George Lucas
George Lucas in 2009
Born	George Walton Lucas, Jr. (1944-05-14) May 14, 1944 (age 68) Modesto, California, U.S.
Residence	Marin County, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Modesto Junior College
Alma mater	University of Southern California (B.A. and B.S.)[1]
Occupation	Chairman & CEO of Lucasfilm
Years active	1965–present
Influenced by	Frank Herbert,[2] Joseph Campbell, Akira Kurosawa, John Ford
Home town	Central Valley, California, U.S.
Net worth	US$3.2 billion (2011)[1]
Spouse	Marcia Lucas (1969–1983)
Partner	Mellody Hobson (2007–present)

George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm.^[3] He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2011.^[1]

Early life and education[link]

George Lucas was born in Modesto, California, the son of Dorothy Ellinore (née Bomberger) and George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991), who owned a stationery store.^[4][5]

Lucas grew up in the Central Valley town of Modesto and his early passion for cars and motor racing would eventually serve as inspiration for his USC student film 1:42.08, as well as his Oscar-nominated low-budget phenomenon, American Graffiti. Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks. George Lucas graduated from USC in California.

As a child, Lucas never learned to swim, which became a source of embarrassment and frustration as he became older. Lucas has expressed in several interviews that his inability to swim was "the passion that drove me to succeed in filmmaking... [It] gave me the chip on my shoulder that I think was critical to my later success"^[6]

During this time, an experimental filmmaker named Bruce Baillie tacked up a bedsheet in his backyard in 1960 to screen the work of underground, avant-garde 16 mm filmmakers like Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage and Bruce Conner. For the next few years, Baillie's series, dubbed Canyon Cinema, toured local coffeehouses. These events became a magnet for the teenage Lucas and his boyhood friend John Plummer. The 19-year-olds began slipping away to San Francisco to hang out in jazz clubs and find news of Canyon Cinema screenings in flyers at the City Lights bookstore. Already a promising photographer, Lucas became infatuated with these abstract films.

"That's when he [George] really started exploring" Plummer recalled. "We went to a theater on Union Street that shows art films, we drove up to San Francisco State for a film festival, and there was an old beatnik coffeehouse in Cow Hollow with shorts that were really out there." It was a season of awakening for Lucas, who had been an uninterested slacker in high school. At an autocross track, Lucas met his first mentor in the film industry — famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler, a fellow aficionado of sleek racing machines. Wexler was impressed by the way the shy teenager handled a camera, cradling it low on his hips to get better angles. "George had a very good eye, and he thought visually," Wexler recalls.^[7]

Lucas then transferred to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, George Lucas shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser. Along with classmates such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood and John Milius, they became a clique of film students known as The Dirty Dozen. He also became very good friends with fellow acclaimed student filmmaker and future Indiana Jones collaborator, Steven Spielberg. Lucas was deeply influenced by the Filmic Expression course taught at the school by filmmaker Lester Novros which concentrated on the non-narrative elements of Film Form like color, light, movement, space, and time. Another huge inspiration was the Serbian montagist (and dean of the USC Film Department) Slavko Vorkapich, a film theoretician comparable in historical importance to Sergei Eisenstein, who moved to Hollywood to make stunning montage sequences for studio features at MGM, RKO, and Paramount. Vorkapich taught the autonomous nature of the cinematic art form, emphasizing the unique dynamic quality of movement and kinetic energy inherent in motion pictures.

Lucas saw many inspiring films in class, particularly the visual films coming out of the National Film Board of Canada like Arthur Lipsett's 21-87, the French-Canadian cameraman Jean-Claude Labrecque's cinéma vérité 60 Cycles, the work of Norman McLaren, and the documentaries of Claude Jutra. Lucas fell madly in love with pure cinema and quickly became prolific at making 16 mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité with such titles as Look at Life, Herbie, 1:42.08, The Emperor, Anyone Lived in a Pretty (how) Town, Filmmaker, and 6-18-67. He was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to being a director, and he loved making abstract visual films that create emotions purely through cinema.^[7]

After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in film in 1967, he tried joining the United States Air Force as an officer, but he was immediately turned down because of his numerous speeding tickets. He was later drafted by the Army for military service in Vietnam, but he was exempted from service after medical tests showed he had diabetes, the disease that killed his paternal grandfather.

In 1967, Lucas re-enrolled as a USC graduate student in film production. Working as a teaching instructor for a class of U.S. Navy students who were being taught documentary cinematography, Lucas directed the short film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which won first prize at the 1967–68 National Student Film Festival, and was later adapted into his first full-length feature film, THX 1138. Lucas was awarded a student scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe and work on the making of a film of his choosing. The film he chose was Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who at the time was revered among film school students of the time as a cinema graduate who had "made it" in Hollywood. In 1969, George Lucas was one of the camera operators on the classic Rolling Stones concert film Gimme Shelter.

Film career[link]

George Lucas is a filmmaker, with a film career dominated by writing and production. Aside from the nine short films he made in the 1960s, he also directed six major features. His work from 1971 and 1977 as a writer-director, which established him as a major figure in Hollywood, consists of just three films: THX 1138, American Graffiti, and Star Wars. There was a 22-year hiatus between the original Star Wars film and his only other feature-film directing credits, the three Star Wars prequels.

Lucas acted as a writer and executive producer on another successful Hollywood film franchise, the Indiana Jones series. In addition, he established his own effects company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), to make the original Star Wars film. The company is now one of the most successful in the industry.

Lucas co-founded the studio American Zoetrope with Coppola—whom he met during his internship at Warner Brothers—hoping to create a liberating environment for filmmakers to direct outside the perceived oppressive control of the Hollywood studio system^{[citation needed]}. His first full-length feature film produced by the studio, THX 1138, was not a success. Lucas then created his own company, Lucasfilm, Ltd., and directed American Graffiti (1973). His new-found wealth and reputation enabled him to develop a story set in space. Even so, he encountered difficulties getting Star Wars made. It was only because Alan Ladd, Jr., at Fox Studios liked American Graffiti that he forced through a production and distribution deal for the film, which ended up restoring Fox to financial stability after a number of flops.^[8]

Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing film of all-time, displaced five years later by Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. During the filming of Star Wars, Lucas waived his up-front fee as director and negotiated to own the licensing rights (for novelizations, T-shirts, toys, etc.)^{[citation needed]}—rights which the studio thought were nearly worthless^{[citation needed]}. This decision earned him hundreds of millions of dollars^{[citation needed]}, as he was able to directly profit from all the licensed games, toys, and collectibles created for the franchise. This accumulated capital enabled him to finance the sequel himself.

Over the two decades after the first Star Wars film, Lucas worked extensively as a writer and/or producer, including the many Star Wars spinoffs made for film, TV, and other media. He acted as executive producer for the next two Star Wars films, assigning the direction of The Empire Strikes Back to Irvin Kershner and Return of the Jedi to Richard Marquand, while receiving a story credit on the former and sharing a screenwriting credit with Lawrence Kasdan on the latter. Lucas also acted as executive producer and story writer on all four of the Indiana Jones films, which he convinced his colleague and good friend, Steven Spielberg, to direct. Other notable projects as a producer or executive producer in this period include Kurosawa's Kagemusha (1980), Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat (1981), Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986), Godfrey Reggio's Powaqqatsi (1986) and the animated film The Land Before Time (1988). There were also some less successful projects, however, including More American Graffiti (1979), the ill-fated Howard the Duck (1986), which was arguably^{[citation needed]} the biggest flop of his career; Willow (1988, which Lucas also wrote); and Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988). Between 1992 and 1996, Lucas served as executive producer for the television spinoff The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. In 1997, for the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, Lucas went back to his trilogy to enhance and add certain scenes using newly available digital technology. These new versions were released in theaters as the Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition. For DVD releases in 2004, this series has received further revisions to make them congruent with the prequel trilogy. Besides the additions to the Star Wars franchise, Lucas released Special Edition director's cuts of THX 1138 and American Graffiti containing a number of CGI revisions.

Lucas at the Venice Film Festival in 2009.

The animation studio Pixar was founded as the Graphics Group^{[citation needed]}, one third of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm. Pixar's early computer graphics research resulted in groundbreaking effects in films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan^[9] and Young Sherlock Holmes,^[9] and the group was purchased in 1986 by Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple after a power struggle at Apple Computer. Jobs paid U.S. $5 million to Lucas and put U.S. $5 million as capital into the company. The sale reflected Lucas' desire to stop the cash flow losses from his 7-year research projects associated with new entertainment technology tools, as well as his company's new focus on creating entertainment products rather than tools. A contributing factor was cash-flow difficulties following Lucas' 1983 divorce concurrent with the sudden dropoff in revenues from Star Wars licenses following the release of Return of the Jedi.

The sound-equipped system, THX Ltd, was founded by Lucas and Tomlinson Holman^{[citation needed]}. The company was formerly owned by Lucasfilm, and contains equipment for stereo, digital, and theatrical sound for films, and music. Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic, the sound and visual effects subdivisions of Lucasfilm, respectively, have become among the most respected firms in their fields^{[citation needed]}. Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts, is well respected in the gaming industry^{[citation needed]}.

In 1994, Lucas began work on the screenplay for the prequel Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which would be the first film he had directed in over two decades. The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, beginning a new trilogy of Star Wars films. Lucas also directed Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith which were released in 2002 and 2005, respectively. Numerous critics considered these films inferior to the previously released Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.^[10][11][12]

In 2008, he reteamed with Spielberg for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Lucas currently serves as executive producer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, an animated television series on Cartoon Network, which was preceded by a feature film of the same name. He is also working on a so-far untitled Star Wars live-action series.

For the film Red Tails (2012), Lucas serves as story-writer and executive producer. He also took over direction of reshoots while director Anthony Hemingway worked on other projects. Lucas is working on his first musical, an untitled CGI project being produced at Skywalker Ranch. Kevin Munroe is directing and David Berenbaum wrote the screenplay.^[13]

Semi-retirement[link]

In January 2012, Lucas announced his retirement from producing large-scale blockbuster films and instead re-focusing his career on smaller, independently budgeted features. He did not specify whether or not this would affect his involvement with a fifth installment of the Indiana Jones series.^[14][15][16]

Philanthropy[link]

In 1991, The George Lucas Educational Foundation was founded as a nonprofit operating foundation to celebrate and encourage innovation in schools. The Foundation's content is available under the brand Edutopia, in an award-winning web site, social media and via documentary films. Lucas, through his foundation, was one of the leading proponents of the E-rate program in the universal service fund,^[17] which was enacted as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. On June 24, 2008, Lucas testified before the United States House of Representatives subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet as the head of his Foundation to advocate for a free wireless broadband educational network.^[18]

In 2005, Lucas gave US$1 million to help build the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington D.C. to commemorate American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.^[19]

On September 19, 2006, USC announced that George Lucas had donated $175–180 million to his alma mater to expand the film school. It is the largest single donation to USC and the largest gift to a film school anywhere.^[20] Previous donations led to the already existing George Lucas Instructional Building and Marcia Lucas Post-Production building.^[21][22]

Awards[link]

The American Film Institute awarded Lucas its Life Achievement Award on June 9, 2005.^[23] This was shortly after the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, about which he joked stating that, since he views the entire Star Wars series as one film, he could actually receive the award now that he had finally "gone back and finished the movie."

On June 5, 2005, Lucas was named among the 100 "Greatest Americans" by the Discovery Channel.^[24]

Lucas was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Directing and Writing for American Graffiti, and Best Directing and Writing for Star Wars. He received the Academy's Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1991. He appeared at the 79th Academy Awards ceremony in 2007 with Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola to present the Best Director award to their friend Martin Scorsese. During the speech, Spielberg and Coppola talked about the joy of winning an Oscar, making fun of Lucas, who has not won a competitive Oscar.

Lucas at the Time 100 2006 gala

On June 17, 2006, the Science Fiction Hall of Fame inducted George Lucas and three others.^[25][26]

On January 1, 2007 George Lucas served as the Grand Marshal for the 2007 Tournament of Roses Parade, and made the coin toss at the 2007 Rose Bowl.

On August 25, 2009, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver announced that Lucas would be one of 13 California Hall of Fame inductees in The California Museum's yearlong exhibit. The induction ceremony was on December 1, 2009 in Sacramento, California.

On September 6, 2009, Lucas was in Venice to present to the Pixar team the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement during the 2009 Biennale Venice Film Festival.

Personal life[link]

In 1969, Lucas married film editor Marcia Lou Griffin, who went on to win an Academy Award for her editing work on the original Star Wars film. George and Marcia adopted a daughter, Amanda, in 1981, and divorced in 1983. Lucas has since adopted two more children: Katie, born in 1988, and Jett, born in 1993. All three of his children have appeared in the three Star Wars prequels, as has Lucas himself. Lucas had been in a long relationship with and engaged to singer Linda Ronstadt. He has been dating Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments, since 2006 and she has accompanied him to several events including the 79th Academy Awards ceremony in February 2007, an American Film Institute event in October 2007, the 2008 Cannes Film Festival held in May, and the 2010 Golden Globes.^[27][28][29]

Lucas was born and raised in a strong Methodist family. The religious and mythical themes in Star Wars were inspired by Lucas' interest in the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell,^[30] and he would eventually come to identify strongly with the Eastern religious philosophies he studied and incorporated into his films, which were a major inspiration for "the Force." Lucas eventually came to state that his religion was "Buddhist Methodist". Lucas resides in Marin County.^[31][32]

Lucas has said that he is a fan of Seth MacFarlane's hit TV show Family Guy. MacFarlane has said that Lucasfilm was extremely helpful when the Family Guy crew wanted to parody their works.^[33]

Lucas has pledged to give half of his fortune to charity as part of an effort called The Giving Pledge led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to persuade America's richest individuals to donate their financial wealth to charities.^[34][35]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Rinzler, J.W. "The Making of Star Wars, The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film", Ebury Press, 2007.
• Silberman, Steve "Life After Darth" Wired, November, 2005
• "George Lucas: Interviews" University Press of Mississippi (February 16, 2007)
• The Cinema of George Lucas (Hardcover) by Marcus Hearn, Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (March 1, 2005)
• Michael Rubin, "Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution" (2005) [ISBN 0937404675]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: George Lucas

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: George Lucas

• George Lucas biography at the Science Fiction Hall of Fame
• George Lucas at the Internet Movie Database
• George Lucas at AllRovi
• George Lucas at the Notable Names Database
• George Lucas at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• George Lucas biography at Lucasfilm.com
• George Lucas biography at World Business Forum where Lucas is a featured speaker for the 2009 event

Bill Bradley
United States Senator from New Jersey
In office January 3, 1979 – January 3, 1997
Preceded by	Clifford P. Case
Succeeded by	Robert Torricelli
Personal details
Born	William Warren Bradley (1943-07-28) July 28, 1943 (age 68) Crystal City, Missouri
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Ernestine Bradley
Alma mater	Princeton University (A.B.), Oxford University (M.A.)
Profession	professional basketball player, United States senator, author, radio host, corporate director

William Warren "Bill" Bradley (born July 28, 1943) is an American hall of fame basketball player, Rhodes scholar, and former three-term Democratic U.S. Senator from New Jersey. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in the 2000 election.

Bradley was born and raised in a suburb of St. Louis and excelled at basketball from an early age. He was a member of the Boy Scouts, did well academically and was an all-county and all-state basketball player in high school. He was offered 75 college scholarships, but declined them all to attend Princeton University. He earned a gold medal as a member of the 1964 Olympic basketball team and was the NCAA Player of the Year in 1965. After graduating in 1965, he attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, delaying a decision for two years on whether or not to play in the NBA.

While at Oxford, Bradley played one season of professional basketball in Europe, and eventually decided to join the New York Knicks in the 1967–68 season, after serving six months in the Air Force Reserve. He spent his entire ten-year professional basketball career playing for the Knicks, winning two championship titles. Retiring in 1977, he ran for a seat in the United States Senate the following year, from his adopted home state of New Jersey. He was re-elected in 1984 and 1990, left the Senate in 1997, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination.

Bradley is the author of seven non-fiction books, most recently We Can All Do Better, and hosts a weekly radio show, American Voices, on Sirius Satellite Radio. He is a corporate director of Starbucks and a partner at investment bank Allen & Company in New York City.

In 2008 Bradley was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.^[1]

Early life[link]

Bradley was born on July 28, 1943 in Crystal City, Missouri, the only child of Warren (d. 1994),^[2] who despite leaving high school after a year had become a bank president, and Susan "Susie" (née Crowe) Bradley (d. 1995),^[2] a teacher and former high school-basketball player.^[3][4][5][6] Politicians and politics were standard dinner-table topics in Bradley's childhood, and he described his father as a "solid Republican" who was an elector for Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 presidential election.^[5] An active Boy Scout, he became an Eagle Scout and member of the Order of the Arrow.^[7]

Bradley's wealthy background made his exceptional athletic ability especially unusual. Bradley began playing basketball at the age of nine. He was a star at Crystal City High School, where he scored 3,068 points in his scholastic career, was twice named All-American, and was elected to the Missouri Association of Student Councils.^[3] He received 75 college scholarship offers, although he applied to only five schools^[6][8][7] and only scored a 485 out of 800 on the Verbal portion of the SAT,^[9] which—despite being likely in the top third of all test takers that year—normally would have caused selective schools like Princeton University to reject him.^[10]

Bradley's basketball ability benefited from his height—5'9" in the 7th grade, 6'1" in the 8th grade,^[7] and his adult size of 6'5" by the age of 15^[3]—and unusually wide peripheral vision,^[3] which he worked to improve by focusing on faraway objects while walking.^[11][12] During his high school years, Bradley maintained a rigorous practice schedule, a habit he carried through college.^[13] He would work on the court for "three and a half hours every day after school, nine to five on Saturday, one-thirty to five on Sunday, and, in the summer, about three hours a day. He put ten pounds of lead slivers in his sneakers, set up chairs as opponents and dribbled in a slalom fashion around them, and wore eyeglass frames that had a piece of cardboard taped to them so that he could not see the floor, for a good dribbler never looks at the ball."^[3]

Basketball[link]

College[link]

Playing at Princeton, 1964

Considered the top high school player in the country, Bradley initially chose to attend Duke University in the fall of 1961.^[14] However, after breaking his foot in the summer of 1961 during a baseball game and thinking about his college decision outside of basketball, Bradley decided to enroll at Princeton due to its record in preparing students for government or United States Foreign Service work.^[15][7] He had been awarded a scholarship at Duke, but not at Princeton; the Ivy League does not allow its members to award athletic scholarships,^[14][15] and Bradley's family's wealth disqualified him from receiving financial aid.^[3]:13

Bradley's childhood hero Dick Kazmaier had won the Heisman Trophy at Princeton, and he wore #42 in his honor.^[3]:73 In his freshman year, Bradley averaged more than 30 points per game for the freshman team,^[16] at one point making 57 consecutive free throws,^[17] breaking a record set by a member of the NBA's Syracuse Nationals. The following year, as a sophomore, he was a varsity starter in Butch van Breda Kolff's first year as coach of the Tigers.^[18]

In his sophomore year Bradley scored 40 points in a 82–81 loss to St. Joseph's^[19] and was named to The Sporting News All-American first team in early 1963. The coach of the St. Louis Hawks believed he was ready to play professional basketball.^[17] The AP and United Press International polls both put Bradley on the second team, establishing him as the top sophomore player in the country;^[20] Bradley also hit .316 as a first baseman for the baseball team.^[19] The following year The Sporting News again named him to its All-American team as its only junior, and as its player of the year.^[21] At the Olympic basketball trials in April 1964, Bradley played guard instead of his usual forward position but was still a top performer.^[22][7] He was one of three chosen unanimously for the Olympic team, the youngest chosen, and the only undergraduate. The Olympic team won its sixth consecutive gold medal.^[3]

As a senior and team captain^[23] in the 1964–1965 season, Bradley became a household name.^[19] Only the third tallest on his team,^[3] but called "easily the No. 1 player in college basketball today",^[7] "the best amateur basketball player in the United States", and "The White O[scar Robertson]",^[3] he scored 41 points in a 80–78 loss to Michigan,^[19] then led Princeton to the Final Four^[24] after defeating heavy favorite Providence by 40 points.^[19] The team lost in the semifinals, but Bradley scored a record 58 points in the consolation game to lead the team to victory against Wichita State and earn himself the Final Four MVP.^[25] In total, Bradley scored 2,503 points at Princeton, averaging 30.2 points per game. He was awarded the 1965 James E. Sullivan Award, presented annually to the United States' top amateur athlete, the first basketball player to win the honor,^[26] and the second Princeton student to win the award, after runner Bill Bonthron in 1934.^[26]

Bradley holds a number of Ivy League career records, including total and average points (1,253/29.83, respectively), and free throws made and attempted (409/468, 87.4%).^[27] Ivy League season records he holds similarly include total and average points (464/33.14, 1964) and most free throws made (153 in 170 attempts, 90.0%, 1962–1963).^[27] He also holds the career point record at Princeton and many other school records, including the top ten slots in the category of total points scored in a game,^[28] but likely could have scored many more points if he had not insisted so often on passing the ball, in what his coaches called "Bradley's hope passes", to inferior teammates closer to the basket; he only emphasized his own scoring when Princeton was behind^[3]:46 or, as during the Wichita State game, his teammates forced Bradley to shoot by returning passes to him.^[19] Van Breda Kolff often encouraged Bradley to be more of a "one on one" player, stating that "Bill is not hungry. At least ninety percent of the time, when he gets the ball, he is looking for a pass."^[3]:46

Van Breda Kolff described Bradley as "not the most physical player. Others can run faster and jump higher. The difference...is self-discipline."^[3] At Princeton he had three to four hours of classes and four hours of basketball practice daily, studied an average of seven hours each weekday and up to 24 more hours each weekend,^[7] frequently spoke for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes around the country, and taught Sunday School at the local Presbyterian Church. When practicing he did not move from a location on the court unless he made at least ten of 13 shots, and could detect whether a basket was an inch too low from the regulation ten feet.^[3]

Improving from his mediocre freshman grades, Bradley graduated magna cum laude^[10] after writing his senior thesis about Harry S. Truman's 1940 United States Senate campaign,^[19] titled "On That Record I Stand",^[29] and received a Rhodes Scholarship at Worcester College, University of Oxford. His tenure at Princeton was the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee's 23 January 1965 article "A Sense of Where You Are" in The New Yorker, which McPhee expanded into a book of the same name. The title came from Bradley's explanation for his ability to repeatedly throw a basketball over his shoulder and into the basket while looking away from it.^[3]

Professional[link]

Bill Bradley

No. 24
Small forward / Shooting guard
Personal information
Born	(1943-07-28) July 28, 1943 (age 68) Crystal City, Missouri
Career information
College	Princeton (1961–1965)
NBA Draft	1965 / Pick: Territorial
Selected by the New York Knicks
Pro career	1965–1977
Career history
1965–1966	Olimpia Milano (Italy)
1967–1977	New York Knicks
Career highlights and awards
2× NBA Champion (1970, 1973) NBA All-Star (1972) NCAA Final Four MOP (1965) USBWA College Player of the Year (1965) AP College Player of the Year (1965) Helms Foundation College Player of the Year (1965) 2× Sporting News Player of the Year (1964–1965) UPI College Player of the Year (1965) 2× Consensus NCAA All-American First Team (1964–1965) #24 Retired by the New York Knicks
Career statistics
Points	9,217 (12.4 ppg)
Rebounds	2,354 (3.2 rpg)
Assists	2,533 (3.4 apg)
Stats at Basketball-Reference.com
Basketball Hall of Fame as player
Medals Men's basketball Competitor for the United States Olympic Games Gold 1964 Tokyo Team competition Universiade Gold 1965 Budapest Team competition

Bradley's graduation year, 1965, was the last year that the NBA's territorial rule was in effect, which gave professional teams first rights to draft players who attended college within 50 miles of the team.^[30] The New York Knicks—one mile closer to Princeton than the Philadelphia 76ers^[3]—drafted Bradley as a territorial pick the 1965 draft, but he did not sign a contract with the team immediately.^[30][31] While studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Oxford, he commuted to Italy to play professional basketball in the Lega Basket Serie A for Olimpia Milano during the 1965–66 season,^[19] where the team won a European Champions Cup.

Bradley dropped out of Oxford two months prior to graduation in April 1967, to go into the Air Force Reserves. After serving six months active duty as an officer (the requirement was 4 years active duty), he joined the New York Knicks in Dec. 1967. The following year Oxford let Bradley take "special exams" and he graduated Oxford in 1968. (On March 6, 1967, Lyndon B. Johnson in a Special Message to the Congress on Selective Service, declared that he would be issuing an Executive Order that no deferments for post-graduate study be granted in the future, except for those men pursuing medical and dental courses.)^[32]

In Bradley's rookie season, he joined the team late, having also missed the entire preseason. He was placed in the back court, although he had spent his high school and college careers as a forward. Both he and the team did not do well, and in the following season, he was returned to the forward slot.^[33][34] Then, in his third season, the Knicks won their first-ever NBA championship, followed by the second in the 1972–73 season, when he made the only All-Star Game appearance of his career.^[35] Over 742 NBA games – all with the Knicks – Bradley scored a total of 9,217 points, an average of 12.4 points per game, with his best season average being 16.1 points per game in the 1972–73 season. Bradley also averaged 3.4 assists per game.^[35]

During his NBA career, Bradley used his fame on the court to explore social as well as political issues, meeting with journalists, government officials, academics, businesspeople, and social activists. He also worked as an assistant to the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, D.C., and as a teacher in the street academies of Harlem.^[5] In 1976, he also became an author by publishing Life on the Run. Using a 20-day stretch of time during one season as the main focus of the book, he chronicled his experiences in the NBA and the people he met along the way. He noted in the book that he had initially signed only a four-year contract, and that he was uncomfortable using his celebrity status to earn extra money endorsing products as other players did.^[36]

Retiring from basketball in 1977, he was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983, along with teammate Dave DeBusschere.^[37] In 1984, the Knicks retired his number 24 jersey; he was the fourth player so honored by the Knicks, after Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, and DeBusschere.^[38]

Politics[link]

Politics was a frequent subject of discussion in the Bradley household, and some of his relatives held local and county political offices. He majored in history at Princeton, and was present in the Senate chamber when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Van Breda Kolff and many others who knew him predicted that Bradley would be Governor of Missouri, or President, by 40.^[3]:42 He spent his time at Oxford focusing on European political and economic history.^[5] In 1978, he said that congressman Mo Udall, himself a former professional basketball player, had told him ten years earlier that professional sports could help prepare him for politics, depending on what he did with his non-playing time.^[29]

Senate[link]

After four years of political campaigning for Democratic candidates around New Jersey, Bradley decided in the summer of 1977 to run for the Senate himself, coinciding with his retirement from the Knicks. He felt his time had been well-spent in "paying his dues". The seat was held by liberal Republican and four-term incumbent Clifford P. Case. Case lost the primary election to anti-tax conservative Jeffrey Bell, who, like Bradley, was 34 years old as the campaign season began.^[5] Bradley won the seat in the general election with about 56 percent of the vote.^[39] During the campaign, Yale football player John Spagnola was Bradley's bodyguard and driver.^[5]

In the Senate, Bradley acquired a reputation for being somewhat aloof and was thought of as a "policy wonk",^[40] specializing in complex reform initiatives. Among these was the 1986 overhaul of the federal tax code, co-sponsored with Dick Gephardt, which reduced the tax rate schedule to just two brackets, 15 percent and 28 percent, and eliminated many kinds of deductions.^[41] Domestic policy initiatives that Bradley led or was associated with included reform of child support enforcement; legislation concerning lead-related children's health problems; the Earned Income Tax Credit; campaign finance reform; a re-apportioning of California water rights; and federal budget reform to reduce the deficit, which included, in 1981, supporting Reagan's spending cuts but opposing his parallel tax cut package, one of only three senators to take this position.^[42] He sponsored the Freedom Support Act, an exchange program between the republics of the former Soviet Union and the United States.^[43]

Bradley was re-elected in 1984 with 65 percent of the vote against Montclair mayor Mary V. Mochary.^[44] In 1988, he was encouraged to seek the Democratic nomination for President, but he declined to enter the race, saying that he would know when he was ready.^[45] In 1990, a controversy over a state income tax increase—on which he refused to take a position—and his proposal on merit pay for teachers, which led the NJEA to support his opponent, turned his once-obscure rival for the Senate, Christine Todd Whitman, into a viable candidate, and Bradley won by only a slim margin. In 1995, he announced he would not to run for re-election, publicly declaring American politics "broken."^[8]

While he was a senator, Bradley walked the beaches from Cape May to Sandy Hook, a four-day, 127-mile trip each Labor Day weekend, to assess beach and ocean conditions and talk with constituents.^[46][47]

Presidential candidate[link]

Bradley ran in the 2000 presidential primaries, opposing incumbent Vice President Al Gore for his party's nomination. Bradley campaigned as the liberal alternative to Gore, taking positions to the left of Gore on a number of issues, including universal health care, gun control, and campaign finance reform.^[48][49] On the issue of taxes, Bradley trumpeted his sponsorship of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which had significantly cut tax rates while abolishing dozens of loopholes. He voiced his belief that the best possible tax code would be one with low rates and no loopholes, but he refused to rule out the idea of raising taxes to pay for his health care program, calling the idea of such a pledge "dishonest".^[50]

On public education, he proposed to make over $2 billion in block grants available to each state every year. He further promised to bring 60,000 new teachers into the education system in hard-to-staff areas over ten years by offering college scholarships to anyone who agreed to become a teacher after graduating; Gore offered a similar proposal.^[51]

Bradley also made child poverty a significant issue in his campaign. He promised to address the minimum wage, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, allow single parents on welfare to keep their child support payments, make the Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable, build support homes for pregnant teenagers, enroll 400,000 more children in Head Start, and increase the availability of food stamps.^[52]

Although Gore was considered the party favorite,^[48] Bradley received a number of high-profile endorsements, including senators Paul Wellstone,^[53][54] Bob Kerrey, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan;^[55] former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich;^[56] former New York City mayor Ed Koch; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker; and basketball stars Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson.^[57][58][59] Bradley and Jackson have been close friends since they were teammates playing for the New York Knicks. Jackson was a vocal supporter of Bradley's run for the presidency and often wore his campaign button in public.^[60] He announced his acceptance of the position of head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers while Bradley was campaigning in California in 1999, and he was a "regular draw on the Bradley money trail" during the campaign.^[61][62] Bradley later called it a "great honor" to be the presenter when Jackson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.^[63]

In March 2000, after failing to win any of the first 20 primaries and caucuses in the election process, Bradley withdrew his campaign and endorsed Gore; he ruled out the idea of running as the vice-presidential candidate and did not answer questions about possible future runs for the presidency. He said that he would continue to speak out regarding his brand of politics, calling for campaign finance reform, gun control, and increased health care insurance.^[64][65]

After politics[link]

Later in 2000, Bradley was offered the chairmanship of the United States Olympic Committee, which he turned down.^[66] In September 2002, Bradley turned down a request from New Jersey Democrats to replace Robert Torricelli on the ballot for his old Senate seat, which another former senator, Frank Lautenberg, accepted.^[67] Oxford University awarded Bradley an honorary Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) in 2003, with a citation that described him in part as "..an outstandingly distinguished athlete, a weighty pillar of the Senate, and still a powerful advocate of the weak...".^[68] In 2007 Bradley was awarded the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. This award is given in recognition of community service more than 25 years after a scout first earns the Eagle badge.^[69][70]

In January 2004, Bradley and Gore both endorsed Howard Dean for President in the 2004 Democratic primaries.^[71] In January 2008, Bradley announced that he was supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary.^[72] He campaigned for Obama and appeared on political news shows as a surrogate. Bradley's name was mentioned as a possible replacement for Tom Daschle as nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration after Daschle withdrew from consideration; the position went to Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius.^[73]

He has worked as a corporate consultant and investment banker. He has been a managing director of Allen & Company LLC, since 2001, was chief outside advisor to McKinsey & Company's nonprofit division, the McKinsey Global Institute, from 2001 to 2004, and is a member of the board of directors of Starbucks and private company Raydiance. Bill Bradley is also a board member of DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects individuals to classrooms in need. He is also the Chair of the Advisory Council for Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.^[74][75][76]

Personal[link]

Bradley married Ernestine (née Misslbeck) Schlant, a German-born professor of comparative literature, in 1974. She has a daughter, Stephanie, from a previous marriage, and they have one daughter, Theresa Anne.^[77][78][79] Bradley and Schlant divorced in 2007, and he lives with former LBJ Library director Betty Sue Flowers.^[80]

See also[link]

• List of NCAA Division I men's basketball career free throw scoring leaders
• List of NCAA Division I men's basketball players with 2000 points and 1000 rebounds

References[link]