A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs.

Readers often open a publication with an expectation of reading another short essay by a specific writer who offers a personal point of view. In some instances, a column has been written by a composite or a team, appearing under a pseudonym, or (in effect) a brand name. Some columnists appear on a daily or weekly basis and later reprint the same material in book collections.

In defining a column, Dictionary.com provides a breakdown of a few popular subjects covered by columnists:

A regular feature or series of articles in a newspaper, magazine, or the like, usually having a readily identifiable heading and the byline of the writer or editor, that reports or comments upon a particular field of interest, as politics, theater or etiquette, or which may contain letters from readers, answers to readers' queries, etc.^[1]

Radio and television[link]

Newspaper columnists of the 1930s and 1940s, such as Franklin Pierce Adams (aka FPA), Nick Kenny, John Crosby, Jimmie Fidler, Louella Parsons, Drew Pearson, Ed Sullivan and Walter Winchell, achieved a celebrity status and used their syndicated columns as a springboard to move into radio and television. In some cases, such as Winchell and Parsons, their radio programs were quite similar in format to their newspaper columns. Rona Barrett began as a Hollywood gossip columnist in 1957, duplicating her print tactics on television by the mid-1960s. One of the more famous syndicated columnists of the 1920s and 1930s, O. O. McIntyre, declined offers to do a radio series because he felt it would interfere and diminish the quality of writing in his column, "New York Day by Day."

Books[link]

FPA and McIntyre both collected their columns into a series of books, as did other columnists. McIntyre's book, The Big Town: New York Day by Day (1935) was a bestseller. FPA's The Melancholy Lute (1936) collected selections from three decades of his columns. H. Allen Smith's first humor book, Low Man on a Totem Pole (1941) and his two following books were so popular during World War II that they kept Smith on the New York Herald Tribune's Best Seller List for 100 weeks and prompted a collection of all three in 3 Smiths in the Wind (1946). When Smith's column, The Totem Pole, was syndicated by United Features, he told Time:

Just between you and me, it's tough. A typewriter can be a pretty formidable contraption when you sit down in front of it and say: "All right, now I'm going to be funny."^[2]

The writing of French humor columnist Alain Rémond has been collected in books. The Miami Herald promoted humor columnist Dave Barry with this description: "Dave Barry has been at The Miami Herald since 1983. A Pulitzer Prize winner for commentary, he writes about issues ranging from the international economy to exploding toilets." Barry has collected his columns into a series of successful books. He stopped writing his nationally syndicated weekly column in 2005, and The Miami Herald now offers on its website a lengthy selection of past columns by Barry.^[3]

In 1950, Editor & Publisher looked back at the newspaper columnists of the 1920s:

"Feature service of various sorts is new," Hallam Walker Davis wrote in a book, The Column, which was published in 1926. "It has had the advantage of high-powered promotion. It is still riding on the crest of the first big wave its own splash sent out." But Mr. Davis did think that in a decade or two the newspapers might be promoting their columns along with their comic strips. The World had started the ball rolling with billboard advertising of Heywood Broun's "It Seems to Me." The McNaught Syndicate was sitting pretty with O. O. McIntyre, Will Rogers and Irvin S. Cobb on its list. The New York Herald Tribune offered Don Marquis and Franklin P. Adams rhymed satirically in "The Conning Tower" for the New York World Syndicate. "A Line o' Type Or Two," Bert Leston Taylor's verse column in the Chicago Tribune, was now being done by Richard Henry Little. Other offerings: humorous sketches by Damon Runyon; O. Henry stories; editorials by Arthur Brisbane; Ring Lardner letter; "Rippling Rhymes," by Walt Mason; literary articles by H. L. Mencken.^[4]

Magazines[link]

In at least one situation, a column expanded to become an entire successful magazine. When Cyrus Curtis founded the Tribune and Farmer in 1879, it was a four-page weekly with an annual subscription rate of 50 cents. He introduced a women's column by his wife, Louise Knapp Curtis, and it proved so popular that in 1883, he decided to publish it as a separate monthly supplement, Ladies Journal and Practical Housekeeper, edited by Louise Curtis. With 25,000 subscribers by the end of its first year, it was such a success that Curtis sold Tribune and Farmer to put his energy into the new publication, which became the Ladies' Home Journal.

Types of columnists[link]

• Advice columnist
• Critic
• Editorial opinion columnist
• Gossip columnist
• Humor columnist
• Food columnist

See also[link]

• Food columnists of note

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up columnist in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• National Society of Newspaper Columnists

John Lithgow
John Lithgow in 2007
Born	John Arthur Lithgow (1945-10-19) October 19, 1945 (age 66) Rochester, New York, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard College
Occupation	Actor, musician, poet, author
Years active	1972–present
Spouse	Jean Taynton (1966–1980) Mary Yeager (1981–present)
Children	Ian Lithgow Phoebe Lithgow Nathan Lithgow

John Arthur Lithgow ( /ˈlɪθɡoʊ/ LITH-goh; born October 19, 1945) is an American actor, musician, and author. Presently, he is involved with a wide range of media projects, including stage, television, film, and radio. He also has written and published several books of poetry and children's literature.

He appeared in the films The World According to Garp (1982) and Terms of Endearment (1983), receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for each. Lithgow is known for his roles as the Reverend Shaw Moore in Footloose, Dick Solomon on the NBC sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, the voice of Lord Farquaad in Shrek, and Arthur Mitchell on Showtime's Dexter, for which he won Golden Globe and Emmy awards.

On the stage, he appeared in the musical adaptation of Sweet Smell of Success, winning the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. He again appeared in a musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, again receiving a Tony nomination for Best Leading Actor in a Musical.

He has also recorded music, such as the 1999 album of children's music, Singin' in the Bathtub, and has written poetry and short stories for children, such as Marsupial Sue.

Early life[link]

Lithgow was born in Rochester, New York. His mother, Sarah Jane (née Price), was a retired actress, and his father, Arthur Washington Lithgow III, was a theatrical producer and director who ran the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey.^[1][2] Because of his father's job, the family moved frequently during Lithgow's childhood; he spent his teenage years in Akron and Lakewood, Ohio.^[3]

Lithgow attended Harvard College, and graduated with an A.B. magna cum laude in 1967, in history and literature. He lived in Adams House as an undergraduate. Lithgow later served on Harvard's Board of Overseers. Lithgow credits a performance at Harvard of Gilbert and Sullivan's Utopia Limited with helping him decide to become an actor.^[4] After graduation, Lithgow won a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Stage career[link]

In 1973, Lithgow debuted on Broadway in David Storey's The Changing Room, for which he received both the Tony and Drama Desk Award as Best Featured Actor in a Play. The following year he starred opposite Lynn Redgrave in My Fat Friend, and in 1976 he starred opposite Meryl Streep in Arthur Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays. He was nominated for the Best Actor Tony Awards for Requiem for a Heavyweight (1985) and M. Butterfly (directed by John Dexter, 1988).

In 2002, Lithgow won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of J.J. Hunsecker in the Broadway adaptation of the 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success. In 2005, Lithgow was elected into the American Theatre Hall of Fame for his work on Broadway. He was also nominated for a Best Leading Actor in a Musical Tony for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

In 2007, Lithgow played Malvolio in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Twelfth Night, at The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom.^[5]

In 2008 through 2009, Lithgow played Joe Keller in a Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons.^[6]

Lithgow starred alongside Jennifer Ehle in Douglas Carter Beane's comedy Mr & Mrs Fitch presented Off-Broadway by Second Stage Theatre from February 22, 2010 to April 4, 2010.^[7]

Lithgow returns to Broadway as Joseph Alsop in the Manhattan Theatre Club production of David Auburn's new play The Columnist, with previews starting on April 4, 2012.^[8]

Film career[link]

In 1979, Lithgow portrayed Lucas Sergeant in Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical movie All That Jazz. The character was loosely based on the real-life director/choreographer Michael Bennett, best known for his work on Dreamgirls and A Chorus Line.

In 1983 and 1984, Lithgow was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances as Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp and as Sam Burns in Terms of Endearment. Both films were screen adaptations of popular novels. Lithgow originated the character of Dr. Emilio Lizardo/Lord John Whorfin, an Italian physicist inhabited by an evil alien, which he played in the 1984 cult film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. In 1984, Lithgow also played a pastor who condemns dancing in Footloose. He later played the role of American space engineer Walter Curnow in 2010, the sequel to the science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

John Lithgow on the red carpet at the 40th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards on August 28, 1988.

In 1983, Lithgow appeared in a remake of the classic Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" in Twilight Zone: The Movie as the paranoid passenger made famous on the television show by William Shatner. In 1991, he starred in the movie Ricochet opposite Denzel Washington as Earl Talbot Blake, a criminal seeking revenge against the policeman who sent him to prison. In 1992, he starred as a man with multiple personality disorder in Brian De Palma's film Raising Cain, and in 1993, starred as the villainous Eric Qualen in the Sylvester Stallone movie Cliffhanger.

In 1987, Lithgow starred in the Bigfoot-themed family comedy Harry and the Hendersons. In 2002, he narrated Life's Greatest Miracle, a documentary about human embryonic development, while in 2004, he portrayed the moralistic, rigid father of Alfred Kinsey in that year's biopic Kinsey. In 2006, Lithgow had a small role in the Academy Award-winning film Dreamgirls, as Jerry Harris, a film producer offering Deena Jones (Beyoncé Knowles) a film role.^[9] He starred in a lead role in the science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes.^[10]

As a voice actor, Lithgow is well known for his role as the evil Lord Farquaad in the Shrek movie franchise. His appearances as Farquaad include Shrek, Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party, Shrek 4-D which was originally Shrek 3-D and used as an amusement park attraction, and Shrek the Third. He also was in Confessions of a Shopaholic as Edgar West.

Television career[link]

In terms of his television career, Lithgow is probably most widely known for his starring role as Dick Solomon in the 1996–2001 NBC sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun. He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in each of the program's six seasons and won three times, in 1996, 1997, and 1999. His son Ian regularly appeared alongside him as Leon, one of his physics students.

In 1986, Lithgow received a Primetime Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series for his appearance in the episode The Doll of the Amazing Stories anthology series.

Additionally, Lithgow has been nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Special for The Day After (1983), and two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Special for Resting Place (1986) and My Brother's Keeper (1995). Lithgow was approached about playing Dr. Frasier Crane on Cheers, but turned it down. Lithgow starred with Jeffrey Tambor in the NBC sitcom Twenty Good Years.

Since 2006 he has starred in Campbell Soup Company's commercials advertising their Campbell's Select premium soup brand.

On March 5, 2009, Lithgow made a cameo on NBC's 30 Rock, in the episode "Goodbye, My Friend," with several references to his role in Harry and the Hendersons.

In September 2009, Lithgow joined the cast of Dexter as Arthur Mitchell, a serial killer and Dexter Morgan's nemesis.^[11] He won a Golden Globe Award for this role,^[12] and won an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama Series.^[13]

He guest starred on How I Met Your Mother in the role of Barney Stinson's father, Jerry.^[14]

Children's entertainment[link]

Lithgow reading a book to children in 2007

Lithgow has done extensive work for children, including several books and albums. Some of his book titles are Marsupial Sue, Marsupial Sue Presents "The Runaway Pancake," Lithgow Party Paloozas!: 52 Unexpected Ways to Make a Birthday, Holiday, or Any Day a Celebration for Kids, Carnival of the Animals, A Lithgow Palooza: 101 Ways to Entertain and Inspire Your Kids, I'm a Manatee, Micawber, The Remarkable Farkle McBride, Mahalia Mouse Goes to College and I Got Two Dogs. He also appeared as a guest on the Canadian children's program, Ants in Your Pants.

Lithgow launched into a career as a recording artist with the 1999 album of children's music, Singin' in the Bathtub. In June 2002, Lithgow released his second children's album Farkle and Friends. It was the musical companion to his book The Remarkable Farkle McBride, which tells the story of a young musical genius. Farkle and Friends features the vocal talents of Lithgow and Bebe Neuwirth backed by the Bill Elliott Swing Orchestra. In August 2006, Lithgow released The Sunny Side of the Street, his third children's album and first with Razor & Tie. This album features versions of classic songs from The Great American Songbook including “Getting to Know You” and “Ya Gotta Have Pep,” with decidedly animated performances geared towards children. Produced by JC Hopkins (Victoria Williams, JC Hopkins Biggish Band featuring Norah Jones), the album features guest appearances by Madeleine Peyroux, Wayne Knight (Seinfeld's Newman), Broadway's Sherie Rene Scott (Aida, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and cabaret star Maude Maggart. Lithgow also makes occasional appearances on stage and television singing children's songs and accompanying himself on guitar.

Podcasts[link]

On October 1, 2010, Lithgow appeared on Doug Benson's podcast Doug Loves Movies, along with fellow guests Paul F. Tompkins and Jimmy Pardo.

Other appearances[link]

Lithgow voiced the character of Yoda in the National Public Radio adaptations of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. He provided narration for the IMAX film Special Effects: Anything Can Happen. He hosts Paloozaville, a children's Video on Demand program on Mag Rack based on his best-selling children's books. He appeared in the most recent Campbell's SelectSoups commercials, portraying a restaurant waiter serving "customers" in their own household. He often delivers commencement addresses at American universities. Lithgow also appears in Books By You, a children's computer game, and guides them through the steps to finish a pre-designed book.^[15]

In 2005, he became the first actor ever to deliver a commencement speech at Harvard University.^[16] He was featured at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 4–6, 2009 for performances of Mozart's Requiem with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He narrated some letters written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, some poems, and sections from the Book of Revelation in certain parts of the performance.^[17]

In 2011, he performed a dramatic reading of a Newt Gingrich press release on The Colbert Report^[18] and mistakenly called in to apologize on Colbert's yearly Atone Phone.^[19] He also voiced a South Carolina TV ad for Colbert Super PAC humorously attacking Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.^[20]

In September 2011, Lithgow was featured in a one-night only production of Dustin Lance Black's play, '8' — a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage — as Attorney Theodore Olson to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.^[21]

Awards and nominations[link]

Lithgow has won five Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, an American Comedy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.^[22] He has also been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.^[22][23] He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for his appearance as Arthur Mitchell on Dexter.^[24]

Work[link]

Filmography[link]

Stage[link]

• 1973 The Changing Room (Tony Award – Best Featured Actor in a Play)
• 1974 My Fat Friend
• 1975 Trelawny of the \"Wells\" (revival)
• 1976 A Memory of Two Mondays
• 1976 Boy Meets Girl (revival)(Director) and Secret Service (revival)
• 1976 Comedians
• 1977 Anna Christie (revival)
• 1978 Once in a Lifetime (revival)
• 1979 Spokesong
• 1980 Division Street
• 1982 Beyond Therapy
• 1985 Requiem for a Heavyweight (Tony Nomination – Best Actor in a Play)
• 1986 The Front Page (revival)
• 1988 M. Butterfly (Tony Nomination – Best Actor in a Play)
• 2002 Sweet Smell of Success (Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical)
• 2003 The Retreat From Moscow
• 2005 Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Tony Nomination – Best Actor in a Musical)
• 2007 Twelfth Night, Royal Shakespeare Company
• 2008 All My Sons
• 2010 Mr. &Mrs. Fitch, Second Stage Theatre
• 2012 The Columnist, Manhattan Theatre Club

Discography[link]

• Singin' in the Bathtub (1999, Sony Wonder)
• The Sunny Side of the Street (2006, Razor & Tie)

Bibliography[link]

• Remarkable Farkle Mcbride (2000, Simon & Schuster)
• Marsupial Sue (2001, Simon & Schuster)
• Micawber (2002, Simon & Schuster)
• I'm a Manatee (2003, Simon & Schuster)
• A Lithgow Palooza (2004, Simon & Schuster)
• Carnival of the Animals, (2004, Simon & Schuster)
• Lithgow Party Paloozas!: 52 Unexpected Ways to Make a Birthday, Holiday, or Any Day a Celebration for Kids, (2005, Simon & Schuster)
• Marsupial Sue Presents "The Runaway Pancake", (2005, Simon & Schuster)
• Mahalia Mouse Goes to College, (2007, Simon & Schuster)
• I Got Two Dogs, (2008, Simon & Schuster)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Lithgow

• Official website
• John Lithgow at the Internet Broadway Database
• John Lithgow at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• John Lithgow at the Internet Movie Database
• John Lithgow at the TCM Movie Database
• John Lithgow at FEARnet
• Profile of John Lithgow – Downstage Center
• American Theatre Wing – 2005 interview
• 2006 bio article on Lithgow
• Razor and Tie Artist Page
• Razor and Tie Media Page
• TonyAwards.com Interview with John Lithgow
• John Lithgow speaks at the Oxonian Society November 15, 2007
• NYPL gallery of selected stage production photographs, 1967-1988

David Auburn (born November 30, 1969)^[1] is an American playwright.

Early life and education[link]

Auburn was born in Chicago, Illinois, to parents Mark and Sandy Auburn.^[1] He was raised in Ohio until 1982 when his family moved to Arkansas.^[1] After graduating from high school in 1987, he attended the University of Chicago, where he was a member of Off-Off Campus, and received a 1991 B.A. degree in English literature.^[1] Following a one-year fellowship with Amblin Entertainment, he moved to New York City in 1992 and spent two years in the Juilliard School's playwriting program, studying under the noted dramatists Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang.^[1][2]

Career[link]

His first full-length play, Skyscraper, ran Off Broadway in 1997. His short play, What Do You Believe About The Future? appeared in Harper's Magazine and has since been adapted for the screen.^[1]

He is best known for his 2000 play Proof,^[3] which won the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play, as well as the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.^[4] He has adapted it into a film, which was released in 2005.^[5] His play The Columnist will have its world premiere in a production by the Manhattan Theatre Club on Broadway, running from April 3, 2012 through June 3, 2012 and starring John Lithgow with direction by Daniel Sullivan.^[6]

He has also been awarded the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[7] Following Proof, he wrote the screenplay for the movie The Lake House, released by Warner Bros. in 2006. In 2007, he made his directorial debut with The Girl in the Park, for which he also wrote the screenplay.^[8]

Personal life[link]

He currently resides in Manhattan, New York.

Plays[link]

• Are You Ready?
• Damage Control
• Fifth Planet
• Miss You
• Three Monologues
• We Had A Very Good Time
• What Do You Believe About The Future?
• Proof
• Skyscraper
• tick, tick...BOOM! (Script consultant)^[9]
• The Columnist (2012)

Screenplays[link]

• The Lake House (2006)
• Proof (2005)

References[link]

External links[link]

• David Auburn at the Internet Broadway Database
• David Auburn at the Internet Movie Database
• David Auburn at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Osserman Interviews David Auburn, author of Proof
• A Conversation With David Auburn—Otium

Joseph Wright Alsop V (October 10, 1910 – August 28, 1989) was an American journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist from the 1930s through the 1970s.

Early years[link]

Alsop was born in Avon, Connecticut, to the socially prominent family of Joseph Wright Alsop IV (1876–1953) and his wife Corinne Douglas Robinson (1886–1971). His mother was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt and was also related to President James Monroe. Both his parents were active in Republican politics. His father sought the governorship of Connecticut several times, his mother founded the Connecticut League of Republican Women in 1917, and both served in the Connecticut General Assembly.^[1]

Alsop graduated from the Groton School in 1928, and from Harvard University in 1932.^[2]

Journalism career[link]

After college, Alsop became a reporter, then an unusual career for someone with an Ivy League diploma. He began his career with the New York Herald Tribune and in a short time he established a substantial reputation as a journalist, particularly by his comprehensive reportage of the Bruno Hauptmann trial in 1934.^[2]

Because of his family ties to the Roosevelts, Alsop soon became well-connected in Franklin Roosevelt's Washington. By 1936 the Saturday Evening Post had awarded him a contract to write about politics with fellow journalist Turner Catledge. Two years later, the North American News Alliance (NANA) contracted Alsop and Robert E. Kintner to write a nationally-syndicated column on a daily basis. His first book The 168 Days (1938), covering Roosevelt's unsuccessful campaign to enlarge the Supreme Court, became a bestseller.^[1] In 1940, Alsop and Kintner moved from NANA to the New York Herald Tribune.

In 1941, after it had become clear that the United States would soon enter World War II, Alsop and Kintner suspended their column and volunteered for the armed forces. Alsop entered the Navy and used his political connections to be assigned to Claire Chennault's American Volunteer Group, to become famous as the Flying Tigers, as Staff Historian,^[3] while the group was training at Toungoo, Burma.

While on a supply mission for Chennault in December 1941, Alsop was captured and interned at Hong Kong by the Japanese. Repatriated on the neutral liner Gripsholm, he rejoined Chennault in Kunming, China and served with him for the rest of the war.

After the war, Alsop resumed his journalism career, now working with his brother Stewart Alsop to produce on a thrice-weekly piece called "Matter of Fact". The use of the word "fact" reflected Alsop's pride in producing a column based on reporting, rather than opinions pieces like those of many columnists. While his brother Stewart remained headquartered in Washington to cover domestic politics, Joseph traveled the world, covering foreign affairs. Their partnership lasted from 1945 until 1958, when Joseph became the sole author of "Matter of Fact" until his retirement in 1974.

The Alsops once described themselves as "Republicans by inheritance and registration, and...conservatives by political conviction."^[4] Despite his identity as a conservative Republican, however, Alsop was an early supporter of the presidential ambitions of Democrat John F. Kennedy and became a close friend and influential adviser to Kennedy after his election in November 1960. Alsop was a vocal supporter of America's involvement in Vietnam, which led to bitter breaks with many of his liberal friends and a decline in the influence of his column.

Personal life[link]

In 1961 he married Susan Mary Jay Patten, the widow of William Patten, an American diplomat who was one of Alsop's friends. By this marriage he had two stepchildren, William and Anne. They divorced in 1978.^[1]

A noted art connoisseur and collector, he delivered six lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on The History of Art Collecting in the summer of 1978.^[1]

Joseph Alsop was at work on a memoir when he died at his home in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1989.^[1] The memoir was published posthumously as I've Seen the Best of It.

Sexuality[link]

Alsop kept his homosexuality a closely guarded secret all of his life.^[5] Richard Helms called him "a scrupulously closeted homosexual."^[6] Nevertheless, Senator Joseph McCarthy insinuated that Alsop was homosexual in the course of a dispute with the Saturday Evening Post about its coverage of his campaign to remove "perverts" from government employment. When McCarthy implied that Alsop was not "healthy and normal," a Post editor vouched for him: "I know Alsop well, and I know he is a man of high character, with great courage and integrity."^[7]

Early in 1957, the KGB photographed him in a hotel room in Moscow having sex with another man, a Soviet agent. He rebuffed Soviet attempts at blackmail, instead writing "a detailed account of the incident and a relevant narrative history of his sex life". It has been described as "brimming with revelations about Alsop's sex life on several continents," including a report that one of his lovers was Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr., who resigned as Dwight Eisenhower's appointments secretary in 1953.^[8] His accounts, delivered to a friend in the CIA, quickly reached the FBI, allowing J. Edgar Hoover to spread the information through the Eisenhower administration, many of whose members had fought sharp battles with Alsop.^[9] Hoover told Lyndon Johnson about the Moscow incident in 1964,^[10] and Johnson told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara about Alsop's FBI file.^[11]

In 1965, Alsop complained to friends that Johnson was tapping his phone, a claim that infuriated the President, who believed that he protected Alsop from McCarthy's attacks years before. Alsop told White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers that he believed the Administration was tapping his phone and spreading gossip about his personal life, all in an attempt to stop leaks. When Moyers reported the charges to the President, Johnson ordered Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to be certain no such wiretap was in place and protested that he never ordered one: "I'm as innocent of it as I am of murdering your wife," he told Katzenbach.^[12]

In the 1970s, the Soviets sent Alsop's embarrassing photos to several prominent American journalists without consequences. As a consequence, Alsop considered making his homosexuality public to end the harassment, but ultimately did not.^[13]

Later references[link]

In 1967, Gore Vidal published Washington, D.C., a novel in which the character of a gay journalist is loosely based on Alsop.^[14]

Broadway Depiction[link]

John Lithgow portrays Alsop in David Auburn's play, The Columnist, which opened on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on April 25, 2012.^[15]

Publications[link]

• Politics
  • The 168 Days (1938) with Turner Catledge
  • Men Around the President (1939) with Robert Kintner
  • American White Paper: The Story of American Diplomacy and the Second World War (1940) with Robert Kintner
  • We Accuse! The Story of the Miscarriage of American Justice in the Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1954) with Stewart Alsop
  • The Reporter's Trade (1958) with Stewart Alsop
  • FDR, 1882–1945: A Centenary Remembrance (1982)
• Memoirs
  • "I've Seen the Best of It": Memoirs (1992) with Adam Platt
• Art
  • From the Silent Earth: A Report on the Greek Bronze Age (1964)
  • The Rare Art Traditions: The History of Art Collecting and Its Linked Phenomena Wherever These Have Appeared (1982)

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• Joseph W. Alsop, with Adam Platt, "I've Seen the Best of It": Memoirs (NY: W.W. Norton, 1992)
• Edwin M. Yoder, Jr., Joe Alsop's Cold War: A Study of Journalistic Influence and Intrigue (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995)

External links[link]

• Booknotes interview with Robert Merry on Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop - Guardians of the American Century, March 24, 1996.

Grace Jane Gummer (born May 9, 1986) is an American actress.

Early life[link]

The daughter of actress Meryl Streep and sculptor Don Gummer, Gummer grew up in Los Angeles and Connecticut with brother, Henry and sisters, Mamie Gummer and Louisa.

Career[link]

After graduating from Vassar College with a degree in Art History and Italian, Gummer made her stage debut in 2008 in Lukas Bärfuss's The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents.^[1][2] She starred as Anna Moore on the TeenNick show Gigantic,^[3] which premiered October 8, 2010.

Gummer made her feature film debut in the 2010 film Meskada, in which she played the role of Nat Collins, before playing Abby in Bashert with Paulo Costanzo. Grace Gummer also had a small role as a student in Julia Roberts' class in Larry Crowne, which was directed by Tom Hanks.^[4]

In the spring of 2011 she performed the role of Chloe Coverly in the revival of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York.

Gummer appeared as Katie Rand on the hit NBC television series Smash on March 26, 2012, in the episode entitled "The Coup". Katie Rand is a humanitarian attempting to bring peace to her divorcing parents. It is not known at this time if this will become a recurring role for Gummer.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Grace Gummer at the Internet Movie Database

This article about an American television actor or actress born in the 1980s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e