| Subject name | John Herbert Dillinger |
|---|---|
| Image name | John Dillinger mug shot.jpg |
| Birth date | June 22, 1903 |
| Birth place | Mooresville, Indiana, U.S. |
| Death date | July 22, 1934 |
| Death place | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Charge | Bank robbery, murder |
| Conviction penalty | Imprisonment from 1924 to 1933 |
| Spouse | Beryl Hovious (divorced) |
John Herbert Dillinger, Jr. (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American gangster and bank-robber in the Depression-era United States. He was charged with the murder of an East Chicago police officer, but never convicted. During his bank heists, a dozen victims—prison officers, police, federal agents, gangsters and civilians—were killed. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations. Dillinger escaped from jail twice.
In 1933-34, among criminals like Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger was the most notorious of all. Media reports were spiced with exaggerated accounts of his bravado and daring. The public demanded federal action and J. Edgar Hoover developed a more sophisticated Federal Bureau of Investigation as a weapon against organized crime.
After evading police in four states for almost a year, Dillinger was wounded and returned to his father's home to heal. He returned to Chicago in July 1934 and met his end at the hands of police and federal agents who were informed of his whereabouts by Ana Cumpanas. On July 22, the police and Division of Investigation closed in on the Biograph Theater. Federal agents, led by Melvin Purvis, moved to arrest him as he left the theater. He pulled a weapon and attempted to flee but was shot three times and killed.
The men were extradited to Indiana, where Dillinger was held in the Crown Point jail, while the others were then sent to Ohio to stand trial for the murder of Sheriff Jess Sarber. Testimony by Shouse identified the five men as members of the Pierpont gang. Dillinger was charged with the murder of a police officer in East Chicago, while Pierpont and Makley were charged with the murder of Sheriff Jesse Sarber. The police boasted to area newspapers that the jail was escape-proof and posted extra guards to make sure. Louis Piquett, John Dillinger's attorney, was able to sneak a wooden gun within the prison and into the hands of Dillinger. Using it, he was able to trick a guard into opening his cell. He then took two men hostage, rounded up all the guards in the jail, locked them in his cell, and fled. Before leaving, Dillinger said to the guards he locked up, "See what I locked all of you monkeys up with? Nothing but a little piece of wood. Well, so long, boys. I'll have to be moving on." In so doing, he crossed the state line in a stolen car, breaking the federal Motor Vehicle Theft Act. The crime was under the jurisdiction of the BOI who immediately took over the Dillinger case after the car was found abandoned in Chicago. Dillinger was indicted by a local grand jury and the BOI organized a nationwide manhunt for him.
In Chicago, Dillinger began living with his girlfriend Evelyn "Billie" Frechette. They proceeded to Saint Paul, Minnesota, met up with "Red" Hamilton, and mustered a new gang, adding Lester "Baby Face Nelson" Gillis, Homer Van Meter, Tommy Carroll, Joseph Fox, Joe Burns, James Jenkins, John Paul Chase, Charles Fisher and Eddie Green. The landlord of their apartment became suspicious and on March 30, 1934, reported his suspicions to a federal agent. The building was placed under surveillance by the federal agents who soon determined Dillinger was in the apartment. Gunfire between the groups lasted only momentarily, but the whole gang managed to escape in various ways despite the agents' efforts to surround and storm the lodge. Agent W. Carter Baum was shot dead by "Baby Face" Nelson during the gun battle. At this time Nelson would separate from the gang for a while.
The next day, Dillinger, Van Meter and Hamilton were confronted by authorities in Hastings, Minnesota. Hamilton was mortally wounded in the encounter. He was taken by Dillinger and Van Meter to see Joseph Moran, though Moran refused to treat Hamilton. He died on April 30, 1934. Dillinger, Van Meter and members of the Barker-Karpis gang buried him. Dillinger and Van Meter then met up with Carroll and the three would spend all of May in hiding. On June 7, the three had a shootout with authorities and Carroll died in the encounter. Dillinger and Van Meter reunited with Nelson a week later and went into hiding.
By July 1934, Dillinger had dropped completely out of sight and the federal agents had no solid leads to follow. He had, in fact, drifted into Chicago and went under the alias of Jimmy Lawrence, a petty criminal from Wisconsin who bore a close resemblance to the bank robber. Taking up a job as a clerk, Dillinger also found a new girlfriend named Mary Evelyn "Billie" Frechette, who was aware of his true identity and even served two years in prison for harboring a criminal. In a large metropolis like Chicago, Dillinger was able to lead an anonymous existence for a while. What Dillinger didn't realize was that the center of the federal agents' dragnet happened to be in Chicago. When the authorities found Dillinger's bloodied getaway car on a Chicago side street, they were positive that he was in the city. and offered the federal agency information on Dillinger in exchange for their help in preventing her deportation. The agency agreed to her terms. Cumpănaş told them that Dillinger was spending his time with another prostitute, Polly Hamilton, and that she and the couple would be going to see a movie together on the following day. She agreed to wear an orange dress, which appeared red in the lights of the theater, so that police could easily identify her. She was unsure which of two theaters they would be attending, but told the agency their names: the Biograph and the Marbro. at the Biograph Theater in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Dillinger was with Polly Hamilton, and Ana Cumpănaş. Once they determined that Dillinger was in the theater, the lead agent (Samuel A. Cowley) contacted J. Edgar Hoover for instructions, who recommended that they wait outside rather than risk a gun battle in a crowded theater. He also told the agents not to put themselves in harm's way, and that any man could open fire on Dillinger at the first sign of resistance. When the movie let out, Special Agent Melvin Purvis stood by the front door and signaled Dillinger's exit by lighting a cigar. Both he and the agents reported that Dillinger turned his head and looked directly at the agent as he walked by, glanced across the street, then moved ahead of his female companions, reached into his pocket but failed to extract his gun, Two female bystanders were slightly wounded in the legs and buttocks by flying bullet and brick fragments. Dillinger was struck three times, twice in the chest, one actually nicking his heart, and the fatal shot, which entered the back of his neck and exited just under his right eye. Although three agents shot Dillinger, Charles Winstead was believed to be the man who executed the fatal shot, the one which went through Dillinger's head. An ambulance was summoned, though it was clear that Dillinger had quickly died from his gunshot wounds. At 10:50 p.m. on July 22, 1934, John Dillinger was pronounced dead at Alexian Brothers Hospital. There were also reports of people dipping their handkerchiefs and skirts into the pools of blood that had formed as Dillinger lay in the alley in order to secure keepsakes of the entire affair. Dillinger's body was displayed to the public at the Cook County morgue after his death.
Dillinger was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery (Section: 44, Lot: 94) in Indianapolis. His gravestone has had to be replaced several times because of vandalism by people chipping off pieces as souvenirs.
Category:American bank robbers Category:American outlaws Category:American people of German descent Category:American mobsters of German descent Category:People from Indianapolis, Indiana Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Crime in Indiana Category:Depression-era gangsters Category:Burials at Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis Category:Deaths by firearm in Illinois Category:People shot dead by law enforcement officers in the United States Category:1903 births Category:1934 deaths
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| Caption | During the Paris premiere of Public Enemies in July 2009 |
|---|---|
| Birth date | June 09, 1963 |
| Birth place | Owensboro, Kentucky, U.S. |
| Birth name | John Christopher Depp II |
| Spouse | Lori Anne Allison (1983–1986) |
| Partner | Sherilyn Fenn (1985–1988)Winona Ryder (1989–1993)Kate Moss (1994–1998)Vanessa Paradis (1998–present) |
| Years active | 1984–present |
| Occupation | Actor, screenwriter, director, producer, musician |
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor and musician known for his portrayals of offbeat, eccentric characters in a wide variety of dramas and fantasy films. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for major roles in recent films.
Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, quickly becoming a teen idol. Turning to film, he was notable as the title character of Edward Scissorhands (1990), and later found box office success in films such as Sleepy Hollow (1999), (2003), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005).
He has collaborated with director and close friend Tim Burton in seven films, the most recent of which are (2007) and Alice in Wonderland (2010). Depp has gained acclaim for his portrayals of people such as Edward D. Wood, Jr., in Ed Wood, Joseph D. Pistone in Donnie Brasco, Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and George Jung in Blow. More recently, he portrayed the bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's 2009 film Public Enemies.
Films featuring Depp have grossed over $2.6 billion at the United States box office and over $6 billion worldwide. He has been nominated for top awards numerous times; he won the Best Actor Awards from the Golden Globes for his role in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and from the Screen Actors Guild for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
On December 24, 1983, Depp married Lori Anne Allison, a makeup artist and sister of his band's bass player and singer. During Depp's marriage, his wife worked as a makeup artist while he worked a variety of odd jobs, including a telemarketer for pens. His wife introduced him to actor Nicolas Cage, who advised Depp to pursue an acting career. They divorced in 1985. Depp later dated and was engaged to Sherilyn Fenn (whom he met on the set of the 1985 short film Dummies).
and goatee similar to the style used in .]]
Critics have described Depp's roles as characters who are "iconic loners." Depp has noted this period of his career was full of "studio defined failures" and films that were "box office poison," but he thought the studios never understood the films and did not do a good job of marketing. but the character became popular with the movie-going public. The film's director, Gore Verbinski, has said that Depp's character closely resembles the actor's personality, but Depp said he modelled the character after Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards. Depp was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for the role.
In 2004, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, for playing Scottish author J. M. Barrie in the film Finding Neverland. Depp next starred as Willy Wonka in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a major success at the box office and earning him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.
Depp returned to the role of Jack Sparrow for the sequel , which opened on July 7, 2006 and grossed $135.5 million in the first three days of its U.S. release, breaking a box office record of the highest weekend tally. The next sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean, , was released May 24, 2007. Depp has said that Sparrow is "definitely a big part of me", and he wants to play the role in further sequels. Depp voiced Sparrow in the video game, . Johnny Depp's swashbuckling sword talents as developed for the character of Jack Sparrow, were highlighted in the documentary film Reclaiming the Blade. Within the film, Swordmaster Bob Anderson shared his experiences working with Depp on the choreography for The Curse of the Black Pearl. Anderson who also trained Errol Flynn, another famous Hollywood pirate, described in the film Depp's ability as an actor to pick up the sword to be, "about as good as you can get."
Depp and Gore Verbinski were executive producers of the album Rogues Gallery, Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys. Depp played the title role of Sweeney Todd in Tim Burton's of , for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Depp thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and praised Tim Burton for his "unwavering trust and support." He portrayed the Mad Hatter in Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and will play Tonto in a future Lone Ranger film. Disney Studios announced a of the Pirates series is in development. At the time, the actor was depressed about films and filmmaking. This part gave him a "chance to stretch out and have some fun"; he said working with Landau "rejuvenated my love for acting".
Depp did not work with Burton again until 2005 in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which he played Willy Wonka. Depp modeled the character's hair on Anna Wintour. The film was a box office success and received positive critical reception. Gene Wilder, who played Willy Wonka in the 1971 film, initially criticized this version. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was released in July, followed by Corpse Bride, for which Depp voiced the character Victor Van Dort, in September.
(2007) followed, bringing Depp his second major award win, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy as well as his third nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Burton first gave him an original cast recording of the in 2000. Although not a fan of the musical genre, Depp grew to like the tale's treatment. He cited Peter Lorre in Mad Love (1935) as his main influence for the role, and practiced the songs his character would perform while filming . Although he had performed in musical groups, Depp was initially unsure that he would be able to sustain Stephen Sondheim's lyrics. Depp recorded demos and worked with Bruce Witkin to shape his vocals without a qualified voice coach. In the DVD Reviews section, Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawaty gave the film an A minus, stating, "Depp's soaring voice makes you wonder what other tricks he's been hiding... Watching Depp's barber wield his razors... it's hard not to be reminded of Edward Scissorhands frantically shaping hedges into animal topiaries 18 years ago... and all of the twisted beauty we would've missed out on had [Burton and Depp] never met."
In his introduction to Burton on Burton, a book of interviews with the director, Depp called Burton "...a brother, a friend,...and [a] brave soul". The next Depp-Burton collaboration was Alice in Wonderland (2010). Depp played the Mad Hatter alongside Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Alan Rickman.
In 1994, Depp was arrested and questioned by police for allegedly causing serious damage to a New York City hotel suite. Since 1998, following a relationship with British supermodel Kate Moss, Depp has had a relationship with Vanessa Paradis, a French actress and singer whom he met while filming The Ninth Gate. He was arrested again in 1999 for brawling with paparazzi outside a restaurant while dining in London with Paradis.
The couple have two children. Daughter Lily-Rose Melody Depp was born May 27, 1999, and son John "Jack" Christopher Depp III was born April 9, 2002. In 2007, his daughter recovered from a serious illness, an E. coli infection that began to cause her kidneys to shut down and resulted in an extended hospital stay. To thank Great Ormond Street Hospital, Depp visited the hospital in November 2007 dressed in his Captain Jack Sparrow outfit and spent 4 hours reading stories to the children. He later donated £1 million (about $2 million) to the hospital in early 2008.
Although Depp has not remarried, he has stated that having children has given him "real foundation, a real strong place to stand in life, in work, in everything." Depp also acquired a vineyard estate in the Plan-de-la-Tour area in 2007.
Depp has 13 tattoos, many of them signifying important persons or events in his life. They include a Native American in profile and a ribbon reading "Wino Forever" (originally "Winona Forever", altered after his breakup with Winona Ryder) on his right biceps, "Lily-Rose" (his daughter's name) over his heart, "Betty Sue" (his mother's name) on his left biceps, and a sparrow flying over water with the word "Jack" (his son's name; the sparrow is flying towards him rather than away from him as it is in Pirates of the Caribbean) on his right forearm.
In 2003, Depp's comments about the United States appeared in Germany's Stern magazine: "America is dumb, is something like a dumb puppy that has big teeth — that can bite and hurt you, aggressive."
On October 8, 2010, Depp made an unannounced appearance at a London Primary School near where he was filming scenes for the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. He turned up dressed as his character Jack Sparrow after receiving a letter from a pupil asking for his help with a class mutiny.
As a guitar player, Depp has recorded a solo album, played slide guitar on the Oasis song "Fade In-Out" (from Be Here Now, 1997), as well as on "Fade Away (Warchild Version)" (b-side of the "Don't Go Away" single). He also played acoustic guitar in the movie Chocolat and on the soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in Mexico. He is a friend of The Pogues' Shane MacGowan, and performed on MacGowan's first solo album. He was also a member of P, a group featuring Butthole Surfers singer Gibby Haynes and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. He has appeared in Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' music video "Into the Great Wide Open".
Some of the awards that Depp has won include honors from the London Film Critics Circle (1996), Russian Guild of Film Critics (1998), Screen Actors Guild Awards (2004) and a Golden Globe for Best Actor. At the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, he won the award for "Best Villain" for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd and "Best Comedic Performance" for Jack Sparrow. Depp has been nominated for three Academy Awards, in 2004 for , in 2005 for Finding Neverland, and in 2008 for . Depp won his first Golden Globe for his portrayal of Sweeney Todd in 2008.
{| class="wikitable" |+ Producer |- ! Year ! Title ! Notes |- | 2010 | The Rum Diary | post-production |- | 2011 | Hugo Cabret | filming |- | 2004 | King of the Hill | Yogi Victor (voice) | Episode: "Hank's Back" |- | 2009 | SpongeBob SquarePants | Jack Kahuna Laguna (voice) || Episode: "SpongeBob vs. The Big One"
}}
Category:American expatriates in France Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American people of Cherokee descent Category:American actors of German descent Category:American television actors Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Actors from Kentucky Category:Actors from Florida Category:American people of Irish descent
Category:People from Owensboro, Kentucky Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:American actors of French descent Category:People of Huguenot descent
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Subject name | Billie Frechette |
|---|---|
| Birth date | 15 September 1907 |
| Birth place | Neopit (Menominee Indian Reservation), Wisconsin, US |
| Death date | 13 January 1969 (aged 61) |
| Death place | Shawano, Wisconsin, US |
| Charge | Harboring a criminal |
| Conviction status | Deceased |
| Occupation | nursemaidwaitress singer |
| Spouse | Welton Sparks(1925–1933; his incarceration) |
| Nickname | Billie |
Mary Evelyn "Billie" Frechette (September 15, 1907 – January 13, 1969) was an American singer, waitress, convict, and lecturer known for her personal relationship with the bank robber John Dillinger in the early 1930s.
She is known to have been involved with Dillinger for about six months until her arrest and imprisonment in 1934. However, some sources believe their relationship began much earlier. She finished her two years in prison in 1936, then toured the country with Dillinger's family for five years as the "Crime Did Not Pay Show", and eventually lived her remaining decades in a quieter, married life on the Indian reservation where she was born.
The parents of Moses Frechette Sr. were Charles and Ursule (Girouard) Frechette. Moses was born in Quebec on 10 December 1824. He married Marie LeClair Nokishiki, and they had 12 children. Moses Frechette Jr. and two of his siblings continued to reside on the Menominee Reservation, and he became the father of Evelyn Frechette.
Her father died when she was eight years old.
In 1925, she married Welton Sparks, who was convicted and imprisoned the same year for a post office robbery.
Category:1907 births Category:1969 deaths Category:American criminals Category:American people of French descent Category:People from Menominee County, Wisconsin Category:Cancer deaths in Wisconsin
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| Subject name | Roy Albert DeMeo |
|---|---|
| Image name | Roydemeo3.JPG |
| Nationality | American |
| Birth date | September 07, 1942 |
| Birth place | Brooklyn, New York, USA |
| Death date | January 10, 1983 (aged 40) |
| Death place | Brooklyn, New York, USA |
| Allegiance | Gambino crime family |
The DeMeo crew murdered at least 70 people between 1973 and 1983. The vast majority were disposed of so thoroughly that they were never found. The crew also gained notoriety due to their use of dismemberment as a method of disposing of their victims.
By the early 1960s, DeMeo had quit his legitimate job at a Banner Dairy Supermarket to focus on loansharking and any other opportunities for income that presented themselves. He conducted most of his business at a neighborhood bar, Phil's Lounge. In 1965, he became a silent partner of the bar, now renamed the Gemini Lounge. The Lounge served as the DeMeo crew's primary headquarters for the next several years, with an apartment building directly behind the bar being the site of dozens of murders and dismemberments committed by the crew.
For a time, DeMeo lived on a waterfront estate on Whitewood Drive in the Bar Harbour section of Massapequa Park, New York.
Rosenberg was dealing drugs at a Canarsie gas station, and DeMeo helped him increase his business and profits by loaning Chris money so that he could deal the narcotics in larger amounts. By 1972, Chris had introduced his friends to DeMeo and they began working for him as well. The members of the crew included Joseph "Dracula" Guglielmo (DeMeo's cousin), Joseph Testa, Anthony Senter and Joseph's younger brother Patrick Testa.
DeMeo joined the Boro of Brooklyn Credit Union that same year, gaining a position on the board of directors shortly afterward. He utilized his position to launder money he had earned through his illegal ventures. He also introduced colleagues at the Credit Union to a lucrative side-business, laundering the money of drug dealers he had become acquainted with. DeMeo also built up his loansharking business with funds stolen from credit union reserves.
His collection of loanshark customers, while still primarily those in the car industry, soon included other businesses such as a dentist's office, an abortion clinic, restaurants and flea markets. He was also listed as an employee for a Brooklyn company named S & C Sportswear Corporation, and frequently told his neighbors he worked in construction, food retailing and the used car business.
In late 1974, a conflict that had erupted between the DeMeo crew and a young bodyshop owner named Andrei Katz had continued to escalate. In May 1975, DeMeo was informed by a police officer that, as a result of this conflict, Andrei was cooperating with authorities. In June he was lured to a place where he could be confronted. After being abducted, he was stabbed to death and then dismembered. An accomplice who helped bait Katz confessed her role and Joseph Testa and Henry Borelli were both arrested. They would secure an acquittal at trial in January 1976.
This was the first known murder committed by the DeMeo crew, and for years was thought to have been the first occasion where DeMeo or members of his crew had dismembered a body for disposal. In 2003 however, new information was provided to the FBI by Bonanno underboss Salvatore Vitale, who claimed that in 1974 he was ordered to deliver the corpse of a man who had just been murdered to a garage in Queens so that it could be disposed of.
When he arrived at the location, Vitale claims, DeMeo was present along with several other men who may have been early members of the DeMeo Crew. Vitale also claims that DeMeo had a knife with him, presumably to dismember the corpse. This information suggests that DeMeo and his followers may have been involved in murder and dismemberment earlier than previously thought by law enforcement.
===Gemini Method=== As the 1970s continued, DeMeo cultivated his followers into a crew experienced with the process of murdering and dismembering victims. With the exception of killings intended to send a message to any who would hinder their criminal activities, or murders that presented no other alternative, a set method of execution was established by DeMeo and crew to ensure that victims would be dispatched quickly and then made to disappear. The method of execution was dubbed the "Gemini Method", named after the Gemini Lounge, the primary hangout of the DeMeo crew as well as the site where most of the crew's victims were killed.
The exact process of the Gemini Method, revealed by multiple crew members and associates who became government witness in the early 1980s, was as follows: typically, the victim would be lured through the side door of the Lounge, and into the apartment that made up the back portion of the building. At this point, a crew member (almost always DeMeo according to crew member turned government witness Frederick DiNome) would approach with a silenced pistol in one hand and a towel in the other, shooting the victim in the head then wrapping the towel around the victim's head wound like a turban in order to staunch the blood flow.
Immediately after, another member of the crew (originally Chris Rosenberg up until his 1979 murder, according to government witness testimony) would stab the victim in the heart in order to prevent any more blood from pumping out of the gunshot wound. By then the victim would be dead, at which point the body would be stripped of its clothing and dragged into the bathroom where it was left while the remaining blood drained out and/or congealed within the body. This was to eliminate the messiness of the next step, when crew members would place the body onto plastic tarps laid out in the main room and proceed to dismember it, cutting off the arms, legs and head.
The body parts would then be put into bags, placed in cardboard boxes and sent off to the Fountain Avenue Dump in Brooklyn, where so many tons of garbage were dropped each day that it was a near impossibility for the bodies to ever be discovered. During the initial stages of an early 1980s Federal/State task force targeting the DeMeo crew, a plan by authorities to excavate sections of the dump in order to locate remains of victims was aborted when it was deemed too costly and likely to fail at locating any meaningful evidence.
Some victims would be killed in other ways for varying reasons. At times, suspected informants or those who committed an act of disrespect against a member of the crew or their superiors had their bodies left in the streets of New York to serve as a message and warning. As well, there were occasions where it would not be possible to lure the intended victim into the Gemini Lounge, in which case other locations would have to be used. A yacht owned by one of DeMeo's men was used on at least one occasion to dispose of bodies as well. Dominick Montiglio, who visited DeMeo frequently to pick up payments for Anthony Gaggi, said in an interview that if the crew didn't kill at least three people a week, they would be depressed.
Another forbidden subject between DeMeo and his boss Nino was narcotics. In the Gambino Family, as most of the other Mafia Families in the country, drug dealing was an act punishable by death for any members caught being involved, owing to the stiffer sentences imposed for such crimes. It was feared by the administrations of the Mafia Families that those facing such harsh penalties would be more likely to flip, or become cooperators for the government. Gaggi and DeMeo, like many others however, continued to deal in narcotics despite the warning due to the massive amounts of profits earned.
By this time, DeMeo's drug operations had expanded greatly from his initial operations in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He had recently started selling cocaine out of the Gemini Lounge and was also the financer of a large marijuana operation that imported the drug from Colombia in 25-pound bales. The marijuana would be delivered from offshore freighters and sold out of a Canarsie bodyshop. DeMeo's weekly tributes to Nino continued to increase from his drug operations and Nino continued to feign ignorance as to the source of the money.
As 1975 drew to a close, DeMeo was almost indicted due to IRS investigations into his income. Months earlier, the Boro of Brooklyn Credit Union had been pushed into insolvency as a result of DeMeo and his colleague's plundering of its finances. As a result DeMeo quit the Credit Union, avoiding law enforcement attention that increased as the Union was merged into another one. Despite this, DeMeo had already gained the attention of the IRS earlier in the year. Before an indictment could be handed down against him however, he utilized false affidavits from businesses owned by friends and acquaintances claiming that he was on their payrolls as an employee. These affidavits served to account for some of his income and he and the IRS reached a settlement.
In May 1976, another murder was committed by the DeMeo crew. Joseph Brocchini, a made member in another of New York's Five Families, was involved in an argument with DeMeo related to a pornography business both were involved in. The argument turned into a physical altercation when Brocchini punched DeMeo in the face, giving him a black eye. Mafia protocol prevented DeMeo, an associate of the Gambino Family, from retaliating in any way against Brocchini or he would be killed. DeMeo went to his boss Nino and explained the situation. Dominick Montiglio, Nino's nephew who was now fully working for his uncle, claimed to have been present at this meeting, where DeMeo allegedly swore revenge regardless of the rules.
Nino responded that they would never be given permission but reportedly agreed with DeMeo's intentions, merely advising him to ensure that the murder could not be traced back to them. On May 20, 1976, DeMeo and Henry Borelli shot Brocchini five times in the back of the head in the office of a used car dealership he owned. The office was ransacked and the other employees were blindfolded and handcuffed prior to the shooting in order to give the illusion that the murder was the result of an armed robbery gone bad.
In the following month Vincent Governara, a young man with no organized crime ties, was shot down by DeMeo and Anthony Gaggi. Gaggi had held a long-standing feud with Governara and had told his nephew Dominick Montiglio to keep a lookout for him. One night Dominick spotted Governara's car outside of a building hosting a craps game in the New York neighborhood of Bensonhurst. Once informed of his nephew's discovery, Nino, along with DeMeo and Dominick, excused themselves from a birthday party being held at the time for Dominick's wife and drove to the location where Governara's car had been seen. There, the trio waited until Governara left the game and approached his car, at which point Nino and DeMeo shot him several times. Governara died in hospital a week later.
One month later in July, DeMeo flew to Florida and murdered George Byrum, another man targeted for revenge by Nino Gaggi. Byrum had provided information to robbers that led to Nino's Florida home being robbed. DeMeo lured Byrum to a hotel under the pretenses of a business deal. As soon as Byrum walked into the room he was shot to death by DeMeo. DeMeo, Nino, and a Gambino soldier operating out of Florida originally planned to dismember the corpse in the hotel room and transport it out in suitcases. The plan was quickly abandoned due to the presence of construction workers near the hotel room and the body was found shortly thereafter lying in the hotel's bathtub with its head halfway sawed off.
DeMeo's sources of income, as well as his crew, continued to grow. By July 1976 he added an automobile firm by the name of Team Auto Wholesalers to his loanshark customers. The owner of Team Auto, Matthew Rega, also purchased stolen vehicles from the crew and sold them off at a New Jersey car lot that he owned. He also involved himself with hijacking; targeting trucks that were delivering or receiving shipments from the John F. Kennedy International Airport. His crew now included Danny Grillo, a hijacker who had just been released from prison.
DeMeo allegedly added to his body count according to various sources, including an FBI informant who reported that DeMeo was a "ruthless killer" who had killed at least a dozen people and dismembered their bodies to make them disappear. Nino Gaggi's nephew Dominick Montiglio, who sometimes drove DeMeo on errands, also claims that during one trip around this time DeMeo had pointed to a recently built gas station and stated that he and his crew had buried the bodies of two victims under its foundation.
In the fall of 1976, the Gambino family went through a massive change when its boss Carlo Gambino died of natural causes. Paul Castellano was named the boss, with Aniello Dellacroce retaining the position of Underboss. The implications of this were twofold for DeMeo. His superior, Nino was elevated to the position of Capo; taking over the crew of men Castellano headed. This promotion was beneficial for DeMeo, whose mentor was now even closer to the ruling Gambino hierarchy. Another advantage was that now that Carlo Gambino had died, new associates would be eligible for membership into the family.
Castellano did not immediately "open the books" for new members however, opting instead to promote existing members and change around leadership of the crews he now presided over. He reportedly told Gaggi he was against the idea of DeMeo ever being made for a number of reasons. Castellano's illegal activities focused more on white-collar crime, and it was said by both law enforcement and other mafiosi that he looked at himself as more of a businessman than a gangster. He looked down on the street guys, such as DeMeo, who were involved in things like auto theft and hijacking. Additionally, Castellano felt DeMeo was unpredictable and did not feel he could be controlled. Nino's attempts at persuading Castellano to consider inducting DeMeo were continually rejected.
Despite the considerable contributions DeMeo had already made to the Gambinos, not least of which were his tens of thousands of dollars worth of weekly payments to Nino Gaggi, by Spring of 1977 DeMeo was still not a made member. Reportedly distraught at the situation, DeMeo continued to look for more opportunities to bring in larger amounts of profit to his superiors.
In May 1977, DeMeo and Danny Grillo murdered Spillane at the behest of Coonan, who then became the top criminal figure in the westside. DeMeo, sensing an opportunity to create a vast source of income for his superiors, informed Nino Gaggi of the possibilities of a partnership between the Westies and the Gambino Family. Shortly afterwards, Coonan and his second in command Mickey Featherstone were called to a meeting with Paul Castellano, becoming a de-facto arm of the Gambino crime family and agreeing to share 10 per cent of all profits. In exchange, the Westies would be privy to several lucrative union deals and take on murder contracts for the Italians.
It was his pivotal role in the Westie/Gambino alliance that reportedly convinced Castellano to give DeMeo his "button", or formally induct him into the crime family. DeMeo was made in mid-1977, being put in charge of handling all family business with the Westies. He was also ordered to get permission before committing any murders and to avoid drug dealing. Despite this warning, DeMeo's crew continued to sell large amounts of cocaine, marijuana, and a variety of narcotic pills, a violation many members of all Five Families continued to commit through the late 1970s and early 1980s due to the tremendous profits gained.
Although he had been ordered by his superiors that he had to get permission before any murders, DeMeo continued to commit unsanctioned killings. In July 1977 DeMeo and his men committed a double homicide, shooting to death Johnathan Quinn, a successful car thief suspected of cooperating with law enforcement, and Cherie Golden, Quinn's 19-year old girlfriend. DeMeo and his men dumped the bodies in locations where they would be discovered to serve as a warning against cooperation with authorities. When questioned by his superiors as to the motive of killing a young woman, DeMeo claimed she was a risk and may have cooperated had the police pressured her.
By 1978, DeMeo was heard bragging to associates that he had murdered 100 people. It was also during this year that he put out word among not just the Gambino family but the other New York Cosa Nostra families as well that he and his crew were available for murder contracts. In at least one case, the crew charged a relatively paltry fee of $5,000. Other murders were committed for free, DeMeo describing them to crew members as "professional favors".
He added to his crew Frederick DiNome, who served as his chauffeur but also became involved in the crew's various illegal activities. DiNome was reportedly fiercely loyal to DeMeo, who had befriended him when the two were teenagers. DiNome credited DeMeo for saving his life after a car crash at a drag race, in which the burning car exploded just as he was saved by DeMeo from the wreckage. DeMeo used a knife to cut the seat belt.
In November 1978 DeMeo and his crew murdered one of their own members, Danny Grillo. Grillo, who had fallen into heavy debt with DeMeo, was killed after DeMeo and Nino Gaggi felt that he was becoming susceptible to police coercion to cooperate against the crew. Grillo, who was dismembered and disposed of like many of the crew's murder victims, was the first occurrence of intra-crew discipline.
The next member who was murdered by DeMeo and the crew was Chris Rosenberg, DeMeo's second-in-command within the group and reportedly his most loyal ally. Rosenberg had set up a drug deal with a Cuban man living in Florida and then murdered him and his associates when they traveled to New York to complete the sale. The Cuban had connections with a Colombian drug cartel and violence was threatened between the Colombians and the Gambino family unless Rosenberg was murdered. DeMeo was ordered to kill Rosenberg but stalled for weeks.
During this period of time DeMeo committed his most public murder, the victim being a college student with no criminal ties named Dominick Ragucci who was paying for his tuition by being a door-to-door salesman. DeMeo saw Ragucci parked outside his house and assumed it was an assassin. After a car chase, which consisted of Freddy DiNome at the wheel with DeMeo and Joseph Guglielmo hanging out of the windows firing wildly (Guglielmo even shot holes in the cars floorboards in his excitement). Ragucci was shot to death by DeMeo when his car became too damaged to continue driving. DeMeo, convinced it was an assassin from the drug cartel, returned home and gathered his family. He drove them out of New York and left them at a hotel for a short time.
DeMeo's son Albert wrote in his book, For The Sins of My Father, that DeMeo started crying when he discovered he had killed an innocent boy. In the meantime, the murder of the college student had infuriated his superior Nino Gaggi, who ordered him again to kill Chris Rosenberg before there were any other innocent victims. In May 1979, Rosenberg, who reportedly had no knowledge of the Colombian situation, arrived at a meeting of the DeMeo Crew and was shot in the head by DeMeo. Crew member Anthony Senter then finished Rosenberg off when he managed to get up after DeMeo shot him.
Unlike Grillo, Rosenberg's body was not dismembered or made to disappear. The Colombians had demanded that his murder make the papers otherwise they would not believe it had actually occurred. DeMeo's men placed Rosenberg's body in his car and left it on the side of Cross Bay Boulevard (near Gateway National Wildlife Refuge) to be found. Albert DeMeo wrote in his book that Rosenberg's murder affected his father deeply, and that when DeMeo came home after the murder, he went into his study room and didn't come out for two days. Likewise, testimony from Frederick DiNome and Vito Arena claims that DeMeo expressed regret at having to kill Chris and at times appeared depressed over it.
Aside from the active partners, other associates and crew members performed the actual stealing of the automobiles off the streets of New York. Among these associates was Vito Arena, a long-time car thief and armed robber who began working for DeMeo in 1978 after murdering his old partner. Like DiNome, Arena would become closely involved with the DeMeo Crew by the end of the 1970s. In 1979, the scheme was nearly stopped by a legitimate car dealer who threatened to inform the police. He was murdered along with an uninvolved acquaintance before he could provide the proper authorities with information.
Eppolito met with Paul Castellano and accused DeMeo and Gaggi of drug dealing, which carried the penalty of death. Castellano, to whom Gaggi was a close ally, sided against Eppolito in the situation and gave Gaggi permission to do what he pleased. He and DeMeo shot the two to death in Eppolito Jr.'s car en route to the Gemini Lounge on October 1, 1979. A witness driving by right as the shots were fired within the parked car managed to alert a nearby police officer, who arrested Gaggi after a shootout between the two that left Gaggi with a bullet wound in his neck.
Because DeMeo had split up with Gaggi as they left the scene, he was not arrested or identified by the witness. Gaggi would be charged with murder and the attempted murder of a police officer but through jury tampering was convicted only of assault and given a 5 to 15 year sentence in Federal Prison. DeMeo would murder the witness shortly after Gaggi's sentencing in March 1980.
The Empire Boulevard Operation had continued to expand through 1979 and 1980 until the warehouse serving as its headquarters was raided by agents from the Newark branch of the FBI in the summer of 1980. The FBI had been surveilling the warehouse and some of the men unloading vehicles there and had shortly thereafter obtained a search warrant. Henry Borelli and Frederick DiNome were arrested in May 1981 for their roles in the operation, but there was not enough evidence to arrest any of the other active partners. DeMeo ordered Borelli and DiNome to plead guilty to the charges in hopes that it would stop any further investigations into his activities by the FBI or other law enforcement agencies.
In the conversation, it is discussed that Paul Castellano had put out a hit on DeMeo, but was having difficulty finding someone willing to do the job. Gene Gotti mentions that his brother John was wary of taking the contract, as DeMeo had an "army of killers" around him. It is also mentioned in this same secretly recorded conversation that, at that time, John had killed fewer than 10 people, while DeMeo had killed at least 38. According to mob turncoat Sammy Gravano, eventually the contract was given to Frank DeCicco, but Frank and his crew couldn't get to DeMeo either. DeCicco allegedly handed the job to DeMeo's own men.
Albert DeMeo wrote that in his final days, DeMeo was paranoid and knew that he would be killed soon. DeMeo considered faking his own death and leaving the country. However, instead he left the house one day and never returned. Albert DeMeo later found DeMeo's personal belongings such as his watch, wallet, and ring in his study room, and also a religious pamphlet indicating that DeMeo had gone to confession before his death.
According to the book Murder Machine, in his final days DeMeo was seen wearing a leather jacket, with a shotgun concealed underneath. On January 10, 1983, DeMeo went to crew member Patrick Testa's bodyshop for a meeting with his men. A few days later, on January 18, he was found murdered in his abandoned car's trunk. He had been shot multiple times in the head and had a bullet wound in his hand, assumed by law enforcement as being from throwing his hand up to his face in a self-defense reflex when the shots were fired at him. Anthony Gaggi was suspected by law enforcement officials of being the one who personally killed DeMeo, although it is likely crew members Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter were present as well.
Gaggi was not charged with the crime, although he was charged with a number of other murders. He died of a heart attack during his trial in 1988, aged 62. According to Anthony Casso's 2008 biography, DeMeo was killed at Patrick Testa's East Flatbush home by Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter following an agreement with Casso, who was given the contract by Gotti and DeCicco after they were unable to kill DeMeo during the fall of 1982. The Casso biography notes that DeMeo was seated, about to receive coffee, when Testa and Senter opened fire. Anthony Gaggi was not present.
In April 1984, Colombo crime family soldier Ralph Scopo was overheard explaining to an associate that DeMeo had been killed by his own family because they merely suspected that he would not be able to stand up to legal charges that resulted from his stolen car ring. The motive as suggested by Scopo is widely accepted by law enforcement and other sources. Another reason was that DeMeo was attracting too much attention from the FBI.
DeMeo's crew was soon rounded up and the core members Henry Borelli, Joseph Testa, and Anthony Senter were imprisoned for life after two trials that saw them convicted of a collective total of 25 murders, in addition to extortion, car theft and drug trafficking. The convictions were secured in large part by testimony of former members Frederick DiNome and Dominick Montiglio. Paul Castellano was indicted for ordering the murder of DeMeo, as well as a host of other crimes, but was killed in December 1985, while out on bail in the middle of the first trial. The murder was ordered by John Gotti, who thus became the new boss of the Gambino family.
Richard Kuklinski, a convicted contract killer and the focus of three HBO Undercover programs, also worked with DeMeo. He filled several contracts for DeMeo, and also claimed that he was the one who murdered him. He shot him five times (twice in the head), and pistol-whipped his corpse, leaving him in the trunk of his car to be found. It should be noted that Kuklinski's claim has yet to be backed by a single credible source and he's not mentioned in the book Murder Machine, essentially a biography of the DeMeo crew.
Through a family friend, personal items claimed to have once belonged to DeMeo, including artifacts supposedly from the Gemini Lounge, have been continually sold on ebay from 2007 through 2010, with an accompanying notarized certificate of authenticity. Among the items sold and claimed to have belonged to DeMeo are numerous neckties, shirts, cups and glassware, money clips, pistol grips and holsters, pocket knives, rosaries and religious medals, etc.
Category:1942 births Category:1983 deaths Category:1975 murders in the United States Category:1983 murders in the United States Category:American mobsters of Italian descent Category:Murdered American mobsters of Italian descent
Category:People from Brooklyn Category:American drug traffickers Category:Mafia hitmen Category:Gambino crime family Category:DeMeo Crew Category:DeMeo Crew victims Category:Burials at St. John's Cemetery (Queens)
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| Name | Phil Collins |
|---|---|
| Landscape | Yes |
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Philip David Charles Collins |
| Born | January 30, 1951Chiswick, London, England |
| Instrument | Drums, vocals,piano, guitar,keyboards,bass guitar |
| Genre | PopRock |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter,musician, actor |
| Years active | 1968–present |
| Label | Virgin, Atlantic |
| Associated acts | Genesis, Brand X, Flaming Youth, Philip Bailey, Eric Clapton, The Phil Collins Big Band |
| Url |
Philip David Charles Collins, LVO (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer-songwriter, drummer, keyboardist and actor best known as a drummer and vocalist for English progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist.
Collins sang the lead vocals on several chart hits in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1978 and 1994, either as a solo artist or with Genesis. His singles, often dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy "In the Air Tonight", dance pop of "Sussudio", piano-driven "Against All Odds", to the political statements of "Another Day in Paradise". His international popularity transformed Genesis from a progressive rock group to a regular on the pop charts and an early MTV mainstay.
Collins's professional music career began as a drummer, first with obscure rock group Flaming Youth and then more famously with Genesis. In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: "For Absent Friends" from 1971's Nursery Cryme album and "More Fool Me" from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973. Following Gabriel's departure in 1975, Collins became the group's lead singer. As the decade closed, Genesis's first international hit, "Follow You, Follow Me", demonstrated a drastic change from the band's early years.
His concurrent solo career, heavily influenced by his personal life, brought both him and Genesis commercial success. According to Atlantic Records, Collins's total worldwide sales as a solo artist, as of 2000, were 150 million. He has won seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and two Golden Globes for his solo work. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.
Collins is one of only three recording artists (along with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson) who have sold over 100 million albums worldwide both as solo artists and (separately) as principal members of a band. According to Billboard magazine, when his work with Genesis, his work with other artists, as well as his solo career is totalled, Collins has the most top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the 1980s. In 2008, Collins was ranked the 22nd most successful artist on the "The Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists".
His professional training began at fourteen when he entered Barbara Speake Stage School. He began a career as a child actor and model, and won his first major role as The Artful Dodger in the London production of Oliver!. He was an extra in The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night – one of hundreds of screaming teenagers during the TV concert sequence and seen fleetingly in a close-up. He was also in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as one of the children who stormed the castle at the end of the movie but was edited out. He also auditioned for the role of Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (1968), a role won by fellow "Artful Dodger" actor, Leonard Whiting. Collins was among the last three finalists for the role of "I.Q." on the American children's television show The Bugaloos (he lost out to English actor/musician John McIndoe).
Despite the beginnings of an acting career, Collins continued to gravitate towards music. While attending Chiswick Community School he formed a band called The Real Thing and later joined The Freehold. With the latter group, he wrote his first song titled "Lying Crying Dying".
Collins's first record deal came as drummer for Flaming Youth who released a single album, Ark 2 (1969). A concept album inspired by the recent media attention surrounding the moon landing, Ark 2 (with Ronnie Caryl, Brian Chatton and Gordon (Flash) Smith), failed to make much commercial success despite positive critical reviews. Melody Maker featured the album as "Pop Album of the Month", describing it as "adult music beautifully played with nice tight harmonies". The album's main single, "From Now On", failed on the radio. After a year of touring, band tensions and the lack of commercial success dissolved the group. In 1970, the 19-year old Collins played percussion on the George Harrison song "The Art of Dying". Harrison credited him in the liner notes to the remastered CD version of the album released in 2000.
" featured the members of Genesis in puppet form, with the single cover (parodying the With the Beatles album and using puppets from the satirical TV show Spitting Image).]]
Collins won the audition. Nursery Cryme was released a year later. Although his role remained primarily that of drummer and backing vocalist for the next five years, he twice sang lead vocals: once on "For Absent Friends" (from Nursery Cryme) and once on "More Fool Me" (from Selling England by the Pound).
In 1974, while Genesis were recording the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Brian Eno (who is credited with "Enossification" for electronic vocal effects on the track "Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging") needed a drummer for his album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Collins was sent to fill the gap, and played drums in lieu of payment for Eno's work with the band.
In 1975, following the final tour supporting the concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Gabriel left the group to pursue a solo career. Collins became lead vocalist after a lengthy but ultimately fruitless search for Gabriel's replacement (where he sang back up with the over 400 hopefuls that reportedly auditioned). In the short term, the group recruited former Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford to play drums during live shows, although Collins continued to play during longer instrumental sections. Bruford's drumming can be heard on the track "The Cinema Show" on the live album Seconds Out. He was soon replaced by ex-Frank Zappa band member Chester Thompson, who became a mainstay of the band's live line-up. Collins, however, continued to play drums on all of the band's studio recordings.
The first album with Collins as lead vocalist, 1976's A Trick of the Tail, reached the American Top 40, and peaked high as #3 on the UK charts. Said Rolling Stone, "Genesis has managed to turn the possible catastrophe of Gabriel's departure into their first broad-based American success.". Following the recording of Genesis's next album Wind and Wuthering guitarist Steve Hackett left the group to pursue his own solo career. The group decided to continue as a trio for recording with Mike Rutherford playing guitar and bass in the studio, although the lineup was regularly augmented by Chester Thompson and American guitarist Daryl Stuermer for concert tours.
Collins simultaneously performed in a jazz fusion group called Brand X. The band recorded their first album, Unorthodox Behaviour, with Collins as drummer, but because Genesis was Collins's priority, there were several Brand X tours and albums without him. Collins credits Brand X as his first use of a drum machine as well as his first use of a home 8-track tape machine.
Collins also performed on Steve Hackett's first solo album, Voyage of the Acolyte, on which he sang lead vocals and played drums.
As the decade closed, Genesis began a shift from their progressive rock roots and toward more accessible, radio-friendly pop-rock music. The album ...And Then There Were Three... featured their first UK Top 10 and U.S. Top 40 single, "Follow You Follow Me".
In the 1980s, while Collins developed as a songwriter and established a parallel career as a solo artist, Genesis recorded a series of highly successful albums including Duke, Abacab, Genesis, and Invisible Touch. The latter album's title track reached #1 on the American Billboard singles chart, the only Genesis song to do so. The group received an MTV "Video of the Year" nomination in 1987 for the single "Land of Confusion" (which featured puppet caricatures created by the British satirical team Spitting Image) but lost out to Peter Gabriel's solo hit, "Sledgehammer". Reviews were generally positive, with Rolling Stone's J.D. Considine stating, "every tune is carefully pruned so that each flourish delivers not an instrumental epiphany but a solid hook."
Collins left Genesis in 1996 to focus on his solo career; The last studio album with him as the lead singer was 1991's We Can't Dance. He and Gabriel reunited with other Genesis members in 1999 to re-record "The Carpet Crawlers" for Genesis's . When in the mid-2000s discussions of a possible Genesis reunion arose, Collins stated that he would prefer to return as the drummer, with Gabriel handling the vocals. Eventually was announced for 2007, with the Collins/Rutherford/Banks lineup.
In March 2010, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio was asked to pay tribute to Genesis, one of his favorite bands, upon being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to Anastasio's speech, Phish appeared and performed two Genesis songs, "Watcher of the Skies" and "No Reply At All". Collins and his Genesis bandmates (minus Peter Gabriel) attended the ceremony but they did not perform.
Much like Face Value, much of the songs from Collins's 1982 follow-up album, Hello, I Must Be Going!, came from Collins's marital problems with his first wife such as "I Don't Care Anymore" and "Do You Know and Do You Care". Collins’s early albums had a dark presence, usually heavy on the drums. Regarding Face Value, he says, "I had a wife, two children, two dogs, and the next day I didn't have anything. So a lot of these songs were written because I was going through these emotional changes." There were occasional poppier influences–Face Value
Two years before, Collins had played drums on Peter Gabriel's third self-titled record (often referred to as Melt), the first record to feature the "gated reverb" sound, which was used on the song "Intruder". Gabriel reportedly "didn't want any metal on the record" and asked Collins to leave his cymbals at home, to concentrate on the sound of his kit more heavily than usual. Studio engineer Hugh Padgham augmented the drum sound by using a microphone normally intended for studio communication rather than recording and feeding it through a signal processor called a noise gate. This allowed the reverberation added to the drums to be suddenly cut off before it naturally decayed. The result was the arresting "gated reverb" which became Collins signature sound. This was the same 'big drum sound' used on such songs as "In The Air Tonight", "Mama" by Genesis, and Frida's "There's Something Going On".
No Jacket Required received criticism that the album was too safe, despite its upbeat reviews and commercial success. A positive review by David Fricke of Rolling Stone ended, "After years on the art-rock fringe, Collins has established himself firmly in the middle of the road. Perhaps he should consider testing himself and his new fans' expectations next time around." "Sussudio" also drew criticism for sounding too similar to Prince's "1999", a charge that Collins did not deny. Nevertheless, the album went straight to #1 in the U.S. and UK. In 1985, Collins was invited by Bob Geldof to perform at the Live Aid charity event. Collins had the distinction of being the only performer to appear at both the UK concert at Wembley Stadium and the US concert at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. He accomplished this by performing early in the day at Wembley as both a solo artist and alongside Sting, then transferring to a Concorde flight to the USA enabling him to perform his solo material, and drum for Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton in Philadelphia. While being a guest on major artists' hit recordings, Collins continued to enjoy solo success even while on tour with Genesis, besides from his number-one duet with Marilyn Martin in 1986, Collins would score two more hits from movies with the singles, "Two Hearts" (1988) and "Groovy Kind of Love" (1988), the latter two from the soundtrack of his feature film, Buster.
In 1989, Collins produced another successful album, ...But Seriously, featuring the anti-homelessness anthem "Another Day in Paradise", with David Crosby on backing vocals. (Collins later went on to co-write, sing and play on the song "Hero" on Crosby's 1993 album Thousand Roads.) "Another Day in Paradise" went to Number 1 on the Billboard Charts at the end of 1989 and won Collins a Grammy for Record of the Year (1990). In the process, it became the last #1 US pop hit of the 1980s. The album ...But Seriously became the first #1 US album of the 1990s. Other songs included "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven" (#4 US, #15 UK), "Do You Remember?" (not released in the UK, but a #4 hit in the US), and "I Wish It Would Rain Down" (the latter featuring Clapton on guitar) (#3 US, #7 UK). Songs about apartheid and homelessness demonstrated Collins’s turn to politically-driven material. This theme recurred on his later albums. A live album, Serious Hits... Live!, followed.
Collins attempted a return to poppier music with Dance into the Light, which Entertainment Weekly reviewed by saying that "(e)ven Phil Collins must know that we all grew weary of Phil Collins". It included minor hits such as the title track and The Beatles-inspired "It's in Your Eyes". Although the album went Gold in the US, it sold considerably less than his previous albums. Despite this the subsequent tour regularly sold out arenas.
In 1996, Collins formed The Phil Collins Big Band. With Collins as drummer, the band performed jazz renditions of various Collins and Genesis hits. The Phil Collins Big Band did a world tour in 1998 that included a performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival. In 1999, the group released the CD A Hot Night in Paris including big band versions of "Invisible Touch", "Sussudio", and the more obscure "The Los Endos Suite" from A Trick of the Tail. , 6834 Hollywood Blvd]] A compilation album Hits was released in 1998 and sold very well, returning Collins to multi-platinum status in America. The album's sole new track, a cover of the Cyndi Lauper hit "True Colors", received considerable play on US Adult Contemporary stations while peaking at #2. Some of Collins's earlier hits (e.g. "I Missed Again", "If Leaving Me Is Easy", etc.) and other successes were not included in this compilation.
Collins's next single, "You'll Be in My Heart", from the Disney animated movie Tarzan, spent 19 weeks at #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart – the longest time ever up to that point. The song won Collins an Academy Award for Best Song. It was his third nomination in the songwriters category, after being nominated in 1985 and 1989. Collins was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on 16 June 1999.
, Spain in July 2004.]]
In 2002 Collins released Testify. Metacritic's roundup of album reviews found this record to be the worst-reviewed album at the time of its release, though it has since been "surpassed" by three more recent releases. The album's "Can't Stop Loving You" (a Leo Sayer cover) was yet another #1 Adult Contemporary smash hit for Collins. Testify sold 140,000 copies in the United States by year's end, although a successful worldwide tour followed.
That same year Collins accepted an invitation to drum for the "house band" at a concert celebrating Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. In 2003 announced his last solo tour - the "First Final Farewell Tour", a tongue-in-cheek reference to the multiple farewell tours of other popular artists. In 2006 he worked with Disney on a Broadway production of Tarzan, a musical which received generally mixed reviews. In 2007 Collins reunited with his Genesis bandmates Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford for , a tour of Europe and North America. During the tour Genesis performed at the Live Earth concert at Wembley Stadium. Following the band's performance, presenter Jonathan Ross had to apologise to viewers watching the televised version as Collins had used a swear word while singing "Invisible Touch".
Going Back was released on 13 September 2010, entering the UK charts at number 4, rising to number one the following week. In early summer 2010, Collins played six concerts entirely dedicated to the music from Going Back. These included a special programme, Phil Collins: One Night Only, which was broadcast on ITV1 on 18 September 2010.
Cymbals: HH Medium Crash 20" – HH Extra Thin Crash 17" – Hi-Hats 15" – HH Chinese 20" – HH Medium-Thin Crash 16" -HH Chinese 22" – HH Raw Bell Dry Ride 21".
Until 1986, Collins played Paiste and Zildjian Cymbals. Other drums he's used over the years are Premier, Noble & Cooley, Pearl, Simmons and Ludwig drums. He uses a Ludwig Speed King pedal and Pro Mark sticks.
Other instruments which have become synonymous with Collins's sound (particularly in his post-1978 Genesis and subsequent solo career) include the Roland CR-78 and Roland TR-808 drum machines, and the Yamaha CP-70 electric grand piano.
Collins wrote and performed the title song to Against All Odds in 1984. The song became the first of his seven American number one songs and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. Collins was not invited to perform the song at that year's presentation, although he was in the audience as the song's composer. Collins had arranged his U.S. tour to accommodate the possibility of appearing on the telecast in the event his song was nominated for an Oscar. It is believed that the producers of that year's Academy Awards show were not aware of his prominence as a musical performer. A note to Collins's label from telecast co-producer Larry Gelbart explaining the lack of invitation stated, "Thank you for your note regarding Phil Cooper (emphasis added). I'm afraid the spots have already been filled". Collins instead watched Ann Reinking perform his song. For a long time afterwards, he would introduce his performance of "Against All Odds" at his concerts by saying: "Miss Ann Reinking's not here tonight, so I guess I'll have to sing my own song".
As a vocalist, Collins sang Stephen Bishop's composition "Separate Lives" for the film White Nights (1985) as a duet with Marilyn Martin. The single of the recording became another Number One hit for Collins. The song itself was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song (a category that honours the composer, not the vocalists). Bishop's song had parallels to some of the songs on Collins's first two albums. Writer Stephen Bishop noted that he was inspired by a failed relationship and called "Separate Lives" "a song about anger". When the song was being nominated for an Academy Award, in interviews about the original snub by the Academy for "Against All Odds", Collins would jokingly say "the hell with him – I'm going up too," referring to if Bishop's song were to win the award.
Collins's first film role since becoming a musician came in 1988 with Buster about the Great Train Robbery, which took place in England in the 1960s. The movie received good reviews and Collins contributed four songs to the film's soundtrack. His rendition of "Groovy Kind of Love", originally a 1966 single by The Mindbenders, with lyrics by Toni Wine and music by Carole Bayer Sager, but with the melody of the Rondo section of Muzio Clementi's "Sonatina in G major", op. 36 no. 5 reached Number One. The film also spawned the hit single "Two Hearts", which he wrote in collaboration with legendary Motown songwriter Lamont Dozier; the two artists would go on to win a Golden Globe for Best Original Song and receive an Oscar nomination in the same category, the second such honour for Collins; "Big Noise", written by Phil Collins and Lamont Dozier, which included Collins on vocals (although the song was not released as a single, an instrumental version of this song appeared as the B-side to the single version of "A Groovy Kind Of Love".) The final song, "Loco In Acapulco", was another collaboration between him and Dozier, with the vocals performed by the legendary Motown group The Four Tops. Movie critic Roger Ebert said the role of Buster was "played with surprising effectiveness" by Collins, although the film's soundtrack proved more successful than the movie did.
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Collins had cameo appearances in Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991) and the AIDS docudrama And the Band Played On (1993). He starred in 1993's Frauds, which competed for the Palme d'Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. He supplied voices to two animated features: Amblin's Balto (1995) and Disney's The Jungle Book 2 (2003). A long-discussed but never completed project was a movie titled The Three Bears; originally meant to star him alongside Danny DeVito and Bob Hoskins, he often mentioned the film, though an appropriate script never materialised.
Collins performed the soundtrack to the animated film Tarzan (1999) for The Walt Disney Company. Collins won an Academy Award for "You'll Be in My Heart", which he performed at that year's telecast as well as during a Disney-themed Super Bowl halftime show. The song, which he also recorded in Spanish among other languages, became his only appearance on Billboard's Hot Latin Tracks. They had a son, Simon Collins, and Collins adopted Bertorelli's daughter Joely Collins, now a Canadian actress. They divorced in 1980, after she started an affair with their painter and decorator. Collins later appeared on the BBC's Top of the Pops singing his 1981 solo hit "In The Air Tonight" with a pot of paint and brush positioned near his piano. Collins has since claimed that the presence of the paint and brush was coincidental. # Collins met his second wife, Jill Taverman, in 1980. They were married from 1984 to 1996. They had one daughter, named Lily Collins, who was born in 1989. Collins openly admits that some of their divorce-related correspondence was by fax (one, about access to their daughter, was reproduced in The Sun), but denies that this took her by surprise. In 2008, Collins was quoted in People Magazine: "Marriage is a difficult proposition. But I haven't given up on it, either.
Collins was appointed a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order in 1994 in recognition of his work on behalf of the Prince's Trust.
Bob Geldof said of Collins after recording the drums for the Band Aid single "Feed The World (Do They Know its Christmas)", "Phil Collins is a magnificent soul. He has touched the world through his music and he continues to fight against world poverty. He is one of life's true heroes."
Collins has stated he is a supporter of animal rights and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In 2005, he donated an autographed drumstick in support of PETA's campaign against Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Collins also has a lifelong interest in the Alamo. He has collected hundreds of artifacts related to the famous 1836 battle in San Antonio, Texas, narrated a light and sound show about the Alamo, and spoken at related events.
Collins has often been mentioned erroneously in the British media as being a supporter of the Conservative Party and an opponent of the Labour Party. Shortly before the 2005 election (when Collins was living in Switzerland), Noel Gallagher is reported as saying: "Vote Labour. If you don't and the Tories get in, Phil is threatening to come back." However, Collins has since stated that although he did once claim many years earlier that he might leave Britain if most of his income was taken in tax, which was Labour Party policy at that time for top earners, he has never been a Conservative Party supporter and he left Britain for Switzerland in 1994 purely because he met a woman who lived there. He said of Gallagher: “I don’t care if he likes my music or not. I do care if he starts telling people I’m a wanker because of my politics. It’s an opinion based on an old misunderstood quote.” Despite his claim that he did not leave Britain for tax purposes, he was one of several super-rich figures living in tax havens who were singled out for criticism in a report by the charity Christian Aid in 2008.
Collins founded the Little Dreams Foundation in February 2000, which aims to "realise the dreams of children in the fields of sports and art" by providing future prodigies aged 4 to 16 years with financial, material, and mentoring support with the help of experts in various fields.
Collins supports the South African charity The Topsy Foundation, which provides relief services to some of South Africa's most under-resourced rural communities through a multi-faceted approach to the consequences of HIV and AIDS and extreme poverty, and he donates all royalties earned in South Africa to the organization.
Robert Howe, representing Phil Collins Limited, said at the time, "The defendants claim royalties in respect to recordings to which they have made no contribution. They appeared in five out of 15 tracks but say they are entitled to full royalties on the whole album, which flies in the face of common-sense." Howe further said that Collins felt the two men had been well rewarded in relation to the nine-month tour. "He [Collins] is not seeking for them to put a hand in their pockets and pay back as much as a penny," according to Mr Howe.
On 19 April 2000, the British High Court ruled that the two musicians would receive no more royalty money from Phil Collins. The amount that Collins was seeking was halved, and Louis Satterfield and Rhamlee Davis, the American performers who originally brought the suit forward in California, would not have to repay any of it. Collins had not sought actual repayment but wanted a declaration from the court that he could stop paying royalties to the performers who claimed they were entitled to royalties on all 15 tracks of an album recorded during Collins's 1990 Seriously, Live! World Tour. The judge ruled, however, the men should have been paid for only the five tracks on which they performed, including the hit "Sussudio".
"In the Air Tonight" re-entered the New Zealand charts in 2008 at #3 and then peaked at #1, after featuring in the 'Cadbury Gorilla' advert.
Category:1951 births Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:Ballad musicians Category:Best Song Academy Award winning songwriters Category:BRIT Award winners Category:British expatriates in Switzerland Category:English-language singers Category:English drummers Category:English film actors Category:English male models Category:English male singers Category:English pop singers Category:English rock drummers Category:English rock singers Category:English singer-songwriters Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:Genesis (band) members Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:Lieutenants of the Royal Victorian Order Category:Living people Category:Musicians from London Category:People from Chiswick Category:Silver Clef Awards winners Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Judy Garland |
|---|---|
| Caption | Garland photographed in 1944 |
| Birth name | Frances Ethel Gumm |
| Birth date | June 10, 1922 |
| Birth place | Grand Rapids, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Death date | June 22, 1969 |
| Death place | Chelsea, London, England, UK |
| Occupation | Actress, singer |
| Years active | 1924–1969 (singer)1929–1967 (actress) |
| Spouse | David Rose (1941–1944)Vincente Minnelli (1945–1951)Sid Luft (1952–1965)Mark Herron (1965–1967)Mickey Deans (1969) (Her Death) |
After appearing in vaudeville with her sisters, Garland was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. There she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney and the 1939 film with which she would be most identified, The Wizard of Oz. After 15 years, Garland was released from the studio but gained renewed success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a critically acclaimed Carnegie Hall concert, a well-regarded but short-lived television series and a return to acting beginning with a critically acclaimed performance in A Star Is Born (1954).
Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was unattractive and manipulated her on-screen physical appearance. Garland was plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. She married five times, with her first four marriages ending in divorce. Garland died of an accidental drug overdose at the age of 47, leaving children Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft and Joey Luft.
In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the ten greatest female stars in the history of American cinema.
Garland's ancestry on both sides of her family can be traced back to the early colonial days of the United States. Her father was descended from the Marable family of Virginia, and her mother from Patrick Fitzpatrick, who emigrated to America in the 1770s from Smithtown, County Meath, Ireland.
Named after both her parents and baptized at a local Episcopal church, "Baby" (as Frances was called by her parents and sisters) shared her family's flair for song and dance. Baby Gumm's first appearance came at the age of two-and-a-half when she joined her two older sisters, Mary Jane "Suzy/Suzanne" Gumm (1915–64) and Dorothy Virginia "Jimmie" Gumm (1917–77), on the stage of her father's movie theater during a Christmas show and sang a chorus of "Jingle Bells". Accompanied by their mother on piano, The Gumm Sisters performed at their father's theater for the next few years. Following rumors that Frank Gumm had made sexual advances toward male ushers at his theater, the family relocated to Lancaster, California, in June 1926. Frank purchased and operated another theater in Lancaster, and Ethel, acting as their manager, began working to get her daughters into motion pictures.
In 1934, the sisters, who by then had been touring the vaudeville circuit as "The Gumm Sisters" for many years, performed in Chicago at the Oriental Theater with George Jessel. He encouraged the group to choose a more appealing name after the name "Gumm" was met with laughter from the audience. "The Garland Sisters" was chosen, and Frances changed her name to "Judy" soon after, inspired by a popular Hoagy Carmichael song.
Several stories persist regarding the origin of the name "Garland". One is that it was originated by Jessel after Carole Lombard's character Lily Garland in the film Twentieth Century which was then playing at the Oriental; another is that the trio chose the surname after drama critic Robert Garland. Garland's daughter Lorna Luft stated that her mother selected the name when Jessel announced that the trio of singers "looked prettier than a garland of flowers". Another variation surfaced when Jessel was a guest on Garland's television show in 1963. He claimed that he had sent actress Judith Anderson a telegram containing the word "garland," and it stuck in his mind.
At any rate, by late 1934 the "Gumm Sisters" had changed their name to the "Garland Sisters." The trio was broken up in August 1935, however, when Suzanne Garland flew to Reno, Nevada, and married musician Lee Kahn, a member of the Jimmy Davis orchestra playing at Cal-Neva Lodge, Lake Tahoe.
On November 16, 1935, in the midst of preparing for a radio performance on the Shell Chateau Hour, Garland learned that her father—who had been hospitalized with meningitis—had taken a turn for the worse. Frank Gumm died the following morning, on November 17, leaving Garland devastated. Garland's song for the Shell Chateau Hour was her first professional rendition of "Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart", a song which would become a standard in many of her concerts.
in Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)]] Garland next came to the attention of studio executives by singing a special arrangement of "You Made Me Love You" to Clark Gable at a birthday party held by the studio for the actor; her rendition was so well regarded that Garland performed the song in the all-star extravaganza Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), in which she sang the song to a photograph of Gable.
MGM hit on a winning formula when it paired Garland with Mickey Rooney in a string of "backyard musicals". The duo first appeared together in the 1937 B movie Thoroughbreds Don't Cry. They became a sensation, and teamed up again in Love Finds Andy Hardy. Garland would eventually star with Rooney in nine films.
To keep up with the frantic pace of making one film after another, Garland, Rooney, and other young performers were constantly given amphetamines, as well as barbiturates to take before bed. For Garland, this regular dose of drugs led to addiction and a lifelong struggle, and contributed to her eventual demise. She later resented the hectic schedule and felt that her youth had been stolen from her by MGM. Despite successful film and recording careers, several awards, critical praise, and her ability to fill concert halls worldwide, Garland was plagued throughout her life with self-doubt and required constant reassurance that she was talented and attractive.
Shooting commenced on October 13, 1938, and was completed on March 16, 1939, with a final cost of more than $2 million. From the conclusion of filming, MGM kept Garland busy with promotional tours and the shooting of Babes in Arms. Garland and Mickey Rooney were sent on a cross-country promotional tour, culminating in the August 17 New York City premiere at the Capitol Theater, which included a five-show-a-day appearance schedule for the two stars.
On November 17, 1939, Garland's mother, Ethel, married William P. Gillmore in Yuma, Arizona. It was the fourth anniversary of her first husband's death.
The Wizard of Oz was a tremendous critical success, though its high budget and promotions costs of an estimated $4 million coupled with the lower revenue generated by children's tickets, meant that the film did not make a profit until it was re-released in the 1940s. At the 1940 Academy Awards ceremony, Garland received an Academy Juvenile Award for her performances in 1939, including The Wizard of Oz and Babes in Arms. Following this recognition, Garland became one of MGM's most bankable stars.
At the age of 21, she was given the "glamour treatment" in Presenting Lily Mars, in which she was dressed in "grown-up" gowns. Her lightened hair was also pulled up in a stylish fashion. However, no matter how glamorous or beautiful she appeared on screen or in photographs, she was never confident in her appearance and never escaped the "girl next door" image that had been created for her. Adding to her insecurity was the dissolution of her marriage to David Rose. Garland, who had aborted her pregnancy by Rose in 1942, agreed to a trial separation in January 1943, and they divorced in 1944.
One of Garland's most successful films for MGM was Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), in which she introduced three standards: "The Trolley Song", "The Boy Next Door", and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". Vincente Minnelli was assigned to direct this movie, and he requested that make-up artist Dorothy Ponedel be assigned to Garland for the picture. Ponedel refined Garland's appearance in several ways, including extending and reshaping her eyebrows, changing her hairline, modifying her lip line, and removing her nose discs. Garland appreciated the results so much that Ponedel was written into her contract for all her remaining pictures at MGM. During the filming of Meet Me in St. Louis, after some initial conflict between them, Garland and Minnelli entered a relationship together. They were married June 15, 1945, and on March 12, 1946, daughter Liza Minnelli was born.
The Clock (1945) was her first straight dramatic film, opposite Robert Walker. Though the film was critically praised and earned a profit, most movie fans expected her to sing. It would be many years before she acted again in a non-singing dramatic role.
Garland's other famous films of the 1940s include The Harvey Girls (1946), in which she introduced the Academy Award-winning song "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", and The Pirate (1948).'''
Because of her mental condition, Garland was unable to complete a series of films. During the filming of The Barkleys of Broadway, Garland was taking prescription sleeping medication along with illicitly obtained pills containing morphine. These, in combination with migraine headaches, led Garland to miss several shooting days in a row. After being advised by Garland's doctor that she would only be able to work in four- to five-day increments with extended rest periods between, MGM executive Arthur Freed made the decision to suspend Garland on July 18, 1948. She was replaced by Ginger Rogers.
Garland was cast in the film adaptation of Annie Get Your Gun in the title role of Annie Oakley. She was nervous at the prospect of taking on a role strongly identified with Ethel Merman, anxious about appearing in an unglamorous part after breaking from juvenile parts for several years, and disturbed by her treatment at the hands of director Busby Berkeley. She began arriving late to the set, and sometimes failed to appear. She was suspended from the picture on May 10, 1949, and was replaced by Betty Hutton.
Garland was next cast in the film Royal Wedding with Fred Astaire after June Allyson became pregnant in 1950. She again failed to report to the set on multiple occasions, and the studio suspended her contract on June 17, 1950. She was replaced by Jane Powell. Reputable biographies following Garland's death stated that after this latest dismissal, she slightly grazed her neck with a broken water glass, requiring only a Band-Aid, but at the time, the public was informed that a despondent Garland had slashed her throat. "All I could see ahead was more confusion," Garland later said of this suicide attempt. "I wanted to black out the future as well as the past. I wanted to hurt myself and everyone who had hurt me."
In October 1951, Garland opened in a vaudeville-style, two-a-day engagement at Broadway's newly refurbished Palace Theatre. Her 19-week engagement exceeded all previous records for the theater, and was described as "one of the greatest personal triumphs in show business history". Garland was honored for her contribution to the revival of vaudeville with a Special Tony Award.
Garland and Luft were married on June 8, 1952, in Hollister, California, and Garland gave birth to the couple's first child, Lorna Luft, on November 21 that year.
Garland's personal and professional achievements during this time were marred by the actions of her mother, Ethel. In May 1952, at the height of Garland's comeback, Ethel was featured in a Los Angeles Mirror story in which she revealed that while Garland was making a small fortune at the Palace, Ethel was working a desk job at Douglas Aircraft Company for $61 a week. Garland and Ethel had been estranged for years, with Garland characterizing her mother as "no good for anything except to create chaos and fear" and accusing her of mismanaging and misappropriating Garland's salary from the earliest days of her career. Garland's sister Virginia denied this, stating "Mama never took a dime from Judy." On January 5, 1953, Ethel was found dead in the Douglas Aircraft parking lot.
Upon its September 29 world premiere, the film was met with tremendous critical and popular acclaim. Before release it was edited at the instruction of Jack Warner; theater operators, concerned that they were losing money because they were only able to run the film for three or four shows per day instead of five or six, pressured the studio to make additional reductions. About 30 minutes of footage was cut, sparking outrage among critics and filmgoers. A Star is Born ended up losing money, and the secure financial position Garland had expected from the profits did not materialize. Transcona made no more films with Warner.
Garland was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and, in the run-up to the 27th Academy Awards, was generally expected to be the winner. She could not attend the ceremony because she had just given birth to her son, Joseph Luft, so a television crew was in Garland's hospital room with cameras and wires to televise Garland's anticipated acceptance speech. The Oscar was won, however, by Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1954). The camera crew was packing up before Kelly could even reach the stage. Garland even made jokes about the incident, on her television series, saying "...and nobody said good-bye." Groucho Marx sent Garland a telegram after the awards ceremony, declaring her loss "the biggest robbery since Brinks". To this day, it is still considered to be one of the biggest upsets in the history of the Academy Awards. Garland won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical for the role.
Garland's films after A Star Is Born included Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) (for which she was Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated for Best Supporting Actress), the animated feature Gay Purr-ee (1962), and A Child Is Waiting (1963) with Burt Lancaster. Her final film, I Could Go On Singing (1963), co-starring Dirk Bogarde, mirrored her own life with its story of a world famous singing star. Garland’s last screen performance of a song was the prophetic I Could Go on Singing at the end of the film.
In November 1959 Garland was hospitalized, diagnosed with acute hepatitis. Over the next few weeks several quarts of fluid were drained from her body until, still weak, she was released from the hospital in January 1960. She was told by doctors that she likely had five years or less to live, and that even if she did survive she would be a semi-invalid and would never sing again. She initially felt "greatly relieved" at the diagnosis. "The pressure was off me for the first time in my life."
Her concert appearance at Carnegie Hall on April 23, 1961, was a considerable highlight, called by many "the greatest night in show business history". The two-record Judy at Carnegie Hall was certified gold, charting for 95 weeks on Billboard, including 13 weeks at number one. The album won four Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and Best Female Vocal of the Year. The album has never been out of print.
In 1961, Garland and CBS settled their contract disputes with the help of her new agent, Freddie Fields, and negotiated a new round of specials. The first, entitled The Judy Garland Show, aired in 1962 and featured guests Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Following this success, CBS made a $24 million offer to Garland for a weekly television series of her own, also to be called The Judy Garland Show, which was deemed at the time in the press to be "the biggest talent deal in TV history". Although Garland had said as early as 1955 that she would never do a weekly television series, in the early 1960s she was in a financially precarious situation. Garland was several hundred thousand dollars in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, having failed to pay taxes in 1951 and 1952, and the financial failure of A Star is Born meant that she received nothing from that investment. A successful run on television was intended to secure Garland's financial future.
Following a third special, Judy Garland and Her Guests Phil Silvers and Robert Goulet, Garland's weekly series debuted September 29, 1963. The Judy Garland Show was critically praised, but for a variety of reasons (including being placed in the time slot opposite Bonanza on NBC) the show lasted only one season and was cancelled in 1964 after 26 episodes. Despite its short run, the series was nominated for four Emmy Awards. The demise of the series was personally and financially devastating for Garland, who never fully recovered from its failure.
Garland sued Sid Luft for divorce in 1963, claiming "cruelty" as the grounds. She also asserted that Luft had repeatedly struck her while he was drinking and that he had attempted to take their children from her by force. She had filed for divorce more than once previously, including as early as 1956.
A 1964 tour of Australia was largely disastrous. Garland's first concert in Sydney, held in the Sydney Stadium because no concert hall could accommodate the crowds who wanted to see her, went well and received positive reviews. Her second performance, in Melbourne, started an hour late. The crowd of 7,000, angered by her tardiness—and believing Garland to be drunk—booed and heckled her, and she fled the stage after just 45 minutes. She later characterized the Melbourne crowd as "brutish". Some of that bad press was deflected by the announcement of a near fatal episode of pleurisy, followed by Garland's fourth marriage to tour promoter Mark Herron. They announced that their marriage had taken place aboard a freighter off the coast of Hong Kong; however, Garland was not legally divorced from Luft at the time the ceremony was performed. Her divorce from Luft became final on May 19, 1965,
In February 1967, Garland had been cast as Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls for 20th Century Fox. The character of Neely O'Hara in the book by Jacqueline Susann was rumored to have been based on Garland. The role of O'Hara in the film was played by Patty Duke. During the filming, Garland missed rehearsals and was fired in April. She was replaced by Susan Hayward. Garland's prerecording of the song "I'll Plant My Own Tree" survived, along with her wardrobe tests.
Returning to the stage, Garland made her last appearances at New York's Palace Theatre in July, a 16-show tour, performing with her children Lorna and Joey Luft. Garland wore a sequined pantsuit on stage for this tour, which was part of the original wardrobe for her character in Valley of the Dolls.
By early 1969, Garland's health had deteriorated. She performed in London at the Talk of the Town nightclub for a five-week run and made her last concert appearance in Copenhagen during March 1969. She married her fifth and final husband, Mickey Deans, at Chelsea Register Office, London, on March 15, 1969, her divorce from Herron having been finalized on February 11 of that year.
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This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
