Name	William Grey Walter
Birth place	Kansas City, Missouri
Nationality	United States
Field	Roboticist, Scientist, Neurophysiologist
Known for	Brain Wave, Delta wave, Alpha wave, EEG topography, Autonomous robot
Signature	}}

W. Grey Walter (February 19, 1910 – May 6, 1977) was a neurophysiologist and robotician.

Overview

Walter was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1910. His ancestry was German/British on his father's side, and American/British on his mother's side. He was brought to England in 1915, and educated at Westminster School and afterwards in King's College, Cambridge, in 1931. He failed to obtain a research fellowship in Cambridge and so turned to doing basic and applied neurophysiological research in hospitals, in London, from 1935 to 1939 and then at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol, from 1939 to 1970. He also carried out research work in the United States, in the Soviet Union and in various other places in Europe. He married twice, and had two sons from his first marriage and one from the second. According to his eldest son, Nicolas Walter, "he was politically on the left, a communist fellow-traveller before the Second World War and an anarchist sympathiser after it." Throughout his life he was a pioneer in the field of cybernetics. In 1970 he was in a severe automobile accident and died seven years later on May 6, 1977 without fully recovering.

Brain waves

As a young man Walter was greatly influenced by the work of the famous Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. He visited the lab of Hans Berger, who invented the electroencephalograph, or EEG machine, for measuring electrical activity in the brain. Walter produced his own versions of Berger's machine with improved capabilities, which allowed it to detect a variety of brain wave types ranging from the high speed alpha waves to the slow delta waves observed during sleep.

In the 1930s Walter made a number of discoveries using his EEG machines at Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol. He was the first to determine by triangulation the surface location of the strongest alpha waves within the occipital lobe (alpha waves originate from the thalamus deep within the brain). Walter demonstrated the use of delta waves to locate brain tumours or lesions responsible for epilepsy. He developed the first brain topography machine based on EEG, using on an array of spiral-scan CRTs connected to high-gain amplifiers.

During the Second World War he worked on scanning radar technology and guided missiles, which may have influenced his subsequent ''alpha wave scanning hypothesis'' of brain activity.

In the 1960s Walter also went on to discover the ''contingent negative variation'' (CNV) effect (or ''readiness potential'') whereby a negative spike of electrical activity appears in the brain half a second prior to a person being consciously aware of movements that he is about to make. Intriguingly, this effect brings into question the very notion of consciousness or free will, and should be considered as part of a person's overall reaction time to events.

Walter's experiments with stroboscopic light, described in The Living Brain, inspired the development of a Dream Machine by the artist Brion Gysin and technician Ian Sommerville.

Robots

Grey Walter's most famous work was his construction of some of the first electronic autonomous robots. He wanted to prove that rich connections between a small number of brain cells could give rise to very complex behaviors - essentially that the secret of how the brain worked lay in how it was wired up. His first robots, which he used to call ''Machina speculatrix'' and named ''Elmer'' and ''Elsie'', were constructed between 1948 and 1949 and were often described as ''tortoises'' due to their shape and slow rate of movement - and because they 'taught us' about the secrets of organisation and life. The three-wheeled tortoise robots were capable of phototaxis, by which they could find their way to a recharging station when they ran low on battery power.

In one experiment he placed a light on the "nose" of a tortoise and watched as the robot observed itself in a mirror. "It began flickering," he wrote. "Twittering, and jigging like a clumsy Narcissus." Walter argued that if it were seen in an animal it "might be accepted as evidence of some degree of self-awareness."

Robots built afterward, (given the pretend scientific name ''Machina docilis'') had a simple single celled "brain," in which they could be taught simple behaviors similar to Ivan Pavlov's dogs, some of these included, being hit meant food, whistle means food, and whistle means being hit, when he added another, this could become whistle means being hit, whistle means food, this would make the animals become "afraid" whenever food was presented.

Later versions of ''Machina spectulatrix'' were exhibited at the Festival of Britain in 1951. Walter stressed the importance of using purely analogue electronics to simulate brain processes at a time when his contemporaries such as Alan Turing and John Von Neumann were all turning towards a view of mental processes in terms of digital computation. His work inspired subsequent generations of robotics researchers such as Rodney Brooks, Hans Moravec and Mark Tilden. Modern incarnations of Walter's ''turtles'' may be found in the form of BEAM robotics.

An original tortoise as seen at the Festival of Britain is on display in London UK in the Science Museum's Making the Modern World gallery. Recently, one was also replicated by Dr. Owen Holland, of the University of the West of England in 1995 - using some of the original parts. A specimen of a second generation turtle is also in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

Books and articles

''An Electromechanical Animal'', Dialectica (1950) Vol. 4: 42—49

''An imitation of life'', Scientific American (1950) 182(5): 42—45

''A machine that learns'', Scientific American (1951) 185(2): 60—63

''The Living Brain'', New York (1953)

''The Living Brain'', Duckworth, London, 1953

''The Living Brain'', [1953], Penguin, London, 1961

''Contingent negative variation: An electrical sign of sensorimotor association and expectancy in the human brain'', Nature (1964) 203: 380-384

''Grey Walter: The Pioneer of Real Artificial Life'', Holland, Owen E. *Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Artificial Life, Christopher Langton Editor, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1997, ISBN# 0-262-62111-8, p34-44.

''Walter's world'', New Scientist, 25/7/98.

''The Tortoise and the Love Machine': Grey Walter and the Politics of Electro-encephalography', ''Hayward, Rhodri, Science in Context (2001) 14.4, pp. 615-42''

"The Curve of the Snowflake," Norton, 1956. Also published in the UK as "Further Outlook", London: Duckworth, 1956. Science Fiction novel concerning paradoxes and the Koch snowflake.

''Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light and the Dream Machine'', New York: Soft Skull Press (2003)

External links

Machina speculatrix: W. Grey Walter's history and how to reproduce Elsie using Lego.

The Grey Walter Picture Archive On-Line. University of West England.

The Grey Walter On-Line Archive. University of West England.

Brief review of Grey Walter's science-fiction novel, "The Curve of the Snowflake."

Elmer the Tortoise. The personal story of how Owen Holland reconstructed Grey Walters robot.

William Grey Walter's Machina Speculatrix a.k.a Turtle on the Beam Robotics Wiki

Category:1910 births Category:1977 deaths Category:American atheists Category:Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Category:American neuroscientists Category:Roboticists Category:History of artificial intelligence

de:William Grey Walter fr:William Grey Walter nl:William Grey Walter pt:William Grey Walter sr:Вилијам Греј Волтер

William Grey may refer to:

William Grey (Bishop of Lincoln) (died 1436), also Bishop of London

William Grey (Bishop of Ely) (died 1478)

William Grey, 13th Baron Grey de Wilton (died 1562)

William Grey, 1st Baron Grey of Werke (died 1674)

Sir William Grey (1818–1878), Governor of Bengal 1866–1871, Governor of Jamaica 1874–1877

Bill Grey, fictional character in the Starfox series

See also

Bill Gray (baseball), also known as ''Bill Grey''

William Grey Walter, neurophysioloigst

William Gray (disambiguation)

Walter John de la Mare (pronounced ), OM CH (25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners".

He was born in Kent (at 83 Maryon Road, Charlton, now part of the London Borough of Greenwich), descended from a family of French Huguenots, and was educated at St Paul's Cathedral School.

His first book, ''Songs of Childhood'', was published under the name Walter Ramal. He worked in the statistics department of the London office of Standard Oil for eighteen years while struggling to bring up a family, but nevertheless found enough time to write, and, in 1908, through the efforts of Sir Henry Newbolt he received a Civil List pension which enabled him to concentrate on writing.

De la Mare also wrote some subtle psychological horror stories; "Seaton's Aunt" and "Out of the Deep" are noteworthy examples. His 1921 novel, ''Memoirs of a Midget'', won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

The imagination

De la Mare described two distinct "types" of imagination – although "aspects" might be a better term: the childlike and the boylike. It was at the border between the two that Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest of the great poets lay.

De la Mare claimed that all children fall into the category of having a childlike imagination at first, which is usually replaced at some point in their lives. In his lecture, "Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination," he argued that children ". . . are not so closely confined and bound in by their groping senses. Facts to them are the liveliest of chameleons . . . They are contemplatives, solitaries, fakirs, who sink again and again out of the noise and fever of existence and into a waking vision." Doris Ross McCrosson summarises this passage, "Children are, in short, visionaries." This visionary view of life can be seen as either vital creativity and ingenuity, or fatal disconnection from reality (or, in a limited sense, both).

The increasing intrusions of the external world upon the mind, however, frighten the childlike imagination, which "retires like a shocked snail into its shell." From then onward the boyish imagination flourishes, the "intellectual, analytical type."

By adulthood (de la Mare proposed), the childlike imagination has either retreated for ever or grown bold enough to face the real world. Thus emerge the two extremes of the spectrum of adult minds: the mind moulded by the boylike is "logical" and "deductive". That shaped by the childlike becomes "intuitive, inductive." De la Mare's summary of this distinction is, "The one knows that beauty is truth, the other reveals that truth is beauty." Another way he puts it is that the visionary's source of poetry is within, while the intellectual's sources are without – external – in "action, knowledge of things, and experience," as McCrosson puts it. De la Mare hastens to add that this does not make the intellectual's poetry any less good, but it is clear where his own preference lies.

A note to avoid confusion: The term "imagination" in the lecture "Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination" is used to refer to both the intellectual and the visionary. To simplify and clarify his language, de la Mare generally used the more conventional "reason" and "imagination" when discussing the same idea elsewhere.

Writer Joan Aiken cites some of his short stories such as ''Almond Trees'' and ''Snow Mountains'' for their sometimes unexplained quality, which she also employs in her own work.

''Come Hither''

''Come Hither'' was an anthology, edited by De la Mare, mostly of poetry with some prose. It has a frame story, and can be read on several levels. It was first published in 1923, and was a success; further editions followed. Alongside the children's literature aspect, it also provides a selection of the leading Georgian poets (from de la Mare's perspective). It is arguably also the best account of their 'hinterland', documenting thematic concerns and a selection of their predecessors.

Supernaturalism

De la Mare was also a significant writer of ghost stories. John Clute comments that "in his long career, De la Mare seems to have published about 100 stories, of which about eighty-five have been collected. At least forty of these have supernatural content". Many of De la Mare's ghost stories can be found in the collections ''Eight Tales'', ''The Riddle and Other Stories'', ''The Connoisseur and Other Stories'', ''On the Edge'' and ''The Wind Blows Over.'' His complete short stories have now been published in three volumes issued by Giles de la Mare Publishers, London. De la Mare also wrote two supernatural novels, ''Henry Brocken'' (1904) and ''The Return'' (1910) and for children, ''The Three Mulla Mulgars'' (1910, AKA ''The Three Royal Monkeys''), described by critic Brian Stableford as a "classic animal fantasy". Boucher and McComas, however, dismissed his 1949 ''Collected Tales'', saying "we freely admit we find Mr. de la Mare's self-consciously subtle wordiness unreadable."

Family

Walter John de la Mare was born to James Edward de la Mare, a clerk at the bank of England, and Lucy Sophia Browning (James' second wife), daughter of Scottish naval surgeon and author Dr Colin Arrott Browning. The assertion that Lucy was related to poet Robert Browning has been found to be incorrect. He had two brothers, Francis Arthur Edward and James Herbert ('Bert'), and four sisters Florence Mary, Constance Eliza, Ethel (who died in infancy), and Ada Mary ('Poppy'). De la Mare was known as Jack by his family and friends as he hated the name Walter.

In 1892, De la Mare joined the Esperanza Amateur Dramatics Club, where he met and fell in love with Elfrida (Elfie) Ingpen, the leading lady. Elfie was ten years older than De la Mare. On 4 August 1899 De la Mare and Elfie, who was by then pregnant, were married. They went on to have 4 children – Richard Herbert Ingpen ('Dick'), Colin, Florence and Lucy Elfrida ('Jinnie') de la Mare. Their house at Anerley was the scene of many parties, notable for imaginative games of charades. In 1940 Elfie was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and spent the rest of her life as an invalid, eventually dying in 1943. From 1940 until his death, De la Mare lived in Montpelier Row, Twickenham, the same street where Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson had lived a century earlier. In 1947 he suffered from coronary thrombosis and died of another in 1956.

Works

Novels

''Henry Brocken'' (1904)

''The Three Mulla Mulgars'' (1910) – also published as ''The Three Royal Monkeys'' (children's novel)

''The Return'' (1910; revised edition 1922; second revised edition 1945)

''Memoirs of a Midget'' (1921)

Short story collections

''The Riddle and Other Stories'' (1923)

''Ding Dong Bell'' (1924)

''Broomsticks and Other Tales'' (1925) (children's stories)

''The Connoisseur and Other Stories'' (1926)

''On the Edge'' (1930)

''The Lord Fish'' (1930) (children's stories)

''The Walter de la Mare Omnibus'' (1933)

''The Wind Blows Over'' (1936)

''The Nap and Other Stories'' (1936)

''Stories, Essays and Poems'' (1938)

''The Best Stories of Walter de la Mare'' (1942)

''Collected Stories for Children'' (1947)

''A Beginning and Other Stories'' (1955)

''Eight Tales'' (1971)

''Walter de la Mare, Short Stories 1895–1926'' (1996), ''Walter de la Mare, Short Stories 1927–1956'' (2000), and ''Walter de la Mare, Short Stories for Children'' (2006) (''Complete edition'', ed. Giles de la Mare)

Poetry collections

''Songs of Childhood'' (1902)

''The Listeners'' (1912)

''Peacock Pie'' (1913)

''The Marionettes'' (1918)

''O Lovely England'' (1952)

''Walter de la Mare, The Complete Poems'' Giles de la Mare (1969)

Plays

''Crossings: A Fairy Play'' (1921)

Nonfiction

''Some Women Novelists of the 'Seventies'' (1929)

''Desert Islands and Robinson Crusoe'' (1930)

Anthologies edited

''Come Hither'' (1923; new and revised edition, 1928; third edition, reset and printed from new plates, 1957)

''Early one Morning, in the Spring. Chapters on children and on childhood as it is revealed in particular in early memories and in early writings.'' (1935)

''Behold, This Dreamer! Of reverie, night, sleep, dream, love-dreams, nightmare, death, the unconscious, the imagination, divination, the artist, and kindred subjects.'' (1939)

''Love'' (1943)

References in other works

De la Mare's play ''Crossings'' has an important role in Robertson Davies' novel ''The Manticore''. In 1944, when the protagonist David Staunton is sixteen, de la Mare's play is produced by the pupils of his sister's school in Toronto, Canada. Staunton falls deeply in love with the girl playing the main role – a first love which would have a profound effect on the rest of his life.

See also

List of horror fiction authors

''The Queen's Book of the Red Cross''

Notes

Sources

''Imagination of the Heart:The Life of Walter de la Mare'' (1993) Theresa Whistler

''Walter de la Mare'' (1966) Doris Ross McCrosson

External links

Walter de la Mare Society Website

Walter de la Mare in Twickenham

Walter de la Mare database

The Listeners – song based on Walter de la Mare's famous poem

Category:1873 births Category:1956 deaths Category:British poets Category:British novelists Category:British short story writers Category:British children's writers Category:British fantasy writers Category:British horror writers Category:British people of Huguenot descent Category:English poets Category:English novelists Category:English short story writers Category:English fantasy writers Category:English horror writers Category:People from Charlton, London Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:British World War I poets Category:English people of Huguenot descent Category:Deaths from thrombosis

de:Walter de la Mare es:Walter de la Mare fr:Walter de la Mare it:Walter de la Mare ja:ウォルター・デ・ラ・メア pl:Walter de la Mare ru:Де Ла Мар, Уолтер Джон sv:Walter de la Mare

name	Patrick Swayze
birth name	Patrick Wayne Swayze
birth date	August 18, 1952
birth place	Houston, Texas, U.S.
death date	September 14, 2009
death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
death cause	Pancreatic cancer
nationality	American
occupation	Actor, dancer, singer-songwriter
years active	1978–2009
spouse	Lisa Niemi(m. 1975–2009, his death)
relatives	Don Swayze (brother) }}

Patrick Wayne Swayze (; August 18, 1952 – September 14, 2009) was an American actor, dancer and singer-songwriter. He was best-known for his tough-guy roles, as romantic leading men in the hit films ''Dirty Dancing'' and ''Ghost'' and as Orry Main in the ''North and South'' television miniseries. He was named by ''People'' magazine as its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991. His film and TV career spanned 30 years.

Diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer in January 2008, Swayze told Barbara Walters a year later that he was "kicking it". However, he died from the disease on September 14, 2009. His last role was the lead in an ill-fated A&E; TV series, ''The Beast'', which premiered on January 15, 2009. Due to a prolonged decline in health, Swayze was unable to promote the series. On June 15, 2009, ''Entertainment Tonight'' announced the show's cancellation.

Early life

Patrick Swayze was born on August 18, 1952, in Houston, Texas, the second child of Patsy Yvonne Helen (née Karnes; born 1927), a choreographer, dance instructor, and dancer, and Jesse Wayne Swayze (1925–1982), an engineering draftsman. Swayze was raised Roman Catholic. He had two younger brothers, actor Don Swayze (born 1958) and Sean Kyle (born 1962), and two sisters, Vickie Lynn (1949–1994) and Bambi. He was a sixth cousin once removed of news commentator John Cameron Swayze, and a relative of noted Texas Revolution soldier Henry Karnes.

Until the age of twenty, Swayze lived in the Oak Forest neighborhood of Houston, where he attended St. Rose of Lima Catholic School, Oak Forest Elementary School, Black Middle School, and Waltrip High School. During this time, he also pursued multiple artistic and athletic skills, such as ice skating, classical ballet, and acting in school plays. He played football for his high school and was hoping to receive a football scholarship for college until a knee injury ended his career. He studied gymnastics at nearby San Jacinto College for two years.

In 1972, he moved to New York City to complete his formal dance training at the Harkness Ballet and Joffrey ballet schools.

Career

Swayze's first professional appearance was as a dancer for Disney on Parade. He then starred as a replacement playing the role of Danny Zuko in the long-running Broadway production of ''Grease'' before his debut film role as "Ace" in ''Skatetown, U.S.A.''. He appeared as Pvt. Sturgis in the ''M*A*S*H'' episode "Blood Brothers" and had a brief stint in 1982 on a short lived TV series ''The Renegades'' playing a gang leader named Bandit. Swayze became known to the film industry after appearing in ''The Outsiders'' as the older brother of C. Thomas Howell and Rob Lowe. Swayze, Howell, and Howell's friend Darren Dalton reunited in ''Red Dawn'' the next year, and Lowe and Swayze reunited in ''Youngblood''. He was considered a member of the Brat Pack. His first major success was in the 1985 television miniseries ''North and South'', which was set during the American Civil War.

Swayze's breakthrough role came with his performance as dance instructor Johnny Castle in the 1987 film ''Dirty Dancing'', alongside his ''Red Dawn'' co-star, Jennifer Grey. ''Dirty Dancing'', a coming of age story, was a low-budget film that was intended to be shown in theaters for one weekend only and then go straight to video, but it became a surprise hit and achieved massive international success. It was the first film to sell one million copies on video, and as of 2009, it earned over $214 million worldwide and spawned several alternate versions, ranging from a television series to stage productions to a computer game. Swayze received a Golden Globe Award nomination for the role and also sang one of the songs on the soundtrack, "She's Like the Wind", which he had originally co-written with Stacy Widelitz for the film ''Grandview, U.S.A.'' The song became a top ten hit and has been covered by other artists.

After ''Dirty Dancing'', Swayze found himself typecast and appeared in several flops, of which ''Road House'' was the most successful. His biggest hit came in 1990, when he starred in ''Ghost'', with Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg. In 1991, he starred alongside ''Youngblood'' cast mate Keanu Reeves in another major action hit, ''Point Break'', and was also chosen by ''People'' magazine as that year's "Sexiest Man Alive".

Swayze was seriously injured in 1998 while filming HBO's ''Letters from a Killer'' near Ione, California when he fell from a horse and hit a tree. Both of his legs were broken and he suffered four detached tendons in his shoulder. Filming was suspended for two months, but the film aired in 1999. Swayze recovered from his injuries, but he had trouble resuming his career until 2000, when he co-starred in ''Waking Up in Reno'', with Billy Bob Thornton and Charlize Theron, and in ''Forever Lulu'', with Melanie Griffith.

In 2001, he appeared in ''Donnie Darko'', where he played a motivational speaker and closet pedophile, and in 2004, he played Allan Quartermain in ''King Solomon's Mines''. He also had a cameo appearance in the ''Dirty Dancing'' sequel, ''Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights'' as an unnamed dance instructor.

Swayze made his West End theatre début in the musical ''Guys and Dolls'' as Nathan Detroit on July 27, 2006, alongside Neil Jerzak, and remained in the role until November 25, 2006. His previous appearances on the Broadway stage had included productions of ''Goodtime Charley'' (1975) and ''Chicago''

Swayze also provided the voice for Cash the country music band dog in ''The Fox and the Hound 2'' and in 2007 starred in the film ''Christmas in Wonderland''. Swayze played an aging rock star in ''Powder Blue'', co-starring his younger brother Don in their first film together. Swayze starred in the A&E; FBI drama ''The Beast'', filmed in Chicago, as FBI Agent Charles Barker.

Personal life

Swayze was married to Lisa Niemi from June 12, 1975, until his death. The couple first met in 1970 when Swayze was 18 years old. Niemi, 14 years old at the time, was taking dance lessons from Swayze's mother. Swayze and Niemi had no children. In a 2008 interview, Swayze stated that Niemi was the inspiration for his 1987 hit song, "She's Like the Wind".

As a reaction to his father's death at age 57 from a heart attack in 1982, Swayze began to drink heavily. In 1989, Swayze said, "I've always felt there was something different in there (my personality), but I was scared to look for fear I wouldn't find anything. That's the reason I got into Buddhism, took est training, was into therapy, into Scientology, into Transcendental Meditation. I was trying to support that side of myself. But, you know, in Texas there isn't much support for that part of you." His sister Vicky committed suicide by drug overdose in 1994, leading him to seek treatment for alcoholism. After initial recovery, he temporarily withdrew from show business, retreating to his ranches in California and Las Vegas, New Mexico, to breed Arabian horses. His best-known horse was Tammen, a chestnut Arabian stallion.

Swayze, who was a certified pilot with an instrument rating, made the news on June 1, 2000, while flying with his dogs in his twin-engine Cessna from Van Nuys, California to Las Vegas. His plane developed a pressurization problem, causing Swayze to make a precautionary landing on a dirt road in a housing complex in Prescott Valley. The plane's right wing struck a light pole, but Swayze was unharmed. He locked the cockpit, left the aircraft in the subdivision, and obtained a ride—with his dogs—from a passing vehicle, allegedly in order to telephone the authorities. According to the police report, witnesses said that Swayze appeared to be extremely intoxicated and asked for help to remove evidence—an open bottle of wine and a 30-pack of beer—from the crash site. He made himself unavailable to police for several hours. It was later determined that the alcohol in question was not in the cabin, but stored in external storage compartments inaccessible in flight and that the probable cause of the accident was Swayze's physical impairment due to the cumulative effects of carbon monoxide from engine exhaust by-products, carbon monoxide from heavy tobacco use, and the loss of an undetermined amount of cabin pressurization.

Illness and death

Swayze was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer in late January 2008, and underwent chemotherapy and treatment with an experimental drug Vatalanib to cut off the blood supply to the tumor at the Stanford University Medical Center. On March 5, 2008, a Reuters article reported that Swayze "has a very limited amount of disease, and he appears to be responding well to treatment thus far." Swayze's doctor confirmed that the actor was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but insisted he was not as close to death as reports suggest. Despite repeated tabloid claims that his death was imminent, Swayze continued to actively pursue his career. Specifically, Swayze was diagnosed with a type of pancreatic tumor called intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm.

In early May 2008, it was widely reported in a number of tabloids that Swayze had undergone surgery to remove part of his stomach after the spread of the cancer and that he had rewritten his will, transferring his property to his wife. In a statement made on May 28, Swayze said that he continued to respond well to treatment at Stanford University Medical Center. In late May 2008, he was seen at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game, his first public appearance since his diagnosis. In 2008 Swayze was treated with Cyberknife radiotherapy cancer treatment.

In late July 2008, six months after reportedly being given just weeks to live by medical experts, a healthy-appearing Swayze was asked by reporter in Los Angeles airport about this health. He replied, "I'm cooking. I'm a miracle dude. I don't know why".

Swayze appeared on the ABC, NBC, and CBS simulcast of ''Stand Up to Cancer'' in September 2008, to appeal to the general public for donations for the initiative. Swayze said to a standing ovation "I dream that the word 'cure' will no longer be followed by the words 'it's impossible'. Together, we can make a world where cancer no longer means living with fear, without hope, or worse". After the show ended, Swayze remained on-stage and talked to other cancer patients; executive producer Laura Ziskin said, "He said a beautiful thing: 'I'm just an individual living with cancer'. That's how he wants to be thought of. He's in a fight, but he's a fighter". In late 2008, Swayze denied claims made by tabloids that the cancer had spread to his liver. Swayze told Barbara Walters in January 2009 that he wanted the media to report that he was "kicking it".

When Barbara Walters asked him if he was using any holistic or alternative methods of treatment besides the chemotherapy, Swayze admitted to using some Chinese herbs, but not much. He then voiced his opposition to the unsupported claims made by proponents of alternative therapies, as noted by ABC News journalist Joseph Brownstein:

: ''Because of the grim prognosis, many patients turn to alternative therapies without scientific evidence behind them. Swayze did not.''

:: "That's one thing I'm not gonna do, is chase, is chase staying alive. I'm not, you know, you'll spend so much time chasing staying alive you won't live, you know? I wanna live. If anybody had that cure out there like so many people swear to me they do, you'd be two things: you'd be very rich, and you'd be very famous. Otherwise, shut up," ''he told Barbara Walters in an interview that aired in January of [2009].''

His last role was the lead in an A&E; TV series, ''The Beast'', which premiered on January 15, 2009. Owing to a prolonged decline in health, Swayze was unable to promote the series, and on June 15, 2009, ''Entertainment Tonight'' reported that the show had been cancelled. In an interview with Barbara Walters which aired in January 2009, Swayze admitted that he had a "tiny little mass" in his liver. On January 9, 2009, Swayze was hospitalized with pneumonia. The pneumonia was said to be a complication of chemotherapy treatments for Swayze's cancer. On January 16, he was released from the hospital to rest at home with his wife. On April 19, 2009, doctors informed Swayze that the cancer had again metastasized to his liver. Swayze stated that his chain smoking probably "had something to do with" the development of his disease. Photos taken of a gaunt Swayze in the months before his death showed him continuing to smoke.

Swayze died "with family at his side" on September 14, 2009, at age 57 (coinicidentally, the same age as his father), 20 months after being diagnosed. Swayze's publicist, Annett Wolf, confirmed to CNN that he had died of pancreatic cancer. He was cremated and his ashes scattered over his New Mexico ranch. He is survived by Lisa Niemi, his wife of 34 years.

Cultural impact

Swayze's name has become a commonly-used term in hip hop songs. Lyrics will use the phrase "...and I'm Swayze," meaning that the speaker has become "like a ghost", meaning he disappeared or is otherwise gone. This is a reference to the title character of Swayze's 1990 film ''Ghost''. It is known to have begun in the early 1990s, by prominent rappers such as EPMD, Black Sheep, CL Smooth, and more recently by such rappers as The Notorious B.I.G. in 2Pac's song ''Runnin' (Dying to Live)'', Method Man, Aesop Rock, and in Mistah F.A.B.'s ''Ghost Ride It''. The expression has become such a hip hop staple that it was even used in the Saturday Night Live hip hop parody, ''Lazy Sunday''.

Filmography

style="background: #B0C4DE;"	Year	Title	Role	Notes
1979	''Skatetown, U.S.A.''	Ace Johnson
1981	''M*A*S*H (TV series)''	Pvt. Gary Sturgis	TV Series Season 9 Episode 18 - "Blood Brothers"
	''Uncommon Valor''	Kevin Scott
	Darrel "Darry" Curtis
	''Red Dawn''	Jed Eckert
''Grandview, U.S.A.''	Ernie "Slam" Webster
1985		Orry Main	TV miniseries
		Derek Sutton
	Orry Main	TV miniseries
	''Dirty Dancing''	Johnny Castle	Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
''Steel Dawn''	Nomad
1988	''Tiger Warsaw''	Chuck "Tiger" Warsaw
		Truman Gates	Nominated – Razzie Award for Worst Actor (also for ''Road House'')
	Dalton	Nominated – Razzie Award for Worst Actor (also for ''Next of Kin'')
		Sam Wheat	Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or ComedyNominated – Saturn Award for Best Actor
''Saturday Night Live''	Guest Host, Oct. 27, 1990	Memorable for sketch with Chris Farley auditioning to be Chippendales dancers
1991	''Point Break''	Bodhi	Nominated – MTV Movie Award for Most Desirable Male
1992		Max Lowe
1993	''Father Hood''	Jack Charles
1994		Orry Main	TV miniseriesUncredited; archive footage from previous episodes
		Pecos Bill
	Jack McCloud
''To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar''	Vida Boheme	Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
	''Letters from a Killer''	Race Darnell
	Jack Crews
2000	''Forever Lulu''	Ben Clifton
	''Donnie Darko''	Jim Cunningham
	Gunnery Sergeant Jim Lance
2002	''Waking Up in Reno''	Roy Kirkendall
		Travis MacPhearson	Directed by his wife, Lisa
''11:14''	Frank
	''Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights''	Dance class instructor	Prequel to ''Dirty Dancing''
	Garth
	Allan Quatermain
	''Keeping Mum''	Lance
	Jason Monk
2006	''The Fox and the Hound 2''	Cash (voice)	Animated film
		Richard Pressburger
''Christmas in Wonderland''	Wayne Saunders
		Velvet Larry
	Charles Barker	TV series

References

External links

Remembering Patrick Swayze - slideshow by ''LIFE'' magazine

Category:1952 births Category:2009 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Actors from Texas Category:American dancers Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Deaths from pancreatic cancer Category:People from Houston, Texas Category:People self-identifying as alcoholics

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name	Barbara Walters
birthname	Barbara Jill Walters
birth date	September 25, 1929
birth place	Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
occupation	JournalistTelevision talk show host
years active	1961–present
religion	Judaism
spouse	Robert Henry Katz(1955-1958; annulled)Lee Guber(1963-1976; divorced)Merv Adelson (1981-1984; divorced)Merv Adelson(1986-1992; divorced)
children	Jacqueline Dena Guber Danforth
credits	''Today'' show anchor (1961–1976)''Not For Women Only'' host (1971–1976)''ABC Evening News'' anchor (1976–1978)''20/20'' host (1984–2004)''The View'' creator/co-host (1997–present)
salary	$12 million (2007) }}

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

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

Early life

Walters was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Louis "Lou" Walters and his wife, Dena Seletsky, both of whom were Jewish and descendants of refugees from the former Russian Empire, now Eastern Europe. Walters' paternal grandfather, Isaac Abrahams, was from what is now Łódź, Poland, and first immigrated to England, changing his name to Abraham Walters. Walters' father was born there c. 1896, and moved to the United States with his family in 1900. In 1937, her father opened the New York version of the Latin Quarter; he also was a Broadway producer (he produced the ''Ziegfeld Follies of 1943''). He also was the Entertainment Director for the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he imported the "Folies Bergere" stage show from Paris to the resort's main showroom. Walters' brother, Burton, died in 1932 of pneumonia. Walters' elder sister, Jacqueline, was born mentally disabled and died of ovarian cancer in 1985. Barbara has another half sister, Walda Walters Anderson born to a different mother and Barbara's father, Lou Walters. Walda is now a communications executive.

According to Walters, being surrounded by celebrities when she was young kept her from being "in awe" of them. When she was a young woman, Walters' father lost his nightclubs and the family's penthouse on Central Park West. As Walters recalled, "He had a breakdown. He went down to live in our house in Florida, and then the Government took the house, and they took the car, and they took the furniture." Of her mother, she said, "My mother should have married the way her friends did, to a man who was a doctor or who was in the dress business."

After attending Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Birch Wathen Lenox School private schools in New York City, Walters graduated from Miami Beach High School in 1947. In 1951 she received a B.A. in English from Sarah Lawrence College.

Career and accolades

After a brief period as a publicist with Tex McCrary Inc. and a job as a writer at CBS News, Walters joined NBC's ''The Today Show'' as a writer and researcher in 1961. She moved up to become that show's regular "Today Girl," handling lighter assignments and the weather. In her autobiography, she describes this era before the Women's Movement as a time when it was believed that nobody would take a woman seriously reporting "hard news". Previous "Today Girls" (whom Walters called "tea pourers") included Florence Henderson, Helen O'Connell, Estelle Parsons and Lee Meriwether. Within a year she had become a reporter-at-large developing, writing, and editing her own reports and interviews. When Frank McGee was named host, he refused to do joint interviews with Walters unless he was given the first four questions. She was not named co-host of the show until McGee's death in 1974, when NBC officially designated Walters as the program's first female co-host.

Walters has seldom minced words when describing the visible, on-the-air disdain her co-anchor, Harry Reasoner, displayed for her when she was teamed up with him on the ''ABC Evening News'' in 1976-78. Reasoner had a difficult relationship with Walters because he disliked having a co-anchor, even though he worked with former CBS colleague Howard K. Smith nightly on ABC for several years. In 1981, five years after the start of their short-lived ABC partnership and well after Reasoner returned to CBS News, Walters and her former co-anchor had a memorable (and cordial) ''20/20'' interview on the occasion of Reasoner's new book release.

Walters is also known for her years on the ABC newsmagazine ''20/20'' where she joined host Hugh Downs in 1979. Throughout her career at ABC, Walters has appeared on ABC news specials as a commentator, including presidential inaugurations and the coverage of 9/11. She was also chosen to be the moderator for the third and final debate between candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, held at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia, during the 1976 Presidential Election. In 1984, she moderated a Presidential debate held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. Many of her regular and special programs are syndicated around the world. As of 2004, she is in semi-retirement as a broadcast journalist, but remains a correspondent for ABC News as well as a host of ABC's special programs.

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

In the fall of 2008, she was honored with the Disney Legends award, an award given to those who made an outstanding contribution to The Walt Disney Company, which owns the network ABC. That same year, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Women's Agenda.

On September 21, 2009, Walters was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 30th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards at New York City's Lincoln Center.

Interviews

On March 7, 2010, Barbara Walters announced she would no longer hold Oscar interviews, but will still be working with ABC and on her show, ''The View.''

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

Walters is known for "personality journalism" and her "scoop" interviews. In November 1977, she achieved a joint interview with Egypt's President, Anwar Al Sadat, and Israel's Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. Her interviews with world leaders from all walks of life are a chronicle of the latter part of the 20th century. They include the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his wife the Empress Farah Pahlavi; Russia's Boris Yeltsin; China's Jiang Zemin; the UK's Margaret Thatcher; Cuba's Fidel Castro, as well as India's Indira Gandhi, Václav Havel, Muammar al-Gaddafi, King Hussein of Jordan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez among many others. Other interviews with influential people include pop icon Michael Jackson, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Wintour, and in 1980 Lord Olivier. Walters considered Dr. Robert Smithdas, a deaf-blind man who spent his life improving the life of other individuals who are deaf-blind, as her most inspirational interview.

Walters was widely lampooned in 1981 (and often since) for having posed the question, during an interview with actress Katharine Hepburn: "If you were a tree, what kind would you be?" But as she has often pointed out (and the video clips confirm) Hepburn initiated the discussion by saying that she would like to be a tree, and Walters merely followed up with the question, "What kind of a tree?"

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

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

''The View''

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

In 2007 Barbara defended co-host O'Donnell about remarks the latter made against Donald Trump and the winner of the Miss USA pageant. Trump firmly responded by saying, "Barbara is off the list..."

Personal life

Walters has been married four times to three different men. "I'm convinced that you stay married when the sex is bad, only because you really want to be," she told ''The New York Times'' in 1996. "But I always had an out. I had this job, and this life and enough money. I didn't have to fight the bad days." Her husbands were: Robert Henry Katz, a business executive and former Navy lieutenant. They married on June 20, 1955, at The Plaza Hotel in New York City. The marriage was reportedly annulled in 1958.

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

Merv Adelson, the CEO of Lorimar Television. They married in 1981 and divorced in 1984 and were married again on May 10, 1986, and divorced in 1992.

She reportedly dated gay lawyer Roy Cohn in college, and the lawyer said that he proposed marriage to Walters the night before her wedding to Lee Guber, but Walters denied this. She explained her lifelong devotion to Cohn as gratitude for his help in her adoption of her daughter, Jacqueline. In her autobiography, Walters says that Cohn got her father's warrant for "failure to appear" dismissed.

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

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

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

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

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

Walters has been close friends with Fox News head Roger Ailes since the late 1960s.

Books

In the late 1960s, Walters wrote a magazine article, ''How to Talk to Practically Anyone About Practically Anything'', which drew upon the kinds of things people said to her, which were often mistakes. Shortly after the article appeared, she received a letter from Doubleday expressing interest in expanding it into a book. Walters felt that it would help "tongue-tied, socially awkward people — the many people who worry that they can't think of the right thing to say to start a conversation." She published the book in 1970, with the assistance of ghostwriter June Callwood. To Walters' great surprise, the book was a phenomenon. As of 2008, it had gone through eight printings, sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, and had been translated into at least 6 different languages.

In 2008, she published her autobiography, ''Audition: A Memoir''.

Awards and nominations

Daytime Emmy Awards

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

1998 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

1998 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

1999 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

1999 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2000 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2000 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2001 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2001 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2002 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2002 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2003 Award for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2003 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2004 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2004 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2005 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2005 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2006 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2006 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2007 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2007 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

2008 Nomination for Best Talk Show (''The View'')

2008 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

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

2010 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (''The View'')

NAACP Image Award

2009 Award for Best Talk Series (''The View'')

2010 Nomination for Best Talk Series

Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Award 1998 Lucy Award in recognition of her excellence and innovation in her creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television.

See also

Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People

References

External links

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

Excerpts from 2008 autobiography, ''Audition: A Memoir''

Barbara Walters Archive of American Television Interview

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

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