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"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.^[1]

History[link]

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[2][dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.

It was also used as a term for a drug dealer in the 1950s and 1960s and can be seen in such media as Curtis Mayfield's "No Thing On Me", William Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, and in the Velvet Underground song "I'm Waiting for the Man", in which Lou Reed sings about going to Uptown Manhattan, specifically Lexington Avenue and 125th Street, to buy heroin.

The use of this term was expanded to counterculture groups and their battles against authority, such as the Yippies, which, according to a May 19, 1969 article in U.S. News and World Report, had the "avowed aim ... to destroy 'The Man', their term for the present system of government". The term eventually found its way into humorous usage, such as in a December 1979 motorcycle ad from the magazine Easyriders which featured the tagline, "California residents: Add 6% sales tax for The Man."

In present day, the phrase has been popularized in commercials and cinema, featuring particularly prominently as a recurring motif in the 2003 film School of Rock.^[3][4][5][6]

Use as praise[link]

The term has also been used as an approbation or form of praise. This may refer to the recipient's status as the leader or authority within a particular context, or it might be assumed to be a shortened form of a phrase like "He is the man (who is in charge)." One example of this usage dates to 1879 when Otto von Bismarck commented, referring to Benjamin Disraeli's pre-eminent position at the Congress of Berlin, "The old Jew, he is the man."^{[7][dubious – discuss]}

In more modern usage, it can be a superlative compliment ("you da man!") indicating that the subject is currently standing out amongst his peers even though they have no special designation or rank, such as a basketball player who is performing better than the other players on the court. It can also be used as a genuine compliment with an implied, slightly exaggerated or sarcastic tone, usually indicating that the person has indeed impressed the speaker but by doing something relatively trivial.

See also[link]

• Absentee landlord
• Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• New World Order (conspiracy theory)
• Ruling class
• The Establishment
• Power elite
• Corrections officer
• YTMND

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Lighter, J.E. (Ed.). (1997). Random House Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House.

Charles Coburn
from the trailer for Rhapsody in Blue (1945)
Born	Charles Douville Coburn (1877-06-19)June 19, 1877 Macon, Georgia, U.S.
Died	August 30, 1961(1961-08-30) (aged 84) Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1901–61
Spouse	Ivah Wills (1906-37; her death) Winifred Natzka (1959-61; his death)

Charles Douville Coburn (June 19, 1877 – August 30, 1961) was an American film and theater actor.^[1]

Biography[link]

Coburn was born in Macon, Georgia,^[2] the son of Scots-Irish Americans Emma Louise Sprigman and Moses Douville Coburn. Growing up in Savannah, he started out doing odd jobs at the local Savannah Theater, handing out programs, ushering, or being the doorman. By age 17 or 18, he was the theater manager.^[3][4] He later became an actor, making his debut on Broadway in 1901. Coburn formed an acting company with actress Ivah Wills in 1905.^[3][4] They married in 1906. In addition to managing the company, the couple performed frequently on Broadway.

After his wife's death in 1937, Coburn relocated to Los Angeles, California and began film work. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a retired millionaire playing Cupid in The More the Merrier in 1943. He was also nominated for The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941 and The Green Years in 1946. Other notable film credits include Of Human Hearts (1938), The Lady Eve (1941), Kings Row (1942), The Constant Nymph (1943), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Wilson (1944), Impact (1949), The Paradine Case (1947), Everybody Does It (1950), Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and John Paul Jones (1959). He usually played comedic parts, but Kings Row and Wilson were dramatic parts, showing his versatility.

For his contributions to motion pictures, Coburn has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6240 Hollywood Boulevard.

Politics[link]

In the 1940s, Coburn served as vice-president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group opposed to alleged Communist infiltration and proselytization in Hollywood during the Cold War.^{[citation needed]}

Marriages[link]

Coburn married Ivah Wills on January 29, 1906 in Atlanta, Georgia . They have 6 children:

• Charlie Coburn on January 19, 1907 in Atlanta, Georgia
• John Coburn on December 1, 1908 in Atlanta, Georgia
• Marg Coburn on May 16, 1910 in New York City, New York
• Margaret Coburn on June 13, 1911 in New York City, New York
• Holly Coburn on March 21, 1912 in Budapest, Hungary
• Samuel Coburn on March 1, 1913 in New York City, New York

Ivah died on December 3, 1937 in New York City, New York on congestive heart failure.

Coburn married Winifred Natzka on June 30, 1959 in Los Angeles, California . They had 1 child: Stephanie Coburn on November 30, 1960 in Hollywood, California They divorced on May 12, 1961 in Los Angeles, California

Death[link]

He died from a heart attack on August 30, 1961, in New York City, aged 84.

Partial filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Charles Coburn

• Charles Coburn at the Internet Movie Database
• Charles Coburn at the Internet Broadway Database
• Charles Coburn at Find a Grave

Cecil Arthur Broadhurst (May 8, 1908 - December 16, 1981) was a Canadian artist, songwriter, actor and playwright, who had a passionate interest in and love for all things Western. At age 15 he began his lifelong commitment to painting, studying under LeMoine Fitzgerald and Frank Franz Johnston A.R.C.A. members of Canada's renowned Group of Seven (artists). In 1932 he launched out on his own, but the Great Depression in the 30s led him to other fields: among them flying as a Bush pilot, radio and theatre, followed by college and a year at the Detroit Art Academy. A Canadian producer asked him to paint a stage set for him, which prompted Broadhurst, a relative of George Broadhurst, New York theatrical producer and founder of New York's famed Broadhurst Theatre, to focus his talents on the theatre and his gift for songwriting. He subsequently wrote over a hundred cowboy songs, including "There'll be a New World Beginning from Tonight" which became an annual fixture as the rousing finale of the hugely popular Christmas concerts of Malcolm Sargent at London's Royal Albert Hall. In 1940 He appeared singing one of his cowboy songs in the movie Susan and God starring Joan Crawford.

He put his creative talents at the service of the Moral Re-Armament movement (MRA) (now known as 'Initiatives of Change [1]). In 1951 he wrote and co-starred in the Broadway Production of his musical Jotham Valley (http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=391960). The work was filmed in 1952 in England with at least one member of the Broadway cast. Another of his plays, A Cowboys Christmas was produced in many countries, often as part of MRA campaigns. He returned to painting full time in the 1960s and quickly established a reputation as one of the West's finest artists at his studio in Arivaca, Arizona. His paintings are in galleries and private collections coast to coast as well as Europe and South America.

He said: "Some say the Cowboy is a vanishing species, but in my book he'll be around as long as the paint stays on the canvas". ^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

Cecil Broadhurst at the Internet Movie Database

Ronald Frankau (22 February 1894 - 11 September 1951) was an English comedian and musician from London who started in cabarets and made his way to radio and films.

Family[link]

It is said^[who?] that it was difficult to get much information about Frankau’s early life because, when asked about it, he would joke rather than divulge any personal information.

Frankau's father was Arthur Frankau, grandson of Joseph Frankau, a German Jew from Frankfurt who came to London in the late 1830s and started a cigar trading business. Arthur Frankau married Julia Davis, who was a celebrated novelist of satirical books. Some of the titles include Pigs in Clover and An Incomplete Etonian. This may account for Frankau's grasp of satire in his later work as a comedian.

Frankau's parents had four children, Gilbert, Jack, Ronald and Joan. Gilbert went into the family trading business until the war (living and working for a while in Germany), was a war poet and subsequently a novelist, while his daughter, Pamela Frankau, became a novelist too. Jack was killed leading his platoon in the 3rd Battle of Gaza in November 1917. Joan married the historian Stanley Bennett and, as a Cambridge don in her own right, Joan Bennett was one of the key defence witnesses in the Lady Chatterley trial of 1960.

Frankau had several children including TV producer John Frankau, father of Nicholas Frankau. He had two children with the actress Renee Roberts - Roberta and Rosemary. Rosemary Frankau pursued a career in acting, appearing in many series of the TV sitcom Terry and June, as June's best friend Beattie. Rosemary's son, Sam Bain, became a comedy writer and co-created the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show.

The Frankau family monument in Hampstead Cemetery is monumental in every sense of the word; Grade II listed by English Heritage in 1999, it commemorates Arthur and Julia Frankau and their three sons.

Early life[link]

Frankau worked as a chorus boy at Daly's Theatre in London in 1911 and joined the army in 1914 to fight in World War I. During that time he continued his music and comedy ambitions, organizing his own concerts in Africa and the United Kingdom.

After the war he worked in night clubs and hotel lounges as an entertainer with both comical song and dance. It was then that he met performer Monte Crick, who would end up being his pianist in all his later recordings.

In 1925 he started broadcasting saucy jokes on the radio in an Etonian tone for the BBC, but is actually better known these days for what he was never allowed to broadcast. Frankau recorded a number of songs and skits on Parlophone, some of which, like Winnie the Worm and Everyone’s Got Sex Appeal For Someone, were banned altogether. Despite, or because of, this flavour in his songs, Frankau sold over 100,000 records in 1932.

Like most comedians, he often commented on the current events at the time, often in satire. Some of the songs he recorded regarding current events (the war, at that time) were ‘’Heil Hitler! Ja! Ja! Ja!’’ and ‘’The Navy The Army and The Police’’. Despite his dangerously naughty tones off the air, he was able to keep his jokes clean enough for some of the toughest censors of British broadcasting at the time, including Baron Reith.

In 1934 Frankau began a comedy duo with Tommy Handley that they called 'Murgatroyd and Winterbottom'.

On 7 November 2006, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a review of one of his partnerships - "Mr Murgatroyd and Mr Winterbottom" - 'The story of Tommy Handley and Ronald Frankau, a comedy partnership which had its heyday in the 1930s world of radio. There was no straight man, so the partnership was a rare one. Tommy was a fast talking Liverpudlian, while Ronald in contrast was upper class and Eton-educated. Presented by Nicholas Frankau, actor and grandson of Ronald.' http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/pip/cqry9/

Ronald Frankau died at Eastbourne on the Sussex coast - as had his father half a century before.

Books[link]

Frankau published a children’s book, Oh, Dear, Dear (Frederick Warne & Co., 1929), poems from which were also set to music by his pianist Monte Crick and released on Parlophone.

"If you'd like to hear a story of many years ago, Then gather round, good children, and I'll tell you all I know. It's all about a princess who couldn't quite behave, And how a naughty ogre took that princess to his cave, And how the little princess was rescued by a prince, And how they've been so very very happy ever since.

Extraordinary! Wonderful! Fascinating! Queer! Marvellous! Incredible! Oh dear, dear "

His other publications include Crazy Omnibus (Grayson & Grayson, 1933) and two Wartime books of morale-boosting humorous verse, both illustrated by Laurie Tayler and published in the early 1940s by Raphael Tuck & Sons: Diversion and He's a Perfect Little Gentleman, the Swine.

Movie credits[link]

• (1947) Dual Alibi
• (1947) The Ghosts of Berkeley Square
• (1945) What Do We Do Now?
• (1942) Much Too Shy (credited as screenwriter)
• (1939) His Brother’s Keeper
• (1935) Radio Follies a.k.a. Radio Parade of 1935
• (1932) Bridegroom for Two
• (1932) The Other Mrs. Phipps
• (1931) Potiphar’s Wife
• (1931) The Skin Game
• (1931) Let’s Love and Laugh

External links[link]

• Ronald Frankau on IMDB
• Ronald Frankau at Find a Grave

Frank Crumit

Frank Crumit (September 26, 1889 – September 7, 1943) was an American singer, composer. radio entertainer and vaudeville star. He shared his radio programs with his wife, Julia Sanderson, and the two were sometimes called "the ideal couple of the air."^[1]

Biography[link]

Crumit was born in Jackson, Ohio, the son of Frank and Mary Poore Crumit.^[2] He made his first stage appearance at the age of five in a minstrel show.^[1]

Attending local schools, Crumit graduated from high school in 1907. After briefly attending an Indiana military academy, he entered Ohio University and later Ohio State University.^{[clarification needed]} His primary purpose for entering Ohio University was to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, Dr. C. K. Crumit, who had been a medical doctor. He instead graduated from Ohio University with a degree in electrical engineering. This career did not last long, as his passion seemed to be music and the old ballads of the 19th century; his love of music and theater dated back to his early years in the Methodist Church choir and led him to pursue a musical career. He studied voice in Cincinnati and then tried out unsuccessfully for opera in New York City.^{[citation needed]}

By 1913, in his early 20s, he was performing on the vaudeville stage, first with a trio and then a year later on his own, playing ukulele; he was referred to as "the one-man glee club" in New York City's night spots. He appeared in the Broadway musical Betty Be Good in 1918. He was a success there and went on to Greenwich Village Follies of 1920, which featured his song, "Sweet Lady," written with David B. Zoob.^[3] Crumit began making records for American Columbia in 1919, using the acoustic or "horn" method of recording (he also occasionally added vocals and banjo to recordings by the Paul Biese Trio on the same label). By the end of 1923, Crumit was singing at Victor Talking Machine.^[4]

He met Julia Sanderson, then a musical comedy star, in 1922.^[1] Sanderson, 38, was sued for divorce in September of that year by her then-husband, U.S. Navy Lieut. Bradford Barnette, with Crumit, 33, named as co-respondent. Crumit was married to a Connecticut woman at the time.^[5] Crumit and Sanderson were married in 1928, and they retired briefly to a country home near Springfield, Mass., but two years later they began working as a radio team, singing duets and engaging in comedy dialogues.^[1] They performed as the "Singing Sweethearts."^[6]

In 1930, they continued with a popular quiz show, The Battle of the Sexes, which ran 13 years, Crumit and Sanderson drove from Massachusetts to New York City, a four-hour trip, twice a week to do their radio show.^{[citation needed]} Their final broadcast was aired the day before Crumit's death of a heart attack in New York City on September 7, 1943.^[1]

Hit songs[link]

His biggest hits were made during the 1920s and early 1930s; they included popular phonograph records of "Frankie and Johnnie", "Abdul Abulbul Amir", "A Gay Caballero" (he even recorded a sequel, "The Return of A Gay Caballero"), "The Prune Song", "There's No-one With Endurance Like The Man Who Sells Insurance", "Down In De Canebrake", "I Wish That I'd Been Born in Borneo", "What Kind of a Noise Annoys an Oyster?", and "I Learned About Women From Her". Crumit is credited with composing at least 50 songs in his career, including the Ohio State University fight song, "Buckeye Battle Cry" in 1919 for a song contest. He composed and published "Hills of Ohio" in 1941. His song "Donald the Dub" was used as the theme music to the BBC radio adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse's The Oldest Member.^{[citation needed]}

His back-to-back recording (that is, one song on each side) of '"The Gay Caballero"' and '"Abdul Abulbul Amir"' (Decca W-4200)^[7] sold more than 4 million records.^[1]

Crumit's "Hello My Baby" was extended and recorded by Ivor Biggun in the late 1970s, being one of Biggun's rare "clean" songs.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• David Lennick, Frank Crumit Returns, Naxos website

External links[link]

• Frank Crumit biography by Tim Gracyk
• Collection of Crumit's songs, from the Internet Archive (all in open source).