The Tennessee Two, 171 “Terra Incognita: The Mind”, 482 Terrasse, Claude, 113 Terry, Clark, 64 Terry, Ellen, 212, 214, 374, 732, 805
Tertis, Lionel, 1010 The Tetons, 7 Tetrazzini, Luisa, 165 Teyte, Maggie, 953–954 , 953 Thalberg, Irving, 646, 869 Tharp, Twyla, 385, 954–955 Theater Hall of Fame, 232 Theater of Cruelty, 135 Theater of the Absurd, 11, 72, 440, 493, 767, 923 The´aˆtre de I’Oeuvre, 998 The´aˆtre de Monte Carlo, 749 The´atre des Champs E´lyse´es, 119, 928 The´aˆtre National Populaire, 694 Theatre of Ireland, 913 Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, 696 Thelonious Plays Duke Ellington, 686 “Thelonious”, 686 Theosophical Society, 100, 613, 682, 913, 1053 “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, 91 These Days, 458 They Went, 259 Thibaud, Jacques, 169 Thienemann, Marie, 438 Things Fall Apart, 5 “Think”, 333 Thinner, 542 The Third Man, 556, 871 Third Piano Sonata (Bourdelle), 117 Third Stream Jazz, 668 Third Symphony, 496 Thirties poets, 229, 344 Thirty-sixers, 440 This Earth, My Brother, 39, 40 “This Land Is Your Land”, 428 This Life, 772 This Strange Passion, 141 Thoma´n, Istva´n, 61 Thomas, Brandon, 435 Thomas, Dylan, 665, 929, 955–957 , 1001 Thomas, Edward, 337 Thomas, Michael Tilson, 986 Thomas, Rufus, 784 Thompson, Hunter Stockton, 536, 626, 957–959
Thompson, Joseph “Snake”, 481 Thompson, Randall, 94 Thomson, Elspeth, 402 Thomson, Virgil, 830 Thorndike Theatre, 961 Thorndike, Sybil, 733, 809, 960–961 , 960 Three Blue Suits, 1042 Three Draped Standing Figures, 690 Three O’Clock Blues, 539 Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 43 Three Tall Women, 11 Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices, 770 The Three-Cornered Hat, 249, 303, 528, 650, 766 The Threepenny Opera, 109, 127, 1021, 1022 “Tiare Tahiti,” 138 Ti-Jean and His Brothers, 1003 Tillie’s Punctured Romance, 183 The Time Machine, 1024 The Time of the Hero, 983 The Times They Are a-Changin’, 274 The Tin Drum, 407 Tin Pan Alley, 91 Tinguely, Jean, 679, 961–962 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 579 Tintagel, 65 Tippett, Michael, 962–964 To Be a Pilgrim, 167 To Catch a Thief, 469 To Kill a Mockingbird, 761 To the Edge of the World, 139 To the Lighthouse, 1046 To Urania, 134 “Today I Sing the Blues” 332 Tolkien, Christopher, 966 Tolkien, J. R. R., 37, 602, 964–966 Toller, Ernst, 966–968 , 966 Tolstoy, Leo, 139, 396, 816, 870 Tom Hanks, 907 Tom Jones, 299, 740 Tom Waits, 174 Tomlinson, Charles, 760 The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, 104 The Tonight Show, 13, 162
1189
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Tony Award, 529, 566, 567, 655, 656, 662, 663, 664, 777, 885 Toorop, Jan, 782 Top Hat, 92 Topaze, 749 Torn, Rip, 627 Tornaghi, Iola, 182 Torres-Garcea, Joaquen, 445 Torso of a Young Man, 267 Tosca, 795 Toscanini, Arturo, 52, 76, 165, 168, 526, 596, 796, 952, 968–969 , 968, 969 Total theater, 736 Toto, 753 “Touch of Grey”, 411 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 422, 994 The Tower, 1054 The Town and the City, 533 Townshend, Pete, 453 Toys in the Attic, 446 Tracy, Spencer, 159, 458 Trakl, Georg, 465 Tramini, Marie Jose´, 760 Tramp, 158 Transatlantic Review, 324, 325 Transition, 732 Translations, 334–335 Transworld Airlines, 485 Traumbude, 811 Traveler without Luggage, 20 Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, 276 Travers, Ben, 435 Travis, Virginia, 511 Tree, Herbert Beerbohm, 809 Tremendismo, 176 Trentacoste, Domenico, 642 The Trial (film), 769 The Trial (novel), 694 “The Trial by Existence”, 337 Trial of a Judge, 904 Trilling, Lionel, 379 Troell, Jan, 936 Trollope, Anthony, 1007 Trotsky, Leon, 131, 145, 521, 562, 803, 822 Trout, Bob, 700 Trudeau, Garretson Beekman, 969–971 Truffaut, Franc¸ois, 219, 386, 630, 694, 971–972 , 993
1190
Trungpa, Chogyam, 381 Tsvetaeva, Marina, 9 Tubb, Ernest, 1035 “Tubism,” 589 Tucker, Sophie, 103 Tudor, Antony, 644 “The Tuft of Flowers”, 337 Tufts University, 702 Tunnel of Love, 910 Turbulent Indigo, 675 Turgenev, Ivan, 32, 688, 694, 728, 808 Turner, Big Joe, 64 Turner, Ike, 453 Turner, Lana, 646 Turner, Tina, 453 Twain, Mark, 825 Twelve O’Clock High, 761 Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 708–709 The Twilight Zone, 874, 906 Twister: A Musical Catastrophe, 536 291 Gallery, 920 Two Trains Running, 1040 Two Women (film), 234 Two Women (novel), 692 Tzara, Tristan, 28, 238, 239, 608, 781 U2, 174, 250, 539, 757 Ueberfeldt, Johann Braet van, 682 Ufa Ballet, 720 Uhde, Wilhelm, 237, 239 UK Music Hall of Fame, 334 Ullman, Liv, 88, 936 Ultraı´smo, 709 Ulysses, 376, 513–515 Umberto D., 233 Unamuno, Miguel de, 55, 504, 617, 975–976 , 975 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 562 Unchained, 174 Under Milk Wood, 956 Under the Open Sky, 139 Under the Volcano, 609, 610 Underground, 686 Unforgiven, 283 Unit One, 689, 714 United Nations Headquarters, 690
United States Congressional Gold Medal, 890 United States Hockey Hall of Fame, 862 United States Medal of Freedom, 843 United States: Essays, 992 A Universal History of Infamy, 114 University of Alabama, 584 University of California at Berkeley, 761 University of California, 207, 231 University of Chicago, 81 University of Exeter, 840 University of London, 469 University of Maine, 541 University of Michigan, 662 University of Minnesota, 273 University of Mississippi, 305 University of Oregon, 535 University of Pennsylvania, 522, 523, 780 University of South Carolina, 507 University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, 611 University of Southern California, 365 University of Washington, 700 University of Wisconsin Madison, 1047 “Until You Come Back To Me”, 333 The Unvanquished, 306 Updike, John, 1045 Ureta, Romelo, 672 Urmstom, Marrianne, 1001 Urquidi, Julia, 983 Urrutia, Matilde al, 709 Usatov, Dimitri, 181 Usˇhkkov, Natalie, 557 “Usonian” houses, 1049 Ustinov, Peter, 436, 733, 1066 Vadim, Roger, 53, 54, 686 Vainglory, 314 Valderrama, Pilar de, 617 “Valentine Stomp”, 1005 Vale´ry, Paul, 130, 979–980 , 979 Valle´-Incla´n, Ramo´n Marı´a del, 503, 980–981 , 980
INDEX
Vallejo, Ce´sar Abraham, 982–983 Vallotton, Fe´lix, 997 Valmont, 326 Valois, Ninette de, 107, 323, 448 Van Doren, Mark, 379 van Gogh, Vincent, 43, 403, 546, 639, 651, 719, 920, 989, 996 Van Kirk, Anneke, 430 Van Neck, Joseph, 241 Van Zandt, Steve, 909 Vancura, Vladislav, 562 Vandross, Luther, 333 Vanessa, 51 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 983–984 Vassar College, 929 Vaughan, Jimmie, 540 Vaughan, Sarah Lois, 984–987 Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 289, 300, 476–477, 962, 987–988 , 988, 1009 Vauxcelles, Louis, 126 Vedrenne, J. E., 405 Vega, Lope de, 617 Vela´zquez, Diego, 43, 976 Velde, Henry van de, 608, 656, 989–990 Velvet Revolution, 441 The Velvet Underground, 1013 Velvetones, 453 Vengerova, Isabella, 51, 94 Verdi, Giuseppe, 95, 162, 165, 182, 256, 757, 794, 833, 950, 952, 995 Vergine, Guglielmo, 164 Verlaine, Paul, 113, 127, 892, 937 Verne, Jules, 241 Veroni, Adua, 757 Ve´szi, Margit, 680 Vic Wells Ballet, 32, 323, 644 Vichy Opera, 802 The Victim, 81 Victor Emmanuel III, King, 641 Vidal, Gore, 163, 208, 990–992 , 990, 1038 Videla, Gabriel Gonza´lez, 709 Vidor, Charles, 531 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, 347 Vienna Secession, 472, 550 Vienna State Opera, 526 Vienna Workshop, 473
Vietnam Veterans of America President’s Award, 955 Vieux Carre´, 1037 Vigny, Alfred de, 244, 330 Vigo, Jean, 972, 992–993 A Village Romeo and Juliet, 240 Villa-Lobos, Heitor, 842 Villon, Franc¸ois, 127, 781, 994 Villon, Jacques, 265, 267, 993–994 , 994 Vince Mendoza, 676 Vin˜es, Ricardo, 777 Viola Concerto (Walton), 1011 Violin Concerto (Henze), 455 Violin Sonata, 51, 496 “Viper’s Drag”, 1005 Virgil, 993 Viridiana, 141 Visconti, Luchino, 95, 233, 456, 893, 995–996 Vishnevskaya, Galina P., 833–834 Visions of Gerard, 532 The Visit, 242, 271–272 Vitti, Monica, 23 “Viva Las Vegas”, 786 Viva Maria!, 54, 694 Vivaldi, 621 Vivaldi, Antonio, 781, 915 Vlaminck, Maurice de, 246, 267, 269, 652, 996–997 Vogel, H. W. Dr., 920 Vogue, 1012 Voice of America, 702 Vollard, Ambroise, 113, 180, 244, 246, 839 Voltaire, 447 Volzhina, Ekaterina Pavlovna, 395 von Kurowsky, Agnes, 450 Vorkapich, Slavko, 611 Voronezh Notebooks, 632 The Vortex, 211, 374 Vorticism, 604, 780 Vorticist artists 780 Vuillard, E´douard, 113, 244, 625, 997–998 Wagner, Otto, 472, 710 Wagner, Richard, 61, 65, 86, 145, 234, 299, 347, 526, 537, 634, 688, 733, 775, 814, 859, 880, 894, 924–925, 968, 1020
Wain, John, 15, 99, 502, 571, 1001–1002 Waiting for Godot, 71, 371, 742 “Waiting for the Barbarians,” 175 Walcott, Derek, 135, 1002–1004 Walcott, Roderick, 1003 Walden, Herwath, 553 Waldman, John, 831 Waldron, Mal, 668 Wales, Prince of, 950 Walk the Line, 174 Walker, Alice, 906 Walker, Ivy, 802 Wall of the Moon, 671 Wall of the Sun, 671 Wallace, Edgar, 809 Waller, Fats, 27, 63, 1004–1005 , 1004 The Wallflowers, 277 Walpole, Horace, 1006 Walpole, Hugh, 298, 653, 881, 1006–1007 , 1006 Walpole, Robert, 1006 Walt Disney Concert Hall, 365 Walter, Bruno, 94, 310, 596, 1008–1009 , 1008 Walter, Little, 251 Walter, Marie The´re`se, 767 Walton, William Turner, 32, 290, 456, 620, 892, 954, 1009–1011 , 1010 Waltrath, Jack, 669 Wandel, Sigurd, 499 The Wanderer, 9 The Wanting Seed, 142 The War of the Worlds, 1024 War Requiem, 131, 744 Ward, Clara, 332 Ward, Thomas F., 240 The Warhol ’60s, 1013 Warhol, Andy, 510, 1011–1014 Warner Brothers, 390 Warner, Rex, 868, 1014–1015 Warren, Leonard, 952 The Warrior’s Husband, 458 Washington and Lee University, 1044 Washington Opera, 257 Washington State University, 584 Washington, Booker T., 655 Washington, Denzel, 930 Washington, Dinah, 332
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The Washingtonians, 294 Wassiljeff, Mitrofan, 879 “The Waste Land,” 291, 780 Watch on the Rhine, 447 Watch Your Step, 91 Water Garden in Fort Worth, 510 Waters, Muddy, 251, 276, 453, 828, 867, 1015–1018 Waters, Roger, 675 Watson, Peter, 904 Watts, Charlie, 828, 829 Waugh, Alec, 1019 Waugh, Auberon Alexander, 1019 Waugh, Evelyn, 96, 1018–1019 , 1018 A Wave, 30, 460 A Way of Looking, 502 Wayne, Carol, 163 Wayne, John, 485, 917, 919 “Weatherbird”, 26 Weaver, Harriet Shaw, 514 The Weavers, 438 Weavers, the, 429 Weavers’ Revolt, 554 The Web and the Rock, 1043 Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, 876, 1025 Webb, Chick, 317 Webb, Robert D., 785 Weber, Max, 837 Webern, Anton von, 85, 86, 117, 859, 927, 929, 1020–1021 , 1020 Webster, Ben, 294 “Wedding Bells”, 1035 Wedekind, Frank, 86, 127, 966 Weekley, Frieda, 573 Weep before God, 1001 Weigel, Helene, 129 Weill, Berthe, 678 Weill, Kurt, 14, 108, 127, 467, 755, 931, 1021–1023 , 1022 Weir, Bob, 409 Weizmann, Chaim, 657 Welch, Denton, 1023–1024 Wellcome, Syrie, 653 Welles, Orson, 108, 109, 252, 254, 532, 694, 810 Welles, Orson, 532
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Wells, H. G., 80, 107, 137, 204, 325, 376, 388, 415, 556, 590, 679, 814, 876, 907, 963, 1024–1026 , 1025 Wells, Isabel Mary, 1025 Welnick, Vince, 409 Welsh, Mary, 451 Welty, Eudora, 1054 Wenger, Ruth, 461 Werfel, Franz, 418, 661, 808, 1023, 1026–1027 , 1027 West Side Story, 94, 823, 896 Westhoff, Clara, 819 West-Running Brook, 338 Wexler, Haskell, 611 Wexler, Jerry, 332 Weyhe Gallery, 151 What Did I Do, 1004, 1005 What’s New, Pussycat?, 13 What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, 13 Wheeler, Hugh, 897 Wheels, 892 When Rain Clouds Gather, 442 When We Were Very Young, 955 “When You’re Smiling”, 27 Where Eagles Dare, 282 Where the Buffalo Roam, 958 Where the Wild Things Are, 871, 872 Whipp, Mary Sue, 483 Whistler, James McNeill, 506, 881 “White Christmas”, 91 The White Goddess, 412, 413 White on White, 629 White, Bukka, 538 White, Patrick, 1028–1029 White, T. H., 1029–1030 Whitelaw, Billie, 73 Whiteman, Paul, 217 Whitman, Walt, 31, 240, 373, 379, 457, 471, 477, 830, 987 Whitten, Danny, 1057 Whitton, Elizabeth, 329 The Who, 453, 587 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, 11 Whorf, Richard, 531 Why We Fight, 159 Widor, Charles Marie, 660 Wiener Werksta¨tte, 854 Wiesbaden State Theatre, 456
Wigman School, 1031 Wigman, Mary, 513, 1031 Wilbur, Crane, 172 Wilcox, Herbert, 961 The Wild One, 123 Wild Strawberries, 88 “Wild Thing”, 454 The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, 909 Wilde, Oscar, 246, 298, 312, 372, 695, 802, 926, 938 Wilder, Billy, 252 Wilder, Gene, 772 Wilder, Thornton Niven, 206, 529, 712, 888, 831, 1031–1034 , 1032 Wilding, Michael, 596 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 546 Williams College, 529 Williams, Charles, 602, 965 Williams, Cootie, 294, 685 Williams, Ernest Hodder, 186 Williams, Hank, 1034–1036 Williams, Hank, Jr., 1034, 1035 Williams, Joe, 63, 64 Williams, Larry, 1017 Williams, Robin, 907 Williams, Tennessee, 123, 207, 529, 567, 712, 931, 991, 1036–1038 , 1037 Williams, Williams Carlos, 380, 780 Williamson, J. C., 448 Williamson, Sonny Boy, 512, 538 Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, 1017 Williwaw, 991 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 224 Wilson, August, 1039–1040 Wilson, Edmund, 102 Wilson, Robert Anton, 586 Wilson, Robert, 384 Wilson, Teddy, 475 Winchell, Walter, 931 The Wind in the Willows, 401, 402–403 Winfrey, Oprah Gail, 19, 1041–1042 Winter Sunrise, 7 Winter Trees, 770 Wintering Out, 443 Winters, Shelley, 560, 772
INDEX
Winwood, Steve, 1017 Wisdom, Frank, 599 Wiseman, Thomas, 924 Witherspoon, Reese, 174 Wittenberg, Alfred, 856 Wittgenstein, Paul, 792 The Wizard of Oz, 361 Wodehouse, P. G., 530 Wolf, Howlin, 453 Wolfe, Thomas, 533, 1042–1044 , 1043 Wolfe, Tom, 536, 585, 626, 959, 1044–1045 Wolfegg, Maria (Miz), 473 The Woman and the Tower, 238 Woman Combing Her Hair, 638 The Woman from Sarajevo, 17 A Woman Is a Woman, 386 A Woman of Paris, 184 Woman with the Hat, 652 Women’s International Center Living Legacy Award, 19 Women’s Zionist Organization, 180 “Won’t Be Long”, 332 The Wonder of You”, 786 Wonderful Town, 94 Wood, Natalie, 733 Wood, Ron, 250, 828, 829, 867 Wood, Ursula, 988 Woodfall Film Productions, 740 Woodruff, Rosemary, 585 Woodstock Festival, 275, 410 “Woodstock”, 1057 Woodward, Joanne, 712 “Woody Sez”, 430 Woodyard, Sam, 294 Woolf, Leonard, 137, 1046, 1047 Woolf, Virginia, 137, 327, 360, 364, 404, 591, 604, 903, 1046–1047
World War I, 305, 449 World War II, 465, 482, 584, 626, 700, 711, 761, 780, 918 World within World, 904 Woronov, Mary, 1013 Wozzeck, 86 Wreath for a Bridal, 770 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 281, 656, 659, 710, 1047–1050 , 1047 Wunderer, Alexander, 525 Wuthering Heights, 48, 145, 733 Wyler, William, 389, 465, 991 Wyman, Bill, 828, 829 Xanrof, Le´on, 422 Xenophon, 1015 Xenopoulous, Gregory, 175 Yakobson, Leonid, 62 Yale Art Gallery, 523 Yale School of Drama, 529, 929 Yale University, 294, 365, 496, 776, 837, 970, 1044 The Yardbirds, 587 The Yearling, 761 Yeats, John Butler, 1053 Yeats, William Butler, 36, 65, 99, 214, 219, 337, 505, 620, 687–688, 725, 728, 780, 913, 937, 938, 944, 1053–1055 , 1053 Yegorkina, Larissa Pavlovna, 948 Yellow Book, 402, 937 Yellow Sky, 761 Yerma, 357, 358 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 834, 879, 1055–1056 Yoko, Yaguchi, 564 York, Michael, 1066 Yosemite country, 6 You Can’t Go Home Again, 1043 You Can’t Take It With You, 918
“You Ought to Have a Wife”, 985 “You Win Again”, 1036 “You’re Gonna Change”, 1035 “You’re the Top”, 776 The Young Goddess Fate, 979 Young People’s Concerts, 95 The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, 131 Young, Freddie, 583 Young, Lester, 63, 475 Young, Neil, 172, 276, 398, 674, 867, 1056–1060 “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, 1036 Your Show of Shows, 884 Ysay¨e, Eugene, 841 Zampa, Luigi, 1065 Zanelli, Renato, 256 Zangwill, Israel, 1063–1064 , 1063 Zapata, Emiliano, 759 Zappa, Frank, 453 Zborowski, Leopold, 678 Zeffirelli, Franco, 733, 816, 893, 935, 1065–1066 , 1065 Zellweger, Rene´e, 930 Zemlinsky, Alexander von, 859 Zero for Conduct, 993 Zgleits, Kazimira, 628 Zhdanov, Andrey, 9 Zhukova, Vera, 527 Ziegfeld Follies, 91 Ziegler, Ma´rta, 61 Zindel, Paul, 713 Zoetrope All-Story, 209 Zola, E´mile, 687, 793 The Zoo Story, 11 Zukerman, Pinchas, 915, 1066–1067 Zverev, Nikolay, 799 Zweig, Stefan, 673, 926
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A NEW ENDANGERED SPECIES: MODERN ARCHITECTURE by Zoe Tillman The sleek exterior of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, a behemoth of black steel and tinted glass, belies an interior plagued with leaky ceilings, broken elevators, and “wasted” space. The building, a victim of years of disrepair, is situated on prime real estate in downtown Washington, D.C. Preservationists worry that if the building is sold to a private developer, it may face demolition. A proposal to sell the library and build a new one elsewhere failed last year by a single vote in the city council. Now three historic preservation advocacy groups have come together to protect the library from the wrecking ball. With support from local officials and architects around the country, they nominated the 35-year-old building for historic landmark status, saying it is an icon of the Modern style of design. “We will go in with a united front” to push for landmark status, says Ginnie Cooper, executive director of the D.C. public library system. The D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board will make its decision June 28. The King library’s situation is not unique. Nearly 50 years after the peak of Modern influence in the United States, historic preservationists and architects say Modern architecture is too frequently torn down or renovated beyond recognition without consideration of its place in architectural history. A report released this month by advocacy group World Monuments Fund (WMF) lists Modern architecture as an “endangered” species. No exact numbers exist, but WMF program manager Marty Hylton estimates that nearly 60 percent of US buildings built in the mid-20th century were influenced by the Modern style. A Modern building facing “inappropriate” renovation or demolition can be found today in almost every city in the United States, Mr. Hylton says. Part of the social and political movement of the same name, Modernism emphasizes transparency (big windows are a key component), practicality, and a break with the past, most visibly through the rejection of ornamentation and an embrace of technology and materials considered innovative in the mid-20th century—steel, aluminum, and plastics. The WMF report lists Riverview High School in Sarasota, Fla., designed by Paul Rudolph in 1957, and Grosse Pointe Public Library in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., designed by Marcel Breuer in 1953, as significant examples. Boston’s City Hall, designed by Gerhard Kallmann, Noel McKinnell, and Edward Knowles in 1962, is another controversial case, and a decision on historic landmark status is pending. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, considered one of the premier architects of the Modern style, designed the MLK library in 1968.
Reprinted by permission of Zoe Tillman. First appeared in the Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com).
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‘You love it, or you hate it’ Modernism has always been controversial and has faced intense criticism for what many in the design community see as a promotion of a sterile and boxy aesthetic. “Either you love it, or you hate it,” says Joan Brierton, a historic preservation expert for the US General Services Administration’s Center for Historic Buildings. MLK library archivist Ryan Semmes says that he finds the building “drab looking” and uninviting. On the other hand, David Fixler, a Modernism preservationist and an architect based in Boston, says the MLK library is “well built” and “adds to the city. . . . Every effort should be made to bring that building back.”
Perception and renovation problems Advocates of Modern architecture say such buildings must wrestle with the public’s perception of what deserves preservation. “We’re so ingrained in the idea that Victorian is ‘historic,’ “ Ms. Brierton says. “It’s very hard to move people away from that era and convince them that . . . you move forward and apply those same principles to midcentury.” But the actual threat to Modern architecture stems mostly from real-world concerns. “These buildings are not necessarily energy efficient,” Hylton admits, making them costly to maintain and, subsequently, even more costly to retrofit with green technology. Mr. Semmes says that the MLK library’s black steel and glass turn it into “a giant pressure cooker” in the summer, destroying rare documents and photographs and making it uncomfortable for patrons and staff. Many Modern buildings were designed for a specific purpose—Modern architects value function over form–making renovation for another use even more expensive. The Office of the Chief Financial Officer in Washington, D.C., estimates that the cost to renovate the MLK library would be $274.9 million, while building a new library would cost $274.5 million. Modern buildings face “the same kinds of pressure that are on all buildings that sit on valuable land,” says Anthony Alofsin, an architectural historian at the University of Texas at Austin.
Preservation criteria The US Department of the Interior (DOI) requires that any building up for historic landmark status must be at least 50 years old. There is a special nomination process for buildings that are younger, but the standards are higher. A building not only has to meet at least one of the DOI’s four criteria for historic landmark status—location of a historic event, association with a historically important person, architectural significance, or the potential to provide historical information—but also must be of “exceptional importance.” Beyond being the only Mies building in Washington, there are other reasons to consider saving the MLK library, says Rebecca Miller, executive director of the D.C. Preservation League. Its central location makes it an ideal spot for a library, she says, and it works well with the rest of the area’s streetscape. Still, its being a “very good Mies building” is a good enough reason to fight, Ms. Miller says. If historic landmark status is granted, it is unclear whether the library will continue to function as a library. Ms. Cooper of the D.C. public library system says that much of the space is underuti-
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lized, since the library’s needs have changed since the 1960s. The building could be converted into office space, Cooper says, adding that she’s even had informal conversations with Smithsonian representatives about the possibility of turning it into a museum. Semmes says that he would like to see a new library built. “I understand the need for preserving works by certain architects, but sometimes I’m afraid [the preservationists] don’t see the overall plan of Mies van der Rohe that . . . things can change.”
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HISTORY DESCENDING A STAIRCASE: AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND AMERICAN CULTURE by Richard Pells Who was Marcel Duchamp, and why did his painting “Nude Descending a Staircase” provoke so much outrage at the Armory Show in 1913? What does George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” have to do with both the Jewish and African-American experience in the United States? Why was Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises so influential for modern fiction and journalism? How did Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch, and Billy Wilder, among many other e´migre´ film directors, bring European cinematic styles and ideas to Hollywood? Why was Marlon Brando’s performance as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire so revolutionary on stage and ultimately in the movies? If you are an undergraduate or a graduate student taking a course in 20th-century American history, you are unlikely to find the answers to those questions. They won’t even be posed. Nor will the names or the works of the artists, composers, novelists, filmmakers, and actors appear in the lectures or in the books assigned on the reading list. The vast majority of American historians no longer regard American culture—whether high culture or mainstream popular culture—as an essential area of study. The much-vaunted cultural turn in the humanities has run its course in one of the first disciplines it influenced. There are many ways that people, including academics, decide what is vital to an understanding of a nation’s past. Certainly, “ordinary” readers (which means book buyers) are fascinated by the biographies of political and military leaders. They continue to believe that charismatic personalities affect a country’s destiny. Professional historians have long since abandoned that idea as a delusion. Instead, for the last 30 years, they have told us that the intricacies of social history are the key to explaining a nation’s identity and development. So for specialists in American history, what matters in the courses they teach and the books they write are the struggles and hard-won accomplishments of women, workers, immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans in a country inhospitable to the poor and the powerless. Still, however fashionable social history has been since the 1970s, no American historian would dispute the importance of other almost-mandatory eras and topics. Colonial history and the formation of the Republic, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, industrialization and urbanization, the New Deal, America’s emergence as a superpower—those themes are all meticulously covered in textbooks, monographs, and course syllabi. And such subjects, along with those in social history, dominate the sessions and book exhibits at the annual conventions of American historians. But one might suppose that a central component of America’s history (as of any country’s history) is its culture. How can we fathom the values and preoccupations of the American people (no
Richard Pells is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. His books include Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (Basic Books, 1997). Reprinted by permission of Richard Pells. First appeared in The Chronicle Review, Aug. 3, 2007 Issue. Copyright 2007 The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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matter what their race, gender, or class) without paying attention to the nation’s literature, painting, architecture, music, theater, and movies? If culture plays as significant a role as social, political, or economic issues in helping us make sense of the American past, why then do American historians expend so much effort analyzing the plight of women and workers, or the policies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and almost no time at all interpreting the paintings of Edward Hopper, the cartoons of Walt Disney, the lyrics of Cole Porter, the choreography of Jerome Robbins, the plays of Eugene O’Neill, or the films of Elia Kazan? Such questions occurred to me in the course of doing research for a book about the global impact of American culture in the 20th century. Of perhaps 2,000 books that I read (or more often skimmed), not more than 50 were written by historians. True, some of the works by historians—like Christine Stansell’s American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (Metropolitan Books, 2000) and Jackson Lears’s Something for Nothing: Luck in America (Viking, 2003), which contains a brilliant chapter on modern painting and music—are superb interpretations of America’s artistic and intellectual life. And Joy S. Kasson’s Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (Hill and Wang, 2000) and Lewis A. Erenberg’s Swingin’ the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture (University of Chicago, 1998) are equally invaluable histories of major episodes in American popular culture. But those are the exceptions. Most of the books on which I relied were written by scholars in art history, music, literature, or film studies. If, for example, I wanted a new interpretation of American culture after World War I, two of the most innovative studies are Ann Douglas’s Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), which concentrates on the intellectual interchange between white people and African-Americans, and Carol J. Oja’s Making Music Modern (Oxford University Press, 2000), which analyzes the influence of European modernist music on American composers and songwriters. But Douglas is a professor of English and comparative literature, while Oja is a professor of music. Similarly, Wanda M. Corn’s The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935 (University of California Press, 1999), a book filled with insights not only about American painting but about larger trends in American culture, is the work of an art historian. Indeed, many of the most suggestive re-examinations of American culture are not written by academics at all. Neal Gabler’s An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (Crown Publishers, 1988) and his latest book, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (Knopf, 2006), together with David Thomson’s The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood (Knopf, 2005) and Richard Schickel’s Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity (Doubleday, 1985), are all stimulating works of cultural history written by people who are primarily freelance journalists and film critics. Yet while the majority of American historians seem uninterested in writing about American culture, their counterparts abroad continue to publish books that deal with novels, music, photography, and film. I recently received a new collection of essays called Satchmo Meets Amadeus, written mainly by European Americanists and edited by Reinhold Wagnleitner, an Austrian historian of the United States at the University of Salzburg. The essays compare the cultural impact of Mozart in 18th-century Vienna and of Louis Armstrong in early-20th-century New Orleans. That is the sort of topic that would be inconceivable to most American historians—not just because of the book’s trans-Atlantic perspective, but also because of its focus on classical music and jazz. Of
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course, foreign professors of American history remain acutely aware of the power of American culture since their societies are inundated with America’s music, movies, and television shows. But American historians were not always so oblivious to the nation’s art and mass entertainment. If you were an aspiring historian in college or graduate school in the 1950s and early 1960s, the course offerings and reading lists in American history were crammed with allusions to novelists, painters, playwrights, and composers. The postwar American-studies movement (which was interdisciplinary, combining history, sociology, politics, and the arts) emphasized the significance of America’s literature, in particular, and that affected the sorts of books historians assigned and the subjects they addressed in class. When I was an undergraduate in the 1960s, I read (because a history professor told me I had to) The Education of Henry Adams, Alfred Kazin’s On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature, James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, and Leslie A. Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel. It was also made clear to me that I’d better know what abstract expressionism was if I had even the faintest prayer of becoming an American historian. I was not alone. Nor am I being wistful about the good old days when Orson Welles and Saul Bellow were culture heroes to a generation of tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking connoisseurs, the types who are standing in line for the next showing of The Sorrow and the Pity in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, pontificating about Federico Fellini. Some of those pomposities aside, the acolytes of the 1950s grew up to become the virtuosos of cultural history in the 1970s: Christopher Lasch, Lawrence W. Levine, Warren Susman. What happened to their assumption that cultural history was crucial to comprehending America, past and present? Basically, the post-World War II conceptions of what constituted both culture and history crumbled in the 1970s. The civil-rights and women’s movements, together with the more-relaxed immigration laws that inspired a new wave of ethnic migration, largely from Latin America and Asia, forced historians to ask: Whose culture? Whose history? The answers led not only to a sharper focus on the social history of those groups previously neglected by scholars and teachers, but also to an anthropological definition of culture. What counted now was the culture of daily life—how people behaved in saloons and department stores, what kinds of clothes and cosmetics they bought, whether they were active or passive when they listened to the radio, and above all how they were manipulated by the ideology of consumerism. That approach affected not just historians, but scholars in American studies as well. Traditional cultural history was clearly under assault by the 1970s and 1980s. But, ironically, no cluster of scholars did more to undermine the field than the cultural historians themselves. While Susman continued to highlight cultural issues in his collection of essays, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (Pantheon, 1984), Lasch became more interested in psychology and social criticism, as in such best-selling books as The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (Norton, 1978). Then Levine published his most influential book, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Harvard University Press, 1988). He portrayed the high-cultural venues of the late 19th century—theaters, opera houses, concert halls, libraries, and art museums—as sanctuaries for the rich. Having failed to elevate the tastes of the masses, who were seduced by disreputable entertainment like vaudeville and the movies, the wealthy (according to Levine) escaped into their own luxurious asylums, shielding themselves from the chaotic and alien babble in the streets. Behind closed doors, they resolved to serve as the sentinels of high culture, guard-
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ing the fortress of art, literature, and music. Thus, for Levine, high culture became less a shared possession of the entire society than a refuge for snobs. Levine’s book ended at the moment that modernism crossed the Atlantic and took root in America. But his argument about the exclusivity of American high culture would not have changed had he examined the Armory Show or the Museum of Modern Art. How, after all, could ordinary people relate to Duchamp’s painting if they couldn’t detect either a nude or a staircase? And how many readers would try to decipher the multilingual puns in James Joyce’s Ulysses, much less the three-page sentences in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!? Levine surely did not intend to turn his colleagues and students away from cultural history. Indeed, he continued to write about American culture throughout his career. But Highbrow/Lowbrow implied that high culture was inherently esoteric, class-bound, and somehow “undemocratic”—in short, antithetical to the values social historians championed. Yet if high culture seemed elitist in the eyes of many American historians, popular culture was insufferably commercial—and therefore equally distasteful as a subject of study. In the earliest days of cinema, as some historians noted, movies had been aimed at an immigrant, working-class audience. But soon the moguls took over (though they were immigrants, too) and converted an egalitarian art form into a money-making machine. Similarly jazz and the blues were once the creations of African-American musicians and performers with deep ties to the black communities in Chicago and New Orleans. Then white record producers, promoters, and agents transformed an authentic folk music into just another big business. So to write or teach about popular entertainment meant that you wound up exploring not the history of culture but the history of capitalism. Of course, no discipline evolves simply on the basis of new ideas and interpretations. There are practical considerations at stake, like one’s career. Graduate students learn swiftly what topics interest their professors. And what dissertation subjects will lead to book contracts. Meanwhile, when it comes to new appointments, American historians, no less than scholars in other fields, like to clone themselves. They want in their departments a coterie of people working in their own areas, which they naturally define as “cutting-edge.” That is called “building on strength.” It rarely occurs to search committees that a department might benefit more from genuine intellectual and methodological diversity, from hiring scholars who are not studying the same subjects as everyone else. The urge to assemble a collection of like-minded souls has meant that, over the past 30 years, most history departments have concentrated on hiring social historians, especially in American history. But “social” history is often narrowly conceived. Consider one of the fields in social history currently in vogue: the “borderlands.” Borderlands could have meant an analysis of how different cultures (high and low) throughout the world collide with and alter one another. For the majority of history departments, however, the idea of the borderlands has assumed an increasingly limited geographical definition: a study of Latin-American (mostly Mexican) immigration to Texas and to other areas of the southwestern United States. That influx is obviously a significant factor in America’s social and ethnic development. But such a restrictive focus on a particular region does not encourage what could be the beginnings of a truly global cultural history. If American historians, like Duchamp’s nude, have descended a staircase from cultural to social history, it might seem that few people outside the academic world should notice or care. If stu-
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dents want to learn more about American culture, they can choose a class in art, film, or American literature. Nevertheless, most universities require students to take one or two courses in American history, which could expose the majority of students to the ideas and information they need to understand American culture. So the indifference to culture among historians has had devastating consequences for the overall quality of American education. Like all professors, historians regularly complain that their students “don’t know anything,” that they’re culturally illiterate. And it’s true: Most of the undergraduates and graduate students whom I and others encounter have little or no knowledge of the history of American art, literature, music, or the popular culture of previous generations. Their familiarity with American culture is usually confined to the past 10 or 15 years of their personal experience. They know about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, but not about Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Charlie Parker, Jackson Pollack, Arthur Miller, or even Marilyn Monroe. The lack of knowledge is not their fault. How can students be expected to have heard of any of America’s pre-eminent writers, artists, actors, or musicians if their history professors never mention them in class—and perhaps don’t know much about them either? We’re teaching the subjects we want to teach, and talking about the people—mostly the exploited and the victimized— we sympathize with. Never mind if we’re also passing on a substantial amount of cultural ignorance from one generation to the next. Yet maybe the situation in our universities, if not in our history departments, is not quite so bleak. Students, fortunately, no longer regard their professors as gods, handing down the wisdom of the ages. They may not even read (or buy) the books their professors assign. But they do have more access than any previous generation to culture. Where my generation depended on old films shown in execrable conditions on late-night independent television stations or at seedy “art” houses screening a retrospective of Sam Fuller’s lowbudget action flicks, students can now rent or download movies, television shows, and plays from all over the world. They can see Sidney Lumet’s 1960 television production of The Iceman Cometh, with Jason Robards and a very young Robert Redford. They can see Dustin Hoffman in 1985 as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. They can grasp why Marlon Brando was so mesmerizing in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, and why he became an American cultural icon. They can learn something about Charlie Parker’s music and his life by watching Clint Eastwood’s Bird. And they can begin to appreciate 20th-century dance by viewing the films of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Bob Fosse. Whether students take advantage of all those opportunities is uncertain. But they have the chance to ascend the cultural staircase. And if they get to the top, they may figure out for themselves why Marcel Duchamp’s painting was both so infuriating and so central to the culture of our own time.
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PLAYWRIGHTS ON WRITING by Jane Anderson As I write this, I’m well into the third week of rehearsals for my new play at the Geffen Playhouse, “The Quality of Life.” As the playwright, I would have ducked out by now to let the director and the actors work out the nuts and bolts of interpreting the play. Maybe I’d get the occasional phone call from the director wondering if they could possibly add or cut a line. But mostly I would rightfully be asked to disappear so everyone could mess around with the text in peace without having me hunched in the back of the rehearsal room wringing my hands. This time, though, I’m also the director, and when I’m in the room with the actors, we’re all keenly aware of the presence of the playwright. I try to take deep breaths to calm that other creature down. Occasionally I’ll excuse myself and go to the ladies’ room to give myself a couple of bitch slaps because I absolutely must protect the actors from myself. There’s a very good reason why writers should be barred from the room: By the time playwrights get to rehearsal we’re at a completely different stage in the process from the actors and the director. We’ve already made our way through the terror of creating something out of nothing. And we’ve done it in the privacy of our notebooks and computers. No one was there, staring over our shoulders as we wrote perfectly dreadful pieces of dialogue or let the play meander off in the wrong direction. Writers are free to blunder without fear of judgment (unless you count our own internal critics, who are unfailingly harsh). Getting lost is part of the creative process, and actors must have freedom to wander and explore. This applies to the theater director as well, especially if he or she is working on a new play that’s never been decoded before. I know that in my early years as a playwright I made my poor directors crazy. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t instantly grasp all the intricate layers of subtext that I built into the lines. I’d heave great sighs and loudly scribble notes. I believe that once I even got up and paced. I was incredibly rude, and I know that if I were the director I would have banned me from the room. Clearly I don’t recommend that playwrights direct their own work. And if you believe that your script is inerrant and you’ve envisioned how every line should be delivered, then you’re in for a miserable time. Your actors will end up despising you, and your production will be mostly unwatchable. Working in film and television helped me to develop a cold, clear third eye. It also didn’t hurt to be a writer-for-hire on some truly banal projects. It took the preciousness out of the process so that when I went back to writing for the theater, I had been relieved of the misconception that every word that I wrote had been blessed by God. By the time I started to direct my screenplays, I had developed an absolute ruthlessness when it came to cutting and rewriting my own work. And having once been an actress, I also understood what it’s like to have an intrusive writer or direc-
Anderson’s plays include “Looking for Normal” and “The Baby Dance.” She won a 1993 Emmy for “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.” Copyright 2007, Los Angeles Times. Reprinted by permission.
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tor stomp the life out of your performance. In other words, I’d been humbled enough by the business to know how not to make an arrogant fool of myself. For the actors, there are, of course, advantages to having the playwright double as the director. I know that my actors appreciate having direct access to my head. There are times when they simply want to know what I meant by a line, and I’ll fill them in if I sense it’ll help them solve a piece of the puzzle. It saves time in rehearsal and cuts down on their frustration factor. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable explaining too much, and I’ll say, “Well, what do you think that means?” like some Freudian shrink. The actors hate that; if they ask, they want to know. They’re thinking of making the deadline of opening night and they don’t want to waste energy going down the wrong rabbit hole. The advantage for me, as the director, is that I don’t have to spend hours in preproduction doing research on myself. I don’t have to study my oeuvre to get a feel for my “style.” I don’t have to read the script over and over, making copious notes, breaking the scenes into beats. I already did my homework during those nine months of emptying my veins over the keys of my computer. What’s curious is that I really never thought twice about directing my own screenplays because in film there’s a tradition of the writer-director as auteur. That’s not as common in theater. We do have theater auteurs, such as Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson. But they’re experimental visionaries whose work integrates multimedia elements that go beyond the straight narrative of a play. David Mamet, a film auteur himself, has been known to direct his own plays—but rarely the premiere production of a work. He’s mostly left that daunting task to someone else. Why is that? I think the answer lies in the fact that your typical auteur is, by nature, a control freak, and the creative process of the film medium feeds that fire. Film directing is about refining every frame, every move, every breath your actors take. You shoot your scenes in small, micromanaged beats. You have the ability to tweak and shade an actor’s work, take after take after take. The way you light an actor, the type of lens you use, the angle you choose all determine how an actor ultimately comes across on the screen. Then, of course, once you get in the editing room, you have even more control. You can shape a performance however you want, cutting together reactions and looks and even bits of accidental brilliance that you captured after you said cut but secretly kept the camera rolling. Another film director once told me that he actually altered one of his star’s reaction shots with CGI. He didn’t like the way her face moved, so he moved it around digitally. A film director can make a bad actor look good and a good actor look bad. We take their images and hold them captive to do whatever we want with them. No wonder so many film stars are hopelessly neurotic and no wonder so many film directors are insufferable megalomaniacs. But the theater director is a different kind of animal. He or she has no control over a production once it’s up and running. Maybe the pace, the tone, the style of the play have been set, but the performances will always be in a state of flux. The actors run the show. As they should. They’re the ones who have the relationship with the audience, not the director or the playwright. Once the play opens, it’s their baby—and most auteur types are not terribly comfortable with this idea. I don’t think of myself as a deeply controlling person. But I’ve been told that I am by my beloved family. And I have been dubbed a film auteur, so I suppose I must be one of those people. And yes, it took a degree of personal hubris to think that I was even remotely qualified to direct the premiere of my own play. But I also knew that this would be a wonderful exercise in humility. I’m humbled by the fact that I must eventually release the reins to this profoundly talented company of actors. There’s no postproduction for me, no editing or sound mixing, no color-correcting for the DVD. And when the run is over, the set will be struck, the cast will disperse and all that
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will be left are some dog-eared scripts and the knowledge that something remarkable happened on that stage. It used to be, when I was still just the playwright, I’d sink into a dark hole whenever one of my plays closed. Maybe that’s what drove me to seek out the permanence of film. But coming back to the theater as a hyphenate means that I have to cede control of my work twice-fold. It’s the ultimate lesson in letting go. So here’s to living in the moment. And here’s to the magic of the stage and the beautiful impermanence of it all.
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WHAT WOULD JESUS LISTEN TO? by David Nantais ‘TO HELL WITH THE DEVIL,” they proclaimed, dressed in black and yellow spandex, with hair that hung below their shoulders. They stood in that “rock star” pose that all adolescent boys from the 1980’s knew how to emulate: legs apart, leaning back slightly, arms raised triumphantly, with an aggressive and intimidating look in their eyes. Their music was heavy and loud and the beat was inviting, the kind of music you could pump your fist to. The year was 1987 and the band was Stryper, a heavy metal band to be sure, but one that identified itself as “Christian.” As a teenager, I was intrigued by Stryper’s image and its music, which sounded quite similar to many other mainstream “hair metal” bands of the day. But after listening to their songs I understood why they were different from other rock bands. They did not sing about sex or the occult, nor did they guzzle booze or bite the heads off bats like Ozzy Osbourne. Their message was clearly very different from their more worldly musical peers. In the 20 years since Stryper helped to popularize “Christian Rock,” the genre has grown substantially, and several contemporary groups have enjoyed a level of success their predecessors could not have imagined. According to a 2006 article on Beliefnet.com, Christian music is the sixth most popular type of music in the United States, outselling both jazz and classical genres. It appears that, in many circles, it is actually cool to listen to Christian rock. The genre has also expanded and includes several sub-genres. Indeed, almost every secular music genre now has a Christian counterpart. A few years back, I even heard a Christian “Death Metal” band called Mortification.
Rockin’ for Jesus Christian rock grew out of “Contemporary Christian Music” or C.C.M., a genre popularized in the 1970’s and 1980’s by artists like Phil Keaggy, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith and John Elefante. Originally influenced by folk and gospel, C.C.M. gradually incorporated elements of pop and rock music. The primary difference lies in the songs’ lyrics, which are meant to evangelize, spread the good news of Jesus and, presumably, win converts to the faith. Using rock music as an evangelical tool would have been unthinkable to most Christians in the 1950’s. This was not because the songs’ lyrics were necessarily objectionable, but because many worried that the sight of Elvis shaking his hips, coupled with rock’s “primal” 4/4 beat, might encourage teenagers to engage in promiscuous behavior. Today the sound of Christian rock is nearly indistinguishable from mainstream rock ‘n’ roll. The same aggressive guitar riffs and driving drum beats listeners objected to 50 years ago can be found in songs by Christian bands like Jars of Clay, Third Day and Audio Adrenaline. “There are few words in music that scare people more than ‘Christian rock,” the music journalist Andrew Beaujon wrote in his recent book, Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock. (The tide comes from a T-shirt Beaujon saw at a Christian rock festival,
David Nantais is a campus minister at St. Mary Student Parish in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has played drums in numerous rock bands over the past 17 years. Originally published in America. New York: May 21, 2007. Vol. 196, Iss. 18; pg. 22. Copyright 2007; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission of America Press.
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which depicted the nail wounds in Jesus’ hands.) Christian rock has been derided for many reasons, including for what some see as the genre’s simplistic “Jesus is my friend” piety. Indeed there is not much theological substance to some Christian rock lyrics. Bands may legitimately be “on fire” for God, but few have the theological vocabulary to communicate their religious experience. Take dc Talk, a band that is often cited as boosting Christian rock’s popularity in the early 1990’s. The title track from their album “Jesus Freak” features lyrics I would expect to read in a second grade catechetical workbook: “People say I’m strange, does it make me a stranger/ That my best friend was born in a manger.” Christian rock has also been characterized as mediocre music that sacrifices quality for a message. Hank Hill, a character on the Fox animated show “King of the Hill,” told the lead singer of a Christian rock band during one episode, “You aren’t making Christianity any better, you’re just making rock ‘n’ roll worse.” This accusation can be leveled against a number of Christian rock bands, but in all fairness, some secular rock music is just as mediocre.
Reformation Rock The religious roots of Christian rock are largely evangelical Protestant. While there are likely many Catholics in the Christian rock fan base, I, as a Catholic music fan, have always felt uncomfortable listening to it. One reason for this discomfort lies in the foundational differences between Protestant and Catholic theology. Thomas Rausch, S.J., explains such differences cogently in his recent book, Being Catholic in a Culture of Choice. Rausch writes that Protestant theology has traditionally been more “pessimistic” than Catholic theology regarding the holiness of the world. The “Catholic religious imagination,” as portrayed by Andrew Greeley and others, helps Catholics to see the sacred in everyday life. The foundations of Protestant ideology, however, focused on “Luther’s personal struggle over justification or his righteousness before God,” which, according to Rausch, “has resulted in Protestant theology’s stressing redemption more than incarnation.” This means that the world is more in need of being saved than it is good and holy. It makes sense that, if Christian rock emerged from this theological foundation, evangelicals would consider it vital to “redeem” rock music by baptizing it with Christian lyrics for a Christian audience. Yet for Catholic rock music fans, the approach is unnecessary. Since the genre was born, many rock artists have addressed religious and spiritual themes in their music. Often they do it in a very subtle way, but the message can be quite powerful. As songwriter and BustedHalo.com’s editor in chief, Bill McGarvey, wrote in a recent article in The Tablet, “Although I was raised Catholic, I now realize that my first religious experience came through music.” McGarvey is referring to secular rock music and, more specifically, to Bob Dylan, an artist with a history of grappling with transcendent themes in his music, but also one you would never find in the “Christian rock” bin at your local record store. The same is true for Bruce Springsteen and U2, who are often cited for the religious and social justice themes in their lyrics. Through much of their music, these artists, and others like them, evoke emotions and convey important messages about faith without any heavyhanded proselytizing. In this way, their spiritual and religious roots are more “Catholic,” meaning that God can be found incarnated in the music itself and in the transcendent experience of listening to it. These songs do not need to be baptized or redeemed. They are reflections of the human beings who created them-simultaneously beautiful and sinful, capable of great pain and great joy.
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Post-Christian Rock? Not all bands welcome the “Christian rock” label. Consider Switchfoot and Red. Although both bands are on the Christian rock touring circuit, they seem more comfortable referring to themselves as “Christians who play in a rock band” rather than pigeonholing themselves into the Christian rock genre. I first heard Red’s recent single, “Breathe Into Me,” on Detroit rock radio. The D.J. seemed apologetic when he introduced the song: “I guess these guys are a Christian band, but they sure do rock!” What I find especially interesting about these bands is that their lyrics avoid the cliche´s often associated with Christian rock. Switchfoot’s song, “American Dream,” for example, cleverly and accurately addresses the problem of materialism in U.S. culture. “I want to live and die for bigger things,” the lead singer belts out convincingly, “I’m tired of fighting for just me.” Some contemporary indie-rock acts have also been addressing issues of faith, spirituality, sin and redemption in their music, approaching these themes with a refreshing maturity. Sufjan Stevens has gained much respect and acclaim, especially after his album “Illinois” was released in the summer of 2005. His 2004 release, “Seven Swans,” brims with Christian imagery. Grant Gallicho raved about this disc in the pages of Commonweal, calling the collection of songs “a believer’s response to the call of God.” Stevens has rejected attempts to categorize his music as “Christian Rock,” but is equally adamant about expressing his faith in his music. He is an extraordinary musician who records and tours with equally adept players. His credibility as a songwriter is not harmed by his open expressions of faith. At the end of the day, people are going to listen to the types of music that appeal to them. There are plenty of genres from which to choose, and the number of bands grows daily. If you find Christian rock enjoyable, then, by all means, listen to it. If it helps bring you closer to God, that is even a better reason to listen to it. Christian rock, however, is not somehow ontologically purer than secular rock. Nor do Christians have to forgo the pleasures of listening to a mainstream rock band because they believe their faith requires a spoonful of Christianity to make the rock music go down. For those who do believe this, I am sorry for what they are missing. As for me, I will continue to take my rock music straight with no religion chaser.
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