Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore, 1896
Born	Ethel Mae Blythe (1879-08-15)August 15, 1879 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	June 18, 1959(1959-06-18) (aged 79) Los Angeles, California
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1895–1957
Spouse	Russel Griswold Colt (m.1909-1923; divorced)

Ethel Barrymore (August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors.^[1]

Early life[link]

Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore (whose real name was Herbert Blythe) and Georgiana Drew. Named after her father’s favorite character—Ethel in William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Newcomes—she was one of the twentieth century’s most elegant, beautiful and gifted actresses.

She was the sister of actors John Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore, the aunt of actor John Drew Barrymore, and the great-aunt of actress Drew Barrymore. She was also the niece of Broadway matinée idol John Drew Jr and early Vitagraph movie star Sidney Drew.

She spent her childhood in Philadelphia, and attended Roman Catholic schools there.

Career[link]

Ethel Barrymore was a highly regarded stage actress in New York City and a major Broadway performer. Many today consider her to be the greatest actress of her generation.

Her first appearance in Broadway was in 1895, in a play called The Imprudent Young Couple which starred her uncle John Drew, Jr. and Maude Adams. She appeared with Drew and Adams again in 1896 in Rosemary.

In 1897 Ethel went with William Gillette to London to play Miss Kittridge in Gillette's Secret Service. The play, Gillette’s greatest work, was a huge success, but Ethel remained pretty much beneath everyone's radar scopes until one night when the leading actress, Odette Taylor, became ill and went home, still dressed in her costume. Ethel was standing in the wings in her nurse’s costume when the theater manager told her she would have to replace Taylor, dressed as she was. Ethel protested that she didn’t know Ms. Taylor’s part, but she went out in her nurse’s uniform and carried the show. It was a splendid performance, and she was noticed.

She was about to return to the States with Gillette's troupe when Henry Irving and Ellen Terry offered her the role of Annette in The Bells. A full London tour was on and, before it was over, Ethel created, on New Years Day 1898, Euphrosine in Peter the Great at the Lyceum, the play having been written by Irving's son, Laurence. Men everywhere were smitten with Ethel, most notably young Winston Churchill, who asked her to marry him. Not wishing to be a politician's wife, she refused. Winston, several years later, married Clementine Hozier, a ravishing beauty who looked very much like Ethel, but Winston and Ethel remained friends until the end of her life. Their “romance” was their own little secret until his son let the cat out of the bag 63 years after it happened.^[2]

After her big season in London, Ethel returned to America. Charles Frohman cast her first in Catherine and then as Stella de Grex in His Excellency the Governor. After that, Frohman finally gave Ethel the role that would make her a star: Madame Trentoni in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, which opened at the Garrick Theatre on February 4, 1901. Unbeknownst to Ethel, her father Maurice had witnessed the performance as an audience member and walked up to his daughter, congratulated her and gave her a big hug. It was the first and only time he saw her on stage. When the tour concluded in Boston in June, she had out-drawn two of the most prominent actresses of her day, Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Minnie Maddern Fiske.

Following her triumph in Captain Jinks, Ethel gave sterling performances in many top-rate productions, and it was in Sunday that she uttered what would be her most famous line, "That's all there is, there isn't any more."^[3]

Ethel portrayed Nora in A Doll's House by Ibsen (1905), and Juliet in Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare (1922).

Barrymore playing the male character Carrots in a play of the same name, 1902

Ethel Barrymore in 1901 in one of the famous dresses from Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines

She was also a strong supporter of the Actors' Equity Association and had a high-profile role in the 1919 strike. In 1926, she scored one of her greatest successes as the sophisticated spouse of a philandering husband in W. Somerset Maugham's comedy, The Constant Wife. She starred in Rasputin and the Empress (1932), with John and Lionel Barrymore, playing the Czarina married to Czar Nicholas. In July 1934, she starred in the play Laura Garnett, by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, at Dobbs Ferry, New York State.

After she became a stage star, she would often dismiss adoring audiences who kept demanding curtain calls by saying "That's all there is—there isn't any more!" This became a popular catch phrase in the 1920s and 1930s. Many references to it can be found in the media of the period, including the Laurel and Hardy 1933 film Sons of the Desert, and Arthur Train's 1930 Wall Street Crash novel Paper Profits.

Barrymore was a baseball and boxing fan. Her admiration for boxing ended when she witnessed as a spectator the brutality of the July 4, 1919, Dempsey/Willard fight in which Dempsey broke Willard's jaw and knocked out several of his teeth. Ethel vowed never to attend another boxing match though she would later watch boxing on television.

In 1928, the Shuberts opened the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, which operates under that name to the present day.

Film and TV career[link]

Barrymore appeared in her first motion picture, The Nightingale, in 1914. Members of her family were already in pictures; uncle Sidney Drew, his wife Gladys Rankin and Lionel had entered films in 1911 and John made his first feature in 1913. She made 15 silent pictures between 1914 and 1919 most of them for the old Metro studio. Most of these pictures were made on the East Coast, as her Broadway career and children came first. All of her silent films are lost with the exception of The Awakening of Helena Ritchie (1916) which survives at the Library of Congress and The Call of Her People (1917) held at George Eastman House, Rochester.^[4][5] In the 1940s, she moved to Hollywood, California. As children she and her brothers put on amateur or home made plays together often with Lionel the hero and John the villain, Ethel of course being the heroine. The only two films that featured all three siblings—Ethel, John and Lionel—were National Red Cross Pageant (1917) and Rasputin and the Empress (1932). The former film is now considered a lost film.

She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1944 film None but the Lonely Heart opposite Cary Grant, but made plain that she was not overly impressed by it. On March 22, 2007, her Oscar was offered for sale on eBay.

She appeared in The Spiral Staircase (1946) directed by Robert Siodmak, The Paradine Case (1947) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and Portrait of Jennie (1948), among others. Her last film appearance was in Johnny Trouble (1957). She also made a number of television appearances in the 1950s, including one memorable encounter with comedian Jimmy Durante on NBC's All Star Revue on December 1, 1951 (preserved on a kinescope). In 1956, she hosted 14 episodes of a TV series Ethel Barrymore Theatre, produced by the DuMont Television Network and presented on the DuMont flagship station WABD just as the network was folding. Unfortunately none of the episodes were preserved on kinescope. A 1952 appearance on What's My Line survives however in addition to several radio broadcasts.

In 1949, Barrymore appeared in the Academy Award winning film Pinky for which she was awarded an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Private life[link]

Ethel Barrymore by Carl Van Vechten (December 12, 1937)

Ethel Barrymore, husband Russell Griswold Colt and their three children, circa 1914.

Winston Churchill was among the closest of many of Barrymore's dear friends. Some have claimed Churchill proposed to her in 1900; however, Barrymore mentions no such thing in her autobiography, Memories. She had, at the age of 19, while on tour in England, been rumored to be engaged to the Duke of Manchester, actor Gerald Du Maurier, writer Richard Harding Davis and the aforementioned Churchill.^[6]

Ethel Barrymore married Russell Griswold Colt (1882–1923), grandnephew of American arms maker Samuel Colt (1814–1862), on March 14, 1909. The couple had been introduced, according to Barrymore's autobiography, when Colt had strolled by the table where she was having lunch with her uncle, actor John (Jack) Drew, in Sherry's Restaurant in New York.^[7] A New York Times article of 1911, when Barrymore first took preliminary divorce measures against Colt, states that Colt had been introduced to Barrymore by her brother John Barrymore some years before while Colt was still a student at Yale.^[8] The couple had three children: actress/singer Ethel Barrymore Colt (1912–1977), who appeared on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim's Follies; Samuel Colt (1909–1986); and John Drew Colt (1913–1975).

Barrymore's marriage to Colt was a precarious one from the start, with Barrymore filing divorce papers as early in the marriage as 1911, much to Colt's surprise, and later recanted by Barrymore as a misunderstanding by the press. At least one source, a servant, alleged that Colt abused her and also that he fathered a child with another woman while married to Barrymore. They divorced in 1923 and, quite surprisingly, she did not seek alimony from Colt for herself, which was her right but she demanded that his entailed wealth still provide for their children.

Ethel Barrymore did not remarry. She had platonic relationships with other men, most notably actors Henry Daniell and Louis Calhern.

Death[link]

Ethel Barrymore died of cardiovascular disease in 1959, at her home in Hollywood, California, after having lived for many years with a heart condition. She was two months shy of her 80th birthday. She was entombed at Calvary Cemetery. The Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City is named after her.^[9]

Filmography[link]

See also[link]

Biography portal

• List of people on the cover of Time Magazine: 1920s – 10 Nov. 1924

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ethel Barrymore

• Ethel Barrymore at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ethel Barrymore at the Internet Movie Database
• Ethel Barrymore at AllRovi
• Ethel Barrymore photo gallery NYP Library
• with brother Lionel on his last film, Main Street to Broadway 1953
• Ethel Barrymore; PeriodPaper
• Ethel Barrymore guest appearance on Whats My Line October 12, 1952

Cary Grant
Cary Grant in a 1941 publicity still
Born	Archibald Alexander Leach (1904-01-18)January 18, 1904 Bristol, England, United Kingdom
Died	November 29, 1986(1986-11-29) (aged 82) Davenport, Iowa, United States
Cause of death	Cerebral hemorrhage
Other names	Archie Leach
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1932–1966
Spouse	Virginia Cherrill (1934–1935) Barbara Hutton (1942–1945) Betsy Drake (1949–1962) Dyan Cannon (1965–1968) Barbara Harris (1981–1986)
Partner	Maureen Donaldson (1973–1977)[1]
Children	Jennifer Grant, born on (1966-02-26) February 26, 1966 (age 46)
Awards	Academy Honorary Award - 1970 For his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues. Kennedy Center Honors - 1981

Archibald Alexander Leach^[2] (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English-American actor.^[3] Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor and "dashing good looks", Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men.

Grant was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. Noted particularly for his work in comedy but also for drama, Grant's best-known films include The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gunga Din (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), To Catch A Thief (1955), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).

Nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Penny Serenade (1941) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), and five times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, Grant was continually passed over, and in 1970 was given an Honorary Oscar at the 42nd Academy Awards. Frank Sinatra presented Grant with the award, "for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues".^[4][5]

Early life and career[link]

Archibald Alexander Leach was born at 15 Hughenden Road, Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria Kingdon (1877–1973) and Elias James Leach (1873–1935).^[6][7] An only child, Leach had an unhappy upbringing, attending Bishop Road Primary School. His mother had suffered from clinical depression since the death of a previous child. Her husband placed her in a mental institution, and told his nine-year-old son only that she had gone away on a "long holiday". Believing she was dead, Grant did not learn otherwise until he was 31 and discovered her alive in a care facility.^[8] When Grant was 10, his father abandoned him after remarrying and having a baby with his new young wife.^[9]

Grant was expelled from the Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918. After joining the "Bob Pender Stage Troupe", Leach performed as a stilt walker and travelled with the group to the United States in 1920 at the age of 16, on a two-year tour of the country. He was processed at Ellis Island on July 28, 1920.^[10]

When the troupe returned to the UK, he decided to stay in the U.S. and continue his stage career. During this time, he became a part of the vaudeville world and toured with Parker, Rand and Leach. Still using his birth name, he performed on the stage at The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri in such shows as Irene (1931); Music in May (1931); Nina Rosa (1931); Rio Rita (1931); Street Singer (1931); The Three Musketeers (1931); and Wonderful Night (1931). Leach's experience on stage as a stilt walker, acrobat, juggler, and mime taught him "phenomenal physical grace and exquisite comic timing" and the value of teamwork, skills which would benefit him in Hollywood.^[8]

Hollywood stardom[link]

After appearing in several musicals on Broadway under the name "Archie Leach,"^[11] Grant went to Hollywood in 1931.^[8] When told to change his name, he proposed "Cary Lockwood," the name of the character he had played in the Broadway show Nikki, based upon the recent film The Last Flight. He signed with Paramount Pictures, where studio bosses decided that the name "Cary" was acceptable, but that "Lockwood" was too similar to another actor's surname. Paramount gave their new actor a list of surnames to choose from, and he selected "Grant" because the initials C and G had already proved lucky for Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, two of Hollywood's biggest movie stars.

Grant appeared as a leading man opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (1932), and his stardom was given a further boost by Mae West when she chose him for her leading man in two of her most successful films, She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel (both 1933).^[12] I'm No Angel was a tremendous financial success and, along with She Done Him Wrong, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, saved Paramount from bankruptcy. Paramount put Grant in a series of unsuccessful films until 1936, when he signed with Columbia Pictures. His first major comedy hit was when he was loaned to Hal Roach's studio for the 1937 Topper (which was distributed by MGM).

in The Philadelphia Story (1940)

The Awful Truth (1937) was a pivotal film in Grant's career, establishing for him a screen persona as a sophisticated light comedy leading man. As Grant later wrote, "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point." Grant is said to have based his characterization in The Awful Truth on the mannerisms and intonations of the film's director, Leo McCarey, whom he resembled physically. As writer/director Peter Bogdanovich notes, "After The Awful Truth, when it came to light comedy, there was Cary Grant and then everyone else was an also-ran."

With Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946)

The Awful Truth began "what would be the most spectacular run ever for an actor in American pictures."^[8] During the next four years, Grant appeared in several classic romantic comedies and screwball comedies, including Holiday (1938), Bringing Up Baby (1939), and The Philadelphia Story (1940) with Katharine Hepburn; His Girl Friday(1940) with Rosalind Russell; and My Favorite Wife (1940), which reunited him with Irene Dunne, his co-star in The Awful Truth. During this time he also made the adventure films Gunga Din and Only Angels Have Wings (both 1939) and dramas Penny Serenade (1941, also with Dunne) and Suspicion (1941, the first of Grant's four collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock).

Grant remained one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions for almost 30 years.^[8] Howard Hawks said that Grant was "so far the best that there isn't anybody to be compared to him".^[13] David Thomson called him "the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema".^[8]

as John Robie in Alfred Hitchcock's
To Catch a Thief (1955)

Grant was a favorite of Hitchcock, who called him "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life".^[14] Besides Suspicion, Grant appeared in the Hitchcock classics Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955) and North by Northwest (1959). Biographer Patrick McGilligan wrote that, in 1965, Hitchcock asked Grant to star in Torn Curtain (1966), only to learn that Grant had decided to retire after making one more film, Walk, Don't Run (1966); Paul Newman was cast instead, opposite Julie Andrews.^[15]

In the mid-1950s, Grant formed his own production company, Granart Productions, and produced a number of movies distributed by Universal, such as Operation Petticoat (1959), Indiscreet (1958), That Touch of Mink (co-starring with Doris Day, 1962), and Father Goose (1964). In 1963, he appeared opposite Audrey Hepburn in Charade. His last feature film was Walk, Don't Run three years later, with Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton.

In Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959)

Grant was the first actor to "go independent" by not renewing his studio contract, effectively leaving the studio system,^[8] which almost completely controlled what an actor could or could not do. In this way, Grant was able to control every aspect of his career, at the risk of not working because no particular studio had an interest in his career long term. He decided which movies he was going to appear in, he often had personal choice of the directors and his co-stars and at times even negotiated a share of the gross revenue, something uncommon at the time. Grant received more than $700,000 for his 10% of the gross for To Catch a Thief, while Hitchcock received less than $50,000 for directing and producing it.^[16]

Grant was nominated for two Academy Awards, for Penny Serenade (1941) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), but never won a competitive Oscar; he received a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1970. Accepting the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1965, Father Goose co-writer Peter Stone had quipped, "My thanks to Cary Grant, who keeps winning these things for other people." In 1981, Grant was accorded the Kennedy Center Honors.

Never self-absorbed, Grant poked fun at himself with statements such as, "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant—even I want to be Cary Grant,"^[17] sometimes elaborating, "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point." He poked fun at himself in ad-lib lines - such as in the film "His Girl Friday", saying, "I never had so much fun since Archie Leach died" and in "Arsenic and Old Lace" a gravestone is seen bearing the name Archie Leach. According to an extremely famous story now believed to be apocryphal, after seeing a telegram from a magazine editor to his agent asking "How old Cary Grant?" Grant reportedly responded with "Old Cary Grant fine. How you?"^[18][19]

Retirement and death[link]

Statue of Cary Grant in Millennium Square, Bristol, England

Cary Grant retired from the screen at 62 when his daughter Jennifer was born, in order to focus on raising her and to provide a sense of permanency and stability in her life. While raising his daughter, he archived artifacts of her childhood and adolescence in a (bank quality) room sized vault he had installed in the house. His daughter attributed this meticulous collection to the fact that artifacts of his own childhood had been destroyed during the bombing of Bristol in World War II (an event that also claimed the lives of his uncle, aunt and cousin as well as the cousin's husband and grandson) and he may have wanted to prevent her from experiencing a similar loss.^[20]

Although Grant had retired from the screen, he remained active in other areas. In the late 1960s, he accepted a position on the board of directors at Fabergé. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed; Grant regularly attended meetings and his mere appearance at a product launch would almost certainly guarantee its success. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother, Dyan Cannon, was working. He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park^{[disambiguation needed ]}, The Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle, Hollywood, CA) Western Airlines (now Delta Air Lines), and MGM.^[21]

In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States in a one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. Grant was preparing for a performance at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa on the afternoon of November 29, 1986 when he sustained a cerebral hemorrhage (he had previously suffered a stroke in October 1984). He died at 11:22 pm^[21] in St. Luke's Hospital at the age of 82. The bulk of his estate, worth millions of dollars, went to his fifth wife Barbara Harris and his daughter Jennifer Grant.^[22]

In 2001 a statue of Grant was erected in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to the harbour in his city of birth, Bristol, England.

In November 2005, Grant came in first in the "The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time" list by Premiere Magazine.^[23] Richard Schickel, the film critic, said about Grant: "He's the best star actor there ever was in the movies."^[24]

Personal life[link]

Second wife Barbara Hutton

Grant was married five times. He wed Virginia Cherrill on February 10, 1934. She divorced him on March 26, 1935, following charges that Grant had hit her. In 1942 he married Barbara Hutton, one of the wealthiest women in the world, and became a father figure to her son, Lance Reventlow. The couple was derisively nicknamed "Cash and Cary", although in an extensive prenuptial agreement Grant refused any financial settlement in the event of a divorce.^{[citation needed]} After divorcing in 1945, they remained lifelong friends. Grant always bristled at the accusation that he married for money: "I may not have married for very sound reasons, but money was never one of them."^{[citation needed]}

Wife Betsy Drake in trailer of her film with Grant, Every Girl Should Be Married (1948)

On December 25, 1949, Grant married Betsy Drake. He appeared with her in two films. This would prove to be his longest marriage, ending on August 14, 1962. Drake introduced Grant to LSD, and in the early 1960s he related how treatment with the hallucinogenic drug — legal at the time — at a prestigious California clinic had finally brought him inner peace after yoga, hypnotism and mysticism had proved ineffective.^[25][26][27] Grant and Drake divorced in 1962.

He eloped with Dyan Cannon on July 22, 1965, in Las Vegas. Their daughter, Jennifer Grant, was born prematurely on February 26, 1966. He frequently called her his "best production" and regretted that he had not had children sooner. The marriage was troubled from the beginning, and Cannon left him in December 1966, claiming that Grant flew into frequent rages and spanked her when she "disobeyed" him. The divorce, finalized in 1968, was bitter and public, and custody fights over their daughter went on for nearly ten years.

On April 11, 1981, Grant married long-time companion Barbara Harris, a British hotel public relations agent, who was 47 years his junior. They renewed their vows on their fifth wedding anniversary. (Fifteen years after Grant's death, Harris married former Kansas Jayhawks All-American quarterback David Jaynes in 2001.)^[28]

Some, including Hedda Hopper^[29] and screenwriter Arthur Laurents, have said that Grant was bisexual, the latter writing that Grant "told me he threw pebbles at my window one night but was luckless".^[30] Grant allegedly was involved with costume designer Orry-Kelly when he first moved to Manhattan,^[31] and lived with actor Randolph Scott off and on for twelve years. Richard Blackwell wrote that Grant and Scott were "deeply, madly in love",^[32] and alleged eyewitness accounts of their physical affection have been published.^[31] Alexander D'Arcy, who appeared with Grant in The Awful Truth, said he knew that Grant and Scott "lived together as a gay couple", adding: "I think Cary knew that people were saying things about him. I don't think he tried to hide it."^[31] The two men frequently accompanied each other to parties and premieres and were unconcerned when photographs of them cozily preparing dinner together at home were published in fan magazines.^[31]

Barbara, Grant's widow, has disputed that there was a relationship with Scott.^[21] When Chevy Chase joked about Grant being gay in a television interview Grant sued him for slander; they settled out of court.^[33] However, Grant did admit in an interview that his first two wives had accused him of being homosexual.^[33] Betsy Drake commented: "Why would I believe that Cary was homosexual when we were busy fucking?"^[21]

Politics[link]

Cary Grant

Grant did not think movie stars should publicly make political declarations.^[34] Grant described his politics and his reticence about them this way:

"I'm opposed to actors taking sides in public and spouting spontaneously about love, religion, or politics. We aren't experts on these subjects. Personally I'm a mass of inconsistencies when it comes to politics. My opinions are constantly changing. That's why I don't ever take a public stand on issues."^[35]

Throughout his life, Grant maintained personal friendships with colleagues of varying political stripes, and his few political activities seemed to be shaped by personal friendships. Repulsed by the human costs to many in Hollywood, Grant publicly condemned McCarthyism in 1953, and when his friend Charlie Chaplin was blacklisted, Grant insisted that the actor's artistic value outweighed political concerns.^[35] Grant was also a friend of the Kennedy brothers and Robert Kennedy's press secretary Frank Mankiewicz. He hosted one of Robert Kennedy's first political fundraisers at his home. He made one of his rare statements on public issues following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, calling for gun control.^[35]

In 1976, after his retirement from movies, Grant made his one overtly partisan appearance, introducing his friend Betty Ford, the First Lady, at the Republican National Convention,^[34] but even in this he maintained some distance from partisanship, speaking of "your" party, rather than "ours" in his remarks.^[35]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography of cited references[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Cary Grant

• Media related to Cary Grant at Wikimedia Commons
• Cary Grant at the Internet Movie Database
• Cary Grant at AllRovi
• Cary Grant at the TCM Movie Database
• Cary Grant at the Internet Broadway Database
• Becoming Cary Grant (in Atlantic Magazine)
• Cary Grant's christening record, and his appearance in the 1911 England/Wales Census, 1920 US immigration, and Social Security Death index in 1986

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. (April 2010)

John Masefield
John Masefield
Born	(1878-06-01)1 June 1878 Ledbury, Herefordshire England
Died	12 May 1967(1967-05-12) (aged 88)
Occupation	poet, writer
Nationality	English
Period	1902–1967
Genres	poetry, children's novels

John Edward Masefield, OM, (1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967. He is remembered as the author of the classic children's novels The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, and poems, including "The Everlasting Mercy" and "Sea-Fever".

Life[link]

Early life[link]

Masefield was born in Ledbury in Herefordshire, to Caroline and George Masefield, a solicitor. His mother died giving birth to his sister when Masefield was only six, and he went to live with his aunt. His father died soon after following a mental breakdown.^[1] After an unhappy education at the King's School in Warwick (now known as Warwick School), where he was a boarder between 1888 and 1891, he left to board the HMS Conway, both to train for a life at sea, and to break his addiction to reading, of which his aunt thought little. He spent several years aboard this ship and found that he could spend much of his time reading and writing. It was aboard the Conway that Masefield's love for story-telling grew. While on the ship, he listened to the stories told about sea lore. He continued to read, and felt that he was to become a writer and story teller himself.

In 1894, Masefield boarded the Gilcruix, destined for Chile - this first voyage bringing him the experience of sea sickness. He recorded his experiences while sailing through the extreme weather, his journal entries reflecting a delight in seeing flying fish, porpoises, and birds, and was awed by the beauty of nature, including a rare sighting of a nocturnal rainbow on his voyage. On reaching Chile, Masefield suffered from sunstroke and was hospitalized. He eventually returned home to England as a passenger aboard a steam ship. In 1895, Masefield returned to sea on a windjammer destined for New York City. However, the urge to become a writer and the hopelessness of life as a sailor overtook him, and in New York, he deserted ship. He lived as a vagrant for several months, before returning to New York City, he did many odd jobs, finding work as an assistant to a bar keeper.

Sometime around Christmas in 1895, Masefield read the December 1895 edition of Truth, a New York periodical, which contained the poem "The Piper of Arll" by Duncan Campbell Scott.^[2] Ten years later, Masefield wrote to Scott to tell him what reading that poem had meant to him: "I had never (till that time) cared very much for poetry, but your poem impressed me deeply, and set me on fire. Since then poetry has been the one deep influence in my life, and to my love of poetry I owe all my friends, and the position I now hold."^[3]

For the next two years, Masefield was employed in a carpet factory, where long hours were expected and conditions were far from ideal. He purchased up to 20 books a week, and devoured both modern and classical literature. His interests at this time were diverse and his reading included works by George du Maurier, Dumas, Thomas Browne, Hazlitt, Dickens, Kipling, and R. L. Stevenson. Chaucer also became very important to him during this time, as well as poetry by Keats and Shelley. He eventually returned home to England in 1897 ^[4] as a passenger aboard a steam ship. When Masefield was 23, he met his future wife, Constance Crommelin, who was 35. Educated in classics and English Literature, and a mathematics teacher, Constance was a match for Masefield despite the difference in age. The couple had two children (Judith, born in 1904, and Lewis, in 1910).^[5]

By 24, Masefield's poems were being published in periodicals and his first collected works, Salt-Water Ballads (1902) was published, the poem "Sea-Fever" appearing in this book. Masefield then wrote the novels, Captain Margaret (1908) and Multitude and Solitude (1909). In 1911, after a long drought of poem writing, he composed "The Everlasting Mercy", the first of his narrative poems, and within the next year, Masefield had produced two more, "The Widow in the Bye Street" and "Dauber". As a result, Masefield became widely known to the public and was praised by critics, and in 1912, he was awarded the annual Edmond de Polignac prize.^[6]

World War I to appointment as Poet Laureate[link]

When World War I began, though old enough to be exempted from military service, Masefield joined the staff of a British hospital for French soldiers, Hôpital Temporaire d'Arc-en-Barrois, Haute-Marne, France, serving briefly in 1915 as a hospital orderly, later publishing his own account of his experiences.

After returning home, Masefield was invited to the United States on a three month lecture tour. Although Masefield's primary purpose was to lecture on English Literature, a secondary purpose was to collect information on the mood and views of Americans regarding the war in Europe. When he returned to England, he submitted a report to the British Foreign Office, and suggested that he be allowed to write a book about the failure of the allied efforts in the Dardanelles, which possibly could be used in the US in order to counter what he thought was German propaganda there. As a result, Masefield wrote Gallipoli. This work was a success, encouraging the British people, and lifting them somewhat from the disappointment they had felt as a result of the Allied losses in the Dardanelles. Due to the success of his wartime writings, Masefield met with the head of British Military Intelligence in France and was asked to write an account of the Battle of the Somme. Although Masefield had grand ideas for his book, he was denied access to the official records, and therefore, what was to be his preface to the book was published as "The Old Front Line", a description of the geography of the Somme area.

In 1918, Masefield returned to America on his second lecture tour. Masefield spent much of his time speaking and lecturing to American soldiers waiting to be sent to Europe. These speaking engagements were very successful, and on one occasion, a battalion of all black soldiers danced and sang for him after his talk. During this tour, he matured as a public speaker and realized his ability to touch the emotions of his audience with his style of speaking, learning to speak publicly with his own heart, rather than from dry scripted speeches. Towards the end of his trip, both Yale and Harvard Universities conferred honorary Doctorates of Letters on him.

Masefield entered the 1920s as an accomplished and respected writer. His family was able to settle on Boar's Hill, a somewhat rural setting not far from Oxford, and Masefield took up beekeeping, goat-herding and poultry-keeping. He continued to meet with success, the 1923 edition of "Collected Poems" selling approximately 80,000 copies. He produced three poems early in this decade. The first was Reynard The Fox, a poem that has been critically compared with works of Geoffrey Chaucer. This was followed by Right Royal and King Cole, poems where the relationship of humanity and nature emphasized. While Reynard is the best known of these, all met with acclaim.

After King Cole Masefield turned away from the long poem and back to the novel, and from 1924 till the Second World War published twelve novels, which vary from stories of the sea (The Bird of Dawning, Victorious Troy) to social novels about modern England (The Hawbucks, The Square Peg), and from tales of an imaginary land in Central America (Sard Harker, Odtaa) to fantasies for children (The Midnight Folk, The Box of Delights). This variety in genre testifies most impressively to the breadth of his imagination, though it probably reduced his sales (which remained very respectable, however), since most readers of novels like knowing what to expect from their favourite authors. In this same period he wrote a large number of dramatic pieces. Most of these were based on Christian themes, and Masefield, to his amazement, encountered a ban on the performance of plays on biblical subjects that went back to the Reformation and had been revived a generation earlier to prevent production of Oscar Wilde's Salome. However, a compromise was reached, and in 1928 his "The Coming of Christ" was the first play to be performed in an English Cathedral since the Middle Ages.^[7]

In 1921, Masefield received an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from Oxford University, and in 1923, organized the Oxford Recitations, an annual contest whose purpose was "to discover good speakers of verse and to encourage ‘the beautiful speaking of poetry.’" The Recitations were seen as a success given the numbers of contest applicants, the promotion of natural speech in poetical recitations, and the number of people learning how to listen to poetry. Masefield began to question however, whether the Recitations should continue as a contest, believing that the event should become more of a festival. In 1929, Masefield broke with the contest concept, and the Recitations came to an end.

Later years and death[link]

In 1930, on the death of Robert Bridges, a new Poet Laureate was needed. Many felt that Rudyard Kipling was a likely choice, however, upon the recommendation of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, King George V appointed Masefield, who remained in office until his death in 1967. The only person to remain in the office for a longer period was Tennyson. On his appointment The Times newspaper said of him his poetry could touch to beauty the plain speech of everyday life ^[8] In 1932, Masefield was commissioned to write a poem to be set to music by the Master of the King's Musick, Sir Edward Elgar and performed by choir and orchestra at the unveiling of the Queen Alexandra Memorial by the King on 8 June 1932. For this he wrote the ode "So many true Princesses who have gone". Although the requirements of Poet Laureate had changed, and those in the office were rarely required to write verse for special occasions, Masefield took his appointment seriously and produced a large quantity of verse. Poems composed in his official capacity were sent to The Times. Masefield's humility was shown by his inclusion of a stamped envelope with each submission so that his composition could be returned if it were found unacceptable for publication.

After his appointment, Masefield received the Order of Merit by King George V and many honorary degrees from British universities, in 1937 being elected as President of the Society of Authors. Masefield encouraged the continued development of English literature and poetry, and began the annual awarding of the Royal Medals for Poetry for a first or second published edition of poetry by a poet under the age of 35. Additionally, his speaking engagements were calling him further away, often on much longer tours, yet he still produced significant amounts of work in a wide variety of genres. To those he had already used he now added autobiography, producing New Chum, In the Mill, and So Long to Learn. Some critics judged Masefield to be an even finer writer of prose than of verse.

It was not until about the age of 70, that Masefield slowed his pace due to illness. In 1960, Constance died at 93, after long illness. Although her death was heartrending, he had spent a tiring year watching the woman he loved die. He continued his duties as Poet Laureate; In Glad Thanksgiving, his last book, was published when he was 88 years old. In late 1966, Masefield developed gangrene in his ankle. This spread to his leg, and he died of the infection on 12 May 1967. According to his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes placed in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Later, the following verse was discovered, written by Masefield, addressed to his "Heirs, Administrators, and Assigns":

<poem> Let no religious rite be done or read In any place for me when I am dead, But burn my body into ash, and scatter The ash in secret into running water, Or on the windy down, and let none see; And then thank God that there's an end of me.^[9] </poem>

The Masefield Centre at Warwick School, which Masefield attended, and a high school in Ledbury, Herefordshire have been named in his honour. In 1977, Folkways Records released an album of his poetry, including some read by Masefield himself.^[10]

Art song settings[link]

Many of Masefield's short poems were set as art songs by British composers of the time.^[11] Best known by far is John Ireland's "Sea Fever", the lasting popularity of which belies any mismatch between the urgency of the language and the slow, swung melody.^[12] Frederick Keel crafted several songs drawn from the Salt-Water Ballads and elsewhere. Of these, "Trade Winds" was particularly popular in its day,^[13] despite the tongue-twisting challenges the text presents to the singer.^[14] Keel's defiant setting of "Tomorrow", written while interned at Ruhleben during World War I,^[13] was frequently programmed at the BBC Proms after the war.^[15] Another memorable wartime composition is Ivor Gurney's climactic declamation of "By a bierside", a setting quickly set down in 1916 during a brief spell behind the lines.^[16]

Selected works[link]

References[link]

1. ^ Masfield Biography
2. ^ The Piper of Arll
3. ^ John Coldwell Adams, "Duncan Campbell Scott", Confederation Voices, Canadian Poetry, 30 March 2011.
4. ^ Stapleton, M; The Cambridge Guide to English Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p571
5. ^ John Masefield Society, A Biography
6. ^ Self-published Blog on Masefield Biog
7. ^ Self-published Blog on Masefield Biog - middle life
8. ^ The Times of London 1930.
9. ^ Self-published Blog on Masefield Biog - Later Life
10. ^ John Masefield Reads His Poetry
11. ^ For a list of settings, see: 'John Masefield' at The Lied, Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive, www.recmusic.org. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
12. ^ Hold, Trevor (2002). Parry to Finzi: twenty English song composers, pp 15, 193-194. The Boydell Press. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
13. ^ ^{a b} Foreman, Lewis (2011). 'In Ruhleben camp'. First World War Studies, Vol 2, No 1 (March), pp 27–40. Retrieved 2011-11-04 (Subscription required).
14. ^ Conor O'Callaghan (2006). 'John Masefield'. Poetry, March 2006. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
15. ^ 'Frederick Keel — Tomorrow' at the BBC Proms archive. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
16. ^ Dunnett, Roderick (2009). 'Ivor Gurney (1890–1937): Songs' [CD booklet notes]. Naxos Records. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
17. ^ The Columbia anthology of British poetry (2005) By Carl Woodring, James S. Shapiro Columbia University Press p737
18. ^ Cambridge paperback guide to literature in English (1996) Ian Ousby Cambridge University Press p252
19. ^ A Guide to twentieth century literature in English (1983) By Harry Blamires, Taylor & Francis, p175

Further reading[link]

• Babington Smith, Constance (1978). John Masefield: A Life. Oxford University Press.
• Spark, Muriel (1953). John Masefield.
• Lurie, Alison (2003) "John Masefield's Boxes of Delight", in "Boys and Girls Together". Penguin Books.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Masefield

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Masefield

• Works by John Masefield at Project Gutenberg
• The John Masefield Society website
• Essay: "John Masefield 1878–1967" at the Poetry Foundation
• Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

Leslie Caron
1960s
Born	Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (1931-07-01) 1 July 1931 (age 80) Boulogne-sur-Seine, France
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1951–2011
Spouse	Geordie Hormel (m. 1951-54) (divorced) Peter Hall (m. 1956-65) (divorced) Michael Laughlin (m. 1969-80) (divorced)

Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (French pronunciation: [lɛzli kaʁɔ̃]; born 1 July 1931) is a French film actress and dancer, who appeared in 45 films between 1951 and 2003. In 2006, her performance in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit won her an Emmy for guest actress in a drama series. Her autobiography Thank Heaven, was published in 2010 in the UK and US, and in 2011 in a French version.

Caron is best known for the musical films An American in Paris (1951), Lili (1953), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Gigi (1958), and for the non-musical films Fanny (1961), The L-Shaped Room (1962), and Father Goose (1964). She received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. She speaks French, English, and Italian. She is one of the few dancers or actresses who has danced with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Rudolf Nureyev.

Early years[link]

Caron was born in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Seine (now Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine), France, the daughter of Margaret (née Petit), an American dancer on Broadway, and Claude Caron, a French chemist.^[1] Caron was prepared for a performing career from childhood by her mother.

Career[link]

Caron started her career as a ballerina. Gene Kelly discovered her in Roland Petit Company "Ballet des Champs Elysées", and cast her to appear opposite him in the musical An American in Paris (1951), a role in which a pregnant Cyd Charisse was originally cast. This led to a long-term MGM contract and a sequence of films, which included the musical The Glass Slipper (1955) and the drama Man with a Cloak (1956), with Joseph Cotten and Barbara Stanwyck. Still, she has said of herself: "Unfortunately, Hollywood considers musical dancers as hoofers. Regrettable expression."^[2]

in Fanny (1961)

She also starred in the successful musicals Lili (1953), with Mel Ferrer; Daddy Long Legs (1955), with Fred Astaire, and Gigi (1958) with Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier.

In 1953, Caron was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Lili. In 1963, she was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the British drama The L-Shaped Room.

In the 1960s and thereafter, Caron worked in European films as well. Her later film assignments included Father Goose (1964), with Cary Grant; Ken Russell's Valentino (1977), in the role of silent-screen legend Alla Nazimova; and Louis Malle's Damage (1992).

In 1989, she was a member of the jury at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival.^[3]

She has continued to act, appearing in the film Chocolat (2000). She is one of the few actors from the classic era of MGM musicals who is still active in film—a group that includes Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, Dean Stockwell, Rita Moreno, Margaret O'Brien, June Lockhart. Her other recent credits include Funny Bones (1995) with Jerry Lewis and Oliver Platt, The Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2000) with Judi Dench and Cleo Laine, and Le Divorce (2003) by Merchant/Ivory with Kate Hudson and Naomi Watts.

On 30 June 2003, Caron traveled to San Francisco to appear as the special guest star in The Songs of Alan Jay Lerner: I Remember It Well, a retrospective concert staged by San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon Company. In 2007, Caron's guest appearance on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit earned her a 2007 Primetime Emmy Award. On 27 April 2009, Caron traveled to New York as an honored guest at a tribute to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe at the Paley Center for Media.^[4]

On 8 December 2009, Caron received the 2,394th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In February 2010, she played Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, which also featured Greta Scacchi and Lambert Wilson.^[5]

Personal life[link]

Photo in 2012

Caron married George Hormel III, a grandson of the founder of Hormel (a meat-packing company) in September 1951. They divorced in 1954.^[6] Her second husband was British theatre director Peter Hall. They married in 1956 and had two children, Christopher John Hall (TV producer) in 1957 and Jennifer Caron Hall, a writer, painter and actress, in 1958. Caron had an affair with Warren Beatty (1961). When she and Hall divorced in 1965, Beatty was named as a co-respondent and was ordered by the London court to pay "the costs of the case."^[7] In 1969, Caron married Michael Laughlin, best known as producer of the film Two-Lane Blacktop; they divorced in 1980. Her son-in-law is Glenn Wilhide the producer and screen writer.

Caron was also romantically linked to Dutch television actor Robert Wolders from 1994 to 1995.^[8]

From June 1993-September 2009 Caron owned and operated a hotel and restaurant, Auberge La Lucarne aux Chouettes (The Owls' Nest), located in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, located about 130 km (81 mi) south of Paris.^[9]

In her autobiography Thank Heaven she states that she became an American citizen—evidently based on her mother having been born in the United States—in time to vote for Barack Obama for President.^[10]

Awards[link]

• British Academy Awards 1954 : Award for Best Leading Actress for Lili
• Laurel Awards 1959 : Golden Laurel for Best Leading Actress in a musical film for Gigi
• British Academy Awards 1963 : Award for Best Leading Actress for The L-Shaped Room
• Golden Globes 1964 : Golden Globes for Best Leading Actress in a dramatic film for The L-Shaped Room
• Laurel Awards 1964 : Golden Laurel for Best Leading Actress in a dramatic film for The L-Shaped Room
• Women in Film Crystal Awards 1989 : Lifetime Achievement Award
• Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by Président Francois Mitterrand in June 1993.
• School of American Ballet 1996 : Life Achievement Award
• Palm Springs International Film Festival 1996 : Life Achievement Award
• Ordre National du Mérite, by Catherine Trautmann, Minister of Culture, in February 1998.
• Officier de la Légion d'Honneur, given by Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin in June 2004.
• Sarasota Film Festival 2005 : Life Achievement Award
• Emmy Award 2007 : Emmy for Guest Star in a dramatic part for Law and Order SVU (episode Recall #8005, 2006, NBC)^[11]
• 8 Décembre 2009 : Walk of Fame Star (Hollywood) on Hollywood Boulevard (n° 6153), between Gene Kelly and Louis Jourdan
• Honorari Degree Recipient 2009 from the American University of Paris

Filmography[link]

Film[link]

Leslie Caron, A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim, théâtre du Châtelet, 2010.

Theatre[link]

• 1955 : Orvet, by Jean Renoir, director Jean Renoir, Théâtre de la Renaissance
• 1956 : Gigi, by Anita Loos, director Sir Peter Hall, New Theatre, London
• 1961 : La sauvage, by Jean Anouilh, BBC (live), London
• 1961 : Ondine, by Jean Giraudoux, director Sir Peter Hall, Aldwych Theatre, London
• 1965 : Carola, by Jean Renoir, director Norman Lloyd, PBS TV, Los Angeles
• 1975 et 1981 : 13, rue de l'amour (Monsieur Chasse), by Georges Feydeau, director Basil Langton, US and Australie
• 1978 : Can-Can, musical by Cole Porter & Abe Burrows, director John Bishop, US and Canadian tour
• 1983 : The rehearsal by Jean Anouilh, director Gillian Lynne, English tour
• 1984 : On your toes by Rogers and Hart, director George Abbott, US tour
• 1985 : One for the Tango (Apprends-moi Céline) by Maria Pacôme, director Pierre Epstein, US tour
• 1985 : L'inaccessible, author and director Krzysztof Zanussi, Théâtre du Petit Odéon of Paris and Spoletto Festival, Italy
• 1991 : Grand hotel, adaptation from the novel of Vicky Baum, director Tommy Tune, Berlin
• 1991 : Le martyre de Saint Sebastien by Claude Debussy and Gabriele d'Annunzio, narration, directed by Michael Tilson Thomas, London Symphony Orchestra
• 1995 : Georges Sand et Chopin, author Bruno Villien, Greenwich Festival, Great Britain
• 1997 : Nocturne for lovers, adaptation Gavin Lambert, director Kado Kostzer, Chichester Festival Theatre, Great Britain
• 1997 : The story of Babar, by Jean de Brunhoff, narration, music from Francis Poulenc, Chichester Festival, Great Britain
• 1998 : Apprends-moi Céline, by Maria Pacôme, director Raymond Acquaviva, French tour
• 1999 : Readings from Colette, director Roger Hodgeman, Melbourne Festival, Australie
• 1999 : Nocturne for lovers, director Roger Hodgeman, Melbourne Festival, Australie
• 2009 : Thank Heaven - 'platform' at the Théâtre National of London
• 2010 : A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim, director Lee Blakeley, Théâtre du Châtelet

Lectures - Enregistrements[link]

• The Lover (l'Amant) by Marguerite Duras on cassettes
• First World War for the radio
• Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien by Claude Debussy and Gabriele d'Annunzio, with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas
• Gigi by Colette in English on cassettes recorded in public at Merkin Concert Hall at Abraham Goodman House in New York City, 1996
• Narrated "Carnival of the Animals" music by Camille St Saëns with the Nash Ensemble - Wigmore Hall, 1999
• The Plutocrats play for the BBC dir. Bill Bryden, written by Michael Hastings, from the novel by Booth Tarkington, January 1999

Notes & references[link]

Articles de Leslie Caron

• Interview with J. Fieschi and B. Villien, in Cinématographe (Paris), October 1980
• "Polonaises", in Cinématographe (Paris), April 1982
• "Enfin Star!", in Cinématographe (Paris), November 1983
• "Un ami : Truffaut", in Cinématographe (Paris), December 1984

Books

• Springer, John, All Talking, All Singing, All Dancing, New York, 1966
• Kobal, John, 'Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance', New York, 1970
• Knox, Donald, The Magic Factory, New York, 1973

Articles sur Leslie Caron

• Current Biography 1954, New York, 1954
• Film Dope (London), March 1982
• Stars (Mariembourg), Spring 1994

See also[link]

Dance portal

• List of oldest and youngest Academy Award winners and nominees

Literature[link]

• (English) Leslie Caron, Vengeance, published by Doubleday (US), Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK), André Balland (France), 1982, ISBN 0-385-17896-4
• (English) Leslie Caron, Thank Heaven, published by Viking Penguin (US), JR Books Ltd (UK), 2009, ISBN 978-1-906779-24-5
• (French) Leslie Caron, Une Française à Hollywood(Mémoires), (translation : Anne-Marie Hussein) published by Baker Street (US), 2011, ISBN 978-2-917559-16-1

References[link]