Coordinates	55°45′06″N37°37′04″N
name	Danny Kaye
birth name	David Daniel Kaminsky
birth date	January 18, 1913
birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
death date	March 03, 1987
death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
occupation	Actor, singer, comedian
years active	1935–1986
spouse	Sylvia Fine (1940-1987) (his death) 1 child }}

Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminsky; January 18, 1913 – March 3, 1987) was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. His best known performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire nonsense songs.

Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and — perhaps his most accomplished performance — The Court Jester (1956). His films were extremely popular, especially his bravura performances of patter songs and children's favorites such as The Inch Worm and The Ugly Duckling. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF and received the French Legion of Honor in 1986 for his many years of work with the organization.

Early years

David Daniel Kaminsky was born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. Jacob and Clara Nemerovsky Kaminsky and their two sons, Larry and Mac, left Ekaterinoslav two years before his birth; he was the only one of their sons born in the United States. He spent his early youth attending Public School 149 in East New York, Brooklyn, where he began entertaining his young classmates with songs and jokes, before moving to Thomas Jefferson High School, but he never graduated. His mother died when he was in his early teens. Clara enjoyed the impressions and humor of her youngest son and always had words of encouragement for them; her death was a great loss for young Danny.

Not long after his mother's death, Danny and his best friend ran away to Florida. Danny sang while his friend Louis played the guitar; the pair eked out a living like this for a while. When Danny did return to New York, his father did not pressure him to return to school or to get a job, giving his son the chance to mature and discover his own abilities. Danny said he had wanted to become a surgeon as a young boy, but there was no chance of the family being able to afford a medical school education for him. He held a succession of jobs after leaving school: a soda jerk, insurance investigator, office clerk. Most of them ended with him being fired. He lost the insurance job when he made an error that cost the insurance company $40,000. The dentist who had hired him to look after his office during his lunch hour did the same when he found Danny using his drill to create designs in the office woodwork. He learned his trade in his teenage years in the Catskills as a tummler in the Borscht Belt.

Kaminsky's first break came in 1933 when he was asked to become one of the "Three Terpsichoreans", a vaudeville dance act. He opened with them in Utica, New York using the name Danny Kaye for the first time. The act toured the United States, then signed on to perform in the Orient with the show La Vie Paree. The troupe left for six months in the Far East on February 8, 1934. While the group was in Osaka, Japan, a hurricane hit the city. The hotel Kaye and his colleagues stayed in suffered heavy damage; a piece of the hotel's cornice was hurled into Kaye's room by the strong wind, nearly killing him. By performance time that evening, the city was still in the grip of the storm. There was no power and the audience had become understandably restless and nervous. To keep everyone calm, Kaye went on stage, his face lit by a flashlight, and sang every song he could recall as loudly as he was able. The experience of trying to entertain audiences who did not speak English is what brought him to the pantomimes, gestures, songs and facial expressions which eventually made him famous. Sometimes it was necessary just to try to get a meal. Kaye's daughter, Dena, tells a story her father related about being at a restaurant in China and trying to order chicken. Kaye flapped his arms and clucked, giving the waiter his best imitation of a chicken. The waiter nodded his understanding, bringing Kaye two eggs. His interest in cooking began on the tour.

When he returned to the United States, jobs were in short supply; Kaye struggled for bookings. One of the jobs was working in a burlesque revue with fan dancer Sally Rand. After the dancer dropped one of her fans while trying to chase away a fly, Kaye was hired to be in charge of the fans so they were always held in front of her.

Career

Danny Kaye made his film debut in a 1935 comedy short titled Moon Over Manhattan. In 1937 he signed with New York–based Educational Pictures for a series of two-reel comedies. Kaye usually played a manic, dark-haired, fast-talking Russian in these low-budget shorts, opposite young hopefuls June Allyson or Imogene Coca. The Kaye series ended abruptly when the studio shut down permanently in 1938. He was still working in the Catskills at times in 1937, using the name Danny Kolbin. Kaye's next venture was a short-lived Broadway show, where Sylvia Fine was the pianist, lyricist and composer. The Straw Hat Revue opened on September 29, 1939 and closed after ten weeks, but it was long enough for critics to take notice of Danny Kaye's work in it. The glowing reviews brought an offer for both Kaye and his new bride, Sylvia, to work at La Martinique, an upscale New York City nightclub. Kaye performed with Sylvia as his accompanist. This is where playwright Moss Hart saw Danny in action, which led to his being cast in Hart's Lady in the Dark.

Kaye scored a personal triumph in 1941, in the hit Broadway comedy Lady in the Dark. His show-stopping number was "Tchaikovsky", by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin, in which he sang the names of a whole string of Russian composers at breakneck speed, seemingly without taking a breath. By the next Broadway season, he was the star of his own show about a young man who is drafted called Let's Face It!.

His feature film debut was in producer Samuel Goldwyn's Technicolor 1944 comedy Up in Arms, a remake of Goldwyn's Eddie Cantor comedy Whoopee! (1930). Kaye's rubber face and fast patter were an instant hit, and rival producer Robert M. Savini cashed in almost immediately by compiling three of Kaye's old Educational Pictures shorts into a makeshift feature, The Birth of a Star (1945).

Kaye starred in a radio program of his own, The Danny Kaye Show, on CBS in 1945–1946. It had a stellar cast (including Eve Arden, Lionel Stander, and Big Band leader Harry James), and was scripted by radio notable Goodman Ace and respected playwright-director Abe Burrows. The radio program's popularity rose quickly. Before Kaye had been on the air a year, he tied with Jimmy Durante for fifth place in the Radio Daily popularity poll. Kaye was asked to participate in a USO tour following the end of World War II. It meant he would be absent from his radio show for close to two months at the beginning of the season. Kaye's friends filled in for him, with a different guest host each week. Kaye was the first actor to visit Tokyo; it was his first time there after touring there some ten years before with the vaudeville troupe. When Kaye asked to be released from his radio contract in mid 1946, he agreed not to accept another regular radio show for one year and also to limit his guest appearances on the radio programs of others. Many of the show's episodes survive today, and are notable for Kaye's opening "signature" patter.

"Git gat gittle, giddle-di-ap, giddle-de-tommy, riddle de biddle de roop, da-reep, fa-san, skeedle de woo-da, fiddle de wada, reep!"

Kaye was sufficiently popular that he inspired imitations:

The 1946 Warner Bros. cartoon Book Revue had a lengthy sequence with Daffy Duck impersonating Kaye singing "Carolina in the Morning" with the Russian accent that Kaye would affect from time to time.

Satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer's 1953 song "Lobachevsky" was based on a number that Kaye had done, about the Russian director Constantin Stanislavski, again with the affected Russian accent. Lehrer mentioned Kaye in the opening monologue, citing him as an "idol since childbirth."

Superman creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, also fashioned a short-lived superhero title, Funnyman, taking inspiration from Kaye's public persona.

Kaye starred in several movies with actress Virginia Mayo in the 1940s, and is well known for his roles in films such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), On the Riviera (1951) co-starring Gene Tierney, Knock on Wood (1954), White Christmas (1954, in a role originally intended for Fred Astaire, then Donald O'Connor),The Court Jester (1956), and Merry Andrew (1958). Kaye starred in two pictures based on biographies, Hans Christian Andersen (1952) about the Danish story-teller, and The Five Pennies (1959) about jazz pioneer Red Nichols. His wife, writer/lyricist Sylvia Fine, wrote many of the witty, tongue-twisting songs Danny Kaye became famous for. She was also an associate producer. Some of Kaye's films included the theme of doubles, two people who look identical (both played by Danny Kaye) being mistaken for each other, to comic effect.

While his wife wrote Kaye's material, there was much of it that was unwritten, springing from the mind of Danny Kaye, often while he was performing. Kaye had one character he never shared with the public; Kaplan, the owner of an Akron, Ohio rubber company, came to life only for family and friends. His wife, Sylvia, described the Kaplan character:

"He doesn't have any first name. Even his wife calls him just Kaplan. He's an illiterate pompous character who advertises his philanthropies. Jack Benny or Dore Schary might say, "Kaplan, why do you hate unions so?" If Danny feels like doing Kaplan that night, he might be off on Kaplan for two hours."

When he appeared at the London Palladium music hall in 1948, he "roused the Royal family to shrieks of laughter and was the first of many performers who have turned English variety into an American preserve." Life magazine described his reception as "worshipful hysteria" and noted that the royal family, for the first time in history, left the royal box to see the show from the front row of the orchestra. He later related that he had no idea of the familial connections when the Marquess of Milford Haven introduced himself after one of the shows and said he would like his cousins to see Kaye perform. Kaye also later stated that he never returned to the venue because there was no way to re-create the magic of that time. Kaye had an invitation to return to London for a Royal Variety Performance in November of the same year. When the invitation arrived, Kaye was busy at work on The Inspector General (which had a working title of Happy Times for a while). Warners stopped work on the film to allow their star to attend.

He hosted the 24th Academy Awards in 1952. The program was broadcast only on radio. Telecasts of the Oscar ceremony would come later. During the 1950s, Kaye visited Australia, where he played "Buttons" in a production of Cinderella in Sydney. In 1953, Kaye started his own production company, Dena Pictures, named for his daughter. Knock on Wood was the first film produced by his firm. The firm expanded into television in 1960 under the name Belmont Television.

Kaye entered the world of television in 1956 through the CBS show See It Now with Edward R. Murrow. The Secret Life of Danny Kaye combined his 50,000 mile, ten country tour as UNICEF ambassador with music and humor. His first solo effort was in 1960 with an hour-long special produced by Sylvia and sponsored by General Motors; there were similar specials in 1961 and 1962. He hosted his own variety hour on CBS television, The Danny Kaye Show, from 1963 to 1967, which won four Emmy awards and a Peabody award. During this period, beginning in 1964, he acted as television host to the annual CBS telecasts of MGM's The Wizard of Oz. Kaye also did a stint as one of the What's My Line? Mystery Guests on the popular Sunday night CBS-TV quiz program. Kaye later served as a guest panelist on that show. He also appeared on the NBC interview program Here's Hollywood.

In the 1970s Kaye tore a ligament in his leg during the run of the Richard Rodgers musical Two by Two, but went on with the show, appearing with his leg in a cast and cavorting on stage from a wheelchair. He had done much the same on his television show in 1964 when his right leg and foot were seriously burned from an at-home cooking accident. The camera shots were planned so television viewers did not see Kaye in his wheelchair.

In 1976, he played the role of Mister Geppetto in a television musical adaptation of Pinocchio with Sandy Duncan in the title role. He guest-starred much later in his career in episodes of The Muppet Show, The Cosby Show and in the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone.

In many of his movies, as well as on stage, Kaye proved to be a very able actor, singer, dancer and comedian. He showed quite a different and serious side as Ambassador for UNICEF and in his dramatic role in the memorable TV movie Skokie, in which he played a Holocaust survivor. Before his death in 1987, Kaye demonstrated his ability to conduct an orchestra during a comical, but technically sound, series of concerts organized for UNICEF fundraising. Kaye received two Academy Awards: an honorary award in 1955, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Screen Actors Guild Annual Award in 1982.

Kaye was enamored of music. While he often claimed an inability to read music, he was quite the conductor, and was said to have perfect pitch. Kaye's ability with an orchestra was brought up by Dimitri Mitropoulos, who was then the conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. After Kaye's guest appearance, Mitropoulos remarked, "Here is a man who is not musically trained, who cannot even read music, and he gets more out of my orchestra than I ever have." Kaye was often invited to conduct symphonies as charity fundraisers and was the conductor of the all-city marching band at the season opener of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984. Over the course of his career he raised over US$5,000,000 in support of musicians pension funds.

In 1980, Kaye hosted and sang in the 25th Anniversary of Disneyland celebration, and hosted the opening celebration for Epcot in 1982 (EPCOT Center at the time), both of which were aired on prime-time American television.

Other projects

Cooking

In his later years he took to entertaining at home as chef – he had a special stove installed in his patio – and specialized in Chinese and Italian cooking. The specialized stove Kaye used for his Chinese dishes was fitted with special metal rings for the burners to allow the heat from them to be highly concentrated. Kaye needed to install a trough with circulating ice water so he could use the burners. Kaye also taught Chinese cooking classes at a San Francisco Chinese restaurant in the 1970s. The theater and demonstration kitchen underneath the library at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York is named for him.

Danny referred to his kitchen as "Ying's Thing". While filming The Madwoman of Chaillot in France, he phoned home to ask his family if they would like to eat at "Ying's Thing" that evening; Kaye then flew home for dinner. Not all of his efforts in the kitchen turned out well. After flying to San Francisco for a recipe for sourdough bread, he came home and spent hours preparing loaves. When his daughter asked about the bread, Kaye tried showing her by hitting the bread on the kitchen table. His bread was hard enough to chip it. Kaye approached his kitchen work with enthusiasm, making his own sausages and other items needed for his cuisine. His work as a chef earned him the "Les Meilleurs Ouvriers de France" cuilinary award; Kaye was the only non-professional to achieve this honor.

Flying

Like many in the film business, Danny was an aviation enthusiast. He became seriously interested in learning how to fly in 1959. An enthusiastic and accomplished golfer, Kaye gave up golf in favor of flying. When Kaye went for his first written pilot's exam, he brought a liverwurst sandwich in case he was there for hours. The first plane Kaye owned was a Piper Aztec. Kaye got his first license as a private pilot of multi-engine aircraft, not getting certified for operating a single engine plane until six years later. He was an accomplished pilot, rated for airplanes ranging from single engine light aircraft to multi-engine jets. Kaye held a commercial pilot's license and had flown every type of aircraft except military planes. A vice-president of Learjet, Kaye owned and operated a Learjet 24. He supported many flying projects. In 1968, he was Honorary Chairman of the Las Vegas International Exposition of Flight, a major show that utilized most facets of the city’s entertainment industry while presenting a major air show. The operational show chairman was well-known aviation figure, Lynn Garrison. Kaye flew his own plane to 65 cities in five days on a mission designed to help UNICEF.

Danny Kaye was very fond of the legendary arranger Vic Schoen. Schoen had arranged for him on White Christmas, The Court Jester, and albums and concerts with the Andrews Sisters. In the 1960s Vic Schoen was working on a show in Las Vegas with Shirley Temple. He was injured in a car accident. When Danny Kaye heard about the accident, he immediately flew his own plane to McCarran Airport to pick up Schoen and bring him back to Los Angeles to guarantee the best medical attention.

Baseball

Kaye was the original owner of baseball's Seattle Mariners along with his partner Lester Smith from 1977 to 1981. Prior to that, the lifelong fan of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers recorded a song called "The D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song (Oh really? No, O'Malley!)", describing a fictitious encounter with the San Francisco Giants, which was a hit during the real-life pennant chase of 1962. That song is included on Baseball's Greatest Hits compact discs. A good friend of Leo Durocher, he would often travel with the team. In addition to being an owner, Kaye had an encyclopedic knowledge of the game.

Medicine

He also had a longstanding interest in medicine and was permitted to observe surgery on several occasions. He was an honorary member of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Charity

Throughout his life, Kaye donated to various charities. Working alongside UNICEF's Halloween fundraiser founder, Ward Simon Kimball Jr., the actor educated the public on impoverished children in deplorable living conditions overseas and assisted in the distribution of donated goods and funds. His involvement with UNICEF came about in a very unusual way. Kaye was flying home from an appearance in London in 1949 when one of the plane's four engines lost its propeller and caught fire. The problem was initially thought to be serious enough that it might need to make an ocean landing; life jackets and life rafts were made ready. The plane was able to head back over 500 miles to make a landing in Shannon, Ireland. On the way back to Shannon, the head of the Children's Fund, Maurice Pate, had the seat next to Danny Kaye and spoke at length to him about the need for recognition for the Fund. Their discussion continued on the flight from Shannon to New York; it was the beginning of the actor's long association with UNICEF.

Death

Kaye died of a heart attack in March 1987, following a bout with hepatitis. Kaye had quadruple bypass heart surgery in February 1983; he contracted hepatitis from a blood transfusion he received at that time. He left a widow, Sylvia Fine, and a daughter, Dena. He is interred in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. His grave is adorned with a bench that contains friezes of a baseball and bat, an aircraft, a piano, a flower pot, musical notes, and a glove. Kaye's name, birth and death dates are inscribed on the glove. The United Nations held a memorial tribute to him at their New York headquarters.

Personal life

Kaye and his wife, Sylvia, both grew up in Brooklyn, living only a few blocks apart, but they did not meet until they were both working on an off-Broadway show in 1939. Sylvia was an audition pianist at the time. Danny and Sylvia discovered that the dentist whose office he had been hired to watch was Sylvia's father, Samuel Fine. They were married on January 3, 1940. Kaye, working in Florida at the time, proposed on the telephone; the couple was married in Fort Lauderdale. Their daughter, Dena, was born on December 17, 1946.

Both Kaye and his wife raised their daughter without any parental hopes or aspirations for her future. Kaye said in a 1954 interview, "Whatever she wants to be she will be without interference from her mother nor from me." When she was very young, Dena did not like seeing her father perform because she did not understand that people were supposed to laugh at what he did.

During World War II, the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated rumors that Kaye dodged the draft by manufacturing a medical condition to gain 4-F status and exemption from military service. FBI files show he was also under investigation for supposed links with Communist groups. The allegations were never substantiated, and he was never charged with any associated crime.

After Kaye and his wife became estranged, he was allegedly involved with a succession of women, though he and Fine never divorced. The best-known of these women was actress Eve Arden.

There are persistent rumors that Kaye was either homosexual or bisexual, and some sources claim that Kaye and Laurence Olivier had a ten-year relationship in the 1950s while Olivier was still married to Vivien Leigh. A biography of Leigh states that the alleged relationship caused her to have a breakdown. The alleged relationship has been denied by Olivier's official biographer, Terry Coleman. Joan Plowright, Olivier's widow, has dealt with the matter in different ways on different occasions: she deflected the question (but alluded to Olivier's "demons") in a BBC interview and was reported saying on another occasion that "I have always resented the comments that it was I who was the homewrecker of Larry's marriage to Vivien Leigh. Danny Kaye was attached to Larry far earlier than I." However, in her memoirs Plowright denies that there had been an affair between the two men. Producer Perry Lafferty reported: "People would ask me, 'Is he gay? Is he gay?' I never saw anything to substantiate that in all the time I was with him.” Kaye’s final girlfriend, Marlene Sorosky, reported that he told her, "I've never had a homosexual experience in my life. I've never had any kind of gay relationship. I've had opportunities, but I never did anything about them."

Honors, awards, tributes

Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (1981)

Asteroid 6546 Kaye

Danny Kaye has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in music, radio, and films. Danny Kaye was knighted by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 1983 for his 1952 portrayal of Hans Christian Andersen in the film of the same name.

Kennedy Center Honor (1984)

French Legion of Honor (Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur) on February 24, 1986 for his UNICEF work.

The song I Wish I Was Danny Kaye on Miracle Legion's 1996 album Portrait of a Damaged Family

On June 23, 1987, Kaye was posthumously presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. The award was received by his daughter Dena. UNICEF's New York Visitor's Centre is named to honor Danny Kaye. In December 1996, the PBS series, American Masters, aired a special on the life of Danny Kaye.

Filmography

Film

{| class=wikitable |- style="background:#b0c4de; text-align:center;" | # | Title | Year | Role | Director | Co-stars | style="width:150px;"|Filmed in |- | align=right|1. | Moon Over Manhattan | 1935 | Himself | Al Christie | Sylvia Froos, Marion Martin | Black and white |- | align=right|2. | Dime a Dance | 1937 | Eddie | Al Christie | Imogene Coca, June Allyson | Black and white |- | align=right|3. | Getting an Eyeful | 1938 | Russian | Al Christie | Charles Kemper, Sally Starr | Black and white |- | align=right|4. | Cupid Takes a Holiday | 1938 | Nikolai Nikolaevich (bride-seeker) | William Watson | Douglas Leavitt, Estelle Jayne | Black and white |- | align=right|5. | Money on Your Life | 1938 | Russian | William Watson | Charles Kemper, Sally Starr | Black and white |- | align=right|6. | Up in Arms | 1944 | Danny Weems | Elliott Nugent | Dinah Shore, Dana Andrews | Technicolor |- | align=right|7. | Wonder Man | 1945 | Edwin Dingle / Buzzy Bellew | H. Bruce Humberstone | Virginia Mayo, Vera-Ellen, Steve Cochran | Technicolor |- | align=right|8. | The Kid from Brooklyn | 1946 | Burleigh Hubert Sullivan | Norman Z. McLeod | Virginia Mayo, Vera-Ellen, Steve Cochran, Eve Arden | Technicolor |- | align=right|9. | The Secret Life of Walter Mitty | 1947 | Walter Mitty | Norman Z. McLeod | Virginia Mayo, Boris Karloff, Fay Bainter, Ann Rutherford | Technicolor |- | 10. | A Song Is Born | 1948 | Professor Hobart Frisbee | Howard Hawks | Virginia Mayo, Benny Goodman, Hugh Herbert, Steve Cochran | Technicolor |- | 11. | It's a Great Feeling | 1949 | Himself | David Butler | Dennis Morgan, Doris Day, Jack Carson | Technicolor |- | 12. | The Inspector General | 1949 | Georgi | Henry Koster | Walter Slezak, Barbara Bates, Elsa Lanchester, Gene Lockhart | Technicolor |- | 13. | On the Riviera | 1951 | Jack Martin / Henri Duran | Walter Lang | Gene Tierney, Corinne Calvet | Technicolor |- | 14. | Hans Christian Andersen | 1952 | Hans Christian Andersen | Charles Vidor | Farley Granger, Zizi Jeanmaire | Technicolor |- | 15. | Knock on Wood | 1954 | Jerry Morgan / Papa Morgan | Norman PanamaMevin Frank | Mai Zetterling, Torin Thatcher | Technicolor |- | 16. | White Christmas | 1954 | Phil Davis | Michael Curtiz | Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger | VistaVisionTechnicolor |- | 17. | The Court Jester | 1956 | Hubert Hawkins | Norman PanamaMevin Frank | Glynis Johns, Basil Rathbone, Angela Lansbury | VistaVisionTechnicolor |- | 18. | Merry Andrew | 1958 | Andrew Larabee | Michael Kidd | Salvatore Baccaloni, Pier Angeli | CinemaScopeMetrocolor |- | 19. | Me and the Colonel | 1958 | Samuel L. Jacobowsky | Peter Glenville | Curd Jürgens, Nicole Maurey, Françoise Rosay, Akim Tamiroff | Black and white |- | 20. | The Five Pennies | 1959 | Red Nichols | Melville Shavelson | Barbara Bel Geddes, Louis Armstrong, Tuesday Weld | VistaVisionTechnicolor |- | 21. | On the Double | 1961 | Pfc. Ernie Williams | Melville Shavelson | Dana Wynter, Margaret Rutherford, Diana Dors | PanavisionTechnicolor |- | 22. | The Man from the Diner's Club | 1963 | Ernest Klenk | Frank Tashlin | Cara Williams, Martha Hyer | Black and white |- | 23. | The Madwoman of Chaillot | 1969 | The Ragpicker | Bryan Forbes | Katharine Hepburn, Charles Boyer | Technicolor |}

Television

Autumn Laughter (1938) (experimental telecast)

The Secret Life of Danny Kaye (1956) (See It Now special)

An Hour With Danny Kaye (1960 and 1961) (specials)

The Danny Kaye Show with Lucille Ball (1962) (special)

The Danny Kaye Show (1963–1967) (series)

The Lucy Show: "Lucy Meets Danny Kaye" (1964) (guest appearance)

Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971) (voice)

The Enchanted World of Danny Kaye: The Emperor's New Clothes (1972) (special)

An Evening with John Denver (1975) (special)

Pinocchio (1976) (special)

Peter Pan (1976) (special)

The Muppet Show (1978) (guest appearance)

Disneyland's 25th Anniversary (1980) (special guest appearance)

An Evening with Danny Kaye (1981) (special)

Skokie (1981)

The New Twilight Zone: "Paladin of the Lost Hour" (1985) (guest appearance)

The Cosby Show: "The Dentist" (1986) (guest appearance)

References

Sources

Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, June 23, 1987

External links

Danny Kaye tribute and fan website

Tribute to Danny Kaye in The Court Jester

Danny! - A Danny Kaye Fan Site

Royal Engineers Museum Danny Kaye in Korea 1952

Literature on Danny Kaye

Listen

The Danny Kaye Show on radio at Internet Archive.

The Danny Kaye Show more radio episodes at Internet Archive.

Watch

The Inspector General for iPod at Internet Archive.

The Inspector General at Internet Archive.

Category:1913 births Category:1987 deaths Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:American aviators Category:American comedians Category:American film actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:Major League Baseball owners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Deaths from hepatitis Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish comedians Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Seattle Mariners owners Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Vaudeville performers Category:Peabody Award winners Category:Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur

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Coordinates	55°45′06″N37°37′04″N
name	Louis Armstrong
alt	A picture of Louis Armstrong. Short-haired black man in his fifties blowing into a trumpet. He is wearing a light-colored sport coat, a white shirt and a bow tie. He is faced left with his eyes looking upwards. His right hand is fingering the trumpet, with the index finger down and three fingers pointing upwards. The man's left hand is mostly covered with a handkerchief and it has a shining ring on the little finger. He is wearing a wristwatch on the left wrist.
landscape	Yes
background	solo_singer
birth name	Louis Armstrong
born	August 4, 1901New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
died	July 06, 1971Corona, Queens, New York City, U.S.
instruments	Trumpet, cornet, vocals
genre	Dixieland, jazz, swing, traditional pop
occupation	Musician
spouse	Daisy Parker
years active	c. 1914–71
associated acts	Joe "King" Oliver, Ella Fitzgerald, Kid Ory, Bobby Hackett
website	}}

Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance.

With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing, vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics.

Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general.

Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his amazing talent in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a person of color. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.

Biography

Early life

Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4, 1900, a date that has been noted in many biographies. Although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date of August 4, 1901 was discovered through the examination of baptismal records.

Armstrong was born into a very poor family in New Orleans, Louisiana, the grandson of slaves. He spent his youth in poverty, in a rough neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans, known as “Back of Town”, as his father, William Armstrong (1881–1922), abandoned the family when Louis was an infant and took up with another woman. His mother, Mary "Mayann" Albert (1886–1942), then left Louis and his younger sister Beatrice Armstrong Collins (1903–1987) in the care of his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong, and at times, his Uncle Isaac. At five, he moved back to live with his mother and her relatives, and saw his father only in parades.

He attended the Fisk School for Boys. It was there that he likely had his first exposure to Creole music. He brought in some money as a paperboy and also by finding discarded food and selling it to restaurants, but it was not enough to keep his mother from prostitution. He hung out in dance halls close to home, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille. For extra money he also hauled coal to Storyville, the famed red-light district, and listened to the bands playing in the brothels and dance halls, especially Pete Lala's where Joe "King" Oliver performed and other famous musicians would drop in to jam.

After dropping out of the Fisk School at age eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys that sang in the streets for money. But he also started to get into trouble. Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong (then 11) to play by ear at Dago Tony's Tonk in New Orleans, although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. Armstrong hardly looked back at his youth as the worst of times but instead drew inspiration from it, “Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans...It has given me something to live for.”

He also worked for a Lithuanian-Jewish immigrant family, the Karnofskys, who had a junk hauling business and gave him odd jobs. They took him in and treated him as almost a family member, knowing he lived without a father, and would feed and nurture him. He later wrote a memoir of his relationship with the Karnofskys titled, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907. In it he describes his discovery that this family was also subject to discrimination by "other white folks' nationalities who felt that they were better than the Jewish race. I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the White Folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for." Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them: "how to live—real life and determination." The influence of Karnofsky is remembered in New Orleans by the Karnofsky Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to accepting donated musical instruments to "put them into the hands of an eager child who could not otherwise take part in a wonderful learning experience."

Armstrong developed his cornet playing seriously in the band of the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, where he had been sent multiple times for general delinquency, most notably for a long term after firing his stepfather's pistol into the air at a New Year's Eve celebration, as police records confirm. Professor Peter Davis (who frequently appeared at the Home at the request of its administrator, Captain Joseph Jones) instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. Eventually, Davis made Armstrong the band leader. The Home band played around New Orleans and the thirteen year old Louis began to draw attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he was released from the Home, living again with his father and new stepmother and then back with his mother and also back to the streets and their temptations. Armstrong got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponce’s where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night.

He played in the city's frequent brass band parades and listened to older musicians every chance he got, learning from Bunk Johnson, Buddy Petit, Kid Ory, and above all, Joe "King" Oliver, who acted as a mentor and father figure to the young musician. Later, he played in the brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and began traveling with the well-regarded band of Fate Marable, which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He described his time with Marable as, "going to the University," since it gave him a much wider experience working with written arrangements.

In 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory's band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band, a society band.

Career

On March 19, 1918, Louis married Daisy Parker from Gretna, Louisiana. They adopted a 3-year-old boy, Clarence Armstrong, whose mother, Louis's cousin Flora, died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled (the result of a head injury at an early age) and Louis would spend the rest of his life taking care of him. Louis's marriage to Parker failed quickly and they separated. She died shortly after the divorce.

Through all his riverboat experience Armstrong’s musicianship began to mature and expand. At twenty, he could read music and he started to be featured in extended trumpet solos, one of the first jazzmen to do this, injecting his own personality and style into his solo turns. He had learned how to create a unique sound and also started using singing and patter in his performances. In 1922, Armstrong joined the exodus to Chicago, where he had been invited by his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to join his Creole Jazz Band and where he could make a sufficient income so that he no longer needed to supplement his music with day labor jobs. It was a boom time in Chicago and though race relations were poor, the “Windy City” was teeming with jobs for black people, who were making good wages in factories and had plenty to spend on entertainment.

Oliver's band was the best and most influential hot jazz band in Chicago in the early 1920s, at a time when Chicago was the center of the jazz universe. Armstrong lived like a king in Chicago, in his own apartment with his own private bath (his first). Excited as he was to be in Chicago, he began his career-long pastime of writing nostalgic letters to friends in New Orleans. As Armstrong’s reputation grew, he was challenged to “cutting contests” by hornmen trying to displace the new phenom, who could blow two hundred high C’s in a row. Armstrong made his first recordings on the Gennett and Okeh labels (jazz records were starting to boom across the country), including taking some solos and breaks, while playing second cornet in Oliver's band in 1923. At this time, he met Hoagy Carmichael (with whom he would collaborate later) who was introduced by friend Bix Beiderbecke, who now had his own Chicago band.

Armstrong enjoyed working with Oliver, but Louis's second wife, pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, urged him to seek more prominent billing and develop his newer style away from the influence of Oliver. Armstrong took the advice of his wife and left Oliver's band. For a year Armstrong played in Fletcher Henderson's band in New York on many recordings. After playing in New York, Armstrong returned to Chicago, playing in large orchestras; there he created his most important early recordings. Lil had her husband play classical music in church concerts to broaden his skill and improve his solo play and she prodded him into wearing more stylish attire to make him look sharp and to better offset his growing girth. Lil’s influence eventually undermined Armstrong’s relationship with his mentor, especially concerning his salary and additional moneys that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong received an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the day. Armstrong switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. His influence upon Henderson's tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period. Armstrong quickly adapted to the more tightly controlled style of Henderson, playing trumpet and even experimenting with the trombone and the other members quickly took up Armstrong’s emotional, expressive pulse. Soon his act included singing and telling tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers. The Henderson Orchestra was playing in the best venues for white-only patrons, including the famed Roseland Ballroom, featuring the classy arrangements of Don Redman. Duke Ellington’s orchestra would go to Roseland to catch Armstrong’s performances and young hornmen around town tried in vain to outplay him, splitting their lips in their attempts.

During this time, Armstrong also made many recordings on the side, arranged by an old friend from New Orleans, pianist Clarence Williams; these included small jazz band sides with the Williams Blue Five (some of the best pairing Armstrong with one of Armstrong's few rivals in fiery technique and ideas, Sidney Bechet) and a series of accompaniments with blues singers, including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Alberta Hunter.

Armstrong returned to Chicago in 1925 due mostly to the urging of his wife, who wanted to pump up Armstrong’s career and income. He was content in New York but later would concede that she was right and that the Henderson Orchestra was limiting his artistic growth. In publicity, much to his chagrin, she billed him as “the World’s Greatest Trumpet Player”. At first he was actually a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and working for his wife. He began recording under his own name for Okeh with his famous Hot Five and Hot Seven groups, producing hits such as "Potato Head Blues", "Muggles", (a reference to marijuana, for which Armstrong had a lifelong fondness), and "West End Blues", the music of which set the standard and the agenda for jazz for many years to come.

The group included Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), wife Lil on piano, and usually no drummer. Armstrong’s bandleading style was easygoing, as St. Cyr noted, "One felt so relaxed working with him and he was very broad-minded ... always did his best to feature each individual." His recordings soon after with pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines (most famously their 1928 Weatherbird duet) and Armstrong's trumpet introduction to "West End Blues" remain some of the most famous and influential improvisations in jazz history. Armstrong was now free to develop his personal style as he wished, which included a heavy dose of effervescent jive, such as "whip that thing, Miss Lil" and "Mr. Johnny Dodds, Aw, do that clarinet, boy!"

Armstrong also played with Erskine Tate’s Little Symphony, actually a quintet, which played mostly at the Vendome Theatre. They furnished music for silent movies and live shows, including jazz versions of classical music, such as “Madame Butterfly,” which gave Armstrong experience with longer forms of music and with hosting before a large audience. He began to scat sing (improvised vocal jazz using non-sensical words) and was among the first to record it, on "Heebie Jeebies" in 1926. So popular was the recording the group became the most famous jazz band in the USA even though they as yet had not performed live to any great degree. Young musicians across the country, black and white, were turned on by Armstrong’s new type of jazz.

After separating from Lil, Armstrong started to play at the Sunset Café for Al Capone's associate Joe Glaser in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, with Earl Hines on piano, which was soon renamed Louis Armstrong and his Stompers, though Hines was the music director and Glaser managed the orchestra. Hines and Armstrong became fast friends as well as successful collaborators.

Armstrong returned to New York, in 1929, where he played in the pit orchestra of the successful musical Hot Chocolate, an all-black revue written by Andy Razaf and pianist/composer Fats Waller. He also made a cameo appearance as a vocalist, regularly stealing the show with his rendition of "Ain't Misbehavin'", his version of the song becoming his biggest selling record to date.

Armstrong started to work at Connie's Inn in Harlem, chief rival to the Cotton Club, a venue for elaborately staged floor shows, and a front for gangster Dutch Schultz. Armstrong also had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of famous songs composed by his old friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the new RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted a characteristic warmth to vocals and immediately became an intrinsic part of the 'crooning' sound of artists like Bing Crosby. Armstrong's famous interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong's unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that had already become standards.

Armstrong's radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael's "Lazy River" (recorded in 1931) encapsulated many features of his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo, then the main melody is stated by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong's growling interjections at the end of each bar: "Yeah! ..."Uh-huh" ..."Sure" ... "Way down, way down." In the first verse, he ignores the notated melody entirely and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza he breaks into an almost fully improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong "scat singing".

As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong's vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gritty coloration of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated. His scat singing style was enriched by his matchless experience as a trumpet soloist. His resonant, velvety lower-register tone and bubbling cadences on sides such as "Lazy River" exerted a huge influence on younger white singers such as Bing Crosby.

The Depression of the early Thirties was especially hard on the jazz scene. The Cotton Club closed in 1936 after a long downward spiral and many musicians stopped playing altogether as club dates evaporated. Bix Beiderbecke died and Fletcher Henderson’s band broke up. King Oliver made a few records but otherwise struggled. Sidney Bechet became a tailor and Kid Ory returned to New Orleans and raised chickens. Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in LA with Lionel Hampton on drums. The band drew the Hollywood crowd, which could still afford a lavish night life, while radio broadcasts from the club connected with younger audiences at home. Bing Crosby and many other celebrities were regulars at the club. In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame. Armstrong was convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town, Armstrong visited New Orleans, got a hero’s welcome and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team known as “Armstrong’s Secret Nine” and got a cigar named after himself. But soon he was on the road again and after a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, Armstrong decided to go to Europe to escape.

After returning to the States, he undertook several exhausting tours. His agent Johnny Collins’ erratic behavior and his own spending ways left Armstrong short of cash. Breach of contract violations plagued him. Finally, he hired Joe Glaser as his new manager, a tough mob-connected wheeler-dealer, who began to straighten out his legal mess, his mob troubles, and his debts. Armstrong also began to experience problems with his fingers and lips, which were aggravated by his unorthodox playing style. As a result he branched out, developing his vocal style and making his first theatrical appearances. He appeared in movies again, including Crosby's 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven. In 1937, Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallee on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast. He finally divorced Lil in 1938 and married longtime girlfriend Alpha.

After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, he continued to develop his playing. He recorded Hoagy Carmichael's Rockin' Chair for Okeh Records.

During the subsequent thirty years, Armstrong played more than three hundred gigs a year. Bookings for big bands tapered off during the 1940s due to changes in public tastes: ballrooms closed, and there was competition from television and from other types of music becoming more popular than big band music. It became impossible under such circumstances to support and finance a 16-piece touring band.

The All Stars

Following a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring Armstrong with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden, Armstrong's manager Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947 and established a six-piece small group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and dixieland musicians, most of them ex-big band leaders. The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club.

This group was called Louis Armstrong and his All Stars and included at various times Earl "Fatha" Hines, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young, Arvell Shaw, Billy Kyle, Marty Napoleon, Big Sid Catlett, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn, Barrett Deems and the Filipino-American percussionist, Danny Barcelona. During this period, Armstrong made many recordings and appeared in over thirty films. He was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time Magazine on February 21, 1949.

In 1964, he recorded his biggest-selling record, "Hello, Dolly!" The song went to #1 on the pop chart, making Armstrong (age 63) the oldest person to ever accomplish that feat. In the process, Armstrong dislodged The Beatles from the #1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs.

Armstrong kept up his busy tour schedule until a few years before his death in 1971. In his later years he would sometimes play some of his numerous gigs by rote, but other times would enliven the most mundane gig with his vigorous playing, often to the astonishment of his band. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under sponsorship of the US State Department with great success, earning the nickname "Ambassador Satch." While failing health restricted his schedule in his last years, within those limitations he continued playing until the day he died.

Death

Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, a month before his 70th birthday, and 11 months after playing a famous show at the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City.

His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sang The Lord's Prayer at the services while Al Hibbler sang "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.

Personality

Armstrong was a colorful character. His own biography vexes biographers and historians, because he had a habit of telling tales, particularly of his early childhood, when he was less scrutinized, and his embellishments of his history often lack consistency.

He was not only an entertainer. Armstrong was a leading personality of the day who was so beloved by a white-controlled America that gave even the greatest African American performers little access beyond their public celebrity, that he was able to privately live a life of access and privilege accorded to few other African Americans.

He tried to remain politically neutral, which gave him a large part of that access, but often alienated him from members of the African-American community who looked to him to use his prominence with white America to become more of an outspoken figure during the Civil Rights Era of U.S. history.

Nicknames

The nicknames Satchmo and Satch are short for Satchelmouth. Like many things in Armstrong's life, which was filled with colorful stories both real and imagined, many of his own telling, the nickname has many possible origins.

The most common tale that biographers tell is the story of Armstrong as a young boy dancing for pennies in the streets of New Orleans, who would scoop up the coins off of the streets and stick them into his mouth to avoid having the bigger children steal them from him. Someone dubbed him "satchel mouth" for his mouth acting as a satchel.

Early on he was also known as Dipper, short for Dippermouth, a reference to the piece Dippermouth Blues. and something of a riff on his unusual embouchure.

Armstrong and race

Armstrong was largely accepted into white society, both on stage and off, a privilege reserved for very few African-American public figures, and usually those of either exceptional talent and fair skin-tone. As his fame grew, so did his access to the finer things in life usually denied to a black man, even a famous one. His renown was such that he dined in the best restaurants and stayed in hotels usually exclusively for whites.

It was a power and privilege that he enjoyed, although he was very careful not to flaunt it with fellow performers of color, and privately, he shared what access that he could with friends and fellow musicians.

That still did not prevent members of the African-American community, particularly in the late 1950s to the early 1970s, from calling him an Uncle Tom, a black-on-black racial epithet for someone who kowtowed to white society at the expense of their own racial identity.

He was criticized for accepting the title of "King of The Zulus" for Mardi Gras in 1949. In the New Orleans African-American community it is an honored role as the head of leading black Carnival Krewe, but bewildering or offensive to outsiders with their traditional costume of grass-skirts and blackface makeup satirizing southern white attitudes.

Some musicians criticized Armstrong for playing in front of segregated audiences, and for not taking a strong enough stand in the civil rights movement.

Billie Holiday countered, however, "Of course Pops toms, but he toms from the heart."

The few exceptions made it more effective when he did speak out. Armstrong's criticism of President Eisenhower, calling him "two-faced" and "gutless" because of his inaction during the conflict over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 made national news.

As a protest, Armstrong canceled a planned tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department saying "The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell" and that he could not represent his government abroad when it was in conflict with its own people. Six days after Armstrong's comments, Eisenhower ordered Federal troops to Little Rock to escort students into the school.

The FBI kept a file on Armstrong, for his outspokenness about integration.

Religion

When asked about his religion, Armstrong would answer that he was raised a Baptist, always wore a Star of David, and was friends with the Pope. Armstrong wore the Star of David in honor of the Karnofsky family, who took him in as a child and lent him the money to buy his first cornet. Louis Armstrong was, in fact, baptized as a Catholic at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in New Orleans, and he met popes Pius XII and Paul VI, though there is no evidence that he considered himself Catholic. Armstrong seems to have been tolerant towards various religions, but also found humor in them.

Personal habits

Purging

Armstrong was also greatly concerned with his health and bodily functions. He made frequent use of laxatives as a means of controlling his weight, a practice he advocated both to personal acquaintances and in the diet plans he published under the title Lose Weight the Satchmo Way. Armstrong's laxative of preference in his younger days was Pluto Water, but he then became an enthusiastic convert when he discovered the herbal remedy Swiss Kriss. He would extol its virtues to anyone who would listen and pass out packets to everyone he encountered, including members of the British Royal Family. (Armstrong also appeared in humorous, albeit risqué, cards that he had printed to send out to friends; the cards bore a picture of him sitting on a toilet—as viewed through a keyhole—with the slogan "Satch says, 'Leave it all behind ya!'") The cards have sometimes been incorrectly described as ads for Swiss Kriss.

In a live recording of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Velma Middleton, he changes the lyric from "Put another record on while I pour" to "Take some Swiss Kriss while I pour." The line, slightly garbled in the live recording, could just as likely be "Take some Swiss Miss while I pour"—Swiss Miss is a hot chocolate mix that would have been fairly new on the market in 1951. (The line comes at 1:04 in the song.)

Love of food

The concern with his health and weight was balanced by his love of food, reflected in such songs as "Cheesecake", "Cornet Chop Suey," though "Struttin’ with Some Barbecue" was written about a fine-looking companion, not about food. He kept a strong connection throughout his life to the cooking of New Orleans, always signing his letters, "Red beans and ricely yours..."

Writings

Armstrong’s gregariousness extended to writing. On the road, he wrote constantly, sharing favorite themes of his life with correspondents around the world. He avidly typed or wrote on whatever stationery was at hand, recording instant takes on music, sex, food, childhood memories, his heavy “medicinal” marijuana use—and even his bowel movements, which he gleefully described. He had a fondness for lewd jokes and dirty limericks as well.

Social organizations

Louis Armstrong was not, as is often claimed, a Freemason. Although he is usually listed as being a member of Montgomery Lodge No. 18 (Prince Hall) in New York, no such lodge has ever existed. Armstrong states in his autobiography, however, that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias, which is not a Masonic group.

Music

Horn playing and early jazz

In his early years, Armstrong was best known for his virtuosity with the cornet and trumpet. The greatest trumpet playing of his early years can be heard on his Hot Five and Hot Seven records, as well as the Red Onion Jazz Babies. The improvisations he made on these records of New Orleans jazz standards and popular songs of the day are unsurpassed by later jazz performers. The older generation of New Orleans jazz musicians often referred to their improvisations as "variating the melody." Armstrong's improvisations were daring and sophisticated for the time, while often subtle and melodic.

He often essentially re-composed pop-tunes he played, making them more interesting. Armstrong's playing is filled with joyous, inspired original melodies, creative leaps, and subtle relaxed or driving rhythms. The genius of these creative passages is matched by Armstrong's playing technique, honed by constant practice, which extended the range, tone and capabilities of the trumpet. In these records, Armstrong almost single-handedly created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what was essentially a collective folk music and turning it into an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual expression.

Armstrong's work in the 1920s shows him playing at the outer limits of his abilities. The Hot Five records, especially, often have minor flubs and missed notes, which do little to detract from listening enjoyment since the energy of the spontaneous performance comes through. By the mid 1930s, Armstrong achieved a smooth assurance, knowing exactly what he could do and carrying out his ideas to perfection.

He was one of the first artists to use recordings of his performances to improve himself. Armstrong was an avid audiophile. He had a large collection of recordings, including reel-to-reel tapes, which he took on the road with him in a trunk during his later career. He enjoyed listening to his own recordings, and comparing his performances musically. In the den of his home, he had the latest audio equipment and would sometimes rehearse and record along with his older recordings or the radio.

Vocal popularity

As his music progressed and popularity grew, his singing also became very important. Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing, but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it. He had a hit with his playing and scat singing on "Heebie Jeebies" when, according to some legends, the sheet music fell on the floor and he simply started singing nonsense syllables. Armstrong stated in his memoirs that this actually occurred. He also sang out "I done forgot the words" in the middle of recording "I'm A Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas."

Such records were hits and scat singing became a major part of his performances. Long before this, however, Armstrong was playing around with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases, interjecting improvisations, using his voice as creatively as his trumpet.

Colleagues and followers

During his long career he played and sang with some of the most important instrumentalists and vocalists of the time; among them were Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, the singing brakeman Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith and perhaps most famously Ella Fitzgerald.

His influence upon Bing Crosby is particularly important with regard to the subsequent development of popular music: Crosby admired and copied Armstrong, as is evident on many of his early recordings, notably "Just One More Chance" (1931). The New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz describes Crosby's debt to Armstrong in precise detail, although it does not acknowledge Armstrong by name:

Armstrong recorded three albums with Ella Fitzgerald: Ella and Louis, Ella and Louis Again, and Porgy and Bess for Verve Records, with the sessions featuring the backing musicianship of the Oscar Peterson Trio and drummer Buddy Rich. His recordings Satch Plays Fats, all Fats Waller tunes, and Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy in the 1950s were perhaps among the last of his great creative recordings, but even oddities like Disney Songs the Satchmo Way are seen to have their musical moments. And, his participation in Dave Brubeck's high-concept jazz musical The Real Ambassadors was critically acclaimed. For the most part, however, his later output was criticized as being overly simplistic or repetitive.

Hits and later career

Armstrong had many hit records including "Stardust", "What a Wonderful World", "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Ain't Misbehavin'", "You Rascal You,"and "Stompin' at the Savoy." "We Have All the Time in the World" was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it featured on a Guinness advert. It reached number 3 in the charts on being re-released.

In 1964, Armstrong knocked the Beatles off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with "Hello, Dolly!", which gave the 63-year-old performer a U.S. record as the oldest artist to have a number one song. His 1964 song, "Bout Time" was later featured in the film "Bewitched" (2005).

Armstrong performed in Italy at the 1968 Sanremo Music Festival where he sang "Mi Va di Cantare" alongside his friend, the Eritrean-born Italian singer Lara Saint Paul. In February 1968, he also appeared with Lara Saint Paul on the Italian RAI television channel where he performed "Grassa e Bella," a track he sang in Italian for the Italian market and C.D.I. label.

In 1968, Armstrong scored one last popular hit in the United Kingdom with the highly sentimental pop song "What a Wonderful World", which topped the British charts for a month; however, the single did not chart at all in America. The song gained greater currency in the popular consciousness when it was used in the 1987 movie Good Morning, Vietnam, its subsequent rerelease topping many charts around the world. Armstrong even appeared on the October 28, 1970 Johnny Cash Show, where he sang Nat "King" Cole's hit "Rambling Rose" and joined Cash to re-create his performance backing Jimmie Rodgers on "Blue Yodel #9".

Stylistic range

Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from blues to the arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to Latin American folksongs, to classical symphonies and opera. Armstrong incorporated influences from all these sources into his performances, sometimes to the bewilderment of fans who wanted Armstrong to stay in convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking version of "St. Louis Blues" from the WC Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.

Literature, radio, films and TV

Armstrong appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, usually playing a band leader or musician. His most familiar role was as the bandleader cum narrator in the 1956 musical, High Society, in which he sang the title song and performed a duet with Bing Crosby on "Now You Has Jazz". In 1947, he played himself in the movie New Orleans opposite Billie Holiday, which chronicled the demise of the Storyville district and the ensuing exodus of musicians from New Orleans to Chicago. In the 1959 film, The Five Pennies (the story of the cornetist Red Nichols), he played himself as well as singing and playing several classic numbers, including a remarkable duet with Danny Kaye of When the Saints Go Marching In during which Kaye does a brilliant impersonation of Armstrong. He also had a part in the film alongside James Stewart in "The Glenn Miller Story" in which Glenn (played by Stewart) went along to Connies Inn and had a jam session with him and a few other noted musicians of the time, Louis sang "Basin St. Blues"..

He was the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show in the 1930s. In 1969, Armstrong had a cameo role in the film version of Hello, Dolly! as the bandleader, Louis, to which he sang the title song with actress Barbra Streisand. His solo recording of "Hello, Dolly!" is one of his most recognizable performances. He was heard on such radio programs as The Story of Swing (1937) and This Is Jazz (1947), and he also made countless television appearances, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, including appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Armstrong has a record star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7601 Hollywood Boulevard.

Many of Armstrong's recordings remain popular. Almost four decades since his passing, a larger number of his recordings from all periods of his career are more widely available than at any time during his lifetime. His songs are broadcast and listened to every day throughout the world, and are honored in various movies, TV series, commercials, and even anime and computer games. "A Kiss to Build a Dream On" was included in the computer game Fallout 2, accompanying the intro cinematic. It was also used in the 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle and the 2005 film Lord of War. His 1923 recordings, with Joe Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, continue to be listened to as documents of ensemble style New Orleans jazz, but more particularly as ripper jazz records in their own right. All too often, however, Armstrong recorded with stiff, standard orchestras leaving only his sublime trumpet playing as of interest. "Melancholy Blues," performed by Armstrong and his Hot Seven was included on the Voyager Golden Record sent into outer space to represent one of the greatest achievements of humanity. Most familiar to modern listeners is his ubiquitous rendition of "What a Wonderful World". In 2008, Armstrong's recording of Edith Piaf's famous "La Vie En Rose" was used in a scene of the popular Disney/Pixar film WALL-E. The song was also used in parts, especially the opening trumpets, in the French Film Jeux d'enfants (English: Love Me If You Dare)

Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, a self-described Armstrong admirer, asserted that a 1952 Louis Armstrong concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris played a significant role in inspiring him to create the fictional creatures called Cronopios that are the subject of a number of Cortázar's short stories. Cortázar once called Armstrong himself "Grandísimo Cronopio" (Most Enormous Cronopio).

Armstrong appears as a minor character in Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory Series. When he and his band escape from a Nazi-like Confederacy, they enhance the insipid mainstream music of the North. A young Armstrong also appears as a minor character in Patrick Neate's 2001 novel Twelve Bar Blues, part of which is set in New Orleans, and which was a winner at that year's Whitbread Book Awards.

There is a pivotal scene in 1980's Stardust Memories in which Woody Allen is overwhelmed by a recording of Armstrong's Stardust and experiences a nostalgic epiphany. The combination of the music and the perfect moment is the catalyst for much of the film's action, prompting the protagonist to fall in love with an ill-advised woman.

Armstrong is referred to in The Trumpet of the Swan along with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Three siblings in the film are named Louis, Billie, and Ella. The main character, Louis, plays a trumpet, an obvious nod to Armstrong. In the original E. B. White book, he is referred to by name, by a child who hears Louis playing and comments, "He sounds just like Louis Armstrong, the famous trumpet player."

In the 2009 Disney Film The Princess and the Frog, one of the supporting characters is a trumpet-playing alligator named Louis. During the song "When I'm Human", Louis sings a line and it says "Y'all heard of Louis Armstrong".

Awards and honors

Grammy Awards

Armstrong was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972 by the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. This Special Merit Award is presented by vote of the Recording Academy's National Trustees to performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording.

{| class=wikitable |- | colspan="6" style="text-align:center;" | Grammy Award |- ! Year ! Category ! Title ! Genre ! Label ! Result |- align=center | 1964 | Male Vocal Performance | "Hello, Dolly!" | Pop | Kapp | Winner |}

Grammy Hall of Fame

Recordings of Armstrong were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

{| class=wikitable |- | colspan="6" style="text-align:center;" | Grammy Hall of Fame |- ! Year Recorded ! Title ! Genre ! Label ! Year Inducted ! Notes |- align=center | 1929 | "St. Louis Blues" | Jazz (Single) | OKeh | 2008 |with Bessie Smith |- align=center | 1928 | "Weather Bird" | Jazz (Single) | OKeh | 2008 | with Earl Hines |- align=center | 1930 | "Blue Yodel #9(Standing on the Corner)" | Country (Single) | Victor | 2007 | Jimmie Rodgers (Featuring Louis Armstrong) |- align=center | 1932 | "All of Me" | Jazz (Single) | Columbia | 2005 | |- align=center | 1958 | Porgy and Bess | Jazz (Album) | Verve | 2001 | with Ella Fitzgerald |- align=center | 1964 | "Hello Dolly!" | Pop (Single) | Kapp | 2001 | |- align=center | 1926 | "Heebie Jeebies" | Jazz (Single) | OKeh | 1999 | |- align=center | 1968 | "What a Wonderful World" | Jazz (Single) | ABC | 1999 | |- align=center | 1955 | "Mack the Knife" | Jazz (Single) | Columbia | 1997 | |- align=center | 1925 | "St. Louis Blues" | Jazz (Single) | Columbia | 1993 | Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, cornet |- align=center | 1928 | "West End Blues" | Jazz (Single) | OKeh | 1974 | |}

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed Armstrong's West End Blues on the list of 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.

{| class=wikitable |- ! Year Recorded ! Title ! Label ! Group |- align=center | 1928 | West End Blues | Okeh | Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five |}

Inductions and honors

In 1995, the U.S. Post Office issued a Louis Armstrong 32 cents commemorative postage stamp.

{| class=wikitable |- ! Year Inducted ! Title ! Results ! Notes |- align=center | 2007 | Louisiana Music Hall of Fame | | |- align=center | 2007 | Gennett Records Walk of Fame, Richmond, Indiana | | |- align=center | 2007 | Long Island Music Hall of Fame | | |- align=center | 2004 | Nesuhi Ertegün Jazz Hall of Fameat Jazz at Lincoln Center | | |- align=center | 1990 | Rock and Roll Hall of Fame | | Early influence |- align=center | 1978 | Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame | | |- align=center | 1952 | Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame | | |- align=center | 1960 | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Star | at 7601 Hollywood Blvd. |}

Legacy

The house where Louis Armstrong lived for close to 28 years was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and is now a museum. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, at 34-56 107th Street (between 34th and 37th Avenues) in Corona, Queens, presents concerts and educational programs, operates as a historic house museum and makes materials in its archives of writings, books, recordings and memorabilia available to the public for research. The museum is operated by the City University of New York's Queens College, following the dictates of Lucille Armstrong's will.

The museum opened to the public on October 15, 2003. A visitors center is currently being planned, and estimated to open in 2011.

The influence of Armstrong on the development of jazz is virtually immeasurable. Yet, his irrepressible personality both as a performer, and as a public figure later in his career, was so strong that to some it sometimes overshadowed his contributions as a musician and singer.

As a virtuoso trumpet player, Armstrong had a unique tone and an extraordinary talent for melodic improvisation. Through his playing, the trumpet emerged as a solo instrument in jazz and is used widely today. He was a masterful accompanist and ensemble player in addition to his extraordinary skills as a soloist. With his innovations, he raised the bar musically for all who came after him.

Though Armstrong is widely recognized as a pioneer of scat singing, Ethel Waters precedes his scatting on record in the 1930s according to Gary Giddins and others. Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra are just two singers who were greatly indebted to him. Holiday said that she always wanted Bessie Smith's 'big' sound and Armstrong's feeling in her singing.

On August 4, 2001, the centennial of Armstrong's birth, New Orleans's airport was renamed Louis Armstrong International Airport in his honor.

In 2002, the Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925–1928) are preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

The US Open tennis tournament's former main stadium was named Louis Armstrong Stadium in honor of Armstrong who had lived a few blocks from the site.

Today, there are many bands worldwide dedicated to preserving and honoring the music and style of Satchmo, including the Louis Armstrong Society located in New Orleans, LA.

Discography

Louis Armstrong albums

Louis Armstrong songs

Notes

References

Armstrong, Louis. Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. ISBN 0-306-80276-7

Armstrong, Louis and Thomas Brothers. Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings. ISBN 0-19-514046-X

Bergreen, Laurence "Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life" ISBN 0-553-06768-0

Brothers, Thomas "Louis Armstrong's New Orleans" ISBN 0-393-06109-4

Cogswell, Michael. Armstrong: The Offstage Story. ISBN 1-888054-81-6

Elie, Lolis Eric. A Letter from New Orleans. Originally printed in Gourmet. Reprinted in Best Food Writing 2006, Edited by Holly Hughes, ISBN 1-56924-287-9

Jones Max and John Chilton. Louis Armstrong Story. ISBN 0-306-80324-0

Meckna, Michael. Satchmo: The Louis Armstrong Encyclopedia. ISBN 0-313-30137-9

Video clips

"Now You Has Jazz"

"Blueberry Hill"

"Stompin' At The Savoy" Germany, 1959

"Tiger Rag"

"C'est si bon 1962

"Dream a Little Dream" photo slide show

"Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra - The Birth of The Blues" - The Edsel Show

External links

louis-armstrong.net - Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Louis Armstrong by Nat Hentoff

Obituary, NY Times

Quotes and tributes

Discography

Filmography @ imdb.com

The Louis Armstrong Society Jazz Band

Louis Armstrong: A Life in Music - slideshow by Life magazine

Seeing Black jazz critic on the Uncle Tom question

the official website of the Louis Armstrong House & Archives

"Louis Armstrong Transcription Project - john p birchall"

Louis Armstrong at pbskids.org

David Margolick, The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise

Smithsonian Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy

Louis Armstrong at NPR Music

Louis Armstrong in Athens, Blog of the Digital Library of Georgia

Louis Armstrong: discography and early recordings (Real Player format) on the Red Hot Jazz website.

Milestone Louis Armstrong recordings at Three Perfect Minutes

Louis Armstrong's autobiography online book

* "Satchmo - My Life in New Orleans(1954)" free download

*"Satchmo - My Life in New Orleans" another website

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Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist.

Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet, Wagner, and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, and most notably Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux.

After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.

Biography

Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, New York to Shirley Bahn (née Sonia Markovna), a musician, and Morris Silverman, an insurance broker. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine (then part of Russia) and Bucharest, Romania. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as "Bubbles" Silverman. As a child, she spoke Yiddish, Russian, Romanian, French and English. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, as well as Manhattan's Professional Children's School.

At the age of three, Sills won a "Miss Beautiful Baby" contest, in which she sang "The Wedding of Jack and Jill". Beginning at age four, she performed professionally on the Saturday morning radio program, "Rainbow House", as "Bubbles" Silverman. Sills began taking singing lessons with Estelle Liebling at the age of seven and a year later sang in the short film Uncle Sol Solves It (filmed August 1937, released June 1938 by Educational Pictures), by which time she had adopted her stage name, Beverly Sills. Liebling encouraged her to audition for CBS Radio's Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, and on October 26, 1939 at the age of 10, Sills was the winner of that week's program. Bowes then asked her to appear on his Capitol Family Hour, a weekly variety show. Her first appearance was on November 19, 1939, the 17th anniversary of the show, and she appeared frequently on the program thereafter.

In 1945, Sills made her professional stage debut with a Gilbert and Sullivan touring company produced by Jacob J. Shubert, playing twelve cities in the US and Canada, offering seven different Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In her 1987 autobiography, she credits that tour with helping to develop the comic timing she soon became famous for: "I played the title role in Patience, and I absolutely loved the character, because Patience is a very funny, flaky girl.... I played her as a dumb Dora all the way through and really had fun with the role.... My Patience grew clumsier and clumsier with each performance, and audiences seemed to like her.... I found that I had a gift for slapstick humor, and it was fun to exercise it onstage." Sills sang in light operas for several more years.

On July 9, 1946, Sills appeared as a contestant on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts (radio). She sang under the pseudonym of "Vicki Lynn", as she was under contract to Shubert. Shubert did not want Godfrey to be able to say he had discovered "Beverly Sills" if she won the contest (although she did not ultimately win). Sills sang "Romany Life" from Victor Herbert's The Fortune Teller.

In 1947, she made her operatic stage debut as the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen with the Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company. She toured North America with the Charles Wagner Opera Company, in the fall of 1951 singing Violetta in La traviata and, in the fall of 1952, singing Micaëla in Carmen. On September 15, 1953, she made her debut with the San Francisco Opera as Helen of Troy in Boito's Mefistofele and also sang Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni the same season. In a step outside of the repertoire she is commonly associated with, Sills gave four performances of the title role of Aida in July of 1954 in Salt Lake City. On October 29, 1955, she first appeared with the New York City Opera as Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus, which received critical praise. As early as 1956 she performed before an audience of over 13,000 guests at the landmark Lewisohn Stadium with the noted operatic conductor Alfredo Antonini in an aria from Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani. Her reputation expanded with her performance of the title role in the New York premiere of Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe in 1958.

On November 17, 1956, Sills married journalist Peter Greenough, of the Cleveland, Ohio newspaper The Plain Dealer and moved to Cleveland. She had two children with Greenough, Meredith ("Muffy") in 1959 and Peter, Jr. ("Bucky") in 1961. Muffy is profoundly deaf and has multiple sclerosis and Peter is severely mentally disabled. Sills restricted her performing schedule to care for her children.

In 1960, Sills and her family moved to Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston. In 1962, Sills sang the title role in Massenet's Manon with the Opera Company of Boston, the first of many roles for opera director Sarah Caldwell. Manon continued to be one of Sills' signature roles throughout most of her career. In January 1964, she sang her first Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute for Caldwell. Although Sills drew critical praise for her coloratura technique and for her performance, she was not fond of the latter role; she observed that she often passed the time between the two arias and the finale addressing holiday cards.

Peak singing years

In 1966, the New York City Opera revived Handel's then virtually unknown opera seria Giulio Cesare (with Norman Treigle as Cæsar), and Sills' performance as Cleopatra made her an international opera star. Sills also made her "unofficial" Met debut in its "Opera in the Parks" program as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, though nothing further came of this other than offers from Rudolf Bing for roles such as Flotow's Martha. In subsequent seasons at the NYCO, Sills had great successes in the roles of the Queen of Shemakha in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel, the title role in Manon, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and the three female leads Suor Angelica, Giorgetta, and Lauretta in Puccini's trilogy Il trittico.

In 1969, Sills sang Zerbinetta in the American premiere (in a concert version) of the 1912 version of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos with the Boston Symphony. Her performance of the role, especially Zerbinetta's aria, "Grossmächtige Prinzessin", which she sang in the original higher key, won her acclaim. Home video-taped copies circulated among collectors for years afterwards, often commanding large sums on Internet auction sites (the performance was released commercially in 2006, garnering high praise). The second major event of the year was her debut as Pamira in Rossini's The Siege of Corinth at La Scala, a success that put her on the cover of Newsweek.

Sills's now high-profile career landed her on the cover of Time in 1971, where she was described as "America's Queen of Opera". The title was appropriate because Sills had purposely limited her overseas engagements because of her family. Her major overseas appearances include London's Covent Garden, Milan's La Scala, La Fenice in Venice, the Vienna State Opera, the Théâtre de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland, and concerts in Paris. In South America, she sang in the opera houses of Buenos Aires and Santiago, a concert in Lima, Peru, and appeared in several productions in Mexico City, including Lucia di Lammermoor with Luciano Pavarotti. On November 9, 1971, her performance in the New York City Opera's production of The Golden Cockerel was telecast live to cable TV subscribers.

During this period, she made her first television appearance as a talk-show personality on Virginia Graham's Girl Talk, a weekday series syndicated by ABC Films. An opera fan who was Talent Coordinator for the series persuaded the producer to put her on the air and she was a huge hit. Throughout the rest of her career she shone as a talk show guest, sometimes also functioning as a guest host. Sills underwent successful surgery for ovarian cancer in late October 1974 (sometimes misreported as breast cancer). Her recovery was so rapid and complete that she opened in Daughter of the Regiment at the San Francisco Opera a month later.

Following Sir Rudolf Bing's departure as director, Sills finally made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on April 7, 1975 in The Siege of Corinth, receiving an eighteen-minute ovation. Other operas she sang at the Met include La traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Thaïs, and Don Pasquale (directed by John Dexter). In an interview after his retirement, Bing stated that his refusal to use Sills, as well as his preference for engaging, almost exclusively, Italian stars such as Renata Tebaldi – due to his notion that American audiences expected to see Italian stars – was the single biggest mistake of his career. Sills attempted to downplay her animosity towards Bing while she was still singing, and even in her two autobiographies. But in a 1997 interview, Sills spoke her mind plainly, "Oh, Mr. Bing is an ass. [W]hile everybody said what a great administrator he was and a great this, Mr. Bing was just an improbable, impossible General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera.... The arrogance of that man."

Sills was a recitalist, especially in the final decade of her career. She sang in mid-size cities and on college concert series, bringing her art to many who might never see her on stage in a fully staged opera. She also sang concerts with a number of symphony orchestras. Sills continued to perform for New York City Opera, her home opera house, essaying new roles right up to her retirement, including the leading roles in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia, Franz Lehár's Die lustige Witwe and Gian Carlo Menotti's La loca, a role written especially for her.

Although Sills' voice type was characterized as a "lyric coloratura", she took a number of heavier spinto and dramatic coloratura roles more associated with heavier voices as she grew older, including Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (with Susanne Marsee as Orsini) and the same composer's Tudor Queens, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux (opposite Plácido Domingo in the title part). She was admired in those roles for transcending the lightness of her voice with dramatic interpretation, although it may have come at a cost: Sills later commented that Roberto Devereux shortened her career by at least four years.

Sills popularized opera through her talk show appearances, including Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, David Frost, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and Dinah Shore. Sills hosted her own talk show, Lifestyles with Beverly Sills, which ran on Sunday mornings on NBC for two years in the late 1970s; it won an Emmy Award. In 1979 she even appeared on The Muppet Show. Down-to-earth and approachable, Sills helped dispel the traditional image of the temperamental opera diva.

Later years and death

In 1978, Sills announced she would retire on October 27, 1980, in a farewell gala at the New York City Opera. In the spring of 1979, she began acting as co-director of NYCO, and became its sole general director as of the fall season of that year, a post she held until 1989, although she remained on the NYCO board until 1991. During her time as general director, Sills helped turn what was then a financially struggling opera company into a viable enterprise. She also devoted herself to various arts causes and such charities as the March of Dimes and was sought after for speaking engagements on college campuses and for fund raisers.

From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairman of Lincoln Center. In October 2002, she agreed to serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, for which she had been a board member since 1991. She resigned as Met chairman in January 2005, citing family as the main reason (she had to place her husband, whom she had cared for over eight years, in a nursing home). She stayed long enough to supervise the appointment of Peter Gelb, formerly head of Sony Classical Records, as the Met's General Manager, to succeed Joseph Volpe in August 2006.

Peter Greenough, Sills's husband, died on September 6, 2006, at the age of 89. They would have had their 50th wedding anniversary on November 17, 2006.

She co-hosted The View for Best Friends Week on November 9, 2006, as Barbara Walters' best friend. She said that she didn't sing anymore, even in the shower, to preserve the memory of her voice.

She appeared on screen in movie theaters during HD transmissions live from the Met, interviewed during intermissions by the host Margaret Juntwait on January 6, 2007 (I puritani simulcast), as a backstage interviewer on February 24, 2007 (Eugene Onegin simulcast) and then, briefly, on April 28, 2007 (Il trittico simulcast).

On June 28, 2007, the Associated Press and CNN reported that Sills was hospitalized as "gravely ill", from lung cancer. With her daughter at her bedside, Beverly Sills succumbed to cancer on July 2, 2007, at the age of 78.

Operatic repertoire

These are the roles that Sills has performed on stage or for television or radio.

{|class="wikitable sortable" !Composer!!Opera!!Role!!In repertoire!!Performed with!!Recorded |- |Bellini||I Capuleti e i Montecchi||Giulietta||1975||Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Bellini||I puritani||Elvira||1972–1978||Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, Tulsa Opera||Yes |- |Bellini||Norma||Norma||1972–1978||Opera Company of Boston, Opera Theatre of New Jersey, Connecticut Opera, Ravinia Festival, San Diego Opera, San Antonio Opera||Yes |- |Bizet||Carmen||Frasquita||1951||Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company||No |- |Bizet||Carmen||Micaela||1952–1958||Charles Wagner Opera Company, Robin Hood Dell West, Cosmopolitan Opera||No |- |Bizet||Carmen||Carmen||1956||Musicarnival||No |- |Bizet||Les pêcheurs de perles||Leila||1956||DuMont Television Network||Yes |- |Boito||Mefistofele||Helen of Troy||1953||San Francisco Opera||No |- |Charpentier||Louise||Louise||1962–1977||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||Anna Bolena||Anna ||1973–1975||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||Don Pasquale||Norina||1978–1980||Opera Company of Boston, Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Diego Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||La fille du régiment||Marie||1970–1977||Opera Company of Boston, Carnegie Hall, San Antonio Opera, Philadelphia Lyric Opera, San Diego Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Edmonton Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Opera Memphis, Palm Beach Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||L'elisir d'amore||Adina||1964||Opera Company of Boston||No |- |Donizetti||Lucia di Lammermoor||Lucia||1968–1977||Fort Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Edmonton Opera, Opera Company of Boston, New York City Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, La Scala, San Antonio Grand Opera, Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, Covent Garden, Tulsa Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Mississippi Opera Association, Zoo Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, New Orleans Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Seattle Opera, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Opera Memphis, San Antonio Symphony, Florentine Opera, Opera Omaha, Metropolitan Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Lucrezia Borgia||Lucrezia Borgia||1975–1976||New York City Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Maria Stuarda||Maria Stuarda||1972–1974||New York City Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Roberto Devereux||Elizabeth I||1970–1975||New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Wolf Trap Opera ||Yes |- |Gounod||Faust||Marguerite||1963–1970||Boston Opera Group, New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Orlando Opera, San Antonio Grand Opera Festival, Duluth Symphony Orchestra||Yes |- |Handel||Ariodante||Ginevra||1971||Kennedy Center||Yes |- |Handel||Giulio Cesare||Cleopatra||1966–1971||New York City Opera, Teatro Colón, Cincinnati May Festival ||Yes |- |Handel||Semele||Semele||1967–1969||Cleveland Orchestra, Caramoor Festival ||Yes |- |Hanson||Merry Mount||Lady Marigold Sandys||1964||San Antonio Symphony||No |- |Hindemith||Hin und zurück||Helene||1965||WGBH-TV||Yes |- |Kálmán||Gräfin Mariza||Countess Mariza||1946||Hartman Theatre in Columbus, Ohio||No |- |Lehár||The Merry Widow||Sonia||1956–1965||Musicarnival, New York City Opera, Casa Mañana, Robin Hood Dell||No |- |Leoncavallo||Pagliacci||Nedda||1965||Fort Worth Opera||No |- |Lehár||The Merry Widow||Hanna Glawari||1977–1979||San Diego Opera, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera||No |- |Massenet||Manon||Manon||1953–1978||Baltimore Opera Company, New York City Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia||Yes |- |Massenet||Thaïs||Thaïs||1954–1978||DuMont Television Network, San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera||Yes |- |Menotti||La Loca||Juana La Loca||1979||San Diego Opera, New York City Opera||Yes |- |Meyerbeer||Les Huguenots||Marguerite||1969||Carnegie Hall||Yes |- |Montemezzi||L'amore dei tre re||Fiora||1956||Philadelphia Grand Opera Company||No |- |Moore||The Ballad of Baby Doe||Baby Doe||1958–1969||New York City Opera, Musicarnival||Yes |- |Moore||The Wings of the Dove||Milly Theale||1962||New York City Opera||No |- |Mozart||Der Schauspieldirektor||Madame Goldentrill||1956||New York City Opera||No |- |Mozart||Die Entführung aus dem Serail||Konstanze||1965–1975||Boston Opera Group, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Grant Park, Tanglewood Music Festival, Frederic R. Mann Auditorium, Ravinia Festival||Yes |- |Mozart||Die Zauberflöte||Queen of the Night ||1964–1967||Boston Opera Group, Théâtre de Beaulieu, Tanglewood Music Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Vienna State Opera, New York City Opera, CBC Radio||Yes |- |Mozart||Don Giovanni||Donna Elvira||1953–1955||San Francisco Opera, Chattanooga Opera Association||No |- |Mozart||Don Giovanni||Donna Anna||1963–1967||New York City Opera, Opera Company of Boston, Metropolitan Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Théâtre de Beaulieu, Baltimore Opera Company ||Yes |- |Mozart||Le nozze di Figaro||Countess||1965||Miami Opera||No |- |Offenbach||Les contes d'Hoffmann||Three Heroines||1964–1973||New Orleans Opera, Grant Park, Opera Company of Boston, Cincinnati Opera, New York City Opera, Baltimore Opera Company, Palacio de Bellas Artes, San Antonio Grand Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Shreveport Opera, Municipal Theater of Santiago, San Diego Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Florida Symphony ||Yes |- |Puccini||La bohème||Musetta||1958–1963||Cosmopolitan Opera, New York City Opera||No |- |Puccini||La bohème||Mimi||1965||Seattle Opera||No |- |Puccini||Gianni Schicchi||Lauretta||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Suor Angelica||Suor Angelica||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Il tabarro||Giorgetta||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Tosca||Tosca||1957–1960||Murrah High School Auditorium for the Jackson Opera Guild, Musicarnival|| No |- |Rameau||Hippolyte et Aricie||Aricie||1966||Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Rimsky-Korsakov||Le Coq d'Or||Queen Shemakha||1967–1971||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Romberg||The Student Prince||Kathie||1954||Chicago Theater of the Air||Yes |- |Rossini||The Barber of Seville||Rosina||1974–1980||Opera Company of Boston, San Antonio Symphony, New York City Opera, Kennedy Center, Fort Worth Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Festival Internacional Cervantino, Robin Hood Dell ||Yes |- |Rossini||Il turco in Italia||Fiorilla||1978–1979||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Rossini||The Siege of Corinth||Pamira||1969–1976|| La Scala, Metropolitan Opera||Yes |- |Johann Strauss II||Die Fledermaus||Rosalinda||1955–1980||Musicarnival, New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Johann Strauss II||Die Fledermaus||Adele||1977–1980||New York City Opera, San Diego Opera||Yes |- |Richard Strauss||Ariadne auf Naxos(original version)||Zerbinetta||1969||Boston Symphony Orchestra||Yes |- |Richard Strauss||Elektra||Fifth Maidservant||1953||San Francisco Opera ||No |- |Sullivan||H.M.S. Pinafore||Josephine||1945||Providence, Rhode Island at the Metropolitan Theater and Hartford, Connecticut at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium||No |- |Sullivan||The Pirates of Penzance||Mabel||1945||Hartford, Connecticut at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium||No |- |Suppé||Die schöne Galathee||Galatea||1965||Fort Worth Opera||No |- |Tchaikovsky||Cherevichki (performed under the title The Golden Slipper)||Oxana||1955||New York City Opera||No |- |Thomas||Mignon||Philine||1956||New York City Opera||No |- |Verdi||Aida||Aida||1954–1960||University of Utah football stadium, Paterson, New Jersey, Central City Opera|| Yes |- |Verdi||La traviata||Violetta||1951–1977||Kingston High School (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), Charleston Municipal Auditorium, Orlando Municipal Auditorium, Saenger Theatre, Duke University, Academy of Music, Erie Philharmonic Orchestra, Portland Civic Opera Association, DuMont Television Network, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Tulsa Opera, Cincinnati Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Grant Park, Teatro di San Carlo, Connecticut Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Opera Company of Boston, La Fenice, San Antonio Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Ravinia Festival, Palm Beach Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Company, San Diego Opera || Yes |- |Verdi||Rigoletto||Gilda||1957–1977|| Grant Park, Opera Company of Boston || Yes |- |Wagner||Die Walküre||Gerhilde||1953||San Francisco Opera||No |- |Weisgall||Six Characters in Search of an Author||Coloratura||1959–1960||New York City Opera||Yes |- |-class="sortbottom" |}

Honors and awards

Sills received many honors and awards from the 1970s through her final years. Here are a list of her major awards, divided by category:

Grammy Award Nominations:

*1969 - Scenes and Arias from French Opera;

*1970 - Mozart and Strauss Arias;

*1976 - Music of Victor Herbert (WINNER)

Emmy Award Nominations:

*1975 - Profile in Music: Beverly Sills, Festival '75 (WINNER);

*1977 - Sills and Burnett at the Met;

*1978 - Lifestyles with Beverly Sills (WINNER);

*1980 - Beverly Sills in Concert;

*1981 - Great Performances: Beverly! Her Farewell Performance

Honorary Doctorates in Music:

*1972 - Temple University;

*1973 - New York University & New England Conservatory of Music;

*1974 - Harvard University

*1975 - California Institute of the Arts

Other Music-related awards:

*1970 - Musical America - Musician of the Year;

1971 - Inducted as a National Patroness of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity on May 1

*1972 - Edison Award - Manon recording;

*1973 - Handel Medallion from New York City for artistic achievement;

*1979 - Recording Industry of America Cultural Award;

*1980 - Golden Baton, American Symphony Orchestra League;

*1985 - Kennedy Center Honors;

*1990 - National Medal of Arts from National Endowment for the Arts;

1996 - The 2nd Annual Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities

*2005 - Beverly Sills Artist Award established by the Metropolitan Opera ($50,000 annual award);

*2007 - Inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame

Charitable and Humanitarian Awards:

*1979 - Pearl S. Buck Women's Award;

*1980 - Presidential Medal of Freedom;

*1981 - Barnard College Medal of Distinction;

*1984 - Charles S. Hughes Gold Medal Award - Nat. Conf. of Christians and Jews;

*1985 - Gold Medal from National Institute of Social Sciences

Recordings and broadcasts

During her operatic career, Sills recorded eighteen full-length operas:

The Ballad of Baby Doe (Bible, Cassel; Buckley, 1959)

Giulio Cesare (Wolff, Forrester, Treigle; Rudel, 1967)

Roberto Devereux (Wolff, Ilosfalvy, Glossop; Mackerras, 1969)

Lucia di Lammermoor (Bergonzi, Cappuccilli, Díaz; Schippers, 1970)

Manon (Gedda, Souzay, Bacquier; Rudel, 1970)

La traviata (Gedda, Panerai; Ceccato, 1971)

Maria Stuarda (Farrell, Burrows, L.Quilico; Ceccato, 1971)

The Tales of Hoffmann (Marsee, Burrows, Treigle; Rudel, 1972)

Anna Bolena (Verrett, Burrows, Plishka; Rudel, 1972)

I puritani (Gedda, L.Quilico, Plishka; Rudel, 1973)

Norma (Verrett, di Giuseppe, Plishka; Levine, 1973)

The Siege of Corinth (Verrett, Theyard, Díaz; Schippers, 1974)

Il barbiere di Siviglia (Barbieri, Gedda, Milnes, Raimondi; Levine, 1974–75)

I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Baker, Gedda, Herincx, Lloyd; G.Patanè, 1975)

Thaïs (Gedda, Milnes; Maazel, 1976)

Louise (Gedda, van Dam; Rudel, 1977)

Don Pasquale (Kraus, Titus, Gramm; Caldwell, 1978)

Rigoletto (M.Dunn, Kraus, Milnes, Ramey; Rudel, 1978)

Sills also recorded nine solo recital albums of arias and songs, and was soprano soloist on a 1967 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.

She starred in eight opera productions televised on PBS and several more on other public TV systems. She participated in such TV specials as A Look-in at the Met with Danny Kaye in 1975, Sills and Burnett at the Met, with Carol Burnett in 1976, and Profile in Music, which won an Emmy Award for its showing in the US in 1975, although it had been recorded in England in 1971.

Some of those televised performances have been commercially distributed on videotape and DVD:

Ariadne auf Naxos (Watson, Nagy; Leinsdorf, 1969) [Concert Version]

La fille du régiment (Costa-Greenspon, McDonald, Malas; Wendelken-Wilson, Mansouri, 1974)

Roberto Devereux (Marsee, Alexander, Fredricks; Rudel, Capobianco, 1975)

La traviata (H.Price, Fredricks; Rudel, Capobianco, 1976)

Il barbiere di Siviglia (H.Price, Titus, Gramm, Ramey; Caldwell, Caldwell, 1976)

Manon (H.Price, Fredricks, Ramey; Rudel, Capobianco, 1977)

Others not available commercially include:

The Magic Flute (Pracht, Shirley, Reardon; NN, NN, 1966)

Le coq d'or (Costa-Greenspon, di Giuseppe, Treigle; Rudel, Capobianco, 1971)

Die lustige Witwe (H.Price, Titus; Alcántara, Capobianco, 1977)

Il Turco in Italia (Marsee, H.Price, Titus, Gramm; Rudel, Capobianco, 1978)

Don Pasquale (Kraus, Hagegård, Bacquier; Rescigno, Dexter, 1979)

After her retirement from singing in 1980 up through 2006, Sills was the host for many of the PBS Live from Lincoln Center telecasts.

Further reading/listening/viewing

Sills, Beverly (1976). Bubbles: A Self-Portrait. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. ISBN 0-446-81520-9. A revised edition was issued in 1981 as Bubbles: An Encore.

Sills, Beverly (with Lawrence Linderman) (1987). Beverly: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books.ISBN

0-553-05173-3.

Sills, Beverly (1987). Beverly Sills: On My Own. ISBN 0-553-45743-8. An audio book designated as a companion to Beverly: An Autobiography, with Sills speaking in interview about her life, interspersed with narration and live musical excerpts. There is no direct text from the printed autobiography.

Paolucci, Bridget (1990). Beverly Sills. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 1-55546-677-X.

Sargeant, Withrop (1973). Divas. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ISBN 0-698-10489-7.

Beverly Sills: Made in America (2006). Deutsche Grammophon B0007999-09. A 90-minute documentary on Sills's singing career with many rare video performance and interview clips.

References

External links

Beverly Sills Online: tribute site with discography, bibliography, photo gallery, sound and video clips, timeline, press articles and other resources.

Beverly Sills:Special mother to the special children: summarizes Sills' charitable work for disabled children.

: Filmography

Beverly Sills: National Women's Hall of Fame profile

Beverly Sills at BrainyQuote: quotations

Beverly Sills: Made in America (PBS Great Performances)

Beverly Sills at OperaMom.com

NY Times five-page obituary, dated July 3, 2007

Category:1929 births Category:2007 deaths Category:American female singers Category:American Jews Category:American opera singers Category:American singers Category:American sopranos Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Category:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Erasmus Hall High School alumni Category:Gilbert and Sullivan performers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish American musicians Category:Jewish classical musicians Category:Jewish opera singers Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Opera managers Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People associated with the Metropolitan Opera Category:People from Brooklyn Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients

de:Beverly Sills es:Beverly Sills fr:Beverly Sills it:Beverly Sills he:בוורלי סילס nl:Beverly Sills ja:ビヴァリー・シルズ pl:Beverly Sills pt:Beverly Sills simple:Beverly Sills sr:Беверли Силс sv:Beverly Sills zh:贝弗利·希尔斯

Coordinates	55°45′06″N37°37′04″N
name	Hans Christian Andersen
birth date	April 02, 1805
birth place	Odense, Denmark
death date	August 04, 1875
death place	Copenhagen, Denmark
occupation	Novelist, short story writer, fairy tales writer
nationality	Danish
genre	Children's literature, travelogue
influences	Ludvig Holberg, William Shakespeare, Christian Johann Heinrich Heine, The Brothers Grimm
signature	Hans Christian Andersen Signature.svg }}

Hans Christian Andersen (, referred to using the initials H. C. Andersen () in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia; April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "The Little Match Girl", and "The Ugly Duckling".

During his lifetime he was acclaimed for having delighted children worldwide, and was feted by royalty. His poetry and stories have been translated into more than 150 languages. They have inspired motion pictures, plays, ballets, and animated films.

Biography

Childhood

Hans Christian Andersen was born in the town of Odense, Denmark, on Tuesday, April 2, 1805. He was an only child. "Hans" and "Christian" are traditional Danish names.

Andersen's father considered himself related to nobility. His paternal grandmother had told his father that their family had in the past belonged to a higher social class, but investigations prove these stories unfounded. The family apparently was affiliated with Danish royalty, but through employment or trade. Today, speculation persists that Andersen may have been an illegitimate son of the royal family. Whatever the reason, King Frederick VI took a personal interest in him as a youth and paid for a part of his education. According to writer Rolf Dorset, Andersen's ancestry remains indeterminate. Hans Christian was forced to support himself. He worked as a weaver's apprentice and, later, for a tailor. At 14, he moved to Copenhagen to seek employment as an actor. Having an excellent soprano voice, he was accepted into the Royal Danish Theatre, but his voice soon changed. A colleague at the theatre told him that he considered Andersen a poet. Taking the suggestion seriously, he began to focus on writing.

Jonas Collin, who, following a chance encounter with Andersen, immediately felt a great affection for him, sent him to a grammar school in Slagelse, covering all his expenses. Andersen had already published his first story, The Ghost at Palnatoke's Grave, in 1822. Though not a keen student, he also attended school at Elsinore until 1827.

He later said his years in school were the darkest and most bitter of his life. At one school, he lived at his schoolmaster's home. There he was abused in order "to improve his character", he was told. He later said the faculty had discouraged him from writing in general, causing him to enter a state of depression.

Early works

In 1829, Andersen enjoyed considerable success with a short story titled "A Journey on Foot from Holmen's Canal to the East Point of Amager". He also published a comedy and a collection of poems that season. Though he made little progress writing and publishing immediately thereafter, in 1833 he received a small traveling grant from the King, enabling him to set out on the first of many journeys through Europe. At Jura, near Le Locle, Switzerland, he wrote the story, "Agnete and the Merman". He spent an evening in the Italian seaside village of Sestri Levante the same year, inspiring the name, The Bay of Fables. (An annual festival celebrates his visit.) In October, 1834, he arrived in Rome. Andersen's first novel, "The Improvisatore", was published at the beginning of 1835, becoming an instant success. During these traveling years, Hans Christian Andersen lived in an apartment at number 20, Nyhavn, Copenhagen. There, a memorial plaque was unveiled on May 8, 1935, a gift by Peter Schannong.

Fairy tales

It was during 1835 that Andersen published the first installment of his immortal Fairy Tales (Danish: Eventyr). More stories, completing the first volume, were published in 1836 and 1837. The quality of these stories was not immediately recognized, and they sold poorly. At the same time, Andersen enjoyed more success with two novels: O.T. (1836) and Only a Fiddler.

Jeg er en Skandinav

After a visit to Sweden in 1837, Andersen became inspired by Scandinavism and committed himself to writing a poem to convey his feeling of relatedness between the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians. It was in July 1839 during a visit to the island of Funen that Andersen first wrote the text of his poem Jeg er en Skandinav (I am a Scandinavian). Andersen designed the poem to capture "the beauty of the Nordic spirit, the way the three sister nations have gradually grown together" as part of a Scandinavian national anthem. Composer Otto Lindblad set the poem to music and the composition was published in January 1840. Its popularity peaked in 1845, after which it was seldom sung.

Travelogues

In 1851, he published to wide acclaim In Sweden, a volume of travel sketches. A keen traveler, Andersen published several other long travelogues: Shadow Pictures of a Journey to the Harz, Swiss Saxony, etc. etc. in the Summer of 1831 (A Poet's Bazaar (560), In Spain, and A Visit to Portugal in 1866 (The latter describes his visit with his Portuguese friends Jorge and Jose O'Neill, who were his fellows in the mid 1820s while living in Copenhagen.) In his travelogues, Andersen took heed of some of the contemporary conventions about travel writing; but always developed the genre to suit his own purposes. Each of his travelogues combines documentary and descriptive accounts of the sights he saw with more philosophical excurses on topics such as being an author, immortality, and the nature of fiction in the literary travel report. Some of the travelogues, such as In Sweden, even contain fairy-tales. In the 1840s Andersen's attention returned to the stage, however with no great success at all. His true genius was however proved in the miscellany the Picture-Book without Pictures (1840). The fame of his fairy tales had grown steadily; a second series began in 1838 and a third in 1845. Andersen was now celebrated throughout Europe, although his native Denmark still showed some resistance to his pretensions. Between 1845 and 1864, H. C. Andersen lived in 67, Nyhavn, Copenhagen, where a memorial plaque is placed.

Meetings with Dickens

In June 1847, Andersen paid his first visit to England and enjoyed a triumphal social success during the summer. The Countess of Blessington invited him to her parties where intellectual and famous people could meet, and it was at one party that he met Charles Dickens for the first time. They shook hands and walked to the veranda which was of much joy to Andersen. He wrote in his diary, "We had come to the veranda, I was so happy to see and speak to England's now living writer, whom I love the most."

Ten years later, Andersen visited England again, primarily to visit Dickens. He stayed at Dickens' home for five weeks. Shortly after Andersen left, Dickens published David Copperfield.

Love life

In Andersen's early life, his private journal records his refusal to have sexual relations.

Andersen often fell in love with unattainable women and many of his stories are interpreted as references to his sexual grief. At one point he wrote in his diary: "Almighty God, thee only have I; thou steerest my fate, I must give myself up to thee! Give me a livelihood! Give me a bride! My blood wants love, as my heart does!" A girl named Riborg Voigt was the unrequited love of Andersen's youth. A small pouch containing a long letter from Riborg was found on Andersen's chest when he died. Other disappointments in love included Sophie Ørsted, the daughter of the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, and Louise Collin, the youngest daughter of his benefactor Jonas Collin. The most famous of these was the opera soprano Jenny Lind. One of his stories, "The Nightingale", was a written expression of his passion for Lind, and became the inspiration for her nickname, the "Swedish Nightingale". Andersen was often shy around women and had extreme difficulty in proposing to Lind. When Lind was boarding a train to take her to an opera concert, Andersen gave Lind a letter of proposal. Her feelings towards him were not the same; she saw him as a brother, writing to him in 1844 "farewell... God bless and protect my brother is the sincere wish of his affectionate sister, Jenny."

Just as with his interest in women, Andersen would become attracted to nonreciprocating men. For example, Andersen wrote to Edvard Collin: "I languish for you as for a pretty Calabrian wench... my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery." Collin, who only preferred women, wrote in his own memoir: "I found myself unable to respond to this love, and this caused the author much suffering." Likewise, the infatuations of the author for the Danish dancer Harald Scharff and Carl Alexander, the young hereditary duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, did not result in any relationships.

In recent times some literary studies have speculated about the homoerotic camouflage in Andersen's works.

Death

In the spring of 1872, Andersen fell out of his bed and was severely hurt. He never fully recovered, but he lived until August 4, 1875, dying of insidious causes in a house called Rolighed (literally: calmness), near Copenhagen, the home of his close friends Moritz Melchior, a banker, and his wife. Shortly before his death, he had consulted a composer about the music for his funeral, saying: "Most of the people who will walk after me will be children, so make the beat keep time with little steps." His body was interred in the Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro area of Copenhagen.

At the time of his death, he was an internationally renowned and treasured artist. He received a stipend from the Danish Government as a "national treasure". Before his death, steps were already underway to erect the large statue in his honor, which was completed and is prominently placed in Rosenborg Garden ("Kongens Have", sculptor A.V. Saabye, 1880) in Copenhagen.

Legacy

In the English-speaking world, stories such as "Thumbelina", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Match Girl", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Little Mermaid", "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", and "The Princess and the Pea" remain popular and are widely read. "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling" have both passed into the English language as well-known expressions.

In the Copenhagen harbor there is a statue of The Little Mermaid, placed in honor of Hans Christian Andersen. April 2, Andersen's birthday, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day. The year 2005 was the bicentenary of Andersen's birth and his life and work was celebrated around the world.

In the United States, statues of Hans Christian Andersen may be found in Central Park, New York, Chicago's Lincoln Park and in Solvang, California. The Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds a unique collection of Andersen materials bequeathed by the Danish-American actor Jean Hersholt. Of particular note is an original scrapbook Andersen prepared for the young Jonas Drewsen.

The city of Bratislava, Slovakia features a statue of Hans Christian Andersen in memory of his visit in 1841.

The city of Funabashi, Japan has a children's theme park named after Hans Christian Andersen.

In the city of Lublin, Poland is the Puppet & Actor Theatre of Hans Christian Andersen.

A $13-million theme park based on Andersen's tales and life opened in Shanghai at the end of 2006. Multi-media games as well as all kinds of cultural contests related to the fairy tales are available to visitors. He was chosen as the star of the park because he is a "nice, hardworking person who was not afraid of poverty", Shanghai Gujin Investment general manager Zhai Shiqiang was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.

Famous fairy tales

Some of his most famous fairy tales include: The Angel (1843) University of Southern Denmark The Bell (1845) University of Southern Denmark

The Emperor's New Clothes (1837) University of Southern Denmark

The Galoshes of Fortune (1838) "Lykkens Kalosker"

The Fir Tree (1844) University of Southern Denmark

The Happy Family (1847)

The Ice Maiden (1861) "Iisjomfruen"

It's Quite True! (1852) University of Southern Denmark

The Little Match Girl (1848) University of Southern Denmark

The Little Mermaid (1836) University of Southern Denmark Little Tuck (1847) University of Southern Denmark The Nightingale (1844) University of Southern Denmark The Old House (1847) University of Southern Denmark Sandman (1841) University of Southern Denmark The Princess and the Pea (1835; also known as The Real Princess) University of Southern Denmark Several Things (1837) University of Southern Denmark The Red Shoes (1845) University of Southern Denmark The Shadow (1847) University of Southern Denmark

The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep (1845)

The Snow Queen (1844) University of Southern Denmark The Steadfast Tin Soldier (1838) University of Southern Denmark The Story of a Mother (1847) University of Southern Denmark The Swineherd (1841) University of Southern Denmark Thumbelina (1835) University of Southern Denmark The Tinderbox (1835) University of Southern Denmark The Ugly Duckling (1844) University of Southern Denmark The Wild Swans (1838) University of Southern Denmark

Influence

Contemporary literary and artistic works inspired by Andersen's stories include:

"The Naked King" ("Голый Король (Goliy Korol)" 1937), "The Shadow" ("Тень (Ten)" 1940), and "The Snow Queen" ("Снежная Королева (Sniezhenaya Koroleva)" 1948) by Eugene Schwartz: reworked and adapted to the contemporary reality plays by one of Russia's most famous playwrights. Schwartz's versions of "The Shadow" and "The Snow Queen" were later made into movies (1971 and 1966, respectively).

Sam the Lovesick Snowman at the Center for Puppetry Arts: a contemporary puppet show by Jon Ludwig inspired by The Snow Man.

The Ugly Duckling ("Гадкий утенок") (Children's opera) - Opera-Parable By Hans Christian Andersen. For Mezzo-Soprano (Soprano), Three-part Children's Choir And the Piano. 1 Act: 2 Epigraphs, 38 Theatrical Pictures. Length: Approximately 28 minutes. The opera version (Free transcription) Written by Lev Konov (Лев Конов) (1996). On music of Sergei Prokofiev: The Ugly Duckling, op. 18 (1914) And Visions Fugitives, op. 22 (1915–1917). (Vocal score language: Russian, English, German, French). The first representation in Moscow in 1997.

The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf by Kathryn Davis: a contemporary novel about fairy tales and opera

The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge: an award-winning novel that reworks the Snow Queen's themes into epic science fiction

The Nightingale by Kara Dalkey: a lyrical adult fantasy novel set in the courts of old Japan

The Wild Swans by Peg Kerr: a novel that brings Andersen's fairy tale to colonial and modern America

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier: a romantic fantasy novel, set in early Ireland, thematically linked to "The Wild Swans"

Birdwing by Rafe Martin, a young adult novel that continues the tale of "The Wild Swans" with the story of Ardwin, the brother whose arm remained a wing

The Snow Queen by Eileen Kernaghan: a gentle Young Adult fantasy novel that brings out the tale's subtle pagan and shamanic elements

"The Snow Queen", a short story by Patricia A. McKillip (published in Snow White, Blood Red)

"You, Little Match Girl", a short story by Joyce Carol Oates (published in Black Heart, Ivory Bones)

"Sparks", a short story by Gregory Frost (based on The Tinder Box, published in Black Swan, White Raven)

"Steadfast", a short story by Nancy Kress (based on The Steadfast Tin Soldier, published in Black Swan, White Raven)

"The Sea Hag", a short story by Melissa Lee Shaw (based on The Little Mermaid, published in Silver Birch, Blood Moon)

"The Real Princess", a short story by Susan Palwick (based on The Princess and the Pea, published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears)

"Match Girl", a short story by Anne Bishop (published in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears)

Le Petit Claus et le Grand Claus, (film, 1964), ((Lille Claus og store Claus) by Jacques Prévert, and his brother Pierre Prévert, French TV 1964.

"The Pangs of Love", a short story by Jane Gardam (based on The Little Mermaid, published in Close Company: Stories of Mothers and Daughters)

"The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep", (film, 1980), French, by Paul Grimault and Jacques Prévert, French title : Le Roi et l'Oiseau (the king and the bird).

"The Chrysanthemum Robe", a short story by Kara Dalkey (based on The Emperor's New Clothes, published in The Armless Maiden)

"The Steadfast Tin Soldier", a short story by Joan Vinge (published in Women of Wonder)

"In the Witch's Garden", a short story by Naomi Kritzer (based on The Snow Queen, published in Realms of Fantasy magazine, October 2002 issue)

"I Hear the Mermaids Singing", a short story by Nancy Holder (based on The Little Mermaid)

"The Last Poems About the Snow Queen", a poem cycle by Sandra Gilbert (published in Blood Pressure)

The Little Mermaid (2005) for children's chorus, narrator, orchestra by Richard Mills

"La petite marchande d'allumettes", film by Jean Renoir (1928)

"The Andersen Project" by Robert Lepage: Freely inspired from two stories by Andersen (The Dryad and The Shadow).

"The Little Mermaid (1989 movie) (Walt Disney Pictures) Based on the original story.

The Little Match Girl (2006 short) With the DVD Release of The Little Mermaid (Walt Disney Pictures)Based on the original story.

The Little Mermaid for actress, two pianos and chamber ensemble/orchestra.

Ponyo got its inspiration from the Little Mermaid.

The Little Match Girl Passion - a choral work composed in 2007 by David Lang. It won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

The Ghost, an episode in the third series of the British TV show Hustle is based on the theft of an Andersen manuscript from an old English manor house.

A Designer's Paradise, an episode in the fourth series of the British TV show Hustle bases a confidence trick around the story of The Emperor's New Clothes

Broken Angels (Merciless in the U.S.), a novel by Richard Montanari focuses on a serial killer who murders people in accordance with Hans Christian Andersen stories. Stories included are The Nightingale, Thumbelina, The Red Shoes, The Little Match Girl, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Tinderbox, What The Moon Saw, Anne Lisbeth, Little Claus and Big Claus, The Snow Man, and Little Ida's Flowers.

"Striking Twelve", a Staged Concert/Musical by the New York band, Groove Lily, about a grumpy guy reading "The Little Match Girl" on New Year's Eve.

"Until My Dancing Days are Done", a short story by Angela D. Mitchell that gave a modern gothic twist to "The Red Shoes." The story was published in Fables Magazine in October 2003, and in April 2004 was voted the 2003 Reader's Choice Award by the magazine's readers.

"The Song Is A Fairy-tale", 20 songs composed by Frederik Magle based on fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen (1994).

"Prisoners" by Regina Spektor references Hans Christian Anderson.

See also

Fairy Tales Told for Children (1838)

Kjøbenhavnsposten

Vilhelm Pedersen, the first illustrator of Andersen's fairy tales

Grimm's Fairy Tales

Fable

References

Further reading

Stig Dalager, Journey in Blue, historical, biographical novel about H.C.Andersen, Peter Owen, London 2006, McArthur & Co., Toronto 2006.

Ruth Manning-Sanders, Swan of Denmark: The Story of Hans Christian Andersen, Heinemann, 1949

Norton, Rictor (ed.) My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries. Leyland Publications, San Francisco. 1998 ISBN 0-943595-71-1

External links

Andersen's Fairy Tales public domain audio book at LibriVox

Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales

Works by Hans Christian Andersen at Internet Archive. Scanned, color illustrated first editions.

And the cobbler's son became a princely author Details of Andersen's life and the celebrations.

The Hans Christian Andersen Center - contains many Andersen's stories in Danish and English

Various stories by Hans Christian Andersen (full text)

Short Stories by Hans Christian Anderson

Information about the musical "Striking Twelve" based on the "Little Match Girl"

Hans Christian Andersen dreamscity.net

Collection of Andersen Fairy Tales

The Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense has a large digital collection of Hans Christian Andersen papercuts, drawings and portraits - You can follow his travels across Europe and explore his Nyhavn study.

The Orders and Medals Society of Denmark has descriptions of Hans Christian Andersen's Medals and Decorations.

Hans Christian Andersen Information (mainly in Danish) contains information about his life, childhood home, Hans Christian Andersen House and museum, fairy tales and stories, literary activities, drawings, papercuts and picture pages.

Funabashi H. Andersen Park article on Japanese Wikipedia (アンデルセン公園)

Hans Christian Andersen paintings by artist Erik Bagge Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales seen with the eyes and pencil of the Danish artist Erik Bagge.

The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen: A metasite about the fairy tales and other literary works (Includes translations into many different languages)

The tales of H.C. Andersen in several languages: , , , , , , and

Chopin and The Nightingale is a dramatic reading with music in six acts, written by Cecilia and Jens Jorgensen of Icons of Europe for narrator, two sopranos and piano. It enacts the true-life romance of Chopin and Jenny Lind, which happens to resemble The Nightingale story of Hans Christian Andersen. When Chopin dies of tuberculosis in the arms of Jenny Lind, she decides to devote the rest of her life to paying tribute to his music. "Good Morning!", says the emperor / composer the next day. Performed - to celebrate the new Europe and World Tuberculosis Day - at Brussels (2003), Warsaw (2004), Toronto (2005) and New York State (2008).

"Did the emperor suffer from tuberculosis?", essay of March 17, 2005 researched and written by Cecilia Jorgensen for World Tuberculosis Day.

Andersen Fairy Tales

Category:1805 births Category:1875 deaths Category:People from Odense Category:19th-century Danish people Category:Collectors of fairy tales Category:Danish children's writers Category:Danish Christians Category:Danish fantasy writers Category:Danish novelists Category:Danish poets Category:Disease-related deaths in Denmark Category:Prometheus Award winning authors Category:Scandinavian folklore

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Coordinates	55°45′06″N37°37′04″N
name	Christian Andersen
fullname	Christian Andersen
birth date	September 28, 1944
birth place	Copenhagen, Denmark
currentclub	none
position	Manager (former defender)
clubs1	B 1903
clubs2	Union St. Gilloise
clubs3	Crossing Schaerbeek
clubs4	Cercle Brugge
clubs5	FC Lorient
clubs6	AB
clubs7	Gladsaxe-Hero BK
manageryears1	1978-1983
manageryears2	1983-1984
manageryears3	1985-1986
manageryears4	1995-1998
manageryears5	1999
manageryears6	1999-2000
manageryears7	2001-2004
manageryears8	2005-2007
manageryears9	2009-2010
managerclubs1	AB
managerclubs2	Glostrup IC
managerclubs3	AB
managerclubs4	AB
managerclubs5	FC Copenhagen
managerclubs6	B93
managerclubs7	Farum BK/FC Nordsjælland
managerclubs8	AB
managerclubs9	BK Frem
nationalyears1	1965
nationalyears2	1969
nationalteam1	Denmark u21
nationalteam2	Denmark
nationalcaps1	1
nationalcaps2	2
nationalgoals1	0
nationalgoals2	0 }}

Christian Andersen (born September 28, 1944) is a Danish former football player and now manager. He was most recently the manager of Boldklubben Frem

As player he played for B 1903, Cercle Brugge, FC Lorient and Akademisk Boldklub and played two caps for the Danish national football team.

As manager he has managed Akademisk Boldklub a couple of times, but he is most famous for his controversies with FC Copenhagen chairman Flemming Østergaard and former chairman of Akademisk Boldklub, Per Frimann. The first controversy was about Andersen being fired as manager of FC Copenhagen after only one match, and the other because Andersen in his autobiography called Frimann the reason why AB had had economic problems. Frimann began talking about a possible lawsuit, but this was solved, when Andersen made a public apology.

References

External links

Danish national team profile

Category:1944 births Category:Living people Category:Danish footballers Category:Denmark international footballers Category:Denmark under-21 international footballers Category:Danish football managers Category:F.C. Copenhagen managers Category:Cercle Brugge K.S.V. players Category:FC Lorient players Category:Akademisk Boldklub players

da:Christian Andersen (fodboldtræner)