Sir Walter Leaf (26 November 1852, Norwood, Middlesex – 8 March 1927, Torquay) was an English banker and classical scholar. He published a benchmark translation of Homer's Iliad and was a director of Westminster Bank for many years, eventually becoming its chairman. He was a co-founder and later president of the International Chamber of Commerce, and served as president of the Institute of Bankers, the Hellenic Society and the Classical Association. He married Charlotte Symonds, daughter of John Addington Symonds.

Academic career[link]

Walter Leaf was born at on 26 November 1852 and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge.^[1] He won a scholarship to Trinity in 1870, became senior classic in 1874 and was elected to a fellowship the following year.^[2] He was concerned with uncovering the physical reality of the classical world, in contrast to the Cambridge Ritualists,^[2] and was the foremost Homer scholar of his generation.^[3] His translation of the Iliad was published in two volumes (1886-1888)^[2] and was regarded for several decades as the best English edition of Homer's epic poem.^[2] Leaf also translated works from Russian and Persian, and was fluent in several European languages, including French, Italian and German.^[3] He was president of the Hellenic Society and the Classical Association.

Banking[link]

In 1877 he entered the family textile firm, becoming in 1888 chairman of Leaf & Company Ltd. In 1892 Leaf & Co merged with Pawson & Co to become Pawsons and Leafs Limited. Walter became a director of what would become Westminster Bank in 1891, and its chairman from 1918 until his death.^[3] From 1919 to 1921 he was president of the Institute of Bankers. He worked tirelessly for the International Chamber of Commerce, of which he was a co-founder in 1919 and elected president in 1925.^[3]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Books by Walter Leaf - Complete books from Project Gutenberg
• Works by Walter Leaf at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Walter Leaf in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Walter Matthau
in Charade (1963)
Born	Walter John Matthow (1920-10-01)October 1, 1920 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	July 1, 2000(2000-07-01) (aged 79) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Heart attack
Resting place	Westwood Village Memorial Park
Residence	Santa Monica, California
Nationality	American
Other names	Grumpy Old Man, Walter Matuschanskayasky, Walter J. Matthau
Education	Seward Park High School
Alma mater	The New School
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1948–2000
Notable work(s)	The Odd Couple, The Bad News Bears, The Fortune Cookie, I.Q., Grumpy Old Men
Home town	Manhattan, New York City, NY
Height	6' 2" (1.89 m)
Religion	Jewish
Spouse	Grace Geraldine Johnson (1948–58; divorced) Carol Grace (1959–2000; his death)
Children	Charles Matthau, Jenny Matthau, David Matthau
Parents	Milton Matthau, Rose (née Berolsky) Matthau
Awards	Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award, Golden Globe Award

Walter Matthau (October 1, 1920 – July 1, 2000) was an American actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon, as well as his role as Coach Buttermaker in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears. He won an Academy Award for his performance in the 1966 Billy Wilder film The Fortune Cookie.

Early life[link]

Matthau was born Walter John Matthow^[1][2] in New York City's Lower East Side on October 1, 1920, the son of Rose (née Berolsky; from Lithuania), who worked in a sweatshop, and Milton Matthow, an electrician and peddler (from Russia), both Jewish immigrants.^[3][4][5] His surname has often incorrectly been listed as Matuschanskayasky (see below for a detailed discussion). As a young boy, Walter attended a Jewish non-profit sleepaway camp, Tranquillity Camp, where he first began acting in the shows the camp would stage on Saturday nights. He also attended Surprise Lake Camp. His high school was Seward Park High School.^[6]

Career[link]

During World War II, Matthau served in the U.S. Army Air Forces with the Eighth Air Force in England as a B-24 Liberator radioman-gunner, in the same 453rd Bombardment Group as James Stewart. He reached the rank of staff sergeant and became interested in acting. He took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator. He often joked that his best early review came in a play where he posed as a derelict. One reviewer said, "The others just looked like actors in make-up, Walter Matthau really looks like a skid row bum!" Matthau was a respected stage actor for years in such fare as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and A Shot in the Dark. He won the 1962 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a play.

In 1952, Matthau appeared in the pilot of Mr. Peepers with Wally Cox. For reasons unknown he used the name Leonard Elliot. His role was of the gym teacher Mr. Wall. In 1955, he made his motion picture debut as a whip-wielding bad guy in The Kentuckian opposite Burt Lancaster.

Matthau in Charade, 1963

Matthau appeared as a villain in subsequent movies, such as 1958's King Creole (in which he is beaten up by Elvis Presley). That same year, he made a western called Ride a Crooked Trail with Audie Murphy and Onionhead starring Andy Griffith and Erin O'Brien, which was a flop. Matthau had a featured role opposite Griffith in the well received drama A Face in the Crowd, directed by Elia Kazan. Matthau also directed a low-budget 1960 movie called The Gangster Story. In 1962, he was a sympathetic sheriff in Lonely are the Brave, which starred Kirk Douglas. He appeared opposite Audrey Hepburn in Charade.

Matthau and Audrey Hepburn in Charade, 1963

Appearances on television were common too, including two on ABC's police drama, Naked City, as well as the 1963 episode "A Tumble from a Tall White House" of The Eleventh Hour. He appeared eight times between 1962 and 1964 on The DuPont Show of the Week and as Franklin Gaer in 1964 in the episode "Man Is a Rock" on Dr. Kildare. Lastly, he starred in the syndicated crime drama Tallahassee 7000, as a Florida-based state police investigator, in the 1961-1962 season.

Comedies were rare in Matthau's work at that time. He was cast in a number of stark dramas, such as 1964's Fail-Safe, in which he portrayed Pentagon adviser Dr. Groeteschele, who urges all out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in response to an accidental transmission of an attack signal to U.S. Air Force bombers, in the tense, and timely cold-war thriller.

In 1965, however, a plum comedy role came Matthau's way when Neil Simon cast him in the hit play The Odd Couple playing the slovenly sportswriter Oscar Madison opposite Art Carney as Felix Unger. Matthau would later join Jack Lemmon in the movie version. Also in 1965, he played detective Ted Casselle in the Hitchcockian thriller Mirage, with Gregory Peck and Diane Baker, a film directed by Edward Dmytryk, based on a novel by Howard Fast.

He achieved great film success in a 1966 comedy as a shyster lawyer called "Whiplash Willie" Gingrich starring opposite Lemmon in The Fortune Cookie, the first of numerous collaborations with Billy Wilder, and a role that would earn him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Filming had to be placed on a five-month hiatus after Matthau suffered a heart attack.

Matthau was visibly banged up during the Oscar telecast, having been involved in a bicycle accident, nonetheless he scolded actors who had not bothered to come to the ceremony, especially the other major award winners that night: Elizabeth Taylor, Sandy Dennis and Paul Scofield.

Oscar nominations would come Matthau's way again for 1972's Kotch, directed by Lemmon, and 1975's The Sunshine Boys, another Simon vehicle transferred from the stage, this one about a pair of former vaudeville stars. For the latter role he won a Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.

Broadway hits turned into films continued to cast Matthau in the leads with 1969's Hello, Dolly! and that same year's Cactus Flower, for which co-star Goldie Hawn received an Oscar. He played three different roles in the 1971 film version of Simon's Plaza Suite and was in the cast of its followup California Suite in 1978.

Matthau in Hello, Dolly!, 1969

Matthau starred in three crime dramas in the mid-1970s, as a detective investigating a mass murder on a bus in The Laughing Policeman, as a bank robber on the run from the Mafia and the law in Charley Varrick and as a New York transit cop in the action-adventure The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. A change of pace about misfits on a Little League baseball team turned out to be a solid hit in 1976 when Matthau starred as coach Morris Buttermaker in the comedy The Bad News Bears

In 1982, Matthau portrayed Herbert Tucker in I Ought to Be in Pictures. There he worked with Ann-Margret and Dinah Manoff, the daughter of the actress whom Matthau starred with in Plaza Suite, Lee Grant.

Matthau played Albert Einstein in the film "IQ", also starring Tim Robbins and Meg Ryan.

Matthau and Art Carney in The Odd Couple, 1965

His partnership with Lemmon became one of the most successful pairings in Hollywood. They became lifelong friends after making The Fortune Cookie and would make a total of 10 movies together—11 counting Kotch, in which Lemmon has a cameo as a sleeping bus passenger. Aside from their many comedies, each appeared (though not on screen together) in the 1991 Oliver Stone drama about the presidential assassination, JFK.

They had a surprise box-office hit in the comedy Grumpy Old Men, reuniting for a sequel, Grumpier Old Men, that co-starred Sophia Loren and Ann-Margret. That led to more pairings late in their careers, notably Out to Sea and a Simon-scripted sequel to one of their great successes, The Odd Couple II. Hanging Up, "I'm Not Rappaport"(1996)was also one of his best and a 2000 film directed by Diane Keaton, was Matthau's final appearance on screen.

Personal life[link]

Marriages[link]

Matthau was married twice; first to Grace Geraldine Johnson from 1948 to 1958, and then from 1959 until his death in 2000 to Carol Marcus. He had two children, Jenny and David, by his first wife, and a second son, Charlie Matthau, with his second wife. David is a radio news reporter, currently at WKXW "New Jersey 101.5" in Trenton, New Jersey. Jenny is president of the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City. Matthau also helped raise his stepchildren, Aram Saroyan and Lucy Saroyan. His grandchildren include William Matthau, an engineer, and Emily Rose Roman, a student at SUNY Binghamton. Charlie Matthau directed his father in The Grass Harp (1995).

Death[link]

Walter Matthau's grave

Matthau died of a heart attack in Santa Monica on July 1, 2000. He was 79 years old. After undergoing heart surgery years earlier, doctors discovered that he had colon cancer, which, by the time of his death, had spread to his liver, lungs, and brain. His remains are interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Less than a year later, remains of Jack Lemmon (who died of colon and bladder cancer) were buried at the same cemetery. After Matthau's death, Lemmon as well as other friends and relatives had appeared on Larry King Live in an hour of tribute and remembrance; many of those same people appeared on the show one year later, reminiscing about Lemmon.

Carol Marcus, also a native of New York, died of a brain aneurysm in 2003. Her remains are buried next to Matthau's.

The remains of actor George C. Scott are also buried next to those of Walter Matthau, in an unmarked grave.

Jokey pseudonyms[link]

There have been persistent but erroneous beliefs about Matthau's birth name. Among the names that have been incorrectly asserted as having been the name he was born under are Matuschanskayasky, Matashansky and Matansky. As reported by the authors of Matthau: A Life by Rob Edelman and Audrey Kupferberg (along with Charlie Matthau), Walter Matthau often told tall tales. In his youth, he found that the joy of embellishment lifted a story (and the listener) to such enjoyable heights that he could not resist trying to pass off the most bogus of information, just to see who was gullible enough to believe it. Matthau told many stories to many reputable people, including, reportedly, the Social Security Administration. When he registered for a number, he was amazed that they only wanted him to write his name, and offer no proof of his identity. So, as another of his traditional goofs, he wrote that his true name was "Walter Foghorn Matthau". The rumor that his birth name was "Matuschanskayasky" was given additional credence by the release of the 1974 film Earthquake in which Matthau had agreed to provide a cameo performance without compensation on the condition that he not be credited under his real name. His character was credited to Walter Matuschanskayasky. Though this was a jokey pseudonym, its appearance in the film's end credits contributed to the urban legend that this was his real name. As recently as 2009, this erroneous information appeared in the World Almanac section on "Original Names of Selected Entertainers" (p. 278).

Work[link]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Mel Gussow (2 July 2000). "Walter Matthau, 79, Rumpled Star and Comic Icon, Dies". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E4D81539F931A35754C0A9669C8B63. Retrieved 2008-05-11. 

External links[link]

• Walter Matthau at the Internet Broadway Database
• Walter Matthau at the Internet Movie Database
• Walter Matthau at the TCM Movie Database

Robert Walter may refer to:

• Robert Walter (politician) (born 1948), British Conservative Member of Parliament
• Robert Walter (musician), keyboard player
• Robert Walter (editor), editor and executive with not-for-profit organizations
• Robert D. Walter, American businessman

See also[link]

• All pages beginning with "Robert Walter"
• Robert Walters (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2012)

Walter Brennan
Brennan in Meet John Doe (1941)
Born	Walter Andrew Brennan (1894-07-25)July 25, 1894 Lynn, Massachusetts, US
Died	September 21, 1974(1974-09-21) (aged 80) Oxnard, California, US
Cause of death	Emphysema
Resting place	San Fernando Mission Cemetery
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Rindge Technical High School
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1925–1974
Spouse	Ruth Wells (m. 1920–1974; his death)
Children	Andrew Brennan, Ruth Brennan, Arthur Brennan
Awards	3 Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor

Walter Brennan (July 25, 1894 – September 21, 1974) was an American actor.^[1] Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most Oscar wins by a male actor, tied with Jack Nicholson.

Early life[link]

Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, less than two miles from his family's home in Swampscott,^[2] Walter Andrew Brennan was the second of three children born to Irish immigrants William John Brennan and Margaret Elizabeth Flanagan. The elder Brennan was an engineer and inventor, and young Walter studied engineering at Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

While in school, Brennan became interested in acting, and began to perform in vaudeville. While working as a bank clerk, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a private with the 101st Field Artillery Regiment in France during World War I.^[2][3] Following the war, he moved to Guatemala and raised pineapples, before settling in Los Angeles. During the 1920s, he became involved in the real estate market, where he made a fortune. Unfortunately, he lost most of his money when the market took a sudden downturn due to the Great Depression.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

Finding himself broke, he began taking extra parts in 1929 and then bit parts in as many films as he could, including The Invisible Man (1933), the Three Stooges short Woman Haters (1934), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and also worked as a stunt man. In the 1930s, he began appearing in higher-quality films and received more substantial roles as his talent was recognized. This culminated with his receiving the very first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Swan Bostrom in the period film Come and Get It (1936). Two years later he portrayed town drunk and accused murderer Muff Potter in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Throughout his career, Brennan was frequently called upon to play characters considerably older than he was in real life. The loss of many teeth in a 1932 accident, rapidly thinning hair, thin build, and gravelly voice all made him seem older than he really was. He used these physical features to great effect. In many of his film roles, Brennan wore dentures; in Northwest Passage—a film set in the late 18th century, when most people had bad teeth—he wore a special dental prosthesis which made him appear to have rotting and broken teeth.

Director Jean Renoir gave the character actor a leading role in 1941: Brennan played the top-billed lead in Swamp Water, a drama directed by Renoir and featuring Walter Huston.

Brennan in Affairs of Cappy Ricks

In the 1941 Sergeant York, he played a sympathetic preacher and dry goods store owner who advised the title character played by Gary Cooper. He was particularly skilled in playing the hero's sidekick or as the "grumpy old man" as in To Have or Have Not, mostly a Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall performance, but with several scenes with Brennan. Though he was hardly ever cast as the villain, notable exceptions were his roles as 'Old Man Clanton' in the 1946 film My Darling Clementine opposite Henry Fonda, the 1962 Cinerama production How the West Was Won as the murderous Colonel Jeb Hawkins, and as Judge Roy Bean in The Westerner, for which he won his third best supporting actor Academy Award, in 1940.

From 1957-1963, he starred in the ABC television series The Real McCoys. The comedy about a poor West Virginia family that relocated to a farm in southern California ran on ABC from 1957 to 1962 before switching to CBS for a final season as simply The McCoys. Brennan joined with the series creator, Irving Pincus, to form Brennan-Westgate-Marterto Productions.

Brennan appeared in several other movies and television programs, usually, as an eccentric "old timer" or "prospector". Prior to the launching of The Real McCoys, Brennan appeared as himself as a musical judge in the 1953-1954 ABC series Jukebox Jury. On May 30, 1957, he guest starred on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.^[4] He also made a few recordings, the most popular being "Old Rivers" about an eccentric but much-beloved farmer; it was released as a single in 1962 by Liberty Records with "The Epic Ride Of John H. Glenn" on the flip side, and peaked at number 5 in the U.S. Billboard charts. In his music, Brennan sometimes worked with Allen "Puddler" Harris, a Louisiana native who was a member of the original Ricky Nelson Band. He also co-starred with James Garner in the 1969 Support Your Local Sheriff!, playing the head of the Danby Family.

Brennan in the trailer of Rio Bravo

Brennan starred as wealthy executive Walter Andrews in the short-lived 1964-1965 series The Tycoon, with Van Williams. In 1967, he starred in another series, The Guns of Will Sonnett, in which he played a man in search of his gunfighter son, James, with his grandson, Jeff, played by Dack Rambo. After the series went off the air in 1969, Brennan continued working in both television and feature films. He received top billing over Pat O'Brien in the TV-movie The Over-the-Hill Gang in 1969 and Fred Astaire in The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again the following year. From 1970 to 1971, he was a regular on the show To Rome With Love, which was his last TV show as a member of the permanent cast.

Legacy[link]

Film historians and critics have long regarded Brennan as one of the finest character actors in motion picture history. While the roles he was adept at playing were extremely diverse, he is probably best remembered for his portrayals in movie Westerns, such as trail hand Nadine Groot in Red River and Deputy Stumpy in Rio Bravo both directed by Howard Hawks. He was the first actor to win three Academy Awards. He remains the only person to have won three Best Supporting Actor awards. However, even he remained somewhat embarrassed as to how he won the awards. In the early years of the Academy Awards, extras were given the right to vote. Brennan was extremely popular with the Union of Film Extras and since their numbers were overwhelming, each time he was nominated, he won. Though never described as undeserving of the awards he won, his third win was one of the catalysts leading to the disenfranchisement of the Extras Union from Oscar voting.

Unlike many actors, Brennan's career never really went into decline. As the years went on, he was able to find work in dozens of high quality films, and later television appearances throughout the 1950s and 60s. As he grew older, he simply became a more familiar, almost comforting film figure whose performances continued to endear him to new generations of fans. In all, he would appear in more than 230 film and television roles in a career spanning nearly five decades.

For his contribution to the television industry, Walter Brennan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6501 Hollywood Blvd. In 1970, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where his photograph adorns a wall.

Private life[link]

Brennan was politically conservative. In 1963 and 1964, Brennan joined fellow actors William Lundigan, Chill Wills, and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., in making appearances on behalf of U.S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater, the Republican nominee in the campaign against U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.^[5] Brennan thereafter supported American Independent Party candidate (and former governor of Alabama) George C. Wallace, Jr., over GOP nominee and former Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign because he felt Nixon was too liberal. He also supported Ronald W. Reagan for governor of California in 1966.

In one of his films, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968), Brennan portrayed a Democratic supporter of U.S. President Grover Cleveland. Buddy Ebsen, who played Brennan's son in the film, was depicted as a supporter of Cleveland's 1888 rival, Benjamin Harrison. In the comedy film, Brennan disparaged Ebsen's character as "never too bright for he was a gol-dern Republican". Both Brennan and Ebsen were outspoken Hollywood Republicans.

Death[link]

Upon his death from emphysema at the age of eighty in Oxnard in Ventura County, Brennan's remains were interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles. Brennan was married to the former Ruth Wells (December 8, 1897 – January 12, 1997),^[6] whom he married in 1920. The Brennans had a daughter and two sons.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

Singles[link]

Academy Awards[link]

Partial filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Walter Brennan

• Walter Brennan at the Internet Movie Database
• Walter Brennan at the TCM Movie Database
• Walter Brennan at AllRovi
• Walter Brennan at Find a Grave
• The Golden Years

Jess Walter
Jess Walter in 2009
Born	(1965-07-20) July 20, 1965 (age 46) Spokane, Washington, United States
Occupation	Author

Jess Walter (born July 20, 1965^[1]) is an American author of five novels. His work has been published in fifteen countries and translated into thirteen languages.

Career[link]

Walter is also a career journalist, whose work has appeared in Newsweek, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. As a reporter he covered the Randy Weaver/Ruby Ridge case for the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper and authored a book about the case, Every Knee Shall Bow (revised edition titled Ruby Ridge).^[2] He also writes short stories, essays and screenplays and was the co-author of Christopher Darden’s 1996 bestseller In Contempt. His 2006 novel The Zero was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Family[link]

Walter lives with his wife Anne and children, Brooklyn, Ava and Alec in his childhood home of Spokane, Washington. He is an alumnus of Eastern Washington University.

Bibliography[link]

Novels[link]

• Over Tumbled Graves (2001)
• The Land of the Blind (2003)
• Citizen Vince (2005)
• The Zero (2006)
• The Financial Lives of the Poets (2009)

Non-fiction[link]

• Every Knee Shall Bow (1995) (re-released as Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family in 2002)
• In Contempt (co-authored with Christopher Darden) (1996)

Awards[link]

• 2006 : Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel Citizen Vince.
• 2006 : National Book Award Finalist for best novel The Zero.
• 2006 : Finalist for Washington State Book Award in Fiction for The Zero
• 2007 : Finalist for Washington State Book Award in Fiction for Citizen Vince
• 2011 : Finalist for Washington State Book Award in Fiction for The Financial Lives of the Poets

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Jess Walter website
• Fantastic Fiction - Jess Walter

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This article about a novelist of the United States born in the 1960s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e