Name	Bette Davis
Caption	Davis in Now, Voyager (1942)
Birth name	Ruth Elizabeth Davis
Birth date	April 05, 1908
Birth place	Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S.
Death date	October 06, 1989
Death place	Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1929–1989
Spouse	Harmon Nelson (1932–1938)Arthur Farnsworth (1940–1943)William Grant Sherry (1945–1950)Gary Merrill (1950–1960)

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres; from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.

After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and her confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.

Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and thrice divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 films, television and theater roles to her credit. In 1999, Davis was placed second, after Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of all time.

Life and career

Background and early acting career

Ruth Elizabeth Davis, known from early childhood as "Betty", was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ruth ("Ruthie") Augusta (née Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney; her sister Barbara ("Bobby") was born October 25, 1909. The family was Protestant, of English, French, and Welsh ancestry. In 1915, Davis's parents separated and Betty and Bobby attended a Spartan boarding school called Crestalban in Lanesborough, which is located in the Berkshires. In 1921, Ruth Davis moved to New York City with her daughters, where she worked as a portrait photographer. Betty was inspired to become an actress after seeing Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and Mary Pickford in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921), and changed the spelling of her name to "Bette" after Honoré de Balzac's La Cousine Bette. She received encouragement from her mother, who had aspired to become an actress.

She attended Cushing Academy, a boarding school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, where she met her future husband, Harmon O. Nelson, known as "Ham". In 1926, she saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck with Blanche Yurka and Peg Entwistle. Davis later recalled that it inspired her full commitment to her chosen career, and said, "Before that performance I wanted to be an actress. When it ended, I had to be an actress... exactly like Peg Entwistle.". She auditioned for admission to Eva LeGallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory, but was rejected by LeGallienne who described her attitude as "insincere" and "frivolous". She was accepted by the John Murray Anderson School of Theatre, and studied dance with Martha Graham.

She auditioned for George Cukor's stock theater company, and although he was not very impressed, he gave Davis her first paid acting assignment anyway – a one-week stint playing the part of a chorus girl in the play Broadway. She was later chosen to play Hedwig, the character she had seen Entwistle play, in The Wild Duck. After performing in Philadelphia, Washington and Boston, she made her Broadway debut in 1929 in Broken Dishes, and followed it with Solid South. A Universal Studios talent scout saw her perform and invited her to Hollywood for a screen test.

Transition from stage to film

Accompanied by her mother, Davis traveled by train to Hollywood, arriving on December 13, 1930. She later recounted her surprise that nobody from the studio was there to meet her; a studio employee had waited for her, but left because he saw nobody who "looked like an actress". She failed her first screen test but was used in several screen tests for other actors. In a 1971 interview with Dick Cavett, she related the experience with the observation, "I was the most Yankee-est, most modest virgin who ever walked the earth. They laid me on a couch, and I tested fifteen men ... They all had to lie on top of me and give me a passionate kiss. Oh, I thought I would die. Just thought I would die." A second test was arranged for Davis, for the film A House Divided (1931). Hastily dressed in an ill-fitting costume with a low neckline, she was rebuffed by the director William Wyler, who loudly commented to the assembled crew, "What do you think of these dames who show their chests and think they can get jobs?" Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios, considered terminating Davis's employment, but cinematographer Karl Freund told him she had "lovely eyes" and would be suitable for The Bad Sister (1931), in which she subsequently made her film debut. Her nervousness was compounded when she overheard the Chief of Production, Carl Laemmle, Jr., comment to another executive that she had "about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville", one of the film's co-stars. The film was not a success, and her next role in Seed (1931) was too brief to attract attention.

Universal Studios renewed her contract for three months, and she appeared in a small role in Waterloo Bridge (1931) before being lent to Columbia Pictures for The Menace and to Capital Films for Hell's House (all 1932). After nine months, and six unsuccessful films, Laemmle elected not to renew her contract. George Arliss chose Davis for the lead female role in The Man Who Played God (1932), and for the rest of her life, Davis credited him with helping her achieve her "break" in Hollywood. The Saturday Evening Post wrote, "she is not only beautiful, but she bubbles with charm", and compared her to Constance Bennett and Olive Borden. Warner Bros. signed her to a five-year contract.

In 1932, she married Harmon "Ham" Nelson, who was scrutinized by the press; his $100 a week earnings compared unfavorably with Davis's reported $1,000 a week income. Davis addressed the issue in an interview, pointing out that many Hollywood wives earned more than their husbands, but the situation proved difficult for Nelson, who refused to allow Davis to purchase a house until he could afford to pay for it himself. Davis had several abortions during the marriage.

(1934), Davis was acclaimed for her dramatic performance.]]

After more than 20 film roles, the role of the vicious and slatternly Mildred Rogers in the RKO Radio production of Of Human Bondage (1934), a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, earned Davis her first major critical acclaim. Many actresses feared playing unsympathetic characters and several had refused the role, but Davis viewed it as an opportunity to show the range of her acting skills. Her costar, Leslie Howard, was initially dismissive of her, but as filming progressed his attitude changed and he subsequently spoke highly of her abilities. The director, John Cromwell, allowed her relative freedom, and commented, "I let Bette have her head. I trusted her instincts." She insisted that she be portrayed realistically in her death scene, and said, "the last stages of consumption, poverty and neglect are not pretty and I intended to be convincing-looking".

The film was a success, and Davis's confronting characterization won praise from critics, with Life magazine writing that she gave "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress". Davis anticipated that her reception would encourage Warner Bros. to cast her in more important roles, and was disappointed when Jack Warner refused to lend her to Columbia Studios to appear in It Happened One Night, and instead cast her in the melodrama Housewife. When Davis was not nominated for an Academy Award for Of Human Bondage, The Hollywood Citizen News questioned the omission and Norma Shearer, herself a nominee, joined a campaign to have Davis nominated. This prompted an announcement from the Academy president, Howard Estabrook, who said that under the circumstances "any voter ... may write on the ballot his or her personal choice for the winners", thus allowing, for the only time in the Academy's history, the consideration of a candidate not officially nominated for an award. Claudette Colbert won the award for It Happened One Night but the uproar led to a change in Academy voting procedures the following year, whereby nominations were determined by votes from all eligible members of a particular branch, rather than by a smaller committee, with results independently tabulated by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

Davis appeared in Dangerous (1935) as a troubled actress and received very good reviews. E. Arnot Robertson wrote in Picture Post, "I think Bette Davis would probably have been burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago. She gives the curious feeling of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet." The New York Times hailed her as "becoming one of the most interesting of our screen actresses". She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, but commented it was belated recognition for Of Human Bondage, calling the award a "consolation prize". For the rest of her life, Davis maintained that she gave the statue its familiar name of "Oscar" because its posterior resembled that of her husband, whose middle name was Oscar, although her claim has been disputed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, among others.

(1936)]]

In her next film, The Petrified Forest (1936), Davis co-starred with Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart, but Bogart, in his first important role, received most of the critics' praise. Davis appeared in several films over the next two years but most were poorly received.

Legal case

Convinced that her career was being damaged by a succession of mediocre films, Davis accepted an offer in 1936 to appear in two films in England. Knowing that she was breaching her contract with Warner Bros., she fled to Canada to avoid legal papers being served upon her. Eventually, Davis brought her case to court in England, hoping to get out of her contract with Warner Bros. She later recalled the opening statement of the barrister, Sir Patrick Hastings, who represented Warner Bros. Hastings urged the court to "come to the conclusion that this is rather a naughty young lady and that what she wants is more money". He mocked Davis's description of her contract as "slavery" by stating, incorrectly, that she was being paid $1,350 per week. He remarked, "if anybody wants to put me into perpetual servitude on the basis of that remuneration, I shall prepare to consider it". The British press offered little support to Davis, and portrayed her as overpaid and ungrateful.

Davis explained her viewpoint to a journalist, saying "I knew that, if I continued to appear in any more mediocre pictures, I would have no career left worth fighting for." Davis's counsel presented her complaints – that she could be suspended without pay for refusing a part, with the period of suspension added to her contract, that she could be called upon to play any part within her abilities regardless of her personal beliefs, that she could be required to support a political party against her beliefs, and that her image and likeness could be displayed in any manner deemed applicable by the studio. Jack Warner testified, and was asked, "Whatever part you choose to call upon her to play, if she thinks she can play it, whether it is distasteful and cheap, she has to play it?" Warner replied, "Yes, she must play it."

(1937)]]

The case, decided by Branson J. in the English High Court, was reported as Warner Bros. Studios Incorporated v. Nelson in [1937] 1 KB 209. Davis lost the case and returned to Hollywood, in debt and without income, to resume her career. Olivia de Havilland mounted a similar case in 1943 and won.

Success with Warner Bros.

Davis began work on Marked Woman (1937), as a prostitute in a contemporary gangster drama inspired by the case of Lucky Luciano. The film and Davis's performance received excellent reviews, and her stature as a leading actress was enhanced.

During the filming of her next film, Jezebel (1938), Davis entered a relationship with director William Wyler. She later described him as the "love of my life", and said that making the film with him was "the time in my life of my most perfect happiness". The film was a success, and Davis's performance as a spoiled Southern belle earned her a second Academy Award, which led to speculation in the press that she would be chosen to play a similar character, Scarlett O'Hara, in Gone with the Wind. Davis expressed her desire to play Scarlett, and while David O. Selznick was conducting a search for the actress to play the role, a radio poll named her as the audience favorite. Warner offered her services to Selznick as part of a deal that also included Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but Selznick did not consider Davis as suitable, and rejected the offer.

Jezebel marked the beginning of the most successful phase of Davis's career, and over the next few years she was listed in the annual "Quigley Poll of the Top Ten Money Making Stars", which was compiled from the votes of movie exhibitors throughout the U.S. for the stars that had generated the most revenue in their theaters over the previous year. In contrast to Davis's success, her husband, Ham Nelson, had failed to establish a career for himself, and their relationship faltered. In 1938, Nelson obtained evidence that Davis was engaged in a sexual relationship with Howard Hughes and subsequently filed for divorce citing Davis's "cruel and inhuman manner".

(1939).]]

She was emotional during the making of her next film, Dark Victory (1939), and considered abandoning it until the producer Hal B. Wallis convinced her to channel her despair into her acting. The film became one of the highest grossing films of the year, and the role of Judith Traherne brought her an Academy Award nomination. In later years, Davis cited this performance as her personal favorite.

She appeared in three other box office hits in 1939, The Old Maid with Miriam Hopkins, Juarez with Paul Muni and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex with Errol Flynn. The latter was her first color film and her only color film made during the height of her career. To play the elderly Elizabeth I of England, Davis shaved her hairline and eyebrows. During filming she was visited on the set by the actor Charles Laughton. She commented that she had a "nerve" playing a woman in her sixties, to which Laughton replied, "Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut." Recalling the episode many years later, Davis remarked that Laughton's advice had influenced her throughout her career.

trailer (1940).]]

By this time, Davis was Warner Bros.' most profitable star, and she was given the most important of their female leading roles. Her image was considered with more care; although she continued to play character roles, she was often filmed in close-ups that emphasized her distinctive eyes. All This and Heaven Too (1940) was the most financially successful film of Davis's career to that point, while The Letter (1940) was considered "one of the best pictures of the year" by The Hollywood Reporter, and Davis won admiration for her portrayal of an adulterous killer, a role originated by famed actress Katharine Cornell. During this time, she was in a relationship with her former costar George Brent, who proposed marriage. Davis refused, as she had met Arthur Farnsworth, a New England innkeeper. They were married in December 1940.

In January 1941, Davis became the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but antagonized the committee members with her brash manner and radical proposals. Faced with the disapproval and resistance of the committee, Davis resigned, and was succeeded by Jean Hersholt, who implemented the changes she had suggested.

William Wyler directed Davis in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes ( RKO,1941), but they clashed over the character of Regina Giddens. Taking a role originally played on stage by Tallulah Bankhead, Davis felt Bankhead's original interpretation was appropriate and followed Hellman's intent, but Wyler wanted her to soften the character. Davis refused to compromise. She received another Academy Award nomination for her performance, and never worked with Wyler again.

War effort and personal tragedy

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Davis spent the early months of 1942 selling war bonds. After Jack Warner criticized her tendency to cajole crowds into buying, she reminded him that her audiences responded most strongly to her "bitch" performances. She sold two million dollars of bonds in two days, as well as a picture of herself in Jezebel for $250,000. She also performed for black regiments as the only white member of an acting troupe formed by Hattie McDaniel, that also included Lena Horne and Ethel Waters.

(1942)]]

At John Garfield's suggestion of opening a servicemen's club in Hollywood, Davis–with the aid of Warner, Cary Grant and Jule Styne–transformed an old nightclub into the Hollywood Canteen, which opened on October 3, 1942. Hollywood's most important stars volunteered to entertain servicemen. Davis ensured that every night there would be a few important "names" for the visiting soldiers to meet. She appeared as herself in the film Hollywood Canteen (1944) which used the canteen as the setting for a fictional story. Davis later commented, "There are few accomplishments in my life that I am sincerely proud of. The Hollywood Canteen is one of them." In 1980, she was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the United States Department of Defense's highest civilian award, for her work with the Hollywood Canteen.

Davis had initially shown little interest in the film Now, Voyager (1942) until Hal Wallis advised her that female audiences needed romantic dramas to distract them from the reality of their lives. It became one of the best known of her 'women's pictures'. In one of the film's most imitated scenes Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes as they are held in his lips before passing one to Davis. Film reviewers complimented Davis on her performance, the National Board of Review commenting that she gave the film "a dignity not fully warranted by the script".

During the early 1940s, several of Davis's film choices were influenced by the war, such as Watch on the Rhine (1943) and Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), a lighthearted all-star musical cavalcade, with each of the featured stars donating their fee to the Hollywood Canteen. Davis performed a novelty song, "They're Either Too Young or Too Old", which became a hit record after the film's release.

Old Acquaintance (1943) reunited her with Miriam Hopkins in a story of two old friends who deal with the tensions created when one of them becomes a successful novelist. Davis felt that Hopkins tried to upstage her throughout the film. The director Vincent Sherman recalled the intense competitiveness and animosity between the two actresses, and Davis often joked that she held back nothing in a scene in which she was required to shake Hopkins in a fit of anger.

In August 1943, Davis's husband, Arthur Farnsworth, collapsed while walking along a Hollywood street, and died two days later. An autopsy revealed that his fall had been caused by a skull fracture which had occurred about two weeks earlier. Davis testified before an inquest that she knew of no event that might have caused the injury. A finding of accidental death was reached. Highly distraught, Davis attempted to withdraw from her next film Mr. Skeffington (1944), but Jack Warner, who had halted production following Farnsworth's death, convinced her to continue.

Although she had gained a reputation for being forthright and demanding, her behavior during filming of Mr. Skeffington was erratic and out of character. She alienated director Vincent Sherman by refusing to film certain scenes and insisting that some sets be rebuilt. She improvised dialogue, causing confusion among other actors, and infuriated the writer Julius Epstein, who was also called upon to rewrite scenes at her whim. Davis later explained her actions with the observation, "when I was most unhappy I lashed out rather than whined". Some reviewers criticized Davis for the excess of her performance; James Agee wrote that she "demonstrates the horrors of egocentricity on a marathonic scale", but despite the mixed reviews, she received another Academy Award nomination.

Professional setbacks

Davis married an artist, William Grant Sherry, who also, when necessary, worked as a masseur, in 1945. She had been drawn to him because he claimed that he had never heard of her and was therefore not intimidated by her.

Davis refused the title role in Mildred Pierce (1945), a role for which Joan Crawford ultimately won an Academy Award, and instead made The Corn Is Green (1945) based on a play by Emlyn Williams. Davis played Miss Moffat, an English teacher who saves a young Welsh miner from a life in the coal pits, by offering him education. The part had originally been played in the theatre by Ethel Barrymore but Warner Bros. felt that the film version should depict the character as a younger woman. Davis disagreed and insisted on playing the part as written and wore a gray wig and padding under her clothes to create a dowdy appearance. The film was well received by critics and made a profit of $2.2 million. The critic E. Arnot Robinson observed that "only Bette Davis... could have combated so successfully the obvious intention of the adaptors of the play to make frustrated sex the mainspring of the chief character's interest in the young miner." He concluded that "the subtle interpretation she insisted on giving" kept the focus on the teacher's "sheer joy in imparting knowledge".

Her next film, A Stolen Life (1946), was the first and only film that Davis made with her own production company, BD Productions. Davis played dual roles, as twins. The film received poor reviews, and was described by Bosley Crowther as "a distressingly empty piece", but was one of her biggest box-office successes with a profit of $2.5 million. In 1947, the U.S. Treasury named Davis as the highest paid woman in the country, with her share of the film's profit accounting for most of her earnings. Her next film was Deception (1946), the first of her films to lose money.

Possessed (1947) had been tailor-made for Davis and was to have been her next project after Deception. However, she was pregnant and went on maternity leave. Joan Crawford played her role in Possessed and was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress. In 1947, at the age of 39, Davis gave birth to a daughter, Barbara Davis Sherry (known as B.D.) and later wrote in her memoir that she became absorbed in motherhood and considered ending her career. Her relationship with Sherry began to deteriorate and she continued making films, but her popularity with audiences was steadily declining.

Among the film roles offered to Davis following her return to film making was Rose Sayer in The African Queen (1951). When informed that the film was to be made in Africa, Davis refused the part, telling Jack Warner, "If you can't shoot the picture in a boat on the back lot, then I'm not interested." Katharine Hepburn played the role. Davis was also offered a role in a film version of the Virginia Kellogg prison drama Women Without Men. Originally intended to pair Davis with Joan Crawford, Davis made it clear that she would not appear in any "dyke movie", and the lead roles were played by Agnes Moorehead and Eleanor Parker when it was filmed as Caged (1950). She lobbied Jack Warner to make two films, Ethan Frome and a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln, however Warner vetoed each proposal.

In 1948, Davis was cast in Winter Meeting and, although she was initially enthusiastic, she soon learned that Warner had arranged for "softer" lighting to be used to disguise her age. She recalled that she had seen the same lighting technique "on the sets of Ruth Chatterton and Kay Francis, and I knew what they meant". She began to regret accepting the role and, to add to her disappointment, she was not confident in the abilities of her leading man, Jim Davis. She disagreed with amendments made to the script because of censorship restrictions and found that many of the aspects of the role that had initially appealed to her were no longer to be included. The film was later described by Bosley Crowther as "interminable" and he noted that "of all the miserable dilemmas in which Miss Davis has been involved ... this one is probably the worst". It failed at the box office and the studio lost nearly one million dollars.

Davis clashed with her co-star Robert Montgomery while making June Bride (1948), later describing him as "a male Miriam Hopkins... an excellent actor, but addicted to scene-stealing". The film marked her first comedy in several years, and earned her some positive reviews, but it was not particularly popular with audiences and returned only a small profit. Despite the lackluster box office receipts from her more recent films, in 1949, she negotiated a four-film contract with Warner Bros. which paid $10,285 per week and made her the highest-paid woman in the United States.

Jack Warner refused to allow her script approval and cast her in Beyond the Forest (1949). Davis reportedly loathed the script and begged Warner to recast the role, but he refused. After the film was completed, Warner released Davis from her contract, at her request. The reviews that followed were scathing; Dorothy Manners writing for the Los Angeles Examiner described the film as "an unfortunate finale to her brilliant career". Hedda Hopper wrote, "If Bette had deliberately set out to wreck her career, she could not have picked a more appropriate vehicle." The film contained the line, "What a dump!", which became closely associated with Davis after impersonators used it in their acts. In later years, Davis often used it as her opening line at speaking engagements.

Starting a freelance career

(1950)]]

By 1949, Davis and Sherry were estranged and Hollywood columnists were writing that Davis's career was at an end. She filmed The Story of a Divorce (released by RKO Radio Pictures in 1951 as Payment on Demand) but had received no other offers. Shortly before filming was completed, the producer Darryl F. Zanuck offered her the role of the aging theatrical actress Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950). Claudette Colbert, for whom the part had been written, had severely injured her back, and although production had been halted for two months in the hope that she might recover, she was unable to continue. Davis read the script, described it as the best she had ever read, and accepted the role. Within days she joined the cast in San Francisco to begin filming. During production, she established what would become a life-long friendship with her costar, Anne Baxter, and a romantic relationship with her leading man, Gary Merrill, which led to marriage. The film's director Joseph L. Mankiewicz later remarked, "Bette was letter perfect. She was syllable-perfect. The director's dream: the prepared actress."

Critics responded positively to Davis's performance and several of her lines became well-known, particularly, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night." She was again nominated for an Academy Award and critics such as Gene Ringgold described her Margo as her "all-time best performance". Pauline Kael wrote that much of Mankiewicz's vision of "the theater" was "nonsense" but commended Davis, writing "[the film is] saved by one performance that is the real thing: Bette Davis is at her most instinctive and assured. Her actress–vain, scared, a woman who goes too far in her reactions and emotions–makes the whole thing come alive."

Davis won a "Best Actress" award from the Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award. She also received the San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award as "Best Actress", having been named by them as the "Worst Actress" of 1949 for Beyond the Forest. During this time she was invited to leave her handprints in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

On July 3, 1950 Davis's divorce from William Sherry was finalized, and on July 28 she married Gary Merrill. With Sherry's consent, Merrill adopted B.D., Davis's daughter with Sherry, and in 1950, Davis and Merrill adopted a baby girl they named Margot. The family traveled to England, where Davis and Merrill starred in a murder-mystery film, Another Man's Poison (1951). When it received lukewarm reviews and failed at the box office, Hollywood columnists wrote that Davis's comeback had petered out, and an Academy Award nomination for The Star (1952) did not halt her decline.

Davis and Merrill adopted a baby boy, Michael, in 1952, and Davis appeared in a Broadway revue, Two's Company directed by Jules Dassin. She was uncomfortable working outside of her area of expertise; she had never been a musical performer and her limited theater experience had been more than 20 years earlier. She was also severely ill and was operated on for osteomyelitis of the jaw. Margot was diagnosed as severely brain damaged due to an injury sustained during or shortly after her birth, and was eventually placed in an institution. Davis and Merrill began arguing frequently, with B.D. later recalling episodes of alcohol abuse and domestic violence.

Few of Davis's films of the 1950s were successful and many of her performances were condemned by critics. The Hollywood Reporter wrote of mannerisms "that you'd expect to find in a nightclub impersonation of [Davis]", while the London critic, Richard Winninger, wrote, "Miss Davis, with more say than most stars as to what films she makes, seems to have lapsed into egoism. The criterion for her choice of film would appear to be that nothing must compete with the full display of each facet of the Davis art. Only bad films are good enough for her." Her films of this period included The Virgin Queen (1955), Storm Center (1956), & The Catered Affair (1956). As her career declined, her marriage continued to deteriorate until she filed for divorce in 1960. The following year, her mother died.

Renewed success

in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), opposite Joan Crawford.]]

In 1961, Davis opened in the Broadway production The Night of the Iguana to mostly mediocre reviews, and left the production after four months due to "chronic illness". She then joined Glenn Ford and Ann-Margret for the Frank Capra film A Pocketful of Miracles (1961) (a remake of Capra's Lady for a Day (1933)), based on a story by Damon Runyon. She accepted her next role, in the Grand Guignol horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) after reading the script and believing it could appeal to the same audience that had recently made Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) a success. She negotiated a deal that would pay her 10 percent of the worldwide gross profits, in addition to her salary. The film became one of the year's biggest successes.

Davis and Joan Crawford played two aging sisters, former actresses forced by circumstance to share a decaying Hollywood mansion. The director, Robert Aldrich, explained that Davis and Crawford were each aware of how important the film was to their respective careers and commented, "It's proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly." After filming was completed, their public comments against each other allowed the tension to develop into a lifelong feud. When Davis was nominated for an Academy Award, Crawford contacted the other Best Actress nominees (who were unable to attend the ceremonies) and offered to accept the award on their behalf should they win. Davis also received her only BAFTA Award nomination for this performance.

Daughter B.D. played a small role in the film and when she and Davis visited the Cannes Film Festival to promote it, she met Jeremy Hyman, an executive for Seven Arts Productions. After a short courtship, she married Hyman at the age of 16, with Davis's permission.

In September 1962, Davis placed an advertisement in Variety under the heading of "Situations wanted — women artists", which read, "Mother of three—10, 11 & 15—divorcee. American. Thirty years experience as an actress in Motion Pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumor would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway)." Davis said that she intended it as a joke, and she sustained her comeback over the course of several years. Dead Ringer (1964) was a crime drama in which she played twin sisters and Where Love Has Gone (1964) was a romantic drama based on a Harold Robbins novel. Davis played the mother of Susan Hayward but filming was hampered by heated arguments between Davis and Hayward. Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) was Robert Aldrich's follow-up to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, in which he planned to reunite Davis and Crawford, but when Crawford withdrew allegedly due to illness soon after filming began, she was replaced by Olivia de Havilland. The film was a considerable success and brought renewed attention to its veteran cast, which also included Joseph Cotten, Mary Astor and Agnes Moorehead.

In 1964 Davis was cast as the lead in an Aaron Spelling sitcom, The Decorator. A pilot episode was filmed, but was not shown, and the project was terminated. By the end of the decade, Davis had appeared in the British films The Nanny (1965), The Anniversary (1968), and Connecting Rooms (1970), but her career again stalled.

Late career

in late 1981 during a show celebrating Taylor's life]]

In the early 1970s, Davis was invited to appear in New York, in a stage presentation, Great Ladies of the American Cinema. Over five successive nights, a different female star discussed her career and answered questions from the audience; Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, Lana Turner, Sylvia Sidney, and Joan Crawford were the other participants. Davis was well received and was invited to tour Australia with the similarly themed, Bette Davis in Person and on Film, and its success allowed her to take the production to the United Kingdom.

In 1972, she played the lead role in two television films that were each intended as pilots for upcoming series for NBC, Madame Sin with Robert Wagner, and The Judge and Jake Wyler, with Joan Van Ark, but in each case, NBC decided against producing a series.

In the U.S., she appeared in the stage production, Miss Moffat, a musical adaptation of The Corn is Green, but after the show was panned by the Philadelphia critics during its pre-Broadway run, she cited a back injury and abandoned the show, which closed immediately. She played supporting roles in Burnt Offerings (1976) and The Disappearance of Aimee (1976), but she clashed with Karen Black and Faye Dunaway, respectively the stars of the two productions, because she felt that neither extended her an appropriate degree of respect, and that their behavior on the film sets was unprofessional.

In 1977, Davis became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. The televised event included comments from several of Davis's colleagues including William Wyler who joked that given the chance Davis would still like to refilm a scene from The Letter to which Davis nodded. Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda, Natalie Wood and Olivia de Havilland were among the actors who paid tribute, with de Havilland commenting that Davis "got the roles I always wanted".

Following the telecast she found herself in demand again, often having to choose between several offers. She accepted roles in the television miniseries The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978) and the theatrical film Death on the Nile (1978), an Agatha Christie murder mystery. The bulk of her remaining work was for television. She won an Emmy Award for (1979) with Gena Rowlands, and was nominated for her performances in White Mama (1980) and Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982). She also played supporting roles in two Disney films, Return from Witch Mountain (1978) and The Watcher in the Woods (1980).

Davis's name became well-known to a younger audience when Kim Carnes's song "Bette Davis Eyes" became a worldwide hit and the best-selling record of 1981 in the U.S., where it stayed at number one on the music charts for more than two months. Davis's grandson was impressed that she was the subject of a hit song and Davis considered it a compliment, writing to both Carnes and the songwriters, and accepting the gift of gold and platinum records from Carnes, and hanging them on her wall.

She continued acting for television, appearing in Family Reunion (1981) opposite her grandson J. Ashley Hyman, A Piano for Mrs. Cimino (1982) and Right of Way (1983) with James Stewart.

Illness, conflict and death

(1987) brought her acclaim during a period in which she was beset with failing health and personal trauma.]]

In 1983, after filming the pilot episode for the television series Hotel, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Within two weeks of her surgery she suffered four strokes which caused paralysis in the left side of her face and in her left arm, and left her with slurred speech. She commenced a lengthy period of physical therapy and, aided by her personal assistant, Kathryn Sermak, gained partial recovery from the paralysis.

During this time, her relationship with her daughter, B. D. Hyman, deteriorated when Hyman became a born-again Christian and attempted to persuade Davis to follow suit. With her health stable, she traveled to England to film the Agatha Christie mystery Murder with Mirrors (1985). Upon her return, she learned that Hyman had published a memoir, My Mother's Keeper, in which she chronicled a difficult mother-daughter relationship and depicted scenes of Davis's overbearing and drunken behavior.

Several of Davis's friends commented that Hyman's depictions of events were not accurate; one said, "so much of the book is out of context". Mike Wallace rebroadcast a 60 Minutes interview he had filmed with Hyman a few years earlier in which she commended Davis on her skills as a mother, and said that she had adopted many of Davis's principles in raising her own children. Critics of Hyman noted that Davis had financially supported the Hyman family for several years and had recently saved them from losing their house. Despite the acrimony of their divorce years earlier, Gary Merrill also defended Davis. Interviewed by CNN, Merrill said that Hyman was motivated by "cruelty and greed". Davis's adopted son, Michael Merrill, ended contact with Hyman and refused to speak to her again, as did Davis, who also disinherited her.

In her second memoir, This 'N That (1987), Davis wrote, "I am still recovering from the fact that a child of mine would write about me behind my back, to say nothing about the kind of book it is. I will never recover as completely from B.D.'s book as I have from the stroke. Both were shattering experiences." Her memoir concluded with a letter to her daughter, in which she addressed her several times as "Hyman", and described her actions as "a glaring lack of loyalty and thanks for the very privileged life I feel you have been given". She concluded with a reference to the title of Hyman's book, "If it refers to money, if my memory serves me right, I've been your keeper all these many years. I am continuing to do so, as my name has made your book about me a success."

at the Kennedy Center on December 6, 1987. They appeared together in the 1939 film Dark Victory, one of Davis' best-known roles.]]

Davis appeared in the television film As Summers Die (1986) and Lindsay Anderson's film The Whales of August (1987), in which she played the blind sister of Lillian Gish. The film earned good reviews, with one critic writing, "Bette crawls across the screen like a testy old hornet on a windowpane, snarling, staggering, twitching – a symphony of misfired synapses." Her last performance was the title role in Larry Cohen's Wicked Stepmother (1989). By this time her health was failing, and after disagreements with Cohen she walked off the set. The script was rewritten to place more emphasis on Barbara Carrera's character, and the reworked version was released after Davis's death.

After abandoning Wicked Stepmother and with no further film offers, Davis appeared on several talk shows and was interviewed by Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, Larry King and David Letterman, discussing her career but refusing to discuss her daughter. Her appearances were popular; Lindsay Anderson observed that the public enjoyed seeing her behaving "so bitchy". He commented, "I always disliked that because she was encouraged to behave badly. And I'd always hear her described by that awful word, feisty."

During 1988 and 1989, Davis was feted for her career achievements, receiving the Kennedy Center Honor, the Legion of Honor from France, the Campione d'Italia from Italy and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Lifetime Achievement Award. She collapsed during the American Cinema Awards in 1989 and later discovered that her cancer had returned. She recovered sufficiently to travel to Spain where she was honored at the Donostia-San Sebastián International Film Festival, but during her visit her health rapidly deteriorated. Too weak to make the long journey back to the U.S., she traveled to France where she died on October 6, 1989, at 11:20 pm, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. She was 81 years old.

She was interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, alongside her mother, Ruthie, and sister, Bobby. On her tombstone is written: "She did it the hard way", an epitaph that she mentioned in her memoir Mother Goddam as having been suggested to her by Joseph L. Mankiewicz shortly after they had filmed All About Eve.

In 1997, the executors of her estate, Michael Merrill, her son, and Kathryn Sermak, her former assistant, established "The Bette Davis Foundation" which awards college scholarships to promising actors and actresses. She admitted she was terrified during the making of her earliest films and that she became tough by necessity. "Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you are not a star", she said, "[but] I've never fought for anything in a treacherous way. I've never fought for anything but the good of the film." During the making of All About Eve, (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz told her of the perception in Hollywood that she was difficult, and she explained that when the audience saw her on screen, they did not consider that her appearance was the result of numerous people working behind the scenes. If she was presented as "a horse's ass ... forty feet wide, and thirty feet high", that is all the audience "would see or care about".

While lauded for her achievements, Davis and her films were sometimes derided; Pauline Kael described Now, Voyager (1942) as a "shlock classic", and by the mid-1940s her sometimes mannered and histrionic performances had become the subject of caricature. Reviewers such as Edwin Schallert for the Los Angeles Times praised Davis's performance in Mr. Skeffington (1944), while observing, "the mimics will have more fun than a box of monkeys imitating Miss Davis", and Dorothy Manners writing for the Los Angeles Examiner said of her performance in the poorly received Beyond the Forest, (1949) "no night club caricaturist has ever turned in such a cruel imitation of the Davis mannerisms as Bette turns on herself in this one". Time magazine noted that Davis was compulsively watchable even while criticizing her acting technique, summarizing her performance in Dead Ringer (1964) with the observation, "her acting, as always, isn't really acting: it's shameless showing off. But just try to look away!"

She attracted a following in the gay subculture and was frequently imitated by female impersonators such as Charles Pierce. Attempting to explain her popularity with gay audiences, the journalist Jim Emerson wrote, "Was she just a camp figurehead because her brittle, melodramatic style of acting hadn't aged well? Or was it that she was 'Larger Than Life,' a tough broad who had survived? Probably some of both." Individual performances continued to receive praise; in 1987, Bill Collins analyzed The Letter (1940), and described her performance as "a brilliant, subtle achievement", and wrote, "Bette Davis makes Leslie Crosbie one of the most extraordinary females in movies." In a 2000 review for All About Eve, (1950) Roger Ebert noted, "Davis was a character, an icon with a grand style, so even her excesses are realistic."

A few months before her death in 1989, Davis was one of several actors featured on the cover of Life magazine. In a film retrospective that celebrated the films and stars of 1939, Life concluded that Davis was the most significant actress of her era, and highlighted Dark Victory (1939) as one of the most-important films of the year. Her death made front-page news throughout the world as the "close of yet another chapter of the Golden Age of Hollywood". Angela Lansbury summed up the feeling of those of the Hollywood community who attended her memorial service, commenting after a sample from Davis's films were screened, that they had witnessed "an extraordinary legacy of acting in the twentieth century by a real master of the craft", that should provide "encouragement and illustration to future generations of aspiring actors".

In 1977, Davis became the first woman to be honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award. In 1999, the American Film Institute published its list of the "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars", which was the result of a film-industry poll to determine the "50 Greatest American Screen Legends" in order to raise public awareness and appreciation of classic film. Of the 25 actresses listed, Davis was ranked at number two, behind Katharine Hepburn.

The United States Postal Service honored Davis with a commemorative postage stamp in 2008, marking the 100th anniversary of her birth. The stamp features an image of her in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950). The First Day of Issue celebration took place September 18, 2008, at Boston University, which houses an extensive Bette Davis archive. Featured speakers included her son Michael Merrill and Lauren Bacall.

Academy Awards milestones

In 1962 Bette Davis became the first person to secure ten Academy Award nominations for acting. Since then only four people have equalled or surpassed this figure, Meryl Streep (with sixteen nominations and two wins), Katharine Hepburn (twelve nominations and four wins), Jack Nicholson (twelve nominations and three wins) and Laurence Olivier (ten nominations and one win).

Steven Spielberg purchased Davis's Oscars for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938) when they were offered for auction for $207,500 and $578,000, respectively, and returned them to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

1934: Davis's performance in Of Human Bondage (1934) was widely acclaimed and when she was not nominated for an Academy Award, several influential people mounted a campaign to have her name included. The Academy relaxed its rules for that year only to allow for the consideration of any performer nominated in a write-in vote; therefore, any performance of the year was technically eligible for consideration. Given the well-publicized hoopla, some sources still consider this as a nomination for Davis; however, the Academy does not officially record this as a nomination.

1935: Won for Dangerous

1938: Won for Jezebel

1939: Nominated for Dark Victory

1940: Nominated for The Letter

1941: Nominated for The Little Foxes

1942: Nominated for Now, Voyager

1944: Nominated for Mr. Skeffington

1950: Nominated for All About Eve

1952: Nominated for The Star

1962: Nominated for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Filmography

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

bettedavis.com, Operated by the Estate of Bette Davis

Bette Davis photographs and bibliography at virtual-history.com

Category:1908 births Category:1989 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:Actors from Massachusetts Category:American actors of English descent Category:American actors of French descent Category:American actors of Welsh descent Category:American film actors Category:American memoirists Category:American Protestants Category:American radio actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:American women writers Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) Category:California Democrats Category:Cancer deaths in France Category:Deaths from breast cancer Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Massachusetts Democrats Category:MGM Records artists Category:People from Lowell, Massachusetts Category:Presidents of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Category:People from Dennis, Massachusetts

Name	Kim Carnes
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Kim Carnes
Alias	Kim Carnes Ellingson
Born	July 20, 1945
Origin	Hollywood, California,United States
Instrument	VocalsKeyboardsGuitarHarmonica
Genre	RockCountryBlue-eyed soul
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician
Years active	1967–present
Label	A&M;EMIMCA
Associated acts	Kim & Dave, David Cassidy, Gene Cotton, Randy Meisner, Kenny Rogers, USA for Africa, James Ingram, Barbra Streisand, Smokey Robinson, Clarence Clemons, Neil Diamond, Angelo (producer, Kings of Leon), Jeff Bridges and many others.
Url	KimCarnes.com
Notable instruments	Acoustic guitarFender RhodesAcoustic pianoPianoMelodicaKeyboardSynthesizerArp Synthesizer

Kim Carnes (born 20 July 1945 Hollywood, California) is a US singer-songwriter. She is a two-time Grammy Award winner noted for her distinctive raspy vocal style.

Early career

After writing songs for many years, Kim Carnes signed her first publishing deal in 1969 with famed producer Jimmy Bowen. During this period, she shared demo-recording time with Bowen's other writers, including Don Henley, Glenn Frey, and J.D. Souther. Carnes wrote and sang "Nobody Knows", which was featured in the end credits of the 1971 film, Vanishing Point. The film also featured Carnes's first selection as a songwriter, "Sing Out for Jesus", which was recorded by Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton.

Her first album, Rest on Me, produced by Jimmy Bowen, was released in 1972. Her self-titled album in 1975 contained her first charted hit, "You're a Part Of Me" (No. 32 AC).

In 1980 her duet with Kenny Rogers "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer" became a major hit on the Pop (No. 4), Country (No. 3) and AC (No. 2) charts.

Bette Davis admitted to being a fan of the song and approached Carnes and the songwriters to thank them. Davis wrote to Carnes after the song was released saying she loved the song. "It was a thrill to become a part of the rock generation", she said in her memoir 'This 'N That.' Davis' grandson, Ashley, told the screen legend she had "finally made it". Carnes and Davis struck up a special friendship, with the singer visiting her at her home several times until her 1989 death. In what she considers a career highlight, Carnes performed the song live for Davis at a tribute to the legendary actress held just before her death. Most recently, the song has been used in a Clairol Nice 'n Easy advertisement in the UK. The ad featuring the song has expanded into South Africa and other territories around the world. In 2008, the song was featured in the opening scene of the documentary film, .

Most recently "Bette Davis Eyes" was used in Episode 8, Season 1 of Fox's new comedy, Raising Hope. The song can be heard as Virginia Chance races behind the gas station to relieve herself, and is caught publicly urinating.

Later career

Carnes' later Hot 100 hits included the top 15 charter "Crazy in the Night" (from Barking at Airplanes) and "What About Me?" with Kenny Rogers and James Ingram. Carnes reached the AC Top 10 four times after "Bette Davis Eyes" with "I Pretend" (No. 9), "What About Me?" (No. 1), "Make No Mistake, He's Mine" with Barbra Streisand (No. 8) (co-produced by Carnes with Bill Cuomo) and "Crazy in Love" (No. 10). On January 19, 1985, Carnes had the distinction of being on the Billboard Hot 100 with three singles simultaneously, "What About Me", "Make No Mistake, He's Mine" and "Invitation to Dance", from the soundtrack to the film, That's Dancing! This meant she was on the chart as a solo artist in addition to being part of a duo and a trio.

Carnes was nominated for two more Grammys - Best Pop Female for Voyeur, and Best Rock Female for "Invisible Hands". In 1983, Kim's song, "I'll Be Here Where the Heart Is", was included on the Flashdance soundtrack which received a Grammy for Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture. Carnes was one of the singers invited to perform on USA for Africa's 1985 famine relief fundraising single "We Are the World" and can be seen in the music video and heard singing the last line of the song's bridge with Huey Lewis and Cyndi Lauper. In 1987 she sang the song "My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own" in a duet with Jeffrey Osborne for the soundtrack to the movie Spaceballs. She also sang a duet of the Johnny Cash classic, "Ring of Fire", with Jeff Bridges, for the film The Contender.

Several of Carnes songs, including "Voyeur", "I'll Be Here Where the Heart Is" and "Gypsy Honeymoon" were hits for her in countries throughout Europe and South America. As a songwriter, she has had two No. 1 country singles. Her duet with Barbra Streisand was re-recorded as "Make No Mistake, She's Mine" by Ronnie Milsap and Kenny Rogers which was a No. 1 Country and No. 42 AC hit in 1987. She also wrote "The Heart Won't Lie", a No. 1 duet for Reba McEntire and Vince Gill in 1993. Co-writing with others, Carnes has had songs covered by such country stars as Deana Carter, Kevin Sharp, Matraca Berg, Carolyn Dawn Johnson. Sawyer Brown, Suzy Bogguss, Collin Raye, Pam Tillis, Tim McGraw and Tanya Tucker.

In 2004, Carnes released the album Chasin' Wild Trains. An extensive European tour followed with the album achieving success in the Americana format. She continues to tour throughout the U.S., Europe and South America, and currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with husband Dave Ellingson. She has two sons, Collin and Ry. Her son Ry is named after musician Ry Cooder, who guests on the song "Rough Edges" from her Barking at Airplanes album. Son Collin is also featured on that album at the beginning of the song "Crazy in the Night".

Discography

References

External links

Kim Carnes - Official Web Site

Kim Carnes Fan Club Web Site

Category:American country singers Category:American female singers Category:American folk singers Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:American pop singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Grammy Award winners Category:1945 births Category:Living people

Name	Vincent Price
Caption	from the trailer for the film Laura (1944)
Birth name	Vincent Leonard Price, Jr.
Birth date	May 27, 1911
Birth place	St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Death date	October 25, 1993
Death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1935–1993
Spouse	Edith Barrett (1938-1948)Mary Grant Price (1949-1973)Coral Browne (1974-1991; her death)

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.

Early life and career

Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., who was the president of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family's fortune.

Price attended St. Louis Country Day School. He was further educated at Yale in art history and fine art. He was a member of the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in the theatre during the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage from 1935.

Career

He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940), as well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). , in which he had a three-year run, photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1942.]] Price's first venture into the horror genre was in the 1939 Boris Karloff film Tower of London. The following year he portrayed the title character in the film The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a vocal cameo at the end of the 1948 horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein).

In 1946 Price reunited with Tierney in two notable films, Dragonwyck and Leave Her to Heaven. There were also many villainous roles in film noir thrillers like The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948) and The Bribe (1949) with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Charles Laughton. His first starring role was as conman James Addison Reavis in the 1950 biopic The Baron of Arizona. He also did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar. He was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in a series that ran from 1943 to 1951.

In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, with a role in House of Wax (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office, then The Mad Magician (1954), and then the monster movie The Fly (1958). Price also starred in the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as the eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. Price played Dr. Warren Chapin, in The Tingler a 1959 horror-thriller film by the American producer and director William Castle. In between these horror films, Price played Baka (the master builder) in The Ten Commandments. In the 1955-1956 television season he appeared three times as Rabbi Gershom Seixos in the ABC anthology series, Crossroads, a study of clergymen from different denominations.

1960s

In the 1960s, Price had a number of low-budget successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) including the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963) The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965). He also starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), a film based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. In 1968 Price portrayed witchhunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General, which is also known as The Conqueror Worm.

He also starred in comedy films, notably Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965). In 1968 he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day opposite Patricia Routledge.

He often spoke of his pleasure at playing Egghead in the Batman television series. One of his co-stars, Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), said Price was her favorite villain in the series. In an often-repeated anecdote from the set of Batman, Price, after a take was printed, started throwing eggs at series stars Adam West and Burt Ward, and when asked to stop replied, "With a full artillery? Not a chance!", causing an eggfight to erupt on the soundstage. This incident is reenacted in the behind-the-scenes telefilm .

In the 1960s, he began his role as a guest on the game show Hollywood Squares, even becoming a semi-regular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980. He was known for usually making fun of Rose Marie's age, and using his famous voice to answer maliciously to questions.

Later career

During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. Price accepted a cameo part in the children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario Canada, on the local television station CHCH. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about the show's various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He also appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed a pair of campy serial killers. That same year Price appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus. Price also recorded dramatic readings of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.

He greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture. Price's voiceover is heard on Alice Cooper's first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare from 1975, and he also appeared in the corresponding TV special . He starred for a year in the early 1970s in a syndicated daily radio program, Tales of the Unexplained. He also made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy showcasing his art expertise and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist.

In October 1976, Price appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.

In the summer of 1977, he began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, the play is set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. In an attempt to earn some much-needed money, he speaks to the audience about his life, his works and, in the second act, about his love for Lord Alfred Douglas, which led to his downfall.

The original tour of the play was a success in every city that it played, except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed it at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. Price would eventually perform the play worldwide. In her biography of her father Victoria Price state that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was the best acting that he ever performed.

From 1981 to 1989, he hosted the PBS television series Mystery!. Also, in 1985, he was voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious Vincent Van Ghoul, who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo and the gang in recapturing thirteen evil demons. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser.

In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and the narrator for The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers.

In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine, facing the end of their days.

In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).

Price also appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple).

A witty raconteur, Price was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he once demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher. Price was a noted gourmet cook and art collector. From 1962 to 1971, Sears, Roebuck offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 pieces of fine art to the general public. Price selected and commissioned works for the collection, including works by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí. He also authored several cookbooks and hosted a cookery TV show, Cooking Pricewise.

Personal life

Price was married three times and fathered a son, named Vincent Barrett Price, with his first wife, former actress Edith Barrett. Price and his second wife Mary Grant Price donated hundreds of works of art and a large amount of money to East Los Angeles College in the early 1960s in order to endow the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery there. Their daughter, Mary Victoria Price, was born in 1962.

Price's last marriage was to the Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). He converted to Catholicism to marry her, and she became a U.S. citizen for him.

Death

Price was a lifelong smoker. He had long suffered from emphysema and Parkinson's disease, which had forced his role in Edward Scissorhands to be much smaller than intended.

His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery!, as his condition was becoming noticeable on-screen. He died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993. He was cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu, California.

The A&E; Network aired an episode of Biography highlighting Price's horror career the next night, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E; produced its updated episode, a show titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price (Citadel Press, 1995). In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.

Legacy

In 1951, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Price donated some 90 pieces from his own collection to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, thus establishing the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the U.S. Today, the Vincent Price Art Gallery continues to present world-class exhibitions, and remains one of the actor's most enduring legacies. The collection contains over 2,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of five million dollars.

Price was an Honorary Board Member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum located in Bristol, Connecticut until his death. The museum features detailed life-size wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes and The Masque of the Red Death.

A black box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.

Director Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who was obsessed with the grim and macabre. It is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price even had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws. The October 2005 episode of the Channel 101 series Yacht Rock featured comedian James Adomian as Vincent Price during the recording of Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch where Vincent Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s and '60s. Other cast members who have played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season 10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994-1995 season).

In 1999, a frank and detailed biography written by his daughter, Victoria Price, about her father was published by St. Martin's Press.

Filmography

:See Vincent Price filmography

References

Further reading

Price, Vincent, I Like What I Know - A Visual Autobiography, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, copyright 1959.

External links

Vincent Price Gallery

vincentprice.org

St. Louis Walk of Fame

The Vincent Price Exhibit

Escape (1950)">Vincent Price performs "Three Skeleton Key" on Escape (1950)

Escape (1950)">Vincent Price in "Bloodbath" on Escape (1950)

Profile @ Turner Classic Movies

Vincent Price Papers catalog

Tilex ad in Family Circle

The Saint radio program

Category:Actors from Missouri Category:Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art Category:American film actors Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:Deaths from emphysema Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:People from St. Louis, Missouri Category:People with Parkinson's disease Category:Yale University alumni Category:Gilbert and Sullivan performers Category:1911 births Category:1993 deaths Category:The Yale Record alumni

Name	Miriam Hopkins
Caption	Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (1935)
Birth date	October 18, 1902
Birth place	Savannah, Georgia, United States
Death date	October 09, 1972
Death place	New York City, New York, United States
Years active	1928–1970
Occupation	Actress
Birth name	Ellen Miriam Hopkins
Spouse	Brandon Peters (1926–1931) Austin Parker (1931–1932) Anatole Litvak (1937–1939) Raymond B. Brock (1945–1951)

Miriam Hopkins (October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an American actress known for her versatility in a wide variety of roles.

Born as Ellen Miriam Hopkins in Savannah, Georgia, she was raised in Bainbridge, a town in the state's southwest near the Alabama border. She attended a finishing school in Vermont and later Syracuse University in New York.

Career

At the age of 20, she became a chorus girl in New York City. In 1930, she signed with Paramount Pictures, and made her official film debut in Fast and Loose. Her first great success was in the 1931 horror drama film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which she portrayed the character Ivy Pearson; a prostitute who becomes entangled with the lead protagonists Jekyll and Hyde. Hopkins received rave reviews, however due to the controversy that surrounded the finished film and in particular, her character, many of Hopkins's scenes were cut before the official release. This reduced Hopkins to approximately five minutes of screen time. Nevertheless her career ascended swiftly thereafter and in 1932 she scored her breakthrough in Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, where she proved her charm and wit as a beautiful and jealous pickpocket. During the pre-code Hollywood era in the early 1930's, she appeared in such other films as The Smiling Lieutenant, The Story of Temple Drake and Design for Living, all of which were box office successes and critically acclaimed. Her pre-code films were also considered quite risqué for their time, with The Story of Temple Drake depicting a rape scene and Design for Living featuring a menage-a-trois plot with Fredric March and Gary Cooper. Hopkins also had great success during the remainder of the decade with the romantic screwball comedy The Richest Girl in the World (1934), the historical drama Becky Sharp (1935), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, Barbary Coast (1935), These Three (1936) (the first of four films with director William Wyler) and The Old Maid (1939). Hopkins was one of the first actresses approached to play the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934), however she famously rejected the part. The role went to Claudette Colbert and resulted in an Academy Award win.

Hopkins had well-publicized fights with her arch-enemy Bette Davis (Davis was having an affair with Hopkins' husband at the time, Anatole Litvak), when they co-starred in their two films The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance (1943). Davis admitted to enjoying very much a scene in Old Acquaintance in which she shakes Hopkins hard. There were even press photos taken with both divas in boxing rings with gloves up and director Vincent Sherman between the two.

After Old Acquaintance, she did not work again in films until The Heiress (1949), where she played the lead character's aunt. In Mitchell Leisen's 1951's screwball comedy The Mating Season, she gave a comic performance as Gene Tierney's character's mother. She also acted in The Children's Hour, which is a remake of her film These Three (1936). In the remake, she played the aunt to Shirley MacLaine, while MacLaine took Hopkins' original role.

Hopkins auditioned for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, having one advantage none of the other candidates had: she was a native Georgian. However, the part went to Vivien Leigh.

She was a television pioneer, performing in teleplays in three decades, spanning the late 1940s through the late 1960s, in such programs as The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre (1949), Pulitzer Prize Playhouse (1951), Lux Video Theatre (1951–1955), and even an episode of The Flying Nun in 1969.

Though she is best remembered for her film work, she has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures at 1701 Vine Street, and one for television at 1708 Vine Street.

Private life

Hopkins was married and divorced four times: first to actor Brandon Peters, second to aviator Austin Parker, third to the director Anatole Litvak, and fourth to war correspondent Raymond B. Brock. In 1932, Hopkins adopted a son, Michael Hopkins.

Hopkins died in New York, New York from a heart attack nine days before her 70th birthday.

Filmography

{| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 90%;" |- bgcolor="#B0C4DE" align="center" ! Year ! width=200px|Title ! width=150px|Role ! Notes |- | 1930 | Fast and Loose | Marion Lenox | Hopkins's film debut |- | rowspan=3|1931 | The Smiling Lieutenant | Princess Anna | The first of three films Hopkins made with Lubitsch |- | 24 Hours | Rosie Duggan | |- | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | Ivy Pearson | Fredric March won an Oscar for his performance |- | rowspan=4|1932 | Two Kinds of Women | Emma Krull | |- | Dancers in the Dark | Gloria Bishop | |- | World and the Flesh | Maria Yaskaya | |- | Trouble in Paradise | Lily | Second film directed by Lubitsch and starring Hopkins |- | rowspan=3|1933 | The Story of Temple Drake | Temple Drake | |- | The Stranger's Return | Louise Starr | |- | Design for Living | Gilda Farrell | Third and final film Hopkins and Lubitsch made together |- | rowspan=3|1934 | All of Me | Lydia Darrow | |- | She Loves Me Not | Curly Flagg | |- | The Richest Girl in the World | Dorothy Hunter | First of five films Hopkins and McCrea made together |- | rowspan=3|1935 | Becky Sharp | Becky Sharp | Nominated - Academy Award for Best ActressThe first feature film made in the three strip technicolor process |- | Barbary Coast | Mary 'Swan' Rutledge | Second film starring Hopkins and McCrea |- | Splendor | Phyllis Manning Lorrimore | Third film starring Hopkins and McCrea |- | rowspan=2|1936 | These Three | Martha Dobie | The film was adapted from the 1934 play The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman. Fourth film starring Hopkins and McCrea |- | Men Are Not Gods | Ann Williams | |- | rowspan=3|1937 | The Woman I Love | Madame Helene Maury | Hopkins married director Anatole Litvak shortly after this film was made. It is the only film Hopkins made with Paul Muni |- | Woman Chases Man | Virginia Travis | Final film Hopkins and McCrea made together |- | Wise Girl | Susan 'Susie' Fletcher | |- | 1939 | The Old Maid | Delia Lovell Ralston | The first of two films Hopkins made with Bette Davis |- | rowspan=2|1940 | Virginia City | Julia Hayne | Hopkins co-starred with Errol Flynn |- | Lady with Red Hair | Mrs. Leslie Carter | |- | 1942 | A Gentleman After Dark | Flo Melton | |- | 1943 | Old Acquaintance | Millie Drake | Second of two films Hopkins made with Bette Davis. |- | 1949 | The Heiress | Aunt Lavinia | Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture |- | 1951 | The Mating Season | Fran Carleton | |- | rowspan=2|1952 | The Outcasts of Poker Flat | Mrs. Shipton/'The Duchess' | |- | Carrie | Julie Hurstwood | |- | 1961 | The Children's Hour | Lily Mortar | Hopkins had starred in the original film adaptation of the play The Children's Hour entitled These Three in the role of Martha Dobie. In this film Shirley MacLaine played Martha and Miriam Hopkins played her Aunt Lily. |- | 1964 | Fanny Hill | Mrs. Maude Brown | |- | 1966 | The Chase | Mrs. Reeves | Hopkins played the mother of Robert Redford's character |- | 1970 | Savage Intruder | Katharine Parker | Hopkins's last film |}

Short Subjects:

"The Home Girl" (1928)

"Hollywood on Parade No. B-1" (1933)

References

External links

Photographs of Miriam Hopkins

Miriam Hopkins Interview with Biographer Allan Ellenberger

Miriam Hopkins in June 1933 Vanity Fair photographed by Edward Steichen

Category:1902 births Category:1972 deaths Category:American film actors Category:Syracuse University alumni Category:American television actors Category:People from Savannah, Georgia Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Actors from Georgia (U.S. state) Category:20th-century actors

Name	Martin Short
Nickname's	Marty, Shorty
Caption	Short hosting Broadway on Broadway, September 2006
Birth name	Martin Hayter Short
Birth date	March 26, 1950
Birth place	Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Occupation	Comedian, actor, screenwriter, singer, producer, voice actor
Years active	1972–present
Spouse	Nancy Dolman (1980-2010 [her death]; 3 children)

Martin Hayter Short, CM (born March 26, 1950) is a Canadian-American comedian, actor, writer, singer and producer. He is best known for his comedy work, particularly on the TV programs SCTV and Saturday Night Live. He has also starred in many popular comedic films such as Three Amigos, Innerspace, Pure Luck, Jungle 2 Jungle, Mars Attacks!, Father of the Bride, and Father of the Bride Part 2.

Early life

Short, youngest of five children, was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, the son of Olive (née Hayter), a violinist, and Charles Patrick Short, a corporate executive with Stelco, a Canadian steel company. He had three older brothers, David, Michael, and Brian, and one older sister, Nora. Short's father was a Roman Catholic refugee from Crossmaglen, South Armagh, Northern Ireland, who came to North America as a stowaway during the Irish War of Independence. Short's mother, who was the concertmaster of the Hamilton Symphony Orchestra, encouraged Martin's early creative endeavours. His eldest brother, David, was killed in a car accident in 1962, when Short was 12. His mother died of cancer when he was 17; and, two years later in 1969, his father died of complications from a stroke.

Short attended Westdale Secondary School and graduated in 1972 from McMaster University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Work.

Career

Early career

When Short graduated from McMaster University, he intended to pursue a career in social work; but he became interested in acting once he was cast in a Toronto production of Godspell that same year. Among other members of that production's cast were Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, and Andrea Martin; Paul Shaffer was the Musical Director. He was subsequently cast in several television shows and plays, including the intense topical drama Fortune and Men's Eyes. He worked solely in Canada through 1979.

In 1979, Short starred in the U.S. sitcom The Associates about a group of young novice lawyers working at a Wall Street law firm. In 1980, he joined the cast of I'm a Big Girl Now, a sitcom starring Diana Canova. Canova was offered the sitcom because of her success playing Corinne Tate Flotsky on ABC's Soap and left Soap shortly before Short's newlywed wife Nancy Dolman joined it.

SCTV

Short was encouraged to pursue comedy by McMaster classmates Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas, whom he joined at improv troupe The Second City in 1977. Short came to public notice when the troupe produced a show for television, Second City Television or SCTV, which ran for several years in Canada and the United States. At SCTV, Short developed several characters before moving on to Saturday Night Live for the 1984-1985 season:

Talk show host Brock Linehan, based on the Canadian interviewer Brian Linehan.

Aged songwriter Irving Cohen, loosely based on American composer Irving Caesar.

Spurious albino entertainer Jackie Rogers, Jr.

Current-events commentator Troy Soren

Industrialist and art patron Bradley P. Allen

Defense attorney Nathan Thurm

Oddball man-child Ed Grimley, later featured in his own animated television series, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley.

Saturday Night Live

At SNL, Short helped revive the show with his many characters after Eddie Murphy left. Short's SNL characters included Wheel of Fortune fan Ed Grimley, which he borrowed from his SCTV days. The Grimley character became Short's best-known original character. He also was recognized for his impersonations of celebrities, notably Jerry Lewis and Katharine Hepburn, and for the character of Nathan Thurm. SNL proved to be the springboard to a long career in film and TV.

Television

In addition to his revered work on SCTV and SNL, Short has starred in several television specials and series of his own. In 1985, Short starred in the one-hour Showtime special, Martin Short: Concert for the North Americas. This is Short's first live concert, interspersed with studio sketches and a wraparound featuring Jackie Rogers Jr. Co-produced by the CBC, this aired as The Martin Short Comedy Special in Canada in March 1986. In 1989, Short headlined another one-hour comedy special, this time for HBO, I, Martin Short, Goes Hollywood, Short's classic send-up of all things Hollywood. It featured many of his characters including: Lawrence Orbach, Ed Grimley, Jackie Rogers Jr, Bradley P Allen, Troy Soren, and Dale O'Day (the dancing fence); released on VHS, it is now out of print. Martin Short has had no less than three shows called The Martin Short Show, including a sitcom (The Martin Short Show, 1994), a sketch comedy show (The Show Formerly Known as the Martin Short Show, 1995), and a syndicated talk show (The Martin Short Show, 1999). Short starred as Jiminy Glick on Comedy Central's Primetime Glick (2001–03). In addition to his own series, Short has guest starred on several shows including Arrested Development, and most recently in a critically acclaimed turn as Leonard Winstone on FX's Damages. As of August 2010, Short is the voice of the Cat in the Hat in The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! on the Public Broadcasting Service.

Film

After doing sketch comedy for several years, Short focused on film—appearing in ¡Three Amigos!, Innerspace, The Big Picture, Captain Ron, Clifford, and the 1991 remake of Father of the Bride and its sequel. In 1996, he appeared in Tim Burton's sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks! as image-obsessed, hormonally driven Press Secretary Jerry Ross. In 2004, he wrote and starred in Jiminy Glick in Lalawood with Jan Hooks as his wife, Dixie Glick. Also in 1997, he appeared as Wall Street broker Richard Kempster in Jungle 2 Jungle starring Tim Allen. In 2006, he starred in another movie with Tim Allen, . Short was also in Pure Luck, directed by Nadia Tass, with Danny Glover and Sheila Kelley and in Three Fugitives, directed by Francis Veber, with Nick Nolte and James Earl Jones. He also played Thimbletack the Brownie from the Spiderwick Chronicles.

On August 31, 2007, he appeared as the new host of O Canada!, a 360° Circlevision® film premiering at Walt Disney World's EPCOT theme park.

Stage

Short also resumed work in the theater, taking a role in the 1993 musical version of the Neil Simon work The Goodbye Girl, receiving a Tony Award nomination and an Outer Critic Circle Award.

He had the lead role in the 1999 Broadway revival of the musical Little Me, which earned him a Tony Award and another Outer Celtic Circle Award.

In 2003, Short took to the stage once again in the critically acclaimed Los Angeles run of The Producers. Short played the role of the accountant, Leo Bloom, opposite Jason Alexander's Max Bialystock. Although the role of Leo Bloom was originated on Broadway by Matthew Broderick, Mel Brooks first approached Short about doing the part opposite Nathan Lane. On the subject, Short has stated in numerous interviews that, while he was thrilled by the opportunity, the idea of having to move his family from their Los Angeles home to New York for a year was less than ideal and ultimately proved a deal-breaker.

Short performed in his satirical one-man show, with a full cast of six, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway. The show toured several cities in the spring of 2006: began previews July 29; opened August 17; and closed January 7, 2007. In it, he performed his classic characters Grimley, Cohen, and Glick.

As Glick, Short brought a member of the audience (usually a celebrity) on stage and interviews him or her. Jerry Seinfeld was the guest on opening night and the subjects have included Al Roker, Bebe Neuwirth, Ben Stiller, Bernadette Peters, Bette Midler, Bill Maher, Bob Costas, Brian Williams, Chris Matthews, Chris Noth, Conan O'Brien, David Hasselhoff, David Schwimmer, Dennis Miller, Diane Keaton, Doris Roberts, Dylan Baker, Gene Simmons, Goldie Hawn, Isaac Mizrahi, James Belushi, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jerry Springer, Jimmy Fallon, Joe Scarborough, Jon Stewart, Kathleen Turner, Kathryn Erbe, Kevin Nealon, Kevin Pollak, Kristin Chenoweth, Larry King, Mariska Hargitay, Martha Stewart, Michael Kors, Michael Riedel, Molly Shannon, Nathan Lane, Neil Patrick Harris, Neil Simon, Nia Vardalos, Regis Philbin, Richard Kind, Rita Wilson, Roseanne, Rosie O'Donnell, Sean Hayes, Spencer Breslin, Stanley Tucci, Stephen Colbert, Steve Martin, Susan Lucci, Tom Burg, Toni Senecal, Tracey Ullman, Tucker Carlson, Victor Garber and many more.

The show also featured parodies of many celebrities including Celine Dion, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Tommy Tune, Joan Rivers, Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Renée Zellweger, Jodie Foster, Rachel Ray, and Short's wife, actress Nancy Dolman. The cast album was released on April 10, 2007, and is available from Ghostlight Records, an imprint of Sh-K-Boom Records.

Since the closure of Fame Becomes Me, Short has continued to tour in his one-man show, which features many of his best-loved characters and sketches. In addition to Fame Becomes Me, some of the titles Short has used for his one-man show include "Stroke Me Lady Fame", "If I'd Saved, I Wouldn't Be Here", and, in more conservative markets, "Sunday in the Park with George Michael".

Personal life

Relationships

Short met Canadian comic actress Nancy Dolman in 1972 during the run of Godspell. He dated co-star Gilda Radner for most of the show's run then began dating Dolman, who was Radner's understudy, in 1974. The couple married in 1980.

Dolman retired from show business in 1985 to be a homemaker and raise her family. Short and Dolman had three children: Katherine Elizabeth (born December 2, 1983), Oliver Patrick (born April 29, 1986) and Henry Hayter (born August 4, 1989). Short and his family make their home in Pacific Palisades, California; and Short is a naturalized U.S. citizen, as well as a citizen of the United Kingdom. The Shorts also have a home on Lake Rosseau in Ontario, Canada. It was reported on August 23, 2010, by the Huffington Post and various media outlets, that Nancy Dolman Short had died. Short's representative confirmed the news but did not reveal the cause. It was later confirmed that the cause of death was cancer.

Short has two stars on Canada's Walk of Fame. He is a Roman Catholic. Short is the first cousin of Clare Short, a former member of the British Parliament and a former British cabinet minister.

Awards and honors

1972: Bachelor of Arts in social work: McMaster University

1982: Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program, SCTV Comedy Network; award shared

1982: Nelly Award: Outstanding Writing, SCTV Comedy Network

1993: Outer Critics Circle Award: Outstanding Actor in a Musical, The Goodbye Girl

1993: Theater World Award

1994: Member of the Order of Canada

1995: Earl Grey Life Time Achievement Award

1999: Outer Critics Circle Award: Outstanding Actor in a Musical, Little Me

1999: Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, Little Me

2000: Canada Walk of Fame

2001: Doctor of Letters honoris causa: McMaster University

2002: Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee Medal

Filmography

;Actor

;Writer

;Producer

;Director

In-character quotes

As Irving Cohen: "What hell kind of name is Roy!?"

As Irving Cohen: "Give me a C, a bouncy C."

As Irving Cohen (as his standard conclusion to an improvised song, of which he's sung a few bars, accompanied by replacing his cigar in his mouth): "...a dot dot dot, dee dee dee, and whatever the hell else you want to put in there."

As Ed Grimley (indrawn breath): "I must say...".

As Ed Grimley (clutching his burning fingers after removing a batch of cookies from the oven without using an oven mitt): "That's a pain that will tend to linger."

As Bradley Allen: "''You can't tell me that a woman who plays the tuba doesn't have a boyfriend somewhere... I mean who's going to carry the damn thing?"

As Bradley Allen (drinking Scotch and declining tissues after a productive cough): "No, I got it."

As Franc Eggelhoffer..."Every party has a pooper, that's why we invited you, party pooper, GEORGE BANKS! That's who!"

As Jack Frost (talking to a little girl who told him to chill) : "I invented chill!"

As Jack Frost (talking to the other members of the Legendary Council) "Excuse me! Did you accuse me of being skillful and delicious? Guilty as charged!"

As Huy.... "You're playing with the big boys now!"

References

External links

Martin Short at Godspell.ca

Northern Stars: Martin Short

; Interviews

Martin Short (June 16, 2010) — The Hour, season 6, episode 66

; Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me

Photo Coverage: Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me Opens on BroadwayWorld.com

Category:1950 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Actors from Ontario Category:American comedians Category:American film actors Category:American impressionists (entertainers) Category:American musical theatre actors Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:American television personalities Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American television writers Category:Canadian expatriate actors in the United States Category:Canadian film actors Category:Canadian immigrants to the United States Category:Canadian impressionists (entertainers) Category:Canadian musical theatre actors Category:Canadian Roman Catholics Category:Canadian people of Northern Ireland descent Category:Canadian stage actors Category:Canadian television comedians Category:Emmy Award winners Category:American people of Irish descent Category:McMaster University alumni Category:Members of the Order of Canada Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from Hamilton, Ontario Category:Second City alumni Category:Tony Award winners

Name	Maggie Smith
Caption	Smith in 2007.
Birth date	December 28, 1934
Birth place	Ilford, London, England
Birth name	Margaret Natalie Smith Cross
Other names	Dame Maggie Smith
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1952–present
Spouse	Robert Stephens (1967–74) (divorced); 2 childrenBeverley Cross (1975–98) (Widowed)

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith Cross, DBE (born 28 December 1934), better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 58 years. Being the most awarded British actress of the film era, she is the only British actress to accrue seven Academy Award nominations. She has won numerous awards for acting, both for the stage and for film, including five BAFTA Awards, two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, two Emmy Awards, two Laurence Olivier Awards, two SAG Awards, and a Tony Award. Her critically-acclaimed films include Othello (1965), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1967), California Suite (1978), A Room with a View (1985), and Gosford Park (2001). She has also appeared in a number of widely-popular films, including Sister Act (1992) and as Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter series.

Early life

Margaret Natalie Smith Cross was born in Ilford, then Essex, now London, the daughter of Margaret Smith (née Hutton), a Glasgow-born secretary, and Nathaniel Smith, a Newcastle upon Tyne-born public health pathologist who worked at Oxford University. She has older twin brothers, Alistair and Ian. Smith studied at Oxford High School.

Career

Smith has had an extensive career both on screen and in live theatre, and is known as one of Britain's pre-eminent actresses. She began her career at the Oxford Playhouse with Frank Shelley and made her first film in 1956. She became a fixture at the Royal National Theatre in the 1960s, most notably for playing Desdemona in Othello opposite Laurence Olivier and winning her first Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1965 film version.

In 1969 she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as an unorthodox Scottish schoolteacher in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a role originally created on stage by Vanessa Redgrave in 1966 in London. (Zoe Caldwell won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play when she created the role in New York.) Smith was also awarded the 1978 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the brittle actress Diana Barry in California Suite, acting opposite Michael Caine. Afterwards, on hearing that Michael Palin was about to embark on a film (The Missionary) with Smith, Caine is supposed to have humorously telephoned Palin, warning him that she would steal the film. She also starred with Palin in the black comedy A Private Function in 1984.

Smith appeared in Sister Act in 1992 and had a major role in the 1999 film Tea With Mussolini, where she appeared as the formidable Lady Hester. Indeed, many of her more mature roles have centred on what Smith refers to as her "gallery of grotesques", playing waspish, sarcastic or plain rude characters. Recent examples of this would include the judgmental sister in Ladies in Lavender and the cantankerous snob Constance, Countess of Trentham in Gosford Park, for which she received another Oscar nomination.

Other notable roles include the querulous Charlotte Bartlett in the Merchant-Ivory production of A Room with a View, a vivid supporting turn as the aged Duchess of York in Ian McKellen's film of Richard III, and a little known but powerful performance as Lila Fisher in the 1973 film Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing with Timothy Bottoms. Due to the international success of the Harry Potter movies, she is now widely known for playing the role of Professor Minerva McGonagall, opposite Daniel Radcliffe, with whom she'd previously worked in the 1999 BBC television adaptation of David Copperfield, playing Betsie Trottwood. She also plays an older Wendy in the Peter Pan movie, Hook and Mrs. Medlock in The Secret Garden.

She appeared in numerous productions at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, to acclaim from 1976 through to 1980. These roles included Queen Elizabeth in Richard III, Virginia Woolf in Virginia, and countless lead roles with long-time Stratford icon Brian Bedford including the Noël Coward comedy Private Lives.

On stage, her many roles have included the title character in the stage production of Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van and starring as Amanda in a revival of Private Lives. She won a Tony Award in 1990 for Best Actress in a Play for Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage, in which she starred as an eccentric tour guide in an English stately home. More recently, she appeared in Edward Albee's The Lady from Dubuque at Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2007. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1970, and was raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1990.

Personal life

Smith has been married twice. She married Robert Stephens on 29 June 1967 at the Greenwich Register Office. The couple had two sons: actors Chris Larkin (born in 1967) and Toby Stephens (born in 1969).

She married playwright Beverley Cross on 23 August 1975 at the Guildford Register Office, and the marriage ended with his death on 20 March 1998.

Maggie Smith was made a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 1970, while she was still married to Stephens. She was married to Cross when the Queen made her a Dame in 1990.

Smith was a close friend of actor Sir Rex Harrison and spoke at his New York memorial service in 1990. Smith was also close to Laurence Olivier and his wife Joan Plowright. She attended Olivier's memorial service in 1989.

In 2007 the Sunday Telegraph's Mandrake diary disclosed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was subsequently reported to have made a full recovery.

Filmography

Television and cinema

Theatre Roles

Twelfth Night, Oxford Playhouse, 1952

He Who Gets Slapped, Clarendon Press Institute, 1952

Cinderella, Oxford Playhouse, 1952

Rookery Nook, Oxford Playhouse, 1953

The Housemaster, Oxford Playhouse, 1953

Cakes and Ale (revue), Edinburgh Festival, 1953

The Love of Four Colonels, Oxford Playhouse, 1953

The Ortolan, Maxton Hall, 1954

Don’t Listen Ladies, Oxford Playhouse, 1954

The Government Inspector, Oxford Playhouse, 1954

The Letter, Oxford Playhouse, 1954

A Man About The House, Oxford Playhouse, 1954

On the Mile (revue), Edinburgh Festival, 1954

Oxford Accents, New Watergate Theatre, London, 1954

Theatre 1900, Oxford Playhouse, 1954

Listen to the Wind, Oxford Playhouse, 1954

The Magistrate, Oxford Playhouse, 1955

The School For Scandal, Oxford Playhouse, 1955

New Faces (revue), Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, 1956

Share My Lettuce (revue), Lyric Hammersmith and Comedy Theatre, 1957 - 1958

The Stepmother, St. Martin's Theatre, 1958

The Double Dealer, Old Vic, 1959

As You Like It, Old Vic, 1959

Richard II, Old Vic, 1959

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Old Vic, 1959

What Every Woman Knows, Old Vic, 1960

Rhinoceros, Strand Theatre, 1960

Strip the Willow, UK Tour, 1960

The Rehearsal, Bristol Old Vic/ London, 1961

The Private Ear and The Public Eye, Globe Theatre, 1962

Mary, Mary, Queen's Theatre, 1963

The Recruiting Officer, National Theatre - Old Vic, 1963

Othello, National Theatre - Old Vic, 1964

The Master Builder, National Theatre - Old Vic, 1964

Hay Fever, National Theatre - Old Vic, 1964

Much Ado About Nothing, National Theatre - Old Vic, 1965

Black Comedy, National Theatre - Chichester and Old Vic, 1965

Miss Julie, National Theatre - Chichester and Old Vic, 1965 - 1966

Trelawney of the Wells, National Theatre - Old Vic, 1966

A Bond Honoured, National Theatre - Old Vic, 1966

The Country Wife, National Theatre - Chichester and Old Vic, 1969

The Beaux Stratagem, National Theatre - Old Vic/ Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, 1970

Hedda Gabler, National Theatre - Cambridge Theatre, 1970

Design For Living, Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, 1971

Private Lives, Queens Theatre, 1972 - 1973

Peter Pan, London Coliseum, 1973

Snap, Vaudeville Theatre, 1974

Private Lives, Los Angeles, 1974/ 46th Street Theatre, New York, 1975

The Way of the World, Stratford, Canada, 1976

Cleopatra, Stratford, Canada, 1976

Three Sisters, Stratford, Canada, 1976

The Guardsman, Stratford, Canada/ Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, 1976

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Stratford, Canada/ Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, 1977

Richard III, Stratford, Canada, 1977

As You Like It, Stratford, Canada, 1977

Hay Fever, Stratford, Canada, 1977

Macbeth, Stratford, Canada, 1978

Private Lives, Stratford, Canada, 1978

Night and Day, Phoenix Theatre/ Washington D.C./ ANTA Playhouse, New York, 1979 - 1980

Much Ado About Nothing, Stratford, Canada, 1980

The Seagull, Stratford, Canada, 1980

Virginia, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 1981

The Way of the World, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 1984

The Interpreters, Queens Theatre, 1985

The Infernal Machine, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, 1986

Coming Into Land, National Theatre/ Lyttelton, 1987

Lettice and Lovage, Globe Theatre, 1987 - 1988

Lettice and Lovage, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, 1990

The Importance of Being Earnest, Aldwych Theatre, 1993

Three Tall Women, Wyndham's Theatre, 1994 - 1995

Talking Heads, Chichester and Comedy Theatre, 1996

A Delicate Balance, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 1997 - 1998

The Lady in the Van, Queens Theatre, 1999 - 2000

The Breath of Life, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 2002 - 2003

Talking Heads, Tour of Australia, 2004

The Lady From Dubuque, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, 2007

Awards and nominations

See also

Tale Spinners For Children

University College Players

References

External links

You have to laugh - The Guardian, 20 November 2004, in-depth interview and profile.

Category:1934 births Category:Anglo-Scots Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners Category:Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:Actresses awarded British damehoods Category:Emmy Award winners Category:English film actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:Evening Standard Award for Best Actress Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:Living people Category:People from Ilford Category:Royal National Theatre Company members Category:Tony Award winners

Name	Joan Crawford
Caption	Crawford photographed in 1948
Birth date	March 23, 1905
Birth place	San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
Death date	May 10, 1977
Death place	New York City, New York, U.S.
Birth name	Lucille Fay LeSueur
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1925–1972
Spouse	Douglas Fairbanks, Jr (1929–1933)Franchot Tone (1935–1939)Phillip Terry (1942–1946)Alfred Steele (1956–1959)

Joan Crawford (March 23, 1905 – May 10, 1977),

Crawford's mother subsequently married Henry J. Cassin. The family lived in Lawton, Oklahoma, where Cassin ran a movie theater. Crawford was unaware that Cassin was not her birth father until her brother Hal told her. The 1910 federal census for Comanche County, Oklahoma, enumerated on April 20, showed Henry and Anna living at 910 "D" Street in Lawton. Crawford was listed as five years old, thus showing 1905 as her likely year of birth. However, the state of Texas did not require the filing of birth certificates until 1908, allowing Crawford to claim she was born in 1908.

Crawford preferred the nickname "Billie" as a child and she loved watching vaudeville acts perform on the stage of her stepfather's theater. Her ambition was to be a dancer. However, in an attempt to escape piano lessons to run and play with friends, she leaped from the front porch of her home and cut her foot deeply on a broken milk bottle. Crawford had three operations and was unable to attend elementary school for a year and a half. She eventually fully recovered and returned to dancing.

Around 1916, Crawford's family moved to Kansas City, Missouri. Cassin was first listed in the City Directory in 1917, living at 403 East Ninth Street. While still in elementary school, Crawford was placed in St. Agnes Academy, a Catholic school in Kansas City. Later, after her mother and stepfather broke up, she stayed on at St. Agnes as a work student. She then went to Rockingham Academy as a work student. While attending Rockingham she began dating and had her first serious relationship, with a trumpet player named Ray Sterling. It was Sterling who inspired her to begin challenging herself academically, and in 1922, Crawford registered at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. She gave her year of birth as 1906. Crawford attended Stephens for less than a year, as she recognized that she was not academically prepared for college.

Career

Early career

Under the name Lucille LeSueur, Crawford began dancing in the choruses of traveling revues and was spotted dancing in Detroit by producer Jacob J. Shubert. Shubert put her in the chorus line for his 1924 show Innocent Eyes at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in New York City. While appearing in Innocent Eyes Crawford met a saxophone player named James Welton. The two were allegedly married in 1924 and the couple lived together for several months, although this supposed marriage was never mentioned in later life by Crawford. She wanted additional work and approached Loews Theaters publicist Nils Granlund. Granlund secured a position for her with producer Harry Richmond's act and arranged for her to do a screen test which he sent to producer Harry Rapf in Hollywood. Stories have persisted that Crawford further supplemented her income by appearing in one or more stag, or soft-core pornographic, films, Rapf notified Granlund on December 24, 1924 that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had offered Crawford a contract at $75 a week. Granlund immediately wired LeSueur – who had returned to her mother's home in Kansas City – with the news; she borrowed $400 (which she never paid back) for travel expenses. The night after Christmas she left Kansas City and arrived in Culver City, California.

As Lucille LeSueur, her first film was Pretty Ladies in 1925, which starred ZaSu Pitts. Also in 1925 she appeared in a small role in The Only Thing and in Old Clothes opposite Jackie Coogan. MGM publicity head Pete Smith recognized her ability but felt that her name sounded fake; it also, he told studio head Louis B. Mayer, sounded like "Le Sewer". Smith organized a contest in conjunction with the fan magazine Movie Weekly to allow readers to select her new name. Initially the name "Joan Arden" was selected but, when another actress was found to have prior claim to that name, the alternate name "Crawford" became the choice. Crawford initially wanted her new first name to be pronounced "Jo-anne". She hated the name Crawford, saying it sounded like "crawfish". Her friend, actor William Haines, quipped, "They might have called you 'Cranberry' and served you every Thanksgiving with the turkey!" Crawford continued to dislike the name throughout her life but, she said, "liked the security that went with it".

Self-promotion and early successes

Growing increasingly frustrated over the size and quality of the parts she was given, Crawford embarked on a campaign of self-promotion. As MGM screenwriter Frederica Sagor Maas recalled, "No one decided to make Joan Crawford a star. Joan Crawford became a star because Joan Crawford decided to become a star." She began attending dances in the afternoons and evenings at hotels around Hollywood, where she often won dance competitions with her performances of the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Her strategy worked, and MGM cast her in the film where she first made an impression on audiences, Edmund Goulding's Sally, Irene and Mary (1925). She played Irene, a struggling chorus girl. In the same year, Crawford worked on Lady of the Night, starring Norma Shearer. Crawford was made up and used as a double for Shearer and her face is briefly seen. Crawford coveted the roles that Shearer played but knew that Shearer's husband, producer Irving Thalberg, guaranteed Shearer first choice of roles in any MGM property. "How can I compete with Norma?" Crawford was quoted as saying. "She sleeps with the boss."

The following year, Crawford was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, along with Mary Astor, Mary Brian, Dolores Costello, Dolores del Río, Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray. For the next two years, Crawford appeared in increasingly important films. In 1926, she made Paris, where she was able to show her sex appeal. She became the romantic interest for some of MGM's leading male stars, among them Ramón Novarro, William Haines, John Gilbert and Tim McCoy. Crawford appeared in The Unknown (1927), starring Lon Chaney, Sr. who played a carnival knife thrower with no arms. Crawford played his skimpily clad young carnival assistant whom he hopes to marry. She stated that she learned more about acting from watching Chaney work than from anything else in her career. "It was then", she said, "I became aware for the first time of the difference between standing in front of a camera, and acting."

In 1928, Crawford starred opposite Ramón Novarro in Across to Singapore, but it was her role as Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) that catapulted her to stardom. The role established her as a symbol of modern 1920s-style femininity that rivaled the image of her friend Clara Bow, the original IT girl, who was Hollywood's foremost flapper. A stream of hits followed Our Dancing Daughters, including two more flapper-themed movies, in which Crawford embodied for her legion of fans (many of whom were women) an idealized vision of the free-spirited, all-American girl. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of her:

On June 3, 1929, Crawford married Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church in New York City. Fairbanks was the son of Douglas Fairbanks and the stepson of Mary Pickford, who were considered Hollywood royalty. Fairbanks Sr. and Pickford were opposed to the marriage and did not invite the couple to their home, Pickfair, for eight months after the marriage. The relationship between Crawford and Fairbanks, Sr. eventually warmed; she called him "Uncle Doug" and he called her "Billie". Following that first invitation, Crawford and Fairbanks, Jr. became more frequent guests, which was hard on Crawford. While the Fairbanks men played golf together, Crawford was left with Pickford or left alone.

To rid herself of her Southwestern accent, Crawford tirelessly practiced diction and elocution. She said:

Her first talkie was Untamed (1929), opposite Robert Montgomery, which was a box office success. Crawford made an effective transition to sound movies. One critic wrote, "Miss Crawford sings appealingly and dances thrillingly as usual; her voice is alluring and her dramatic efforts in the difficult role she portrays are at all times convincing."

From Queen of the Movies to box office poison

(1932)]] With the early sound film, Our Blushing Brides (1930), another financial success, MGM began to develop a more sophisticated image of Crawford, rather than continuing to promote her flapper girl persona of the silent era. In 1931, she starred opposite Clark Gable in Possessed. They began an affair during the production, resulting in an ultimatum from studio chief Louis B. Mayer to Gable that the affair end. Gable complied, although for many years their affair resumed sporadically and secretly. Upon release, Possessed was an enormous hit.

The studio then cast her in Grand Hotel, which starred the most famous actors of the 1930s and was MGM's most prestigious movie of 1932. Crawford later achieved continued success with Letty Lynton (1932). Soon after its release, a plagiarism suit forced MGM to withdraw it. It has never been shown on television or made available on home video, and is therefore considered the "lost" Crawford film. The film is mostly remembered because of the "Letty Lynton dress", designed by Adrian: a white cotton organdy gown with large ruffled sleeves, puffed at the shoulder. It was with this gown that Crawford's broad shoulders began to be accentuated by costume. Macy's copied the dress in 1932, and it sold over 500,000 replicas nationwide.

In May 1933, Crawford divorced Fairbanks. Crawford cited "grievous mental cruelty"; "a jealous and suspicious attitude" toward her friends and "loud arguments about the most trivial subjects" lasting "far into the night".

Following Possessed, Crawford starred opposite Gable in the hit Dancing Lady (1933), in which she received top billing. Crawford's next movies, Sadie McKee, Chained and Forsaking All Others (all 1934), were among the top money makers of the mid-1930s.

In 1935, Crawford married her second husband, Franchot Tone, a stage actor from New York who planned to use his film salary to finance his theatre group. Tone and Crawford appeared together in Today We Live (1933) and were immediately drawn to each other, although Crawford was hesitant about entering into another romance so soon after her split from Fairbanks. The couple built a small theatre at Crawford's Brentwood home and put on productions of classic plays for select groups of friends. Before and during their marriage, Crawford worked to promote Tone's Hollywood career but Tone was ultimately not interested in being a movie star and Crawford eventually wearied of the effort. Tone began drinking and physically abusing Crawford and she filed for divorce, which was granted in 1939. Crawford and Tone eventually reconciled their friendship and Tone even proposed in 1964 that they remarry. When Tone died in 1968, Crawford arranged for him to be cremated and his ashes scattered at Muskoka Lakes, Canada.

The Motion Picture Herald placed Crawford on its list of the top-ten moneymaking stars from 1932, the first year of the poll, through 1936 and Life magazine proclaimed her "First Queen of the Movies" in 1937. Later in 1937 she dropped out of the top ten for the first time, and in 1938 the Independent Film Journal named her and several other stars as "box office poison" based on their supposed lack of popular appeal. However, Crawford made a small comeback with her role as home-wrecker Crystal Allen in director George Cukor's comedy The Women in 1939. She also broke from formula by taking the unglamorous role of Julie in Strange Cargo (1940), her eighth and final film with Clark Gable. Crawford then starred as a facially disfigured blackmailer in A Woman's Face (1941). While the film was only a moderate box office success, her performance was hailed by many critics.

Crawford adopted her first child, a daughter, in 1940. Because she was single, California law prevented her from adopting within the state so she arranged the adoption through an agency in Las Vegas. The child was temporarily called Joan until Crawford changed her name to Christina. She married actor Phillip Terry on July 21, 1942 after a six-month courtship. Together the couple adopted a son whom they named Christopher, but his birth mother reclaimed the child. They adopted another boy, whom they named Phillip Terry, Jr. After the marriage ended in 1946, Crawford changed the child's name to Christopher Crawford.

After 18 years, Crawford's contract with MGM was terminated by mutual consent on June 29, 1943. In lieu of one more movie owed under her contract, MGM bought her out for $100,000.

Move to Warner Bros.

For $500,000, Crawford signed with Warner Bros. for a three movie deal and was placed on the payroll on July 1, 1943. She also made a cameo with many other stars in the G.I. morale-booster Hollywood Canteen (1944). Crawford said one of the main reasons she signed with Warner Bros. was because she wanted to play the character "Mattie" in a proposed 1944 film version of Edith Wharton's novel Ethan Frome (1911). However, Bette Davis wanted to play Mattie and reportedly told Jack Warner, "Joan's far too old, and besides, she can't act." (1945)]]

Crawford wanted to play the title role in Mildred Pierce (1945), but Davis was the studio's first choice. However, Davis did not want to play the mother of a seventeen year old daughter and she turned the role down. Director Michael Curtiz did not want Crawford and told Jack Warner, "She comes over here with her high-hat airs and her goddamn shoulder pads...why should I waste my time directing a has-been?" Curtiz demanded Crawford prove her suitability by taking a screen test. After the test, Curtiz agreed to Crawford's casting. Crawford starred opposite Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth and Butterfly McQueen. Mildred Pierce was a commercial success. It epitomized the lush visual style and the hard-boiled film noir sensibility that defined Warner Bros. movies of the later 1940s, earning Crawford the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

From 1945 to 1952, Crawford reigned as a top star and respected actress, appearing in such roles as Helen Wright in Humoresque (1946), Louise Howell Graham in Possessed (1947, for which she was nominated for a second Oscar for Best Actress) and the title role in Daisy Kenyon (also 1947). She did a critically well received sendup of her screen image in a cameo in the Doris Day-Jack Carson musical, It's a Great Feeling (1949). Crawford's other movie roles of the era include Lane Bellamy in Flamingo Road (1949), a dual role in the film noir The Damned Don't Cry (1950) and her performance in the title role of Harriet Craig (1950) at Columbia Pictures. After filming This Woman Is Dangerous (1952), Crawford asked to be released from her Warner Bros. contract. As she had done before, Crawford triumphed as Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear (1952) at RKO, which was the movie that introduced her co-star, Jack Palance, to the screen and earned Crawford a third and final Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

Crawford adopted two more children in 1947, fraternal twins whom she named Cindy and Cathy.

Radio and television

Crawford worked in the radio series The Screen Guild Theater on January 8, 1939; Good News; Baby, broadcast March 2, 1940 on Arch Oboler's Lights Out; The Word on Everyman's Theater (1941); Chained on the Lux Radio Theater and Norman Corwin's Document A/777 (1948). She appeared in episodes of anthology television series in the 1950s and, in 1959, made a pilot for her series, The Joan Crawford Show, but the show was never picked up by a network.

Al Steele and Pepsi Cola Company

Crawford married her final husband, Alfred Steele, at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on May 10, 1955. Crawford and Steele met at a party in 1950 when Steele was an executive with Coca-Cola. They renewed their acquaintance at a New Year's Eve party in 1954. Steele by that time had become the president of Pepsi Cola. Crawford traveled extensively on behalf of Pepsi following the marriage. She estimated that she traveled over 100,000 miles for the company. Crawford, left near-penniless following Steele's death, accepted a supporting role in the film The Best of Everything (1959). It was her first non-starring role in her later career.

Crawford received the sixth annual "Pally Award", which was in the shape of a bronze Pepsi bottle. It was awarded to the employee making the most significant contribution to company sales. In 1973, Crawford was forcibly retired from the company at the behest of company executive Don Kendall, whom Crawford had referred to for years as "Fang."

Later career

After her triumph in RKO's Sudden Fear, Crawford appeared in films ranging from the camp western film Johnny Guitar (1954) to the drama Autumn Leaves (1956), opposite a young Cliff Robertson. By the early 1960s, however, Crawford's status in motion pictures had diminished.

in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)]]

Crawford starred as Blanche Hudson, a physically disabled woman and former A-list movie star in conflict with her psychotic sister in the highly successful thriller What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962). Despite the actresses' earlier tensions, Crawford suggested Bette Davis for the role of Jane. The two stars maintained publicly that there was no feud between them. However, Crawford accused Davis of kicking her during the filming of a scene in which Jane attacks Blanche, and reportedly retaliated by wearing weights under her clothes in a scene in which Davis had to carry her. The director, Robert Aldrich, explained that Davis and Crawford were each aware of how important the film was to their respective careers and commented, "It's proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly." After filming was completed, their public comments against each other allowed the tension to develop into a lifelong feud. The film became a huge success, recouping its costs in 11 days of nationwide release and temporarily reviving Crawford's career. Davis was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Jane Hudson. Crawford secretly contacted all the other Oscar nominees to tell them if they were unable to attend the ceremony, she would be happy to accept the Oscar on their behalf. Both Davis and Crawford were backstage when the absent Anne Bancroft was announced as the winner and Crawford accepted the award on her behalf. Davis claimed for the rest of her life that Crawford campaigned against her, a charge Crawford denied. That same year, Crawford starred as Lucy Harbin in William Castle's horror mystery Strait-Jacket (1964).

Director Robert Aldrich cast Crawford and Davis in Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). After a campaign of intimidation by Davis while the film was on location in Louisiana, Crawford returned to Hollywood and entered a hospital. After a prolonged absence in which Crawford was accused of feigning illness, Aldrich was forced to replace her with Olivia de Havilland. Crawford was devastated. "I heard the news of my replacement over the radio, lying in my hospital bed", Crawford said. "I wept for 39 hours." Crawford nursed grudges against Davis and Aldrich for the rest of her life, saying of Aldrich, "He is a man who loves evil, horrendous, vile things." (to which Aldrich replied, "If the shoe fits, wear it, and I am very fond of Miss Crawford.")

In October 1968, Crawford's 29-year-old daughter, Christina (who was then acting in New York on the soap opera The Secret Storm), needed immediate medical attention for a ruptured ovarian tumor. Until Christina was well enough to return, Crawford offered to play her role, to which producer Gloria Monty readily agreed. Although Crawford did well in rehearsal, she lost her composure while taping and the director and producer were left to struggle to piece together the necessary footage.

Crawford's appearance in the 1969 TV film Night Gallery (which served as pilot to the series that followed), marked one of Steven Spielberg's earliest directing jobs. She starred on the big screen one final time, playing Dr. Brockton in Herman Cohen's science fiction horror film Trog (1970), rounding out a career spanning 45 years and over 80 motion pictures. Crawford made four more TV appearances, as Stephanie White in an episode of The Virginian (1970), entitled "The Nightmare"; as a board member in an episode of The Name of the Game (1971), entitled "Los Angeles"; as Allison Hayes in the made-for-TV movie Beyond the Water's Edge (1972); and as Joan Fairchild (her final performance) on an episode of the television series, The Sixth Sense, entitled, "Dear Joan: We're Going To Scare You To Death" (1972). Crawford also starred as Della in a television pilot of the same name in 1964. In this nighttime soap opera she played a reclusive millionaire who lives alone with her daughter and is only ever seen at night.

Final years and death

In 1970, Crawford was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award by John Wayne at the Golden Globes, which was telecast from the Coconut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. She also spoke at her alma mater, Stephens College, from which she never graduated.

Crawford published her autobiography, A Portrait of Joan – written with Jane Kesner Ardmore – in 1962 through Doubleday. Crawford's next book, My Way of Life, was published in 1971 by Simon and Schuster. Those expecting a racy tell-all were disappointed, although Crawford's meticulous ways were revealed in her advice on grooming, wardrobe, exercise, and even food storage.

In September 1973, Crawford moved from apartment 22-G to the smaller apartment 22-H in the Imperial House. Her last public appearance was September 23, 1974, at a party honoring her old friend Rosalind Russell at New York's Rainbow Room. Russell was suffering from breast cancer at the time and died two years later in 1976. When Crawford saw the unflattering photos of both stars that appeared in the papers the next day, she said, "If that's how I look, then they won't see me anymore." Crawford cancelled all public appearances, began declining interviews and left her apartment less and less. Her dental-related issues, including surgery which left her in need of round the clock nursing care, also plagued her from 1972 until the middle of 1975. While on antibiotics for this problem in October 1974, Crawford's drinking caused her to black out, slip and strike her face. This incident scared her enough to give up drinking and smoking, although in public she insisted it was due to her return to Christian Science. The whole incident is recorded in a series of letters sent to her insurance company held at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, as well as being documented by her friend, Carl Johnnes, in his book.

On May 8, 1977, Crawford gave away her beloved Shih Tzu "Princess Lotus Blossom", which she was too weak to care for properly. Crawford died two days later at her New York apartment from a heart attack, while also ill with pancreatic cancer. A funeral was held at Campbell Funeral Home, New York, on May 13, 1977. All four of her adopted children attended, as did her niece, Joan Crawford LeSueur (aka Joan Lowe), who was the daughter of her late brother, Hal LeSueur (who had died in 1963). In her will, which was signed October 28, 1976, Crawford bequeathed to her two youngest children, Cindy and Cathy, $77,500 each from her $2,000,000 estate. She explicitly disinherited the two eldest, Christina and Christopher, writing "It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known to them."

A memorial service was held for Crawford at All Souls' Unitarian Church on Lexington Avenue in New York on May 16, 1977, and was attended by, among others, her old Hollywood friend Myrna Loy. Another memorial service, organized by George Cukor, was held on June 24 in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California. Crawford was cremated and her ashes placed in a crypt with her last husband, Alfred Steele, in Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York.

Crawford's hand and footprints are immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1750 Vine Street. In 1999, Playboy listed Crawford as one of the "100 Sexiest Women of the 20th century", ranking her #84.

Mommie Dearest

In November 1978, a year and a half after Crawford's death, Christina published Mommie Dearest, which contained allegations that Crawford was emotionally and physically abusive to Christina and her brother Christopher. Many of Crawford's friends and co-workers, including Van Johnson, Ann Blyth, Marlene Dietrich, Myrna Loy, Cesar Romero, and Crawford's other daughters, Cathy and Cindy, denounced the book, categorically denying any abuse. But others, including Helen Hayes and Crawford's rival Bette Davis supported Christina's version, with Davis saying that Christina could not have made it up (Davis, while still alive, would ironically later become the target of her own daughter B. D. Hyman's tell-all in 1985, My Mother's Keeper). Mommie Dearest became a bestseller and was made into the 1981 film Mommie Dearest, starring Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford.

Filmography

Notes

References

Bret, David (2006). Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr. Robson. ISBN 1861059310.

Considine, Shaun (1989). Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud. New York, E. P. Dutton, a division of Penguin Books. ISBN 052524770X.

Granlund, Nils T. (1957). Blondes, Brunettes, and Bullets. New York, David McKay Company.

Hoefling, Larry J. (2008). Nils Thor Granlund: The Swedish Showman Who Invented American Entertainment. Inlandia Press. ISBN 098223130X.

LaSalle, Mick (2000). Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood. New York, Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312252072.

Leese, Elizabeth (1991). Costume Design in the Movies. Dover Books. ISBN 048626548X.

Newquist, Roy, with introduction by John Springer (1980). Conversations with Joan Crawford. New Jersey, Citadel Press, a division of Lyle Stuart, Inc. ISBN 0806507209.

Skal, David J. (1993). The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. Penguin Books. ISBN 0140240020.

Thomas, Bob (1978). Joan Crawford: A Biography. New York, Bantam Books. ISBN 0553129422.

Further reading

Just Joan: A Joan Crawford Appreciation by Donna Marie Nowak. Albany, BearManor Media 2010. ISBN 978-1-59393-542-9.

External links

The Best of Everything: A Joan Crawford Encyclopedia

Excerpt of 2008 biography from Vanity Fair

Category:1905 births Category:1977 deaths Category:Actors from Oklahoma Category:Actors from Texas Category:American businesspeople Category:American Christian Scientists Category:American film actors Category:American people of English descent Category:American radio personalities Category:American radio actors Category:American silent film actors Category:American television actors Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners Category:Converts to Christian Science Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Deaths from pancreatic cancer Category:People from San Antonio, Texas Category:People of Huguenot descent Category:Stephens College people Category:20th-century actors Category:Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery

Name	Gwyneth Paltrow
Caption	Paltrow at the launch of Estée Lauder's Sensuous perfume, July 2008
Birth name	Gwyneth Kate Paltrow
Birth date	September 27, 1972
Birth place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, Singer, Guitarist
Years active	1990–present
Spouse	}}

Gwyneth Kate Paltrow (; born September 27, 1972) is an American actress.

Paltrow made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. She gained early notice for her work in films such as Se7en (1995), Emma (1996), in which she played the title role, and Sliding Doors (1998). She garnered worldwide recognition through her performance in Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actress and as a member of the Outstanding Cast. Since then, Paltrow has portrayed supporting as well as lead roles in films such as The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Shallow Hal (2001) and Proof (2005), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. In 2008, she appeared in the highest grossing movie of her career, the superhero film Iron Man (2008), and then reprised her role as Pepper Potts in its sequel, Iron Man 2 (2010). Paltrow has been the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume since 2005. She is married to Chris Martin, the lead vocalist of Coldplay.

Early life

Paltrow was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Blythe Danner, an actress, and Bruce Paltrow, a film and television director and producer. Paltrow's father was of Ashkenazi Russian Jewish descent and her mother is a Quaker of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. Paltrow's paternal great-grandfather, whose surname was "Paltrowicz", was a rabbi in Nowogród, Poland. Paltrow was raised in Santa Monica, where she attended Crossroads School, before moving and enrolling in The Spence School, a private girls' school in New York City. Later, she briefly studied art history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before dropping out to act. Paltrow has a younger brother, Jake Paltrow, and is a half-cousin of actress Katherine Moennig, and a second cousin of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-08). She is an "adopted daughter" of Talavera de la Reina (Spain), where at 15 she spent a year as an exchange student and learned to speak Spanish. Paltrow is a childhood friend of Saturday Night Live's Maya Rudolph.

Career

Early work, 1990–1996

Paltrow made her professional stage debut in 1990. Her film debut followed next year with Shout (1991), starring John Travolta; later that year, she appeared in Hook (1991), as Young Wendy. Paltrow then had minor roles in Malice (1993) and Flesh and Bone (1993). She was next cast in a supporting role in Se7en (1995) alongside Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, which earned her a Satellite Award nomination. In 1996, she played the title character in Emma to critical acclaim, particularly in the United Kingdom, where her perfection of the English accent was appreciated.

Worldwide recognition, 1998–2003

In 1998, Paltrow starred in Shakespeare in Love, portraying the fictional love of William Shakespeare, played by Joseph Fiennes. The film earned more than US$100 million in box office receipts in the United States and Paltrow gained critical acclaim for her portrayal. Entertainment Weekly commented, "Best of all is Gwyneth Paltrow, who, at long last, has a movie to star in that's as radiant as she is." The New York Times summed up her turn as Viola as such: "Gwyneth Paltrow, in her first great, fully realized starring performance, makes a heroine so breathtaking that she seems utterly plausible as the playwright's guiding light." The award-winning Shakespeare in Love earned Paltrow the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role from the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy Award for Best Actress, among other honors. She said she was unequipped for the pressure, leading to several bad movie choices, agreeing with peers who believe the win is, in some ways, a curse. In The Guardian, she said she divided her career into movies for love and films for money: The Royal Tenenbaums, Proof, and Sylvia fell into the former category, while she did View from the Top and Shallow Hal for the latter. The film is her largest grossing movie ever, earning more than US$ 585 million at the worldwide box office. Paltrow said she was hesitant to appear in a big-budget project but she was won over by Robert Downey Jr., the film's lead, and director Jon Favreau. Paltrow recalled a conversation with Downey, saying:

In 2010, she reprised her role in the sequel to Iron Man, Iron Man 2. Later in 2010, she appeared in the country musical, Country Strong, where she also recorded the song Country Strong for the films' soundtrack. The song was released to country radio in August 2010. Paltrow will next shoot for Steven Soderbergh's virus thriller Contagion, in which she is part of an ensemble cast. She also appeared in Fox's Glee, as a substitute teacher who fills in for Matthew Morrison's character Will when he falls ill. She sang "Nowadays" from the musical Chicago with Lea Michele, Cee Lo Green's "Forget You", plus a mash-up of "Singin' In the Rain" and Rihanna's "Umbrella" with Morrison, Mark Salling and Chris Colfer in the episode.

Other projects

Paltrow is a Save the Children artist ambassador, raising awareness about World Pneumonia Day. She is on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization that works to alleviate poverty in New York City. In February 2009, Paltrow received a Grammy nomination for her reading of the classic bear books of author Bill Martin, Jr..

Paltrow had her singing debut in the 2000 film Duets, in which she performed a cover version of Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'". The song was released as a single. The song went to number one in Australia, while Paltrow's rendition of the Kim Carnes classic "Bette Davis Eyes" reached number three. In the 2006 film Infamous, she sang "What Is This Thing Called Love". On September 27, 2006, Paltrow sang with rapper Jay-Z during his concert at Royal Albert Hall. She sang the chorus for "Song Cry", from the rapper's album Blueprint. In an interview, she said she would be at the concert but not that she would perform. She was quoted as saying "I'm a Jay-Z fan. He's my best friend."

In May 2005, Paltrow became the face of Estée Lauder's Pleasures perfume. She appeared in Chicago on 17 August 2007, to sign bottles of the perfume, and on 8 July 2008, she promoted Lauder's Sensuous perfume in New York with the company's three other models. Estée Lauder donates a minimum of $500,000 of sales of items from the 'Pleasures Gwyneth Paltrow' collection to breast cancer research. In 2006, she became the face for Bean Pole International, a Korean fashion brand.

In October 2007, she signed for a PBS television series Spain... on the road Again with Mario Batali that showcases the food and culture of Spain. In September 2008, she launched a weekly lifestyle newsletter, Goop, encouraging readers to 'nourish the inner aspect'. The website's title is derived from the initials of her first and last names. Each week, the newsletter focuses on an action: Make, Go, Get, Do, Be, and See. It has been ridiculed by E-Online, Vanity Fair, The Independent, and the UK's Daily Mirror.

Personal life

In her early 20s, Paltrow was engaged for six months to Brad Pitt, whom she dated from December 1994 to May 1997. The engagement was called off, according to Paltrow, because she wasn't ready for marriage and later felt responsible for hurting Pitt since she was "such a mess" during that time in her life. Paltrow has since said that as this was her first high-profile relationship with another celebrity, it taught her the need for public discretion about her romantic life; she told Biography magazine, "I said things about being in a relationship [with Brad Pitt] that felt wrong to me even as I was saying them."

Paltrow had an on-off three year relationship with Ben Affleck from 1997 to late 2000. They first dated from November 1997 to January 1999. Soon after their breakup, Paltrow convinced Affleck to work in the film Bounce with her; during the making of the film, which was shot in mid 1999, the couple started dating again and eventually broke up in October 2000.

In October 2002, Paltrow met Chris Martin of the British rock group Coldplay backstage at a gig just three weeks after the death of her father Bruce Paltrow. They married on December 5, 2003 in a ceremony at a hotel in Southern California. On 14 May 2004, the couple had their first child, a girl named Apple Blythe Alison Martin. Paltrow explained the unusual first name on Oprah, saying: "It sounded so sweet and it conjured such a lovely picture for me – you know, apples are so sweet and they're wholesome and it's biblical – and I just thought it sounded so lovely and … clean! And I just thought, 'Perfect!'" The child's godfathers are Simon Pegg and Martin's bandmate, Jonny Buckland.

Her second child, a boy named Moses Bruce Anthony Martin, was born on 8 April 2006, in New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital. Her son's first name was explained as the song, entitled "Moses", that her husband wrote for her before their wedding. She has also said that she suffered from depression after the death of her father Paltrow is friends with Madonna Paltrow denied making the statements attributed to her and told People magazine that she never gave an interview to a Portuguese publication, but instead had tried to say in Spanish, during a press conference, that Europe was an "older culture" and Americans "live to work". Diário de Notícias said in their 6 December 2006 edition that it had obtained the quotes from English-language articles that are still referenced online, though Paltrow has insisted that she was misquoted, declaring in 2007: "I love America, and I'm an American through and through." ! width="35"| US AC ! width="35"| USCountry ! width="35"| AUS ! width="35"| CAN ! width="35"| IRL ! width="35"| NZ |- | rowspan="2"| 2000 | align="left"| "Cruisin'" (with Huey Lewis) | — | 1 | — | 1 | — | — | 1 | align="left"| AUS: 2× Platinum | rowspan="2"| Duets (soundtrack) |- | align="left"| "Bette Davis Eyes" | — | — | — | 3 | — | — | — | align="left"| AUS: Platinum | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | | rowspan="2"|Non-album singles |- | align="left"| "Singing in the Rain / Umbrella" (with Glee Cast) | 18 | — | — | 23 | 20 | 27 | — | |- | colspan="11" style="font-size:8pt"| "—" denotes releases that did not chart. |- |}

Music videos

References

External links

Gwyneth Paltrow's Newsletter, Goop

Category:American expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:American film actors Category:American female singers Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actress Golden Globe (film) winners

Category:Musicians from California Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:Actors from Los Angeles, California Category:1972 births Category:Living people Category:Jewish actors Category:American Jews Category:American people of Jewish descent Category:American people of Russian descent Category:American people of German descent Category:University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent

Name	Frank Capra
Caption	Frank Capra cuts army film as a Signal Corps Reserve major during World War II.
Birth name	Francesco Rosario Capra
Birth date	May 18, 1897
Birth place	Bisacquino, Sicily, Italy
Death date	September 03, 1991
Death place	La Quinta, California, U.S.
Occupation	Director, producer, writer
Years active	1922–1961
Spouse	Helen Howell (1923-1927)Lou Capra (1932-1984); 4 children}}

Frank Russell Capra (May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was a Sicilian-born American film director and a creative force behind a number of films of the 1930s and 1940s, including It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Early life

Born as Frank Rosario Capra (some sources indicate Francesco Rosario Capra) in Bisacquino, Sicily, he immigrated to the United States in 1903 with his parents, Turiddu Capra (later known as "Salvatore") and Rosaria (later known as "Sarah"; née Nicolosi) and his siblings Giuseppa, Giuseppe, and Antonia.

In California the family met with Benedetto Capra (the oldest sibling, known as "Benjamin") and settled in Los Angeles. Frank Capra attended Manual Arts High School there. In 1918, he graduated from Throop Institute (now the California Institute of Technology) with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering.

World War I

During World War I, Capra enlisted in the United States Army on October 18, 1918. He taught ballistics and mathematics to artillerymen at Fort Winfield Scott in the Presidio of San Francisco. While there, he caught Spanish flu and was medically discharged with the rank of second lieutenant on December 13, 1918. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1920 as Frank Russell Capra.

Film career

Capra began as a prop man in silent films. However, Capra's first exposure to films occurred in 1915 while he was attending Manual Arts High School. At Manual Arts, Capra's teacher, Rob Wagner, directed Our Wonderful Schools, a documentary on the Los Angeles Unified School District. Capra worked on the film as an editor. The film was produced by Reliance Film Company and released by Mutual Film. The film won a medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition fair in San Francisco. Later, Capra wrote and directed silent film comedies starring Harry Langdon and the Our Gang kids. Capra went to work for Mack Sennett in 1924 and then moved to Columbia Pictures, where he became the top director at the small studio, and eventually one of the most honored directors in Hollywood. During his years there he also formed a close association with screenwriter Robert Riskin (husband of Fay Wray) and cameraman Joseph Walker.

For the 1934 film It Happened One Night, Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy were originally offered the roles, but each felt that the script was poor, and Loy described it as one of the worst she had ever read, later noting that the final version bore little resemblance to the script she and Montgomery were offered. After Loy, Miriam Hopkins and Margaret Sullavan also each rejected the part. Constance Bennett wanted to, but only if she could produce it herself. Then Bette Davis wanted the role, but she was under contract with Warner Brothers and Jack Warner refused to loan her to Columbia Studios. Capra was unable to get any of the actresses he wanted for the part of Ellie Andrews, partly because no self-respecting star would make a film with only two costumes. Harry Cohn suggested Claudette Colbert to play the lead role. Both Capra and Clark Gable enjoyed making the movie; Colbert did not. After the 1934 film It Happened One Night, Capra directed a steady stream of films for Columbia Pictures, intended to be inspirational and humanitarian.

The best known of Capra's films are Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the original Lost Horizon, You Can't Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life. His ten-year break from screwball comedy ended with the comedy Arsenic and Old Lace. Among the actors who owed much of their early success to Capra were Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant and Donna Reed. Capra called Jean Arthur "[his] favorite actress".

Capra's films in the 1930s enjoyed success at the Academy Awards. It Happened One Night was the first film to win all five top Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay). In 1936, Capra won his second Best Director Oscar for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; in 1938 he won his third Director Oscar in five years for You Can't Take It with You, which also won Best Picture. In addition to his three directing wins, Capra received directing nominations for three other films (Lady for a Day, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life). On May 5, 1936, Capra was also host of the 8th Academy Awards ceremony.

World War II

Frank Capra was commissioned as a major in the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II. He produced State of the Union and directed or co-directed eight documentary propaganda films between 1942 and 1948, including the seven-episode U.S. government-commissioned Why We Fight series—consisting of Prelude to War (1942), The Nazis Strike (1942), The Battle of Britain (1943), Divide and Conquer (1943), (1945), Tunisian Victory (1945), and Two Down and One to Go (1945)—as well as produced the African-American targeted The Negro Soldier (1944). Why We Fight is widely considered a masterpiece of propaganda and won an Academy Award. Prelude to War won the 1942 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Capra regarded these films as his most important works. As a colonel, he received the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945.

Post-war

, James Stewart, and Karolyn Grimes in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).]]

It's a Wonderful Life (1946) was considered a box office disappointment but it was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Sound Recording and Best Editing. The American Film Institute named it one of the best films ever made, putting it at the top of the list of AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers, a list of what AFI considers to be the most inspirational American movies of all time. The film also appeared in another AFI Top 100 list: it placed at 11th on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list of the top American films.

Capra directed two films at Paramount Pictures starring Bing Crosby, Riding High (1950) and Here Comes the Groom (1951). From 1952-1956, Capra produced four science-related television specials in color for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company: Our Mr. Sun (1956), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957), and (1958). These educational science documentaries were popular favorites for showing in school science classrooms. It was eight years before he directed another theatrical film, A Hole in the Head (1959) with Frank Sinatra, which was his first feature film in color.

Capra's final theatrical film was with Glenn Ford and Bette Davis, named Pocketful of Miracles (1961), a remake of his 1933 film Lady for a Day. In the mid-1960s he worked on pre-production for an adaptation of Martin Caidan's novel Marooned but budgetary constraints made him eventually shelve it.

Capra's final film, Rendezvous in Space (1964), was an industrial film made for the Martin Marietta Company and shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair. It was exhibited at the New York Hall of Science after the Fair ended.

In 1982, the American Film Institute honored Frank Capra with the television film The American Film Institute Salute to Frank Capra, hosted by James Stewart. In 1986, Capra received the National Medal of Arts.

Autobiography

In 1971, Capra published his autobiography, The Name Above the Title. Upon the book's publication, Capra became a popular guest speaker on the college lecture circuit. Capra was also the subject of a 1991 biography by Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success.

Political views

Capra was a Republican who was active in the anti-Communist cause and also donated funds to the Human Life Amendment PAC.

Family

His son Frank Capra, Jr. — one of the four children born to Capra's second wife, Lucille Capra — was the president of EUE Screen Gems Studios, in Wilmington, North Carolina, until his death on December 19, 2007. His grandson, Frank Capra III, is a Hollywood director and worked as an assistant director in the 1995 film The American President, which referred to Frank Capra in the film's dialogue.

Death and legacy

Frank Capra died in La Quinta, California, of a heart attack in his sleep in 1991 at the age of 94. He was interred in the Coachella Valley Public Cemetery in Coachella, California.

He left part of his ranch in Fallbrook, California, to Caltech. Capra's personal papers and some of his film related materials are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives; which allows scholars and media experts from around the world to have full access.

Style

Capra films usually carry a definite message about the basic goodness of human nature and show the value of unselfishness and hard work. His wholesome, feel-good themes have led some to term his style Capra-corn, but those who hold his vision in high regard prefer the term Capraesque.

Capra's basic themes of championing the common man, as well as his use of spontaneous, fast-paced dialogue and goofy, memorable lead and supporting characters, made him one of the most popular and respected filmmakers of the 20th century. His influence can be traced in the works of many directors, including Robert Altman , Ron Howard , Akira Kurosawa , John Lasseter , David Lynch, John Milius , Oliver Stone

Awards and honors

Academy Awards

Capra won a total of six Academy Awards. He was nominated six times for Best Director and six times for Outstanding Production/Best Picture. Out of six nominations for Best Director, Capra received the award three times. He briefly held the record for winning the most Best Director Oscars when he won for the third time in 1938, until this record was matched by John Ford in 1941, and then later surpassed by Ford in 1952. William Wyler also matched this record upon winning his third Oscar in 1959. With three directing Oscars each, Capra and Wyler have received the second highest number of directing awards in Oscar history, behind Ford's four.

American Film Institute

Life Achievement Award (1982)

Directors Guild of America

Best Director Nomination for A Hole in the Head (1959)

Life Achievement Award (1959)

Best Director Nomination for Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

Golden Globe Award

Best Director Award for It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Venice Film Festival

Mussolini Cups for best foreign film Nomination for It Happened One Night (1934)

Mussolini Cups for best foreign film Nomination for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Golden Lion (1982)

American Film Institute recognition

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)

*It's a Wonderful Life...# 20

*Mr. Smith Goes to Washington...# 26

*It Happened One Night...# 46

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers

*It's a Wonderful Life...# 1

*Mr. Smith Goes to Washington...# 5

*Meet John Doe...# 49

*Mr. Deeds Goes to Town...# 83

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs

*It Happened One Night...# 8

*Arsenic and Old Lace...# 30

*Mr. Deeds Goes to Town...# 70

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions

*It's a Wonderful Life...# 8

*It Happened One Night...# 38

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains

*50 greatest movie heroes

*It's a Wonderful Life...George Bailey ...# 9

*Mr. Smith Goes to Washington...Jefferson Smith ...# 11

*50 greatest movie villains

*It's a Wonderful Life...Mister Potter ...# 6

AFI's 10 Top 10

*Fantasy

**It's a Wonderful Life...# 3

*Romantic Comedies

**It Happened One Night...# 3

United States National Film Registry

The Strong Man (1926)

It Happened One Night (1934)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Why We Fight Series of seven films (1942)

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Filmography

{|class="wikitable sortable" width="100%" !Year||Title||Production Co.||Cast||Notes |- |colspan="8" align="center" style="background:LightSteelBlue"|Silent films |- |1915 || Our Wonderful Schools || Reliance Film Company || || Documentary; film editor |- style=background:#efefef; |- |1922 || Fultah Fisher's Boarding House || Fireside Productions || || Short film |- style=background:#efefef; |1926 || The Strong Man || Harry Langdon Corporation || Harry Langdon || |- |1927 || Long Pants || Harry Langdon Corporation || Harry Langdon || |- style=background:#efefef; |1927 || For the Love of Mike || Robert Kane Productions || Claudette Colbert / Ben Lyon || |- |1928 || That Certain Thing || Columbia || Viola Dana || |- style=background:#efefef; |1928 || So This is Love? || Columbia || Shirley Mason || |- |1928 || The Matinee Idol || Columbia || Bessie Love / Johnnie Walker || |- style=background:#efefef; |1928 || The Way of the Strong || Columbia || Mitchell Lewis / Alice Day / William Norton Bailey || |- |1928 || Say It with Sables || Columbia || Helene Chadwick / Francis X. Bushman / Margaret Livingston || |- style=background:#efefef; |1928 || Submarine || Columbia || Jack Holt / Ralph Graves / Dorothy Revier || |- |1928 || The Power of the Press || Columbia || Douglas Fairbanks Jr. || |- style=background:#efefef; |1928 || The Burglar || Mack Sennett || || Short film / Co-directed with Phil Whitman |- |colspan="8" align="center" style="background:LightSteelBlue"|Sound films |- |1929 || The Younger Generation || Columbia || Ricardo Cortez || Talking sequences |- style=background:#efefef; |1929 || The Donovan Affair || Columbia || Jack Holt || |- |1929 || Flight || Columbia || Jack Holt / Ralph Graves || |- style=background:#efefef; |1930 || Ladies of Leisure || Columbia || Barbara Stanwyck / Ralph Graves || |- |1930 || Rain or Shine || Columbia || Joe Cook || |- style=background:#efefef; |1931 || Dirigible || Columbia || Jack Holt / Ralph Graves / Fay Wray || |- |1931 || The Miracle Woman || Columbia || Barbara Stanwyck || |- style=background:#efefef; |1931 || Platinum Blonde || Columbia || Loretta Young / Robert Williams / Jean Harlow || |- |1932 || Forbidden || Columbia || Barbara Stanwyck / Adolphe Menjou || |- style=background:#efefef; |1932 || American Madness || Columbia || Walter Huston || Co-directed with Allan Dwan / Roy William Neill |- |1933 || The Bitter Tea of General Yen || Columbia || Barbara Stanwyck / Nils Asther || |- style=background:#efefef; |1933 || Lady for a Day || Columbia || May Robson / Warren William / Guy Kibbee || |- |1934 || It Happened One Night || Columbia || Clark Gable / Claudette Colbert || |- style=background:#efefef; |1934 || Broadway Bill || Columbia || Warner Baxter / Myrna Loy || |- |1936 || Mr. Deeds Goes to Town || Columbia || Gary Cooper / Jean Arthur || |- style=background:#efefef; |1937 || Lost Horizon || Columbia || Ronald Colman / Jane Wyatt || |- |1938 || You Can't Take It With You || Columbia || Lionel Barrymore / Jean Arthur / James Stewart || |- style=background:#efefef; |1939 || Mr. Smith Goes to Washington || Columbia || James Stewart / Jean Arthur || |- |1941 || Meet John Doe || Frank Capra Productions || Gary Cooper / Barbara Stanwyck || |- style=background:#efefef; |1943 || The Nazis Strike ||U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Short film / Co-directed with Anatole Litvak |- |1943 || Divide and Conquer || U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Co-directed with Anatole Litvak |- style=background:#efefef; |1943 || The Battle of Britain || Warner Bros. || || Documentary / Co-directed with Anthony Veiller |- |1943 || Prelude to War || U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Co-directed with Anatole Litvak |- style=background:#efefef; |1943 || The Battle of Russia || U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Co-directed with Anatole Litvak |- |1944 || The Battle of China || U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Co-directed with Anatole Litvak |- style=background:#efefef; |1944 || Tunisian Victory || U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Co-directed with Hugh Stewart |- |1944 || Arsenic and Old Lace || Warner Bros. || Cary Grant / Priscilla Lane || |- style=background:#efefef; |1945 || Your Job in Germany || || || Documentary / Short film |- |1945 || || U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Co-directed with Joris Ivens |- style=background:#efefef; |1945 || Two Down and One to Go || U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Short film |- |- |1945 || War Comes to America || U.S. War Department || || Documentary / Co-directed with Anatole Litvak |- style=background:#efefef; |1946 || It's a Wonderful Life || Liberty Films || James Stewart / Donna Reed || |- |1948 || State of the Union || Liberty Films || Spencer Tracy / Katharine Hepburn || |- style=background:#efefef; |1950 || Riding High || Paramount Pictures || Bing Crosby || Remake of Broadway Bill |- |1951 || Here Comes the Groom || Paramount Pictures || Bing Crosby / Jane Wyman || |- style=background:#efefef; |1959 || A Hole in the Head || Sincap Productions || Frank Sinatra / Edward G. Robinson || First color film |- |1961 || Pocketful of Miracles || Franton Production || Glenn Ford / Hope Lange / Bette Davis || Eastmancolor film / Remake of Lady for a Day |}

His Films with Academy Awards

{|class="wikitable" |- ! Year !! Film !! OscarNominations !! OscarWins !! Performances Nominations |- | 1933 | Lady for a Day | align="center"|4 | align="center"|0 | Best Actress for May Robson (nom) |- | 1934 | It Happened One Night | align="center"|5 | align="center"|5 | Best Actor for Clark GableBest Actress for Claudette Colbert |- | 1936 | Mr. Deeds Goes to Town | align="center"|5 | align="center"|1 | Best Actor for Gary Cooper (nom) |- | 1937 | Lost Horizon | align="center"|7 | align="center"|2 | Best Supporting Actor for H. B. Warner (nom) |- | 1938 | You Can't Take It With You | align="center"|7 | align="center"|2 | Best Supporting Actress for Spring Byington (nom) |- | 1939 | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington | align="center"|11 | align="center"|1 | Best Actor for James Stewart (nom)Best Supporting Actor for Harry Carey (nom)Best Supporting Actor for Claude Rains (nom) |- | 1941 | Meet John Doe | align="center"|1 | align="center"|0 |- | 1942 | Prelude to War | align="center"|1 | align="center"|1 |- | 1943 | The Battle of Russia | align="center"|1 | align="center"|0 |- | 1946 | It's a Wonderful Life | align="center"|5 | align="center"|0 | Best Actor for James Stewart (nom) |- | 1951 | Here Comes the Groom | align="center"|2 | align="center"|1 |- | 1959 | A Hole in the Head | align="center"|1 | align="center"|1 |- | 1961 | Pocketful of Miracles | align="center"|3 | align="center"|0 | Best Supporting Actor for Peter Falk |- |}

See also

James Stewart

The Bell Laboratory Science Series

Frank Capra at the First International Film Festival of India, 1952

References

;Notes ;Bibliography

Barney, Richard A. David Lynch: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers Series). Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2009 ISBN 978-1604732375.

Capra, Frank. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971. ISBN 0-30680-771-8.

Chandler, Charlotte. The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. ISBN 0-78628-639-3.

Dixon, Wheeler W. The Early Film Criticism of Francois Truffaut. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0253207715.

Kotsabilas-Davis, James and Myrna Loy. Being and Becoming. New York: Primus, Donald I Fine Inc., 1987. ISBN 1-55611-101-0.

McBride, Joseph. Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. New York: Touchstone Books, 1992. ISBN 0-671-79788-3.

Oderman, Stuart. Talking To the Piano Player: Silent Film Stars, Writers and Directors Remember. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media, 2005. ISBN 1-59393-013-5.

Wiley, Mason and Damien Bona. Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987. ISBN 0-345-34453-7.

External links

Capra Smith and Doe: Filming the American Hero from American Studies at the University of Virginia

Retrieved on May 19, 2009 Retrieved on May 19, 2009

Bibliography

Capra before he became ‘Capraesque’ BFI Sight & Sound magazine November 2010 article on Capra's early career, by Joseph McBride

It's A Wonderful Life", Humanitas, Vol. XVIII, No's 1&2, 2005">"Sentimental Hogwash?: On Capra's It's A Wonderful Life", Humanitas, Vol. XVIII, No's 1&2, 2005

Category:American anti-communists Category:American film directors Category:American military personnel of World War I Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:Best Director Academy Award winners Category:Best Director Golden Globe winners Category:Presidents of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Category:California Institute of Technology alumni Category:California Republicans Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in California Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:American film directors of Italian descent Category:Italian immigrants to the United States Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from the Province of Palermo Category:Propaganda film directors Category:Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) Category:American people of Sicilian descent Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:1903 births Category:1991 deaths Category:Burials at Coachella Valley Public Cemetery Category:American screenwriters Category:American film producers Category:United States Army Air Forces officers Category:First Motion Picture Unit personnel Category:United States Army officers

Name	Eve
Caption	Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder shows Eve giving Adam the fruit.
Birth date	3760 BC (Hebrew calendar)4004 BC (Ussher chronology)
Birth place	Garden of Eden
Death date	2820 BC (Hebrew calendar) [aged 940]3064 BC (Ussher chronology)
Death place	Unknown
Spouse	Adam
Children	CainAbelSethmore sons and daughters

Eve (Hebrew: חַוָּה, Ḥawwāh in Classical Hebrew, Modern Israeli Hebrew: "Khavah", Arabic:حواء) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first woman and the second person created by God, and an important figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Her husband was Adam, from whose rib God created her to be his companion. She succumbs to the serpent's temptation via the suggestion that to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would improve on the way God had made her, and that she would not die, and she, believing the Serpent rather than the earlier instruction from God, shares the fruit with Adam. As a result, the first humans are expelled from the Garden of Eden and are cursed.

Name and origin

Bible, Eve (Hebrew: חַוָּה, Ḥawwāh; , Hawwa'; Ge'ez: ሕይዋን Hiywan; "living one" or "source of life", from Hebrew ḥavvâ, "living", "life", from ḥāyâ, "to live"; ultimately from the Semitic root ḥyw) is Adam's wife. Derived from the words chavah, meaning "to breathe" and chayah, meaning "to live", her name occurs only five times in the Bible, where she is called "the mother of all living" (Genesis 3:20), a title previously held by the Babylonian creatrix Tiamat. Historically the name appears to have been derived from that of the Hurrian Goddess "Kheba", who was shown in the Amarna Letters to be worshipped in Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age. It has been suggested that the name Kheba may derive from Kubau, a woman who reigned as the first "king" of the Third Dynasty of Kish Another name of Asherah in the first millennium BCE was Chawat, Hawwah in Aramaic, (Eve in English). on the Orvieto Cathedral, Italy ]]

Eve is the first woman mentioned in the Bible. Here it was Adam who gave her the name Eve. Eve lived with Adam in the Garden of Eden during the time Adam was described as having walked with God. Eventually, however, with the Fall, the pair were removed from the garden because she was encouraged by a serpent to take a fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and with the Temptation led Adam to eat of the Forbidden Fruit.

In the Tyndale translation Eve is the name given to the beasts by Adam, his wife is called Heua.

Eve is not a saint's name, but the traditional name day of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, has been celebrated on December 24 since the Middle Ages in many European countries, e.g. Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Scandinavia, Estonia.

by Michelangelo]]

Creation of Eve

Eve was created in the Garden of Eden to be the wife of Adam. God decides that "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a companion fit for him." and in Genesis 2:21–22 it states

:"And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man" After her creation, Adam names his companion Woman, "because she was taken out of Man." "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."

Eve is also mentioned in the Book of Tobit (viii, 8; Sept., viii, 6) where it is simply affirmed that she was given to Adam for a helper.

An alternate tradition, originating in a Jewish book called The Alphabet of Ben-Sira which entered Europe from the East in the 6th century A.D suggests that Lilith, not Eve, was Adam's first wife, created at the same time and from the same dust. The tradition goes that Lilith, claiming to be created equal, refused to sleep or serve "under him" (Adam). When Adam tried to force her into the "inferior" position, she flew away from Eden into the air, where she copulated with demons, conceiving hundreds more each day. God sent three angels after her, who threatened to kill her brood if she refused to return to Adam. But she did refuse. So God made Eve from Adam's rib to be his "second wife."

Controversy regarding the "rib" continues to the present day, regarding the Sumerian and the original Hebrew words for rib. The common translation, for example, that of the King James Version, is that אַחַת מִצַּלְעֹתָיו means "one of his ribs". The contrary position is that the term צלע ṣelaʿ, occurring forty-one times in the Tanakh, is most often translated as "side" in general.[7]. "Rib" is, however, the etymologically primary meaning of the term, which is from a root ṣ-l-ʿ, "bend", cognate to Assyrian ṣêlu "rib".[8] Also God took "one" ( ʾeḫad) of Adam's ṣelaʿ, suggesting an individual rib. The Septuagint has μίαν τῶν πλευρῶν αὐτοῦ, with ἡ πλευρά choosing a Greek term that like the Hebrew ṣelaʿ may mean either "rib", or, in the plural, "side [of a man or animal]" in general. The specification "one of the πλευρά" thus closely imitates the Hebrew text. The Aramaic form of the word is עלע ʿalaʿ, which appears, also in the meaning "rib", in Daniel 7:5.

An old story of the rib is told by Rabbi Joshua:

:"God deliberated from what member He would create woman, and He reasoned with Himself thus: I must not create her from Adam's head, for she would be a proud person, and hold her head high. If I create her from the eye, then she will wish to pry into all things; if from the ear, she will wish to hear all things; if from the mouth, she will talk much; if from the heart, she will envy people; if from the hand, she will desire to take all things; if from the feet, she will be a gadabout. Therefore I will create her from the member which is hid, that is the rib, which is not even seen when man is naked."[9]

illustration of Eve and the serpent]] Anatomically, men and women have the same number of ribs - 24. When this fact was noted by the Flemish anatomist Vesalius in 1524 it touched off a wave of controversy, as it seemed to contradict Genesis 2:21.

Some hold that the origin of this motif is the Sumerian myth in which the goddess Ninhursag created a beautiful garden full of lush vegetation and fruit trees, called Edinu, in Dilmun, the Sumerian earthly Paradise, a place which the Sumerians believed to exist to the east of their own land, beyond the sea. Ninhursag charged Enki, her lover and husband, with controlling the wild animals and tending the garden, but Enki became curious about the garden and his assistant, Adapa, selected seven plants and offered them to Enki, who ate them. (In other versions of the story he seduced in turn seven generations of the offspring of his divine marriage with Ninhursag). This enraged Ninhursag, and she caused Enki to fall ill. Enki felt pain in his rib, which is a pun in Sumerian, as the word "ti" means both "rib" and "life". The other gods persuaded Ninhursag to relent. Ninhursag then created a new goddess named Ninti, (a name made up of "Nin", or "lady", plus "ti", and which can be translated as both Lady of Living and Lady of the Rib), to cure Enki. Ninhursag is known as mother of all living creatures, and thus holds the same position in the story as does Eve. The story has a clear parallel with Eve's creation from Adam's rib, but given that the pun with rib is present only in Sumerian, linguistic criticism places the Sumerian account as the more ancient.

Temptation, fall, and expulsion from the garden

at the entrance to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. The portrayal of the image of the serpent as a mirror of Eve was common in earlier iconography as a result of the identification of women as the source of human original sin]] The serpent tells the woman that she will not die if she eats the fruit of the tree: "When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So the woman eats, and gives to the man who also eats. "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." The man and woman hide themselves from God, the man blaming the woman for giving him the fruit, and the woman blaming the serpent. God curses the serpent, "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life;" the woman he punishes with childbirth (and the pain therein), and with subordination to man: "your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you;" and Adam he punishes with a life of toil: "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground." The man names his wife Eve, "because she was the mother of all living."

"Behold," says God, "the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." God expels the couple from Eden, "lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever;" the gate of Eden is sealed by cherubim and a flaming sword "to guard the way to the tree of life."

Eve as mother of humanity

According to the Bible, for her share in the transgression, Eve (and womankind after her) is sentenced to a life of sorrow and travail in childbirth, and to be under the power of her husband. Early anti-feminists argued that "sex education" for women was a violation of God's curse and should be resisted. While believers accept all subsequent humans have Eve as an ancestor, she is believed to be unique in that although all people after her were physically created from women, Eve herself was created from a man. Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel, the first a tiller of the ground, the second a keeper of sheep. After the death of Abel, Eve gives birth to a third son, Seth, from which Noah (and thus the whole of modern humanity) is descended. According to the Bible, Eve states "God hath given me [literally, "put" or "appointed"] another seed, for Abel whom Cain slew" (Genesis 4:25).

Eve in other traditions

Eve in Judaism

Even in ancient times, the presence of two distinct accounts was noted, and regarded with some curiosity. The first account says male and female [God] created them (Genesis 1:27), which has been assumed by critical scholars to imply simultaneous creation, whereas the second account states that God created Eve from Adam's rib because Adam was lonely (Genesis 2:18 ff.). Thus to resolve this apparent discrepancy, mediaeval rabbis suggested that Eve and the woman of the first account were two separate individuals.

Preserved in the Midrash, and the mediaeval Alphabet of Ben Sira, this rabbinic tradition held that the first woman refused to take the submissive position to Adam in sex, and eventually fled from him, consequently leaving him lonely. This first woman was identified in the Midrash as Lilith, a figure elsewhere described as a night demon.

The word liyliyth can also mean "screech owl", as it is translated in the King James Version of Isaiah 34:14, although some scholars take this to be a reference to the same demonic entity as mentioned in the Talmud.

In the Talmud, Adam is said to have separated from Eve for 130 years, during which time his ejaculations gave rise to "ghouls, and demons." Elsewhere in the Talmud, Lilith is identified as the mother of these creatures. The demons were said to prey on newborn males before they had been circumcised, and so a tradition arose in which a protective amulet was placed around the neck of newborns. Traditions in the Midrash concerning Lilith, and her sexual appetite, have been compared to Sumerian mythology concerning the demon ki-sikil-lil-la-ke, by scholars who postulate an intermediate Akkadian folk etymology interpreting the lil-la-ke portion of the name as a corruption of lîlîtu, literally meaning female night demon.

The Alphabet of Ben Sira Midrash goes even further and identifies a third wife, created after Lilith deserted Adam, but before Eve. This unnamed wife was purportedly made in the same way as Adam, from the "dust of the earth", but the sight of her being created proved too much for Adam to take and he refused to go near her. It is also said that she was created from nothing at all, and that God created into being a skeleton, then organs, and then flesh. The Midrash tells that Adam saw her as "full of blood and secretions," suggesting that he witnessed her creation and was horrified at seeing a body from the inside out. Ben Sira does not record this wife's fate. She was never named, and it assumed that she was allowed to leave the Garden a perpetual virgin, or was ultimately destroyed by God in favor of Eve, who was created when Adam was asleep and oblivious. It should be noted here, that both Lilith and the Second Wife are free from any curse of the Tree of Knowledge, as they left long before the event occurred.

Genesis does not tell for how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, but the Book of Jubilees states that they were removed from the garden on the new moon of the fourth month of the 8th year after creation (Jubilees 3:33); other Jewish sources assert that it was less than a day. Shortly after their expulsion, Eve brought forth her first-born child, and thereafter their second — Cain and Abel, respectively.

Another Jewish tradition---also used to explain "male and female He created them" line, is that God originally created Adam as a hermaphrodite[Midrash Rabbah - Genesis VIII:1], and in this way was bodily and spiritually male and female. He later decided that "it is not good for [Adam] to be alone," and created the separate beings of Adam and Eve, thus creating the idea of two people joining together to achieve a union of the two separate spirits.

Only three of Adam's children (Cain, Abel, and Seth) are explicitly named in Genesis, although it does state that there were other sons and daughters as well (Genesis 5:4). In Jubilees, two daughters are named - Azûrâ being the first, and Awân, who was born after Seth, Cain, Abel, nine other sons, and Azûrâ. Jubilees goes on to state that Cain later married Awân and Seth married Azûrâ, thus, accounting for their descendants. However, according to Genesis Rabba and other later sources, either Cain had a twin sister, and Abel had two twin sisters, or Cain had a twin sister named Lebuda, and Abel a twin sister named Qelimath. In the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, Cain's twin sister is named Luluwa, and Abel's twin sister is named Aklia.

Other pseudepigrapha give further details of their life outside of Eden, in particular, the Life of Adam and Eve (also known as the Apocalypse of Moses) consists entirely of a description of their life outside Eden. Generally in Judaism Eve's sin was used as an example of what can happen to women who stray from their childbearing duties.

According to traditional Jewish belief, Eve is buried in the Cave of Machpelah, in Hebron.

Eve in Christianity

In Christian tradition Eve is often used as the exemplar of sexual temptation, a tendency not found in Judaism where Lilith plays that role. Furthermore, the serpent that tempted Eve was interpreted within most Christian traditions to have been Satan, although there is no mention of this identification in the Torah. In fact, Genesis does not even hint at any of these readings, although it is found in some of the Jewish apocrypha but their adoption by many Christians has marked the religion's radical break from its Judaic parent. Writings dealing with this subject are extant in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Armenian and Arabic. They go back undoubtedly to a Jewish basis, but in some of the forms in which they appear at present they are Christianized throughout. The oldest and for the most part Jewish portion of this literature is said Primary Adam Literature (see Life of Adam and Eve). Before we discuss this Primary Adam Literature we shall mention other members of this literature, which, though derivable ultimately from Jewish sources, are Christian in their present form; The Book of Adam and Eve, also called the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan and a Syriac work entitled Cave of Treasures. This work has close affinities to the Conflict, but is said by Dillmann to be more original.

Drawing upon the statement in II Cor., xi, 3, where reference is made to her seduction by the serpent, and in I Tim., ii, 13, where the Apostle enjoins submission and silence upon women, arguing that "Adam was first formed; then Eve. And Adam was not seduced, but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression", because Eve had tempted Adam to eat of the fatal fruit, some early Fathers of the Church held her and all subsequent women to be the first sinners, and especially responsible for the Fall because of the sin of Eve. She was also called "the lance of the demon", "the road of iniquity" "the sting of the scorpion", "a daughter of falsehood, the sentinel of Hell", "the enemy of peace" and "of the wild beast, the most dangerous." "You are the devil's gateway," Tertullian told his female listeners in the early 2nd century, and went on to explain that all women were responsible for the death of Christ: "On account of your desert _ that is, death - even the Son of God had to die." In this way Eve is equated with the Greco-Roman myth of Pandora who was responsible for bringing evil into the world.

Saint Augustine, according to Elaine Pagels, used the sin of Eve to justify his idiosyncratic view of humanity as permanently scarred by the Fall, which led to the Catholic doctrine of Original sin.

In 1486 the Renaissance Dominicans Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger took this further as one of their justifications in the Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of the Witches") a central text in three centuries of persecution of "witches". Such "Eve bashing" is much more common in Christianity than in Judaism or Islam, though major differences in women status does not seem to have been the result. This is often balanced by the typology of the Madonna, much as "Old Adam" is balanced by Christ - this is even the case in the "Mallus" whose authors were capable of writings things such as "Justly we may say with Cato of Utica: If the world could be rid of women, we should not be without God in our intercourse. For truly, without the wickedness of women, to say nothing of witchcraft, the world would still remain proof against innumerable dangers" but were perhaps aware that (tragically) a large percentage of those accusing witches were female as well, and feared losing their support: "There are also others who bring forward yet other reasons, of which preachers should be very careful how they make use. For it is true that in the Old Testament the Scriptures have much that is evil to say about women, and this because of the first temptress, Eve, and her imitators; yet afterwards in the New Testament we find a change of name, as from Eva to Ave (as S. Jerome says), and the whole sin of Eve taken away by the benediction of Mary. Therefore preachers should always say as much praise of them as possible." It is interesting to note that in pre - industrial times, misogynic authorities were often (such as in "The Romance of the Rose" feminist debate) just called "The Roman Books", due to the perceived paternalistic attitude of both Pagan & Christian Romans to gender problems. Another example often given of this, Gregory of Tours report of how, in the 585CE Council of Macon, attended by 43 bishops that one bishop maintained that woman could not be included under the term "man", and as being responsible for Adam's sin, had a deficient soul. However, he accepted the reasoning of the other bishops and did not press his case for the holy book of the Old Testament tells us that in the beginning, when God created man, "Male and female he created them and called their name Adam," which means earthly man; even so, he called the woman Eve, yet of both he used the word "man."

Eve in Christian Art is most usually portrayed as the temptress of Adam, and often during the Renaissance the serpent in the Garden is portrayed as having a woman's face identical to that of Eve.

Some Christians claim monogamy is implied in the story of Adam and Eve as one woman is created for one man. Eve's being taken from his side implies not only her secondary role in the conjugal state (1 Corinthians 11:9), but also emphasizes the intimate union between husband and wife, and the dependence of the latter on the former "Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh."

Eve is commemorated as a matriarch in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod with Adam on December 19.

Eve in Gnosticism

Eve too has different roles within Gnosticism. For example she is often seen as the embodiment of the supreme feminine principle, called Barbelo (from Arb-Eloh), barbeloth, or barthenos. As such she is equated with the Light-Maiden of Sophia (Wisdom), creator of the word (Logos) of God, the "thygater tou photos" or simply the Virgin Maiden, "parthenos". In other texts she is equated with Zoe (Life). Again, in conventional Christianity, this is a prefigurement of Mary, also sometimes called "the Second Eve". In other Gnostic texts, such as The Hypostasis of the Archons (The Reality of the Rulers), the Pistis Sophia is equated with Eve's daughter, Norea, the wife of Seth.

As a result of such Gnostic beliefs, especially among Marcionites, women were considered equal to men, being revered as prophets, teachers, travelling evangelists, faith healers, priests and even bishops.

Eve in Islam

library, Istanbul.]] Eve is not mentioned by name in the Qur'an, she is nevertheless referred to as Adam's spouse, and Islamic tradition refers to her by an etymologically similar name - حواء (). Mention of Adam's spouse is found in verses 30-39 of Sura 2, verses 11-25 of Sura 7, verses 26-42 of Sura 15, verses 61-65 of Sura 17, verses 50-51 of Sura 18, verses 110-124 of Sura 20 and in verses 71-85 of Sura 38.

In particular, Sura 7 recounts:

(Al-A`raf 7:22-23)

Islamic texts, which include Quran and the books of Sunnah (Hadith), differ from the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an, contrary to the Bible, places equal blame on both Adam and Eve for their mistake. The Qur'an does not say that Eve tempted Adam to eat from the tree or even that she had eaten before him. In the book it states both Adam and Eve committed a sin and then asked God for forgiveness and He forgave them both. Original Sin is not generally considered to exist in Islam.

Traditionally, the final resting place of Eve is said to be the "Tomb of Eve" in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Eve in modern times

On the basis of Eve's transgression, in the late sixteenth century a young scholar, Valentius Acidalius, who was working as a teacher in Silesia, published a pamphlet later republished at Lyons in France in 1647 in Italian, That was entitled Women do not have a soul and do not belong to the human race, as is shown by many passages of Holy Scripture. This belief was taken up by Johannes Leyser, a Lutheran pastor from the region of Frankfurt in 1675, who linked the story to a misreading of the results of the Council of Macon. Pierre Bayle, a Dutch Calvinist with a marked distaste for the Catholicism to which he had once adhered, spread Leyer's belief further by writing in his Dictionnaire: "What I think yet more strange is to find that in a Council it has been gravely proposed as a question whether women were human creatures, and that it was determined affirmatively [only] after a long debate."

An alternative view was given by Matilda Joslyn Gage who in Woman, Church and State: A Historical Account of the Status of Woman Through the Christian Ages with Reminiscences of the Matriarchate (1893, reprinted by Arno Press Inc, 1972), who showed that in book printed in Amsterdam, 1700, in a series of eleven reasons, threw the greater culpability upon Adam, saying of Eve (pages 522–523):

First: The serpent tempted her before she thought of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and suffered herself to be persuaded that not well understood his meaning.

Second: That believing that God had not given such prohibition she ate the fruit.

Third: Sinning through ignorance she committed a less heinous crime than Adam.

Fourth: That Eve did not necessarily mean the penalty of eternal death, for God's decree only imported that man should die if he sinned against his conscience.

Fifth: That God might have inflicted death on Eve without injustice, yet he resolved, so great is his mercy toward his works, to let her live, in (that) she had not sinned maliciously.

Sixth: That being exempted from the punishment contained in God's decree, she might retain all the prerogatives of her sex except those that were not incidental with the infirmities to which God condemned her.

Seventh: That she retained in particulars the prerogative of bringing forth children who had a right to eternal happiness on condition of obeying the new Adam.

Eighth: That as mankind was to proceed from Adam and Eve, Adam was preserved alive only because his preservation was necessary for the procreation of children.

Ninth: That it was by accident therefore, that the sentence of death was not executed on him, but that otherwise he was more (justly) punished than his wife.

Tenth: That she was not driven out from Paradise as he was, but was only obliged to leave it to find out Adam in the earth; and that it was full privilege of returning thither again.

Eleventh: That the children of Adam and Eve were subject to eternal damnation, not a proceeding from Eve, but as proceeding from Adam."

Early feminist theologian Katharine Bushnell writes that Eve was deceived by the Serpent and therefore sinned in ignorance. She confesses her sin and God does not banish her from Eden. Adam, however, sinned in full knowledge and does not repent, and is therefore assigned the blame.
 
Pamela Norris in her book "Eve: A Biography" argues that throughout history the story of Eve "was developed to manipulate and control women." Bryce Christiansen, commenting upon Norris's work shows how "The effort to demystify Eve requires a context that sharply contrasts her subordination to Adam with the awesome power of female deities prominent in Babylonian and Canaanite myths. Norris exposes the various ways in which the Genesis account of Eve's transgression has justified centuries of scapegoating women". Norris also reports upon the snaky Lamias and Liliths who haunted nineteenth-century painting and literature, suggesting that centuries of disobedient women have been linked with Eve, the original bad girl, providing ample ammunition for male fears and fantasies.
 
Elaine Pagels in her book "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" shows how the disgust felt by early Christians for the flesh was a radical departure from both pagan and Jewish sexual attitudes. In fact, as she demonstrates, the ascetic movement in Christianity met with great resistance in the first four centuries. Sex only became fully tainted, inextricably linked to sin through the work of Tertullian and Augustine, attacking Gnosticism while adopting certain of their attitudes.
 
Modern feminists have tended to examine the story of Eve as the source of patriarchal misogyny in Christianity. Genesis 2-3 is more often cited than any other biblical text justifying the suppression of women and proof of their inferiority to men. Others like Phyllis Trible, have contested that it is a certain kind of interpretation of Genesis 2-3 that is the source of the problem. Trible, for instance, argues that before the fall, there is an amazing equality between Adam and Eve. Before the creation of Eve, she argues, 'ādām or human, is created from the 'ădāmāh or humus, and although a male pronoun is used for this creature Trible argues that it was androgynous, not yet sexually differentiated. This interpretation is not original, it in fact goes back through Rashi, the 10th century Jewish interpreter, and ultimately back to Plato.
 
Trible also argues that Eve is the crown of creation rather than an afterthought. She further argues that the word 'ēzer, meaning "helper" is not to signify a subordinate position to man as it is also most often used describe God and is thus a superior rather than an inferior being. In the story of the garden, Eve is also autonomous and independent while Adam is surprisingly passive.
 
Mieke Bal, while less positive than Trible, nevertheless argues that Eve taking of the fruit is the first act of human independence, and by gaining knowledge of good and evil, she achieves a position of greater equality with the divinity, rather than remaining a puppet of God.
 
Robert McElvaine argues that the story of Adam and Eve can be linked to the gender dynamics associated with the rise of Patriarchy in the ancient world. The Garden of Eden he claims is a mythical reference to hunting and gathering societies in which people lived in nature, not doing much work. With eating of the tree of Knowledge, first women, and then men took conscious control over the food supply, and now had to take care and be answerable for any ecological problems this brought. The parallel between Adam cursing Eve is paralleled in the Cain and Abel story, according to McElwaine, as "real men don't fool about with plants". Through associating male semen metaphorically with seed 'man became the Godlike creator of life and women from their Goddess-like creators [transformed] into ...dirt ...In Genesis the soil has no creative power" (p. 128). Projecting this into the sacred world, the belief that through planting seed in the Earth men had procreative power, just as with planting semen in the womb he had the same. As a result, it was argued, the Supreme God must also been male and men are closer to God than women. The hierarchy that emerged was

::God - over ::Men - over ::Women - over ::the Earth.

Thus according to McElvaine, men can be the sons of God, but all women are the daughters of men.

See also

Mitochondrial Eve

Eve Grave

Pre-Adamite

Footnotes

References

Primary sources

Genesis ii.7-iii.23

Paulinus Minorita, Compendium

Secondary sources

Flood, John (2010) "Representations of Eve in Antiquity and the English Middle Ages" (Routledge)

Pamela Norris (1998) "The Story of Eve" (MacMillan Books)

Elaine Pagels (1989) "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" (Vintage Books)

Category:Adam and Eve Category:Burials in Hebron Category:Hebrew Bible people Category:Old Testament female saints

Name	Errol Flynn
Caption	Errol Flynn c.1940
Birth name	Errol Leslie Thompson Flynn
Birth place	Hobart, Tasmania, Australia He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films and his flamboyant lifestyle.
Name	Flynn, Errol
Short description	actor
Date of birth	20 June 1909
Place of birth	Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Date of death	14 October 1959
Place of death	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Category:Alcohol-related deaths in Canada Category:American expatriates in Jamaica Category:American film actors Category:American people of Australian descent Category:American actors of English descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American actors of Scottish descent Category:Australian film actors Category:Australian expatriate actors in the United States Category:Australian expatriates in Jamaica Category:Australian expatriates in the United Kingdom Category:Australian immigrants to the United States Category:Australian people of English descent Category:Australian people of Irish descent Category:Australian people of Scottish descent Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale) Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:20th-century actors Category:People from Sydney Category:People from Tasmania Category:Shore Old Boys Category:Western (genre) film actors Category:1909 births Category:1959 deaths Category:People from Hobart

Name	Barbara Walters
Caption	Barbara Walters, 2008.
Birthname	Barbara Jill Walters
Birth date	September 25, 1929
Birth place	Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	JournalistTelevision talk show host
Years active	1961–present
Gender	Female
Status	Divorced (3 times)
Religion	Judaism
Spouse	Merv Adelson(1986–1992)Lee Guber(1963–1976)Robert Henry Katz(1955–1958)
Children	Jacqueline Dena Guber Danforth
Salary	$12 million (2007)

Barbara Jill Walters (born September 25, 1929) is an American broadcast journalist and author, who has hosted morning television shows (Today and The View), the television newsmagazine (20/20), and co-anchor of the ABC Evening News and correspondent on ABC World News (then ABC Evening News).

Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today, where she worked with Hugh Downs and later hosts Frank McGee and Jim Hartz. Walters later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20. She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News and was later a correspondent for ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson.

Early life

Walters was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Louis "Lou" Walters and his wife, Dena Seletsky, both of whom were Jewish and descendants of refugees from the former Russian Empire, now Eastern Europe. Walters' paternal grandfather, Isaac Abrahams, was from what is now Łódź, Poland, and first immigrated to England, changing his name to Abraham Walters. In 1937, her father opened the New York version of the Latin Quarter; he also was a Broadway producer (he produced the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943). He also was the Entertainment Director for the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he imported the "Folies Bergere" stage show from Paris to the resort's main showroom. Walters' brother, Burton, died in 1932 of pneumonia. Walters' elder sister, Jacqueline, was born mentally retarded and died of ovarian cancer in 1985. Barbara has another half sister, Walda Walters Anderson born to a different mother and Barbara's father, Lou Walters. Walda is now a communications executive. Barbara and Walters Anderson are believed not to be in contact.

According to Walters, being surrounded by celebrities when she was young kept her from being "in awe" of them.

After attending Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Birch Wathen Lenox School private schools in New York City,

Career and accolades

After a brief period as a publicist with Tex McCrary Inc. and a job as a writer at CBS News, Walters joined NBC's The Today Show as a writer and researcher in 1961. Within a year she had become a reporter-at-large developing, writing, and editing her own reports and interviews. In 1984, she moderated a Presidential debate held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Many of her regular and special programs are syndicated around the world. As of 2004, she is in semi-retirement as a broadcast journalist, but remains a correspondent for ABC News as well as a host of ABC's special programs.

On June 14, 2007, Walters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has won Daytime and Prime Time Emmy Awards, a Women in Film Lucy Award, and a GLAAD Excellence in Media award. Her impact on the popular culture is illustrated by Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa" impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live,

In a November 2010 episode of The View, while interviewing Larry King on his retirement from CNN, Walters alluded to her impending retirement, stating, "I know when my time's coming."

Walters is known for "personality journalism" and her "scoop" interviews.

During a story about Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Walters claimed that "for Castro, freedom begins with education." Some critics point to her characterization of Castro as freedom-loving and argue that it painted an inaccurate picture of his government.

On March 3, 1999, her interview of Monica Lewinsky was seen by a record 74 million viewers, the highest rating ever for a journalist's interview. Walters asked Lewinsky, "What will you tell your children about this matter?" and Lewinsky replied, "I guess Mommy made some mistakes," at which point Walters brought the program to a dramatic conclusion, turning to the viewers, saying, "And that is the understatement of the century."

The View

Walters is a part-time host of the daytime talk show The View, of which she is also co-creator and co-executive producer with her business partner Bill Geddie. Walters described the show in its original opening credits as a forum for women of "different generations, backgrounds, and views". The show's current co-hosts are Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd. Previous co-hosts include Meredith Vieira, Lisa Ling, Rosie O'Donnell, Star Jones, and Debbie Matenopoulos.

In 2007 Barbara defended co-host Rosie O' Donnell after she made slanderous remarks against Donald Trump and the winner of the miss USA pageant. Donald firmly responded by saying, "Barbara is off the list"

Personal life

Walters has been married three times. "I'm convinced that you stay married when the days are bad, only because you really want to be," she told The New York Times in 1996. "But I always had an out. I had this job, and this life and enough money. I didn't have to fight the bad days."

Lee Guber, theatrical producer and theater owner. They married on December 8, 1963, and divorced in 1976. They have one daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber (born 1968, adopted the same year).

Merv Adelson, the CEO of Lorimar Television. They married on May 10, 1986, and divorced in 1992.

She dated lawyer Roy Cohn in college, and the lawyer said that he proposed marriage to Walters the night before her wedding to Lee Guber, but Walters has denied this claim. In her autobiography, Walters says that Cohn got her father's warrant for "failure to appear" dismissed.

Walters, who dated former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in the 1970s, was linked romantically to United States Senator John Warner in the 1990s.

In Walters's autobiography Audition she claimed that she had an affair in the 1970s with Edward Brooke, then a married United States Senator from Massachusetts. It is not clear whether Walters also was married at the time. Walters said that the affair ended to protect their careers from scandal.

She announced on the May 10, 2010 episode of her show The View, that she will be undergoing open heart surgery to replace a faulty heart valve; the aortic valve, which pumps blood from the heart to the rest of the body. Walters added that she knew for quite a while that she was suffering from aortic valve stenosis, though symptom free.

The procedure to fix the faulty heart valve "went well, and the doctors are very pleased with the outcome," Walters' spokeswoman, Cindi Berger, said in a statement on May 14, 2010.

On July 9, 2010, it was announced that Barbara Walters will return to The View and her Sirius XM satellite show Here's Barbara in September 2010.

Books

In the late 1960s, Walters wrote a magazine article, How to Talk to Practically Anyone About Practically Anything, which drew upon the kinds of things people said to her, which were often mistakes. Shortly after the article appeared, she received a letter from Doubleday expressing interest in expanding it into a book. Walters felt that it would help "tongue-tied, socially awkward people — the many people who worry that they can't think of the right thing to say to start a conversation." To Walters' great surprise, the book was a phenomenon. As of 2008, it had gone through eight printings, sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, and had been translated into at least 6 different languages. Radner exaggerated Walters' partially rhotacistic speech impediment (not a geographical accent) wherein she pronounced l and r like w. She remembered seeing a sketch during the time she was leaving NBC to join ABC News with Harry Reasoner, and Radner as "Baba Wawa" said: "This is my wast moment on NBC and I want to wemind you to wook fow me awong with Hawwy Weasoneh weeknights at seven o'cwock ... anotheh netwohk wecognizes in me a gweat tawent for dewivering wewevant news stowies with cwystal cwahity".

One time Walters' daughter Jackie was watching the characterization and laughing, much to Walters' dismay. She said her daughter "set her straight" by saying "Oh, Mom. Lighten up." Walters wrote in her memoir: "Hearing that from Jackie made me realize that I was losing all perspective. Where was my sense of humor?" Walters later met Gilda Radner and told her that she thought the caricature was funny. When Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer at age forty-two, Walters sent a short, simple note to her husband, Gene Wilder, and said: "She made me laugh. I will miss her. Baba Wawa."

Awards and nominations

Daytime Emmy Awards

1975 Award for Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host (Today)

1998 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

1998 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

1999 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

1999 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2000 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2000 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2001 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2001 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2002 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2002 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2003 Award for Best Talk Show (The View)

2003 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2004 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2004 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2005 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2005 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2006 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2006 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2007 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2007 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2008 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2008 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2009 Award for Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host (The View) (with Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd)

2010 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

NAACP Image Award

2009 Award for Best Talk Series (The View)

2010 Nomination for Best Talk Series

See also

Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People

References

External links

ABC News' "Time Tunnel" page containing clips of numerous newscasts on which Walters appeared

Excerpts from 2008 autobiography, Audition: A Memoir

Barbara Walters Archive of American Television Interview

Category:1929 births Category:Living people Category:ABC News personalities Category:Alumnae of women's universities and colleges Category:American Jews Category:American memoirists Category:American television news anchors Category:American television personalities Category:American television reporters and correspondents Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Ethical Culture Fieldston School alumni Category:Miami Beach Senior High School alumni Category:NBC News Category:People from Brookline, Massachusetts Category:People from Miami, Florida Category:People from New York Category:Sarah Lawrence College alumni Category:American women journalists

Anne Diamond (born 8 September 1954) is an English radio and television presenter and journalist. She hosted Good Morning Britain for TV-am and the similarly-titled Good Morning... with Anne and Nick for BBC1, both with Nick Owen as her co-presenter. Currently Anne presents a phone-in show on BBC Radio Berkshire on weekday mornings from 10am to 1pm and makes regular appearances airing her views as a panelist on The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 and BBC London, and is a regular columnist for the Daily Mail .

Biography

Diamond was born and grew up in Malvern, Worcestershire and she attended Worcester Grammar School for Girls. She is the cousin of Scots Singer-songwriter Jim Diamond.

20th century

She worked at a Butlins holiday camp as a redcoat and chalet-maid.  She then began her career as a journalist on the Bridgwater Mercury and Bournemouth Evening Echo. She began her television career with Associated TeleVision with their ATV Today programme in 1979 and Central News, before joining the BBC in 1983. After ITV's franchised breakfast show TV-am's chief executive Peter Jay quit, new producer Greg Dyke sacked presenters Anna Ford and Angela Rippon, to be replaced in 1983 by new team Nick Owen, Diamond - and puppet, Roland Rat The show's figures slowly picked up.

In 1987, she appeared as the TV-am presenter on an episode of Filthy Rich & Catflap. After TV-am but before joining the BBC, Anne Diamond presented TV Weekly. Shown in the afternoon in most ITV regions (with an early evening repeat on TVS) the programme looked behind the scenes of various TV programmes and interviewed various personalities from in front and behind the camera. Following the TV-am loss of its ITV breakfast franchise in 1992, Diamond was rejoined by Nick Owen to present daytime show Good Morning with Anne and Nick. The program ran for 4 years against ITV's This Morning, before going off air. Diamond's presenting style on This Morning attracted accusations of dumbing down. In commenting on the Fall of the Berlin Wall, she suggested that a major benefit would be that East Germans would have a better choice of shops in the West, leading her critics to suggest that she hadn't fully grasped the event's significance.

In the late 1990s she presented the breakfast show on the London radio station LBC, variously with Sir Nicholas Lloyd and Tommy Boyd. After a few months presenting her own lunchtime show in 1999, she left the station.

Cot Death

Diamond became involved in raising awareness of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - known as "cot death" in the UK - after her son, Sebastian, died from the syndrome in 1991. She fronted "back to sleep", a campaign telling parents to ensure that babies slept on their backs. Since then, there has been a significant fall in incidents of cot death in the United Kingdom, from more than 2000 per year to around 300, which has been attributed to the campaign.

On the 28 March 2008 in an article for the UK's "Daily Mail" tabloid newspaper, Anne Diamond contributed to an article concerning violence in video games where she is quoted as saying that the 9.1/10 Gamespot.com rated, 15 certificate Wii game "Resident Evil 4" "shouldn't be allowed to be sold, even to adults"

In 2008, Diamond hosted a series of special 25th year reunion TV-am daily shows on the BBC London 94.9 breakfast show between 27–30 May 2008 along with Nick Owen. Diamond now often sits in for Vanessa Feltz's morning call-in show on BBC London 94.9 on Bank Holidays and during Feltz's personal holidays.

Diamond became involved in co-developing a jewellery range, which she during 2008 she marketed on shopping channel QVC under her own name brand. In 2009, she appeared on the opening episode of the second series of Hole in the Wall on BBC One with David Vitty. She also appeared in a TV commercial for 'Postgoldforcash'.

Personal life

She married Mike Hollingsworth in 1989, and the couple had four children: Oliver, James, Jake and Conor. But after he had an affair with radio presenter Harriet Scott, they separated. Hollingsworth tried to get back together with Diamond after rows with Scott, but the couple have since divorced.

References

External links

Fathappens.co.uk Anne Diamond's project

Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:BBC newsreaders and journalists Category:British reporters and correspondents Category:English radio presenters Category:English television presenters Category:Celebrity Fit Club participants Category:Video game censorship Category:People from Malvern Category:Butlins Redcoats

Name	Angela Lansbury
Caption	Angela Lansbury in 1989
Birth name	Angela Brigid Lansbury
Birth date	October 16, 1925
Birth place	London, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1944–present
Spouse	Richard Cromwell (1945–1946)Peter Shaw (1949–2003)}}

Angela Brigid Lansbury, CBE (born 16 October 1925) is an English actress and singer whose career has spanned seven decades. Her first film appearance was in Gaslight (1944) as a conniving maid, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Among her other films are The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and Beauty and the Beast (1991).

She expanded her repertoire to Broadway and television in the 1950s and was particularly successful in Broadway productions of , Mame and . Lansbury is perhaps best known for her role as writer Jessica Fletcher on the U.S. television series Murder, She Wrote, in which she starred from 1984 to 1996. Her recent roles include Lady Adelaide Stitch in the 2005 film Nanny McPhee, Leona Mullen in the 2007 Broadway play Deuce, Madame Arcati in the 2009 Broadway revival of the play Blithe Spirit (2009) and Madame Armfeldt in the 2010 Broadway revival of the musical A Little Night Music.

Respected for her versatility, Lansbury has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, and has been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and eighteen Emmy Awards.

Early life

Angela Brigid Lansbury was born in Poplar, London, to Belfast-born actress Moyna MacGill and Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the London borough of Poplar. Her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader George Lansbury. She is the elder sister of producer Edgar Lansbury and a cousin of the late English animator and puppeteer Oliver Postgate (another grandchild of George Lansbury). Her cousin, the academic Coral Lansbury, was the mother of former Australian federal Opposition Leader and noted republican Malcolm Turnbull. She was raised in the Anglican church.

Her earliest theatrical influences were the teenage coloratura Deanna Durbin, screen star Irene Dunne, and Lansbury's mother, who encouraged her daughter's ambition by taking her to plays at the Old Vic and removing her from South Hampstead High School for Girls in order to enroll her in the Ritman School of Dancing and later the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

Following her father's death from stomach cancer, her mother became involved with a Scotsman named Leckie Forbes and the two merged their families under one roof in Hampstead. A former colonel with the British Army in India, Forbes proved to be a jealous and suspicious tyrant who ruled the household with an iron fist. Just prior to the German bombing campaign of London, Lansbury's mother was presented with the opportunity to take her children to North America, and under cover of dark of night they fled from their unhappy home and sailed for Montreal; from there they headed to New York City. When her mother settled in Hollywood following a fund-raising Canadian tour of a Noël Coward play, Lansbury (and later her brothers) joined her there.

Lansbury worked at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. At one of the frequent parties her mother hosted for British émigré performers in their Laurel Canyon home, she met would-be actor Michael Dyne, who arranged for her to meet Mel Ballerino, the casting director for the upcoming film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ballerino was casting Gaslight (1944) as well, and he offered her the part of Nancy Oliver, Ingrid Bergman's conniving maid, which was her first film role. Appearing with Bergman and Charles Boyer, Lansbury was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar and the following year gained another nomination for her heartbreaking performance as the doomed Sibyl Vane, opposite Hurd Hatfield, in the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Career

Theatre

, New York City, 2007]]

On Broadway, Lansbury received good reviews from her first musical outing, the short-lived 1964 Stephen Sondheim musical Anyone Can Whistle, which co-starred Lee Remick. In 1966, she was offered the title role in what would become the enormously successful Mame, Jerry Herman's musical adaptation of the novel and subsequent film Auntie Mame, which had starred Rosalind Russell. Mame opened at the Winter Garden Theater in May 1966 and Lansbury received her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Additionally, Lansbury's recording of the play's song "We Need a Little Christmas" has become widely popular, and receives substantial airplay each Christmas. Lansbury won her second Tony Award for her performance in Dear World (1969). In 1971, Lansbury was cast in the title role in the musical Prettybelle. After a difficult rehearsal period, the show opened to brutal reviews in tryouts in Boston, where it closed within a week. In 1982, a recording of the show was released by Varèse Sarabande which included most of the original cast, and Lansbury's 11 o'clock number "When I'm Drunk, I'm Beautiful" along with "You Never Looked Better", a song removed early in the run.

In May 1973, the first revival of opened in London's West End and played for 300 performances. Lansbury played Rose, the infamous stage mother. In September 1974, the same production opened at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre. Lansbury received her third Tony for her performance in Gypsy. In her acceptance speech, she thanked Ethel Merman for creating the role of Rose in the original 1959 production.

In December 1975, she portrayed Gertrude in the National Theatre, London, production of Hamlet, directed by Peter Hall. During the summer of 1976, she starred as Mame Dennis in a production of Mame at The Muny, an outdoor theatre in Forest Park in St. Louis, Missouri.

Lansbury starred as Mrs. Lovett in the original 1979 production of Stephen Sondheim's musical thriller . She starred opposite Len Cariou who played the title role, and later played the role in the first U.S. tour (1982) which was recorded for television while playing in Los Angeles. She won another Tony Award for her portrayal of Mrs. Lovett.

She had been announced for the lead role in the Kander and Ebb musical The Visit, to open on Broadway in 2001, but withdrew from the show before it opened because of her husband's declining health.

Lansbury returned to Broadway for the first time in twenty-three years in Deuce, a play by Terrence McNally, co-starring Marian Seldes. The play opened at the Music Box Theatre in May 2007 in a limited run of eighteen weeks. Lansbury received a Tony Award nomination in the category of Best Leading Actress in a Play for her role.

In October 2008, she was cast as Madame Arcati in the revival of Blithe Spirit, which opened at the Shubert Theatre in March 2009. The New York Times praised her performance, for which she won numerous awards, including the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play (her fifth win).

Lansbury starred as Madame Armfeldt with Catherine Zeta Jones in the first Broadway revival of A Little Night Music, which opened on December 13, 2009 at the Walter Kerr Theatre. She left the show on June 20, 2010. For her performance as Madame Armfeldt, Lansbury received a 2010 Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in A Musical.

Film and television

(1946), one of her earliest film appearances.]]

Lansbury has enjoyed a long and varied career, often in roles older than her actual age, appearing in such films as Gaslight (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), Samson and Delilah (1949) and Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). She had a prominent supporting role in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) in which she portrayed the invidious Mrs Iselin. She received acclaim for her performance and received several industry awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category. (Lucille Ball had been considered for the role; a decade later, Ball coincidentally landed the title role in the film version of Mame, the role Lansbury had created on Broadway.) Lansbury also starred in several dramas before and during her Broadway success, including The World of Henry Orient (1964) and Something for Everyone (1970).

Lansbury's popularity from and association with Mame on Broadway in the 1960s had her very much in demand everywhere in the media. Ever the humanitarian, she used her fame as an opportunity to benefit others wherever possible. For example, when appearing as a mystery guest on the popular Sunday night CBS-TV show What's My Line?, she made an impassioned plea for viewers to contribute to the 1966 Muscular Dystrophy Association fundraising drive, chaired by Jerry Lewis.

(1945)]]

After many years performing in professional theatre, Lansbury returned to film in Death on the Nile (1978), and portrayed Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack'd (1980). She began doing character voice work in the years that followed in animated films such as The Last Unicorn (1982) and Anastasia (1997), and her most famous voice work is arguably as the singing teapot Mrs. Potts in the Disney film Beauty and the Beast (1991), in which she performed the title song. She reprised the role for its and in the video game Kingdom Hearts II (2006). Lansbury made her first theatrical film appearance since The Company of Wolves (1984) as Aunt Adelaide in Emma Thompson's Nanny McPhee in 2005.

Lansbury has won five of the seven Tony Awards for which she has been nominated, but has not won an Academy Award or an Emmy Award. She has been thrice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; reflecting on these losses in 2007, she stated that she was at first "terribly disappointed, but subsequently very glad that [she] did not win" because she believes that she would have otherwise had a less successful career. Lansbury has received eighteen Emmy Award nominations over a thirty-three-year period, and holds the record for the most losses by a performer, twelve of which as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. However, she has received the Golden Globe and People's Choice awards.

In 1983, Lansbury starred opposite Laurence Olivier in a BBC adaptation of the Broadway play, A Talent for Murder, which she described as "a rushed job" in which she participated solely to work with Olivier. Subsequent to this performance, Lansbury continued to work in the mystery genre, and achieved fame greater than at any other time in her career as mystery novelist Jessica Fletcher on the U.S. television series Murder, She Wrote (1984—1996). It became one of the longest-running detective drama series in television history and made her one of the highest-paid actresses in the world. She assumed ownership of the series in 1991 and acted as executive producer from that season onward.

She is scheduled to co-star in Mr. Popper's Penguins opposite Jim Carrey and Adeline opposite Katherine Heigl. Both films are to be released in 2011.

Personal life

In 1945, Lansbury married American actor Richard Cromwell when he was 35 and she was 19. Unbeknownst to her, Cromwell was bisexual (some sources suggest he was gay), and the marriage dissolved after a year, but the two remained friends.

In 1949, Lansbury married British-born actor and businessman Peter Shaw, who was a former boyfriend of Joan Crawford. Shaw was instrumental in guiding and managing Lansbury's career. They were married for 54 years until his death in January 2003.

Lansbury is the mother of two, stepmother of one, and a grandmother several times over. In an interview with Barbara Walters, Lansbury revealed a firestorm that destroyed the family's Malibu home in September 1970 was a blessing in disguise, as it prompted a move to a rural area of County Cork in Ireland, where her children were separated from the hard drugs with which they had been experimenting. Her daughter, Deirdre, had reportedly been briefly involved with the Manson Family. Her son Anthony Shaw, after a brief fling with acting, became producer/director of Murder, She Wrote and currently is a television executive and director. Her daughter and son-in-law, a chef, are restaurateurs in West Los Angeles.

Lansbury's half-sister Isolde was married to Peter Ustinov for some years but divorced in 1946. Lansbury and her former in-law Ustinov appeared together professionally once in Death on the Nile (1978). Lansbury is related by marriage to actress Ally Sheedy, wife of her nephew David Lansbury. Both her brothers, twins Bruce and Edgar, are successful theater producers: Edgar Lansbury, Jr. was instrumental in bringing Godspell to Broadway and Bruce Lansbury was a television producer for such shows as The Wild Wild West and .

She had knee-replacement surgery on 14 July 2005.

Lansbury was a long-time resident of Brentwood, California, where she supported various philanthropies. In 2006, she moved to New York City, purchasing a condominium at a reported cost of $2 million. The following year, she returned to Broadway in Deuce, opposite Marian Seldes.

Lansbury's papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

Work

Filmography

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- |rowspan=2|1944 |Gaslight |Nancy Oliver |Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress |- |National Velvet |Edwina Brown | |- |1945 |The Picture of Dorian Gray |Sibyl Vane |Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion PictureNominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress |- |rowspan=3|1946 |The Harvey Girls |Em | |- |The Hoodlum Saint |Dusty Millard | |- |Till the Clouds Roll By |London Specialty |performs "How'd You Like to Spoon with Me?" by Jerome Kern |- |rowspan=2|1947 |The Private Affairs of Bel Ami |Clotilde de Marelle | |- |If Winter Comes |Mabel Sabre | |- |rowspan=3|1948 |State of the Union |Kay Thorndyke | |- |The Three Musketeers |Queen Anne | |- |Tenth Avenue Angel |Susan Bratten | |- |rowspan=2|1949 |The Red Danube |Audrey Quail | |- |Samson and Delilah |Semadar | |- |1951 |Kind Lady |Mrs. Edwards | |- |1952 |Mutiny |Leslie | |- |1953 |Remains to Be Seen |Valeska Chauvel | |- |1954 |A Life at Stake |Doris Hillman | |- |rowspan=2|1955 |The Purple Mask |Madame Valentine | |- |A Lawless Street |Tally Dickinsen | |- |rowspan=2|1956 |The Court Jester |Princess Gwendolyn | |- |Please Murder Me |Myra Leeds | |- |rowspan=2|1958 |The Long, Hot Summer |Minnie Littlejohn | |- |The Reluctant Debutante |Mabel Claremont | |- |1959 |Summer of the Seventeenth Doll |Pearl | |- |rowspan=2|1960 |The Dark at the Top of the Stairs |Mavis Pruitt | |- |A Breath of Scandal |Countess Lina | |- |1961 |Blue Hawaii |Sarah Lee Gates | |- |rowspan=3|1962 |Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse |Marguerite Laurier |voice (uncredited) |- |All Fall Down |Annabell Willart |National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for The Manchurian Candidate) |- |The Manchurian Candidate |Mrs. Iselin |Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion PictureNational Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress (also for All Fall Down)Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress |- |1963 |In the Cool of the Day |Sybil Logan | |- |rowspan=2|1964 |The World of Henry Orient |Isabel Boyd | |- |Dear Heart |Phyllis | |- |rowspan=3|1965 |The Greatest Story Ever Told |Claudia | |- |The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders |Lady Blystone | |- |Harlow |Mama Jean Bello | |- |1966 |Mister Buddwing |Gloria | |- |1970 |Something for Everyone |Countess Herthe von Ornstein |Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |- |1971 |Bedknobs and Broomsticks |Miss Eglantine Price |Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |- |1978 |Death on the Nile |Salome Otterbourne |National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting ActressNominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role |- |1979 |The Lady Vanishes |Miss Froy | |- |1980 |The Mirror Crack'd |Miss Jane Marple |Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Actress |- |1982 |The Last Unicorn |Mommy Fortuna |voice |- |1983 |The Pirates of Penzance |Ruth | |- |rowspan=2|1984 |Ingrid |Herself | |- |The Company of Wolves |Granny | |- |1991 |Beauty and the Beast |rowspan=2|Mrs. Potts |voice |- |rowspan=2|1997 | |voice; direct-to-video midquel |- |Anastasia |Dowager Empress Marie |voice |- |1999 |Fantasia 2000 |Herself - Hostess |segment Firebird Suite - 1919 Version |- |2003 | |Herself | |- |2005 |Nanny McPhee |Great Aunt Adelaide | |- |2011 |Mr. Popper's Penguins |Mrs. Van Gundy | |- |}

Theatre

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Production ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Venue ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Dates ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- |Hotel Paradiso | Marcelle (Madame Cot) |Broadway |April – July 1957 | |- |A Taste of Honey | Helen |Broadway |October 1960 – May 1961 | |- |Anyone Can Whistle |Cora Hoover Hooper |Broadway |April 1964 |musical debut |- |Mame |Mame Dennis |Broadway |May 1966 – March 1968 (to August 1968 on tour) |rowspan=2|Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical |- |Dear World |Countess Aurelia |Broadway |February 1969 – May 1969 |- |Prettybelle |Prettybelle Sweet |Boston |February 1971 | |- |All Over | |West End |1972 | |- | |Mama Rose Hovick |West End;Broadway |May 1973 – March 1974;September 1974 – January 1975 |Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a MusicalTony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical |- |Hamlet | Gertrude |West End |1975–1976 |National Theatre Company, Old Vic Theatre & Lyttleton Theatre |- |The King and I |Anna Leonowens |Broadway |April 1978 |Nominated — Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical |- | |Mrs. Nellie Lovett |Broadway |March 1979 – March 1980(including U.S. tour from October 1980 – August 1981) |Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a MusicalTony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical |- |A Little Family Business | Lillian |Broadway |December 1982 | |- |Mame |Mame Dennis |Broadway |July – August 1983 |revival |- |Deuce |Leona Mullen |Broadway |April – August 2007 |Nominated — Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play |- |Blithe Spirit |Madame Arcati |Broadway |March – July 2009 |Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a PlayTony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play |- |A Little Night Music |Madame Armfeldt |Broadway |December 2009 - June 2010

Lansbury's wins:

1966 - Best Actress in a Musical for Mame

1969 - Best Actress in a Musical for Dear World

1975 - Best Actress in a Musical for

1979 - Best Actress in a Musical for Sweeney Todd

2009 - Best Featured Actress in a Play for Blithe Spirit

In addition, she was nominated in 2007 for her leading role in the play Deuce for the Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play and in 2010 for her featured role in the revival of the musical A Little Night Music for the Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical.

Honorary awards

In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom appointed her a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In 1997, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000.

She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for Film (North side of the 6600 block of Hollywood Boulevard) and one for TV (West side of the 1500 block of Vine Street).

Honorary recognition

Lansbury's additional recognition includes:

Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year (1968)

Lansbury was named a Disney Legend in 1995

Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award (1996)

Television Critics Association Awards — Career Achievement Award (1996)

The New Dramatists Lifetime Achievement Award on May 16, 2000. The Acting Company's First Lifetime Achievement Award on November 11, 2002.

BAFTA Awards — Britannia Award for Lifetime Achievement, 2003

The Actor's Fund of America Lifetime Achievement on October 30, 2004. The degree Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from the University of Miami on May 9, 2008. She was also the guest speaker at the commencement ceremony. George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing.

Drama League Awards — The Unique Contribution to the Theatre Award (2009)

Drama League Honors, February 8, 2010 Signature Theatre Sondheim Award, April 12, 2010 Honorary Chairman of the American Theatre Wing, named on June 13, 2010

Notes

References

External links

Angela Lansbury Archive of American Television Interview recorded 15 September 1998

Angela Lansbury on American Theatre Wing's Downstage Center

Angela Lansbury Collection at Boston University

2009 interview with Angela Lansbury by The Sondheim Review

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