Bgcolour	silver
Name	Queenie Smith
Birth date	September 08, 1898
Birth place	New York City, New York, U.S.
Death date	August 05, 1978
Death place	Burbank, California, U.S.
Years active	1915–1978
Spouse	Robert Garland

Queenie Smith (8 September 1898 - 5 August 1978) was an American stage, television, and film actress.

Biography

Smith got an early start, being trained in ballet and dance and spent her teen years performing as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Company in operas such as Aida, La Traviata, and Faust. By the 1920s she was a star on Broadway in shows such as Helen of Troy, New York (1923), Sitting Pretty (1924), and The Street Singer (1929), and by the mid-30s had made her way into films. She starred on Broadway in George and Ira Gershwin's musical Tip-Toes (1925). She costarred in the 1936 Universal Pictures film version of Jerome Kern's Show Boat, playing Ellie May Chipley. Smith replaced stage actress Eva Puck who had starred as Chipley in the 1927 premiere and 1932 revival of Show Boat.

Beginning in 1950 she began playing character roles on film, and later, television. She was seen as Jimmy Durante's wife in The Great Rupert, and in guest shots in many television shows, including The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, A.E.S. Hudson Street, Rhoda, Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, Barney Miller, Mother, Jugs & Speed, Chico and the Man, McMillan & Wife, Love American Style, The Waltons, Here's Lucy, The Funny Side, Hawaii Five-O, The Monkees, The Odd Couple, The Love Boat, Maude and Little House on the Prairie (in a recurring role as "Mrs. Whipple").

Queenie Smith was a teacher and mentor to many a young actor. She taught at the Hollywood Professional School and was the Director for the training program at Melodyland Theater, Anaheim, California, during the 60's.

She worked right up until the year of her death; her last role being "Elsie" in the Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn film Foul Play (1978). She died of cancer a month before her 80th birthday.

References

Category:1898 births Category:1978 deaths Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:American film actors

Name	Virginia Woolf
Birthname	Adeline Virginia Stephen
Birthdate	January 25, 1882
Birthplace	London, England
Deathdate	March 28, 1941
Deathplace	near Lewes, East Sussex, England
Spouse	Leonard Woolf (1912–1941)
Notableworks	To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway, , A Room of One's Own
Occupation	Novelist, Essayist, Publisher, Critic
Influences	William Shakespeare, George Eliot, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Emily Bronte, Daniel Defoe, E. M. Forster

Adeline Virginia Woolf (; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Early life

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen in London in 1882. Her mother, a renowned beauty, Julia Prinsep Stephen (born Jackson) (1846–1895), was born in India to Dr. John and Maria Pattle Jackson and later moved to England with her mother, where she served as a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones. Her breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods, modern scholars (including her nephew and biographer, Quentin Bell) have suggested,]] Woolf went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular success. Much of her work was self-published through the Hogarth Press. She has been hailed as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century and one of the foremost modernists.

The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings – often wartime environments – of most of her novels. For example, Mrs Dalloway (1925) centres on the efforts of Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged society woman, to organise a party, even as her life is paralleled with that of Septimus Warren Smith, a working-class veteran who has returned from the First World War bearing deep psychological scars.

To the Lighthouse (1927) is set on two days ten years apart. The plot centres around the Ramsay family's anticipation of and reflection upon a visit to a lighthouse and the connected familial tensions. One of the primary themes of the novel is the struggle in the creative process that beset painter Lily Briscoe while she struggles to paint in the midst of the family drama. The novel is also a meditation upon the lives of a nation's inhabitants in the midst of war, and of the people left behind. It also explores the passage of time, and how women are forced by society to allow men to take emotional strength from them.

Orlando (1928) has a different quality from all Virginia Woolf's other novels suggested by its subtitle, "A Biography", as it attempts to represent the character of a real person and is dedicated to Vita Sackville-West. It was meant to console Vita for being a girl and for the loss of her ancestral home, though it is also a satirical treatment of Vita and her work. In Orlando the techniques of historical biographers are being ridiculed; the character of a pompous biographer is being assumed in order for it to be mocked.

The Waves (1931) presents a group of six friends whose reflections, which are closer to recitatives than to interior monologues proper, create a wave-like atmosphere that is more akin to a prose poem than to a plot-centered novel.

Her last work, Between the Acts (1941) sums up and magnifies Woolf's chief preoccupations: the transformation of life through art, sexual ambivalence, and meditation on the themes of flux of time and life, presented simultaneously as corrosion and rejuvenation—all set in a highly imaginative and symbolic narrative encompassing almost all of English history. This book is the most lyrical of all her works, not only in feeling but in style, being chiefly written in verse. While Woolf's work can be understood as consistently in dialogue with Bloomsbury, particularly its tendency (informed by G.E. Moore, among others) towards doctrinaire rationalism, it is not a simple recapitulation of the coterie's ideals.

Her works have been translated into over 50 languages, by writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Marguerite Yourcenar.

Death

After completing the manuscript of her last (posthumously published) novel, Between the Acts, Woolf fell into a depression similar to that which she had earlier experienced. The onset of World War II, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, and the cool reception given to her biography of her late friend Roger Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work. On 28 March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned. Woolf's body was not found until 18 April 1941. Her husband buried her cremated remains under an elm in the garden of Monk's House, their home in Rodmell, Sussex.

In her last note to her husband she wrote: }}'''

Modern scholarship and interpretations

Recently, studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in her work, such as in the 1997 collection of critical essays, Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings, edited by Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. Controversially, Louise A. DeSalvo reads most of Woolf's life and career through the lens of the incestuous sexual abuse Woolf suffered as a young woman in her 1989 book Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on her Life and Work.

Woolf's fiction is also studied for its insight into shell shock, war, class and modern British society. Her best-known nonfiction works, A Room of One's Own (1929) and Three Guineas (1938), examine the difficulties female writers and intellectuals face because men hold disproportionate legal and economic power and the future of women in education and society.

Irene Coates's book Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf: A Case for the Sanity of Virginia Woolf holds that Leonard Woolf's treatment of his wife encouraged her ill health and ultimately was responsible for her death. This is not accepted by Leonard's family but is extensively researched and fills in some of the gaps in the traditional account of Virginia Woolf's life. Victoria Glendinning's book Leonard Woolf: A Biography, which is even more extensively researched and supported by contemporaneous writings, argues that Leonard Woolf was not only supportive of his wife but enabled her to live as long as she did by providing her with the life and atmosphere she needed to live and write. Accounts of Virginia's supposed anti-semitism (Leonard was jewish) are not only taken out of historical context but greatly exaggerated. Virginia's own diaries support this view of the Woolfs' marriage.

Though at least one biography of Virginia Woolf appeared in her lifetime, the first authoritative study of her life was published in 1972 by her nephew Quentin Bell.

In 1992, Thomas Caramagno published the book ''The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic-Depressive Illness."

Hermione Lee's 1996 biography Virginia Woolf provides a thorough and authoritative examination of Woolf's life and work.

In 2001 Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska edited The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. Julia Briggs's Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, published in 2005 is the most recent examination of Woolf's life. It focuses on Woolf's writing, including her novels and her commentary on the creative process, to illuminate her life. Thomas Szasz's book My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf (ISBN 0-7658-0321-6) was published in 2006.

Rita Martin’s play Flores no me pongan (2006) considers Woolf's last minutes of life in order to debate polemical issues such as bisexuality, Jewishness and war. Written in Spanish, the play was performed in Miami under the direction of actress Miriam Bermudez.

Depictions

Michael Cunningham's 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Hours, focused on three generations of women affected by Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. In 2002, a film version of the novel was released starring Nicole Kidman as Woolf, a role for which she won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Actress. The film also starred Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep.

Bibliography

Novels

The Voyage Out (1915)

Night and Day (1919)

Jacob's Room (1922)

Mrs Dalloway (1925)

To the Lighthouse (1927)

(1928)

The Waves (1931)

The Years (1937)

Between the Acts (1941)

Short story collections

Monday or Tuesday (1921)

A Haunted House and Other Short Stories (1944)

Mrs Dalloway's Party (1973)

The Complete Shorter Fiction (1985)

"Biographies"

Virginia Woolf published three books to which she gave the subtitle "A Biography":

(1928, usually characterised Novel, inspired by the life of Vita Sackville-West)

(1933, more explicitly cross-genre: fiction as "stream of consciousness" tale by Flush, a dog; non-fiction in the sense of telling the story of the owner of the dog, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), reprinted in 2005 by Persephone Books

(1940, usually characterised non-fiction, however: "[Woolf's] novelistic skills worked against her talent as a biographer, for her impressionistic observations jostled uncomfortably with the simultaneous need to marshall a multitude of facts.")

Non-fiction books

Modern Fiction (1919)

The Common Reader (1925)

A Room of One's Own (1929)

On Being Ill (1930)

The London Scene (1931)

The Common Reader: Second Series (1932)

Three Guineas (1938)

The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)

The Moment and Other Essays (1947)

The Captain's Death Bed And Other Essays (1950)

Granite and Rainbow (1958)

Books and Portraits (1978)

Women And Writing (1979)

Collected Essays (four volumes)

Drama

(performed in 1923, revised in 1935, and published in 1976)

Autobiographical writings and diaries

A Writer’s Diary (1953) – Extracts from the complete diary

Moments of Being (1976)

A Moment's Liberty: the shorter diary (1990)

The Diary of Virginia Woolf (five volumes) – Diary of Virginia Woolf from 1915 to 1941

Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897–1909 (1990)

Travels With Virginia Woolf (1993) – Greek travel diary of Virginia Woolf, edited by Jan Morris

The Platform of Time: Memoirs of Family and Friends, Expanded Edition, edited by S. P. Rosenbaum (London, Hesperus, 2008)

Letters

Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters (1993)

The Letters of Virginia Woolf 1888–1941 (six volumes, 1975–1980)

Paper Darts: The Illustrated Letters of Virginia Woolf (1991)

Prefaces, contributions

Selections Autobiographical and Imaginative from the Works of George Gissing ed. Alfred C. Gissing, with an introduction by Virginia Woolf (London & New York, 1929)

Biographies

Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson. New York, Penguin Group. 2000

Virginia Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972; Revised editions 1990, 1996

"Vanessa and Virginia" by Susan Sellers (Two Ravens, 2008; Harcourt 2009) [Fictional biography of Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell]

The Unknown Virginia Woolf by Roger Poole. Cambridge UP, 1978.

The Invisible Presence: Virginia Woolf and the Mother-Daughter Relationship by Ellen Bayuk Rosenman. Louisiana State University Press, 1986.

Virginia Woolf and the politics of style, by Pamela J. Transue. SUNY Press, 1986. ISBN 0887062865.

The Victorian heritage of Virginia Woolf: the external world in her novels, by Janis M. Paul. Pilgrim Books, 1987. ISBN 0937664731.

Virginia Woolf's To the lighthouse, by Harold Bloom. Chelsea House, 1988. ISBN 1555460348.

Virginia Woolf: the frames of art and life, by C. Ruth Miller. Macmillan, 1988. ISBN 0333448804.

Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise DeSalvo. Boston: Little Brown, 1989

A Virginia Woolf Chronology by Edward Bishop. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1989.

A Very Close Conspiracy: Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf by Jane Dunn. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990

Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life by Lyndall Gordon. New York: Norton, 1984; 1991.

Virginia Woolf and war, by Mark Hussey. Syracuse University Press, 1991. ISBN 0815625375.

The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic-Depressive Illness by Thomas D. Caramago. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1992

Virginia Woolf by James King. NY: W.W. Norton, 1994.

Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf by Panthea Reid. New York: Oxford UP, 1996.

Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Granite and Rainbow: The Hidden Life of Virginia Woolf by Mitchell Leaska. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.

The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf, by Jane Goldman. Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0521794587.

Virginia Woolf and the nineteenth-century domestic novel, by Emily Blair. SUNY Press, 2002. ISBN 0791471195.

Virginia Woolf: becoming a writer, by Katherine Dalsimer. Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0300092083.

Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman by Ruth Gruber. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005

My Madness Saved Me: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf by Thomas Szasz, 2006

Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, by Julia Briggs. Harcourt, 2006. ISBN 0156032295.

The Bedside, Bathtub and Armchair Companion to Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury by Sarah M. Hall, Continuum Publishing, 2007

Virginia Woolf and the Visible World, by Emily Dalgarno. Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 0521033608,.

A Life of One's Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf by Ilana Simons, New York: Penguin Press, 2007

Sudden Endings: 13 Profiles in Depth of Famous Suicides by M. J. Meaker, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964, p. 250-269: "The Fatal Game: Virginia Woolf".

Notes

External links

Biography of Virginia Woolf on the Yale Modernism Lab

Listen to Virginia Woolf's BBC Broadcast (29 April 1937) 'Words Fail Me'

Rare recordings of Virginia Woolf, Conan Doyle, and others

Monk's House information at the National Trust

The Virginia Woolf Collection at the Victoria University Library Special Collections

* Category:1882 births Category:1941 deaths Category:20th-century women writers Category:Alumni of King's College London Category:Bisexual writers Category:Bloomsbury Group Category:English diarists Category:English essayists Category:English novelists Category:English women writers Category:Female suicides Category:Feminist writers Category:LGBT people from England Category:LGBT writers from the United Kingdom Category:Modernist women writers Category:People from Kensington Category:People with bipolar disorder Category:Rhetoricians Category:Suicides by drowning Category:Suicides in England Category:Women diarists Category:Women essayists Category:Women novelists Category:Writers who committed suicide Category:Women of the Victorian era Category:People of the Edwardian era

Sarah Smith (Born November 1967), is a Scottish television news reporter who currently serves as the Washington, DC correspondent for Britain's Channel 4 News. Smith was previously the first newsreader on More4 News on Channel 4's digital television sister channel More4.

Smith has covered stories ranging from the United States presidential elections and the Madrid train bombings (for which Channel 4 News won an International Emmy in 2004), to the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith and an exclusive interview with Saddam Hussein's defence lawyer.

She is the eldest daughter of the late Labour Party leader John Smith, and of Elizabeth Smith, Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill. Her mother's status as Baroness affords her the right to use "the Honourable" before her forename. The John Smith Memorial Trust, on whose Advisory Council she sits, lists her as "The Hon. Sarah Smith". Her godmother is Glasgow Herald journalist Ruth Wishart.

Smith began her journalistic career in 1989 as a graduate trainee with BBC Scotland. She spent a year living and working in Belfast for BBC Northern Ireland, during which time she was held at gunpoint by the Ulster Freedom Fighters in the Ulster Defence Association's (UDA) West Belfast headquarters.

In 1991, Smith moved to London as an assistant producer with BBC Youth Programmes, working on Rough Guide, Rapido and Reportage. Two years later she moved to news and current affairs, first as assistant producer with the Public Eye and Here & Now programmes, joining Newsnight as a producer in 1994.

She came to Channel 4 from 5 News where she was reporter for two years. Previously she had worked as a producer for the BBC on programmes as diverse as Newsnight, Public Eye and Rough Guides.

Smith married Simon Conway, an author and co-chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, on the island of Iona, where her father is buried, on 22 September 2007.

External links

Biography at the John Smith Memorial Trust

Category:1968 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the University of Glasgow Category:ITN newsreaders and journalists Category:Scottish journalists

Name	Paul Robeson
Caption	photo by Yousuf Karsh, 1938, June 1942
Birth name	Paul Leroy Robeson
Born	April 09, 1898Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	January 23, 1976Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals
Genre	SpiritualsInternational folkMusicals
Voice type	Bass-Baritone
Occupation	Actor, concert singer, athlete, lawyer, social activist
Years active	1917–1963
Background	solo_singer

Name	Paul "Robey" Robeson
Position	End
Birthdate	April 9, 1898
Deathdate	January 23, 1976
Heightft	6
Heightin	3
Weight	219
Debutyear	1921
Debutteam	Akron Pros
Finalyear	1922
Finalteam	Milwaukee Badgers
College	Rutgers
Teams
Statseason	1922
Statlabel1	Games played
Statvalue1	15
Statlabel2	Games started
Statvalue2	13
Statlabel3	TD
Statvalue3	1
Nfl	ROB361120
Collegehof	10080

Paul Leroy Robeson

At the height of his career, Paul Robeson chose to become a political artist. In 1950, Robeson's passport was revoked under the McCarran Act over his work in the anti-imperialism movement and what the U.S. State Department called Robeson's "frequent criticism while abroad of the treatment of blacks in the US."

Education

.]] In 1915, Robeson graduated with honors from Somerville High School, where he excelled academically and participated in singing, acting, and athletics. He went on to win a full academic scholarship to Rutgers University. In turn, he was benched on more than one occasion when Southern teams William and Mary and Georgia Tech refused to play against a black man.

Marriage and family

In August 1921, Robeson married Eslanda Cardozo Goode, who headed the pathology laboratory at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City and came from a distinguished family of a mixed race background. Her father Cardozo Goode was related to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo. Essie encouraged Robeson in his career and became his business manager.

Early in their marriage, Eslanda understood that her husband was not dedicated to monogamy and domesticity. Wanting to retain her marriage and status as Robeson's wife, she tolerated his extramarital affairs while also having her own at times. Robeson in turn felt that Essie was instrumental to his success both as his manager and his intellectual partner. Eslanda's diaries and their shared correspondence demonstrates that at times there was anger and recrimination on both sides of their partnership. Despite his ambivalence at times to staying married, Robeson knew that divorcing Eslanda would hurt his stature in the black community. According to his biographer Martin Duberman, Robeson was "not a religious man in any formalistic sense ... nonetheless an intensely spiritual one, convinced that some higher force watched over him."

The Spanish Civil War

Robeson has had a long association with the International Brigades who served in the Spanish Civil War. Throughout his life he cited the struggle against fascism in Spain as an essential part of shaping his transformation into a political artist and activist, writing in his autobiography that Spain was "the turning point of my life." Under the weight of internal disputes, government repression, and financial hardships, the Council on African Affairs would disband in 1955.

Height of fame and World War II (1939-1945)

When Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, Robeson was among the first performers to give benefit concerts on behalf of the American war effort, making him one of the top American actors and singers of that era. The Beverly Wilshire was the only hotel in Los Angeles willing to accommodate Robeson, at the then exorbitant rate of $100 per night and only if he would register under an assumed name. He complied with the requirements, but then arranged to spend two hours every afternoon sitting in the lobby, where he could easily be recognized. When asked why, he responded, "To ensure that the next time Black singers and actors come through, they’ll have a place to stay."

Civil Rights activism

After over ten years of refusing to play segregated houses and supporting anti-colonialist and early civil rights causes, Robeson began to take a more active role. In winter 1943, he traveled to Boston where he called for a full investigation into the recent rash of anti-Semitic acts of vandalism against a Jewish cemetery and a synagogue. The following month he spoke at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, at 12th Annual Herald Tribune Forum, on the participation of African Americans in the fight against the Axis powers. On December 3, 1943, Robeson addressed an annual meeting of Major League Baseball club owners, demanding they admit Black players to major league baseball, helping to pave the way for Jackie Robinson to break the "color bar" in baseball two years later.

The Broadway Othello

Robeson reprised the role of Othello in New York in 1943 under the direction of Margaret Webster, and toured the US with it until 1945. As of 2010 his run of Othello is the longest of any Shakespeare play on Broadway, running for 296 performances. For the Broadway production Uta Hagen played Desdemona, and José Ferrer played Iago. For his portrayal, Robeson received a Donaldson Award (a precursor of the Tony Award) in 1944, the Spingarn Medal in 1945 and the Gold Medal for the best diction in the American theater. The latter had only been awarded nine times since its inception in 1924. in the Theatre Guild production of Othello.]]The play had its Broadway run at the Shubert Theatre, and Robeson was the first African American to play the role with a white supporting cast on the Broadway stage. At the opening night performance, the audience gave the cast a twenty-minute standing ovation, for ten curtain calls. Despite his popularity, Robeson was not permitted to dine at Sardi's, a once-segregated restaurant located just across the street from the Theatre. Robeson toured with Othello in the US and Canada until 1945 and continued to perform solo excerpts from the play at his concert performances for the remainder of his career.

Film work

In 1942 Robeson lent his speaking and singing talents to the Frontier Films production of Native Land. A combination of a documentary format and staged reenactments, the film depicted the struggle of trade unions against anti-union corporations. It was based on the 1938 report of the La Follette Committee's investigation of the repression of labor organizing. Mark Naison, professor of African American history and studies at Fordham University has referred to Robeson's involvement with the Labor movement as being "One of the least known, but most significant dimensions of his political activism.

Tenney Committees

On October 7, 1946, Robeson testified before the Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California (Tenney Committee) that he was not a Communist Party member. Contrary to popular belief, he has never been identified as a card-carrying or official member of any Communist organization, despite support of socialism, domestically and internationally.

Mundt-Nixon bill and Smith Act

Robeson opposed anti-communist legislation. In 1948, he opposed a bill calling for registration of Communist Party members and appared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Questioned about his affiliation with the Communist Party, he refused to answer, stating "Some of the most brilliant and distinguished Americans are about to go to jail for the failure to answer that question, and I am going to join them, if necessary." (The bill was ultimately defeated in the Senate.) In 1949, he spoke in favor of the liberty of twelve Communists (including his long-time friend Benjamin Davis, Jr.) convicted under the Smith Act, which criminalized various left- and right-wing activities as seditious.

Controversies and international travels (1949)

Following a successful U.S. and Caribbean tour during late 1948, Robeson took a Christmas break at the family home in Enfield, Connecticut, planning to join accompanist Lawrence Brown in the spring of 1949 for scheduled US concert dates. He soon was informed, however, that the performances were canceled by local booking agents whom the FBI had threatened to brand "pro-Communist." For the first time in his professional life, Robeson was without a U.S. concert audience and his recordings were now banned from radio and stores.:

At the time of Robeson's widely misquoted In April 1953, shortly after Stalin's death, Robeson penned a eulogy entitled To You Beloved Comrade, praising Stalin as being dedicated to peace and a guidance to the world: "Through his deep humanity, by his wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage." Robeson is on record many times as stating that he felt the "existence of a major socialist power like the USSR was a bulwark against Western European capitalist domination of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean." At no time during his retirement (or his life) is Paul Robeson on record of mentioning any unhappiness or regrets about his strong support for the Soviet Union and his hopes for socialism in Africa and Asia. In 1967, the New York Times also incorrectly published that during the 1950s (when he was without his passport), Robeson had chosen a "long exile in the Soviet Union...." Robeson used the tour to speak out in defense of the Maori and Australian Aborigines peoples. Through the aboriginal activist Faith Bandler, Robeson viewed a film made in the 1950s about the aborigines in Warburton, Western Australia. Bandler remembered, "The tears started streaming down his face; but when the film showed thirsty children waiting for water, sorrow turned to anger." At a press conference in Sydney the next day he lambasted the Australian government proclaiming, 'There's no such thing as a 'backward' human being, there is only a society which says they are backward. The indigenous people of Australia are my brothers and sisters.'" Robeson also met Lloyd L. Davis, a longtime aboriginal activist and lawyer. and writer and broadcaster Phillip Adams recalled, Robeson's tour was like "a second coming" to "aspiring young lefties" in Australia. Three days afterwords, he told his son that he felt extreme paranoia, thought that the walls of the room were moving and, overcome by a powerful sense of emptiness and depression, tried to take his own life.

MKULTRA and other theories

Robeson's health decline has given rise to controversy and speculation. Paul Robeson, Jr. argued for years that his father's health problems stemmed from attempts by CIA and MI5 to "neutralize" his father. and that his father's symptoms were resulting from being "subjected to mind depatterning under MKULTRA", a secret CIA programme. making a few scattered public appearances before falling seriously ill during a tour, nearly dying from double pneumonia and a kidney blockage in 1965. Due to his ailing health, he withdrew from the public to lead a quiet life. He saw few visitors aside from very close friends and gave few statements apart from very short messages to support current civil rights and international movements, feeling that his record "spoke for itself". Robeson was honored by many accolades and celebrations, both in the U.S. and internationally, including public arenas that had previously shunned him. In April 1965, Robeson was honored by a dinner given by Freedomways Quarterly, a progressive journal.

The black press universally celebrated Robeson, with The Amsterdam News eulogizing him as "Gulliver among the Lilliputians" and saying his life would "always be a challenge and a reproach to white and Black America."

On January 27, 1976, 2,500 people attended Paul Robeson's funeral at Mother AME Zion Church in Harlem, where Robeson's brother Ben had been pastor for 27 years. Robeson was cremated and his ashes were interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York with a grave marker that states, "The Artist Must Fight For Freedom Or Slavery. I Made My Choice. I Had No Alternative."

Legacy

Along with Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Josephine Baker, Robeson was one of the first African American artist/activists. He is also referenced with being one of the forerunners of the civil rights movement. During the 1960s radical black activists such as Malcolm X and members of SNCC referenced and praised Robeson's controversial stances. On the international political scene, Robeson's legacy included influences on the African Independence movements and his work was cited by Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela, Kenyan president Jomo Kenyatta and Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah and other post-colonialist leaders. American Jews continue to celebrate his memory as an ally as do the people of Wales. In the arts, his popularizing of Negro Spirituals has been cited and paid tribute to by singers including Sir Willard White. While film industry figures and historians have written of his groundbreaking work in cinema as the first major black actor unwilling to play stereotypes.

Paul Robeson Archives

, 1981]] The Paul Robeson Archive was established in East Berlin in 1965. Robeson was a popular figure in East Germany, where he received an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University in 1960 among other awards. On October 8, 1976, Artist's Tribute to the Life of Paul Robeson, was held at Carnegie Hall, as a benefit for the Paul Robeson Archive. Sidney Poitier proclaimed, "When Paul Robeson died, it marked the passing of a magnificent giant whose presence among us conferred nobility upon us all..." Beginning in 1978, Paul Robeson's films were finally shown again on American television, with Show Boat making its cable television debut in 1983. In recent years, all of Robeson's films have appeared on Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics channels.

1990s

On January 18, 1995 Paul Robeson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame, a step taken by the National Football Foundation which many called "long-overdue". Rutgers-Newark also honored him posthumously by naming the student-life campus center, and art gallery after him. and Rutgers University New Brunswick Campus named one of their cultural centers, The Paul Robeson Cultural Center. In addition, the Rutgers-Camden campus also named their library, the Paul Robeson Library.

During the centenary of Paul Robeson's birth in 1998, around the world, over four hundred celebrations took place with over twenty Robeson centennial events held in the San Francisco Bay area alone. These included film showings, musical and educational programs, art exhibitions, a two-hour PBS documentary, as well as the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. President Bill Clinton sent a greeting to celebration of the Robeson Centennial in Westchester County, New York, stating: “A century after Paul Robeson’s birth, we live in a nation that is stronger because of his vision and eloquent voice.”

In 1998 the San Francisco Bay Area Post of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade presented "Paul Robeson: The Artist Must Take Sides" in tribute. The program consisted of a dramatic performance by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, with slides and commentary, and keynote speaker Professor Sterling Stuckey. Paul Robeson's image is also featured prominently in a historical monument dedicated to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade which was unveiled on The Embarcadero, San Francisco in 2008 by actor Peter Coyote.

2000s

Robeson has remained a celebrated cultural figure in Wales. The exhibition Let Paul Robeson Sing! was unveiled in Cardiff in 2001, then toured several Welsh towns and cities. A number of Welsh artists have celebrated Robeson's life: the Manic Street Preachers' song "Let Robeson Sing" appears on the album Know Your Enemy. The band also covered "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?"— the spiritual sung by Robeson as part of his 1957 telephone performance. The play Paul Robeson Knew My Father by Greg Cullen, set in the Rhondda during the 1950s, features a character with a childhood obsession for Robeson's music and films. Martyn Joseph's song "Proud Valley Boy" on his 2005 album Deep Blue is also based on Robeson's Welsh connections. In 2010 Susan Robeson, as an honorary fellow of Swansea University, visited Ebbw Vale and at the 2010 Eisteddfod launched a project by the university, in conjunction with the Paul Robeson Wales Trust and the Welsh Assembly, to create an online learning resource in her grandfather's memory.

In 2004 Paul Robeson was featured on a US postage stamp. The Paul Robeson Commemorative Postage Stamp is the 27th stamp in the Black Heritage Series.The national Stamp Unveiling Ceremony was held on January 20, 2004 at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Robeson’s birthplace, with Paul Robeson, Jr. participating. On September 26, 2009, Edgecombe Avenue and 160th Street in Washington Heights, Manhattan, were renamed as Paul Robeson Boulevard and Count Basie Place. The corner is the location of 555 Edgecombe Avenue, also known as the Paul Robeson Home, a National Historic Landmarked building where Paul Robeson and Count Basie lived.

An "heirloom tomato" has been named after Paul Robeson.

Filmography

Body and Soul (1924)

Camille (1926)

Borderline (1930)

The Emperor Jones (1933)

Sanders of the River (1935)

Show Boat (1936)

Song of Freedom (1936)

Big Fella (1937)

My Song Goes Forth (1937)

King Solomon's Mines (1937)

Jericho/Dark Sands (1937)

The Proud Valley (1940)

Native Land (1942)

Tales of Manhattan (1942)

The Song of the Rivers (1954)

Works

Robeson, Paul. Here I Stand. Beacon Press (1958), (1971 edition with Preface by Lloyd L. Brown), (January 1, 1998). 160 pages. ISBN 0-8070-6445-9.

Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918–1974, edited with an introduction by Philip S. Foner, Brunner, 1978.

Edited collections of writings

Paul Robeson: Tributes, Selected Writings, compiled and edited by Roberta Yancy Dent with the assistance of Marilyn Robeson and Paul Robeson, Jr., The Archives, 1976.

(Contributor) "The Great Forerunner", Freedomways, 1971, new edition, Dodd, 1978, enlarged, 1985.

See also

Paul Robeson High School, a four year (9th–12th grades) business and technology high school in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood

Notes

References

Balaji, Murali. The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics and Friendship of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson (Nation Books, 2007) ISBN 1-56858-355-9

Bogle, Donald (2001). Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, Fourth Edition

Boyle, Sheila Tully, and Andrew Bunie (2001). Paul Robeson: The Years of Promise and Achievement. University of Massachusetts Press ISBN 1-55849-149-X

Brown, Lloyd (1998) On My Journey Now: The Young Paul Robeson Basic Books ISBN 0813331773

Du Bois, Shirley Graham. Paul Robeson, Citizen of the World. (Julian Messner, June 1, 1971) ISBN 0-671-32464-0; (Greenwood Pub Group, January 1, 1972) ISBN 0-86543-468-9; (Africa World Pr, January 1, 1998), ISBN 0-86543-469-7; (Africa World Pr, April 1, 1998), ISBN 0-8371-6055-3

Duberman, Martin Bauml (1988). Paul Robeson Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. Also Reissue edition (1995) New Press. ISBN 1-56584-288-X.

Dorinson, Joseph and William Pencak with foreword by Henry Foner. Paul Robeson: Essays on His Life and Legacy (Oct 15, 2004) ISBN 0-7864-1153-8;

Foner, Philip S. Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, and Interviews, a Centennial Celebration. Citadel Press; Reprint edition (September 1, 1982). 644 pages. ISBN 0-8065-0815-9.

Ford, Carin T (2001). Paul Robeson: "I Want to make Freedom Ring". Enslow Publishers

Holmes, Burnham. ''Paul Robeson: A Voice of Struggle (Heinemann Library, September 1, 1994) ISBN 0-8114-2381-6

Larsen, Rebecca. Paul Robeson: Hero Before His Time (Franklin Watts, September 1, 1989), ISBN 0-531-10779-5

McKissack, Pat, Fredrick McKissack and Michael David Biegel (illustrator). Paul Robeson: A Voice to Remember. Library (Enslow Pub Inc, May 1, 2001), ISBN 0-89490-310-1

Nash, Elizabeth. "Autobiographical Reminiscences of African-American Classical Singers, 1853-Present".(Edwin Mellen Press, 2007). ISBN 0-7734-5250-8.(192-194, 438-445)

Nollen, Scott Allen (2010). Paul Robeson: Film Pioneer.. McFarland. ISBN 0786435208

Nash, Elizabeth. "Autobiographical Reminiscences of African-American Classical Singers, 1853-Present".(Edwin Mellen Press, 2007). ISBN 0-7734-5250-8.(192-194, 438-445)

Robeson, Eslanda. Paul Robeson, Negro, V. Gollancz; 1st edition (1930) ASIN: B0006E8ML4

Robeson Jr., Paul. (1971) "Paul Robeson: Black Warrior", in Freedomways The Great Forerunner, pages 3–16

Robeson Jr., Paul. The Undiscovered Paul Robeson , An Artist's Journey, 1898-1939.(Wiley; 1St edition (March 2, 2001) ISBN 0471242659

Robeson Jr., Paul. The Undiscovered Paul Robeson, Quest for Freedom, 1940-1976(Wiley; 1St Edition edition (January 26, 2010) ISBN 0471409731

Robeson, Susan (1981). The Whole World in His Hands: A Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson Citadel Press; 1st edition ISBN 0806507543

Reiner, Carl. How Paul Robeson Saved My Life and Other Mostly Happy Stories (Cliff Street Books, October 1, 1999), Cassette/Spoken Word (Dove Entertainment Inc, October 1, 1999). ISBN 0-06-019451-0

Seton, Marie (1958). Paul Robeson. D. Dobson.

Stewart, Jeffrey C. (editor); Paul Robeson Cultural Center; Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum (corporate author). Paul Robeson: Artist and Citizen. Hardcover (Rutgers Univ Pr, April 1, 1998) ISBN 0-8135-2510-1, Paperback (Rutgers Univ Pr, April 1, 1998) ISBN 0-8135-2511-X

Stuckey, Sterling. I Want to Be African: Paul Robeson and the Ends of Nationalist Theory and Practice, 1919–1945 (Univ of California Center for Afro, June 1, 1976) ISBN 0-934934-15-0

Wright, Charles. Paul Robeson: Labor's Forgotten Champion (Balamp Pub Co; First Printing edition (June 1975)) ISBN 0913642061

Wright, David K. Paul Robeson: Actor, Singer, Political Activist (Univ of California Center for Afro, June 1, 1976) ISBN 0-934934-15-0

Rappaport, Louis. Stalin's War Against the Jews: The Doctors Plot & The Soviet Solution, Free Press (October 1, 1990) ISBN 0-02-925821-9

Turner, Charlotte (1986). Paul Robeson's Last Days in Philadelphia

Further reading

Film documentaries concerning Paul Robeson

The Tallest Tree in Our Forest (1977)

(1979)

(1998)

directed by St. Clair Bourne. PBS American Masters (1999), Winstar Home Entertainment.

External links

The Paul Robeson Foundation, Inc.

Paul Robeson digital archive at Rutgers University

The Bay Area Paul Robeson Centennial Committee

The Robeson Centennial Celebration

Rutgers Celebrates the Paul Robeson Stamp

Paul Robeson Awards

The Paul Robeson Collection

Testimony of Paul Robeson before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, June 12, 1956

The Freedom Archives

American Masters: Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson Cultural Center

The FBI Files of Paul Robeson

Discography

Paul Robeson singing the English version of the U.S.S.R. anthem

Tony Benn">BBC site celebrating Robeson with contributions by Tony Benn

Paul Robeson sings "Just a-Wearyin' for You" w. Frank Lebby Stanton m. Carrie Jacobs-Bond

Paul Robeson sings "A Perfect Day" by Carrie Jacobs-Bond

Paul Robeson in Berlin with Aubrey Pankey Photographed in 1960

Category:1898 births Category:1976 deaths Category:African American actors Category:African American basketball players Category:African Americans' rights activists Category:Akron Pros players Category:Alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies Category:American basses Category:American film actors Category:American folk singers Category:American football tight ends Category:American lawyers Category:American people of Igbo descent Category:American socialists Category:Basketball players from New Jersey Category:Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery Category:Columbia Law School alumni Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Milwaukee Badgers players Category:Operatic basses Category:People from Princeton, New Jersey Category:Progressive Party (United States, 1948) politicians Category:Rutgers Scarlet Knights football players Category:Rutgers Scarlet Knights men's basketball players Category:Rutgers University alumni Category:Spingarn Medal winners Category:Stalin Peace Prize recipients

Bgcolour	silver
Name	Hattie McDaniel
Imagesize	240px
Birth date	June 10, 1895
Birth place	Wichita, Kansas, U.S.
Death date	October 26, 1952
Death place	Woodland Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1932–1952
Spouse	Larry Williams (1949-1950) (divorced)James Lloyd Crawford (1941-1945) (divorced)Howard Hickman (1938-1938) (divorced)George Langford (1922-1922) (his death)}}

Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1895October 25, 1952) was an American actress and the first African-American to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939).

McDaniel was also a professional singer-songwriter, comedian, stage actress, radio performer, and television star. Hattie McDaniel was in fact the first black woman to sing on the radio in America. Station KNX, Los Angeles, The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour (1931) CBS Network, The Beulah Show (1947)

See also

List of African American firsts

List of black Academy Award winners and nominees

Footnotes

References

The Life and Struggles of Hattie McDaniel (author Jill Watts audio interview), hear the voice of Hattie McDaniel

Hopper, Hedda. "Hattie Hates Nobody". Chicago Sunday Tribune, 1947.

Jackson, Carlton. Hattie: The Life of Hattie McDaniel. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1990. ISBN 1568330049

Mitchell, Lisa. "More Than a Mammy". Hollywood Studio Magazine, April 1979.

Salamon, Julie. "The Courage to Rise Above Mammyness". New York Times, August 6, 2001.

Watts, Jill. Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0060514906

Young, Al. "I’d Rather Play a Maid Than Be One". New York Times, October 15, 1989.

Zeigler, Ronny. "Hattie McDaniel: ‘(I’d). . . rather play a maid.’" N.Y. Amsterdam News, April 28, 1979.

Access Newspaper Archive - search for "Hattie McDaniel"

External links

Hattie McDaniel Photos

Category:1895 births Category:1952 deaths Category:People from Wichita, Kansas Category:Baptists from the United States Category:African American film actors Category:African American actors Category:American television actors Category:Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners Category:Actors from Kansas Category:Okeh Records artists Category:Deaths from breast cancer Category:Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:20th-century actors