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Tab Hunter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Andrew Kelm (born July 11, 1931, in New York City, New York) is an American actor and singer known professionally as Tab Hunter.

His father Charles Kelm was Jewish, and his mother Gertrude Gelien was Lutheran, but he was raised as a Roman Catholic. Within a few years of his birth, his parents divorced, and his mother moved with her two sons to California and all three took her maiden name of Gelien. Hunter's older brother, Walter, a medic, was killed in Vietnam. As a teenager, Hunter was a figure skater, competing in both singles and pairs.

He was signed to a contract at Warner Bros. and renamed "Tab Hunter" by his first agent, Henry Willson. His good looks got him pegged as a teen idol. He landed a role in the film Island of Desire opposite Linda Darnell. Although he believed that he had a mediocre singing voice, he had a 1957 hit record with a cover of the Sonny James song, "Young Love," which was #1 for over a month. His success lead Warner Bros to form Warner Bros Records.

While doing The Tab Hunter Show (1960-1961), he was one of the finalists for the lead in West Side Story, but didn't get the part, because the producers felt he was "too old" at 29. On July 9, 1960, he was arrested by Glendale, California police for beating his dog. He was acquitted by a jury, but the incident dealt a severe blow to his squeaky-clean image.

Hunter settled, for a short time in the late 1960s, in the south of France, where the spaghetti westerns he was appearing in at the time were filmed.

His career was revived in the 1980s when he starred opposite transvestite actor Divine in John Waters' Polyester (1981) and Paul Bartel's Lust in the Dust (1985). He also wrote and starred in Dark Horse (1992).

In his autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (ISBN 1565124669), he admitted his homosexuality, confirming rumors that had circulated since the height of his fame; it became a best-seller. Hunter lives in Montecito, California, near Santa Barbara with his partner of 23 years, film producer Allan Glaser. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6320 Hollywood Blvd.

Bruce McGill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bruce Travis McGill (born on July 11, 1950 in San Antonio, Texas) is an American actor. He graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a degree in drama. He has starred in many films, perhaps his most well-known role being "D-Day" in the 1978 comedy classic National Lampoon's Animal House, a role McGill was desperate to take at the time, recalling his days as a young unemployed actor sitting in a New York City casting office.

His other films include The Last Boy Scout, My Cousin Vinny, Timecop, The Insider, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, Collateral, Matchstick Men, Bagger Vance (2000), Runaway Jury (2003), and Cinderella Man (2005).

His television guest appearances range from Quantum Leap, Walker, Texas Ranger, and Miami Vice, to Star Trek: Voyager as Captain Braxton in the episode "Relativity." He has also appeared multiple times as a regular guest star in MacGyver as the title character's comical best friend Jack Dalton. Echoing that role, McGill often plays friends of the lead character in film and television. McGill occasionally makes references to the MacGyver episode "Brainwashed," greeting friends with the trigger phrase, "From the bottom of my heart, I salute you."

McGill also played Major Ed Ryan in the third season Babylon 5 episode "Severed Dreams". Babylon 5 producer J. Michael Straczynski originally intended for Everett McGill to play the role of Major Ryan in the episode Severed Dreams. However he did not know McGill's first name, so when he asked to have McGill contacted Straczynski was asked if he meant Bruce McGill, to which he replied yes. Even though it became apparent to Straczynski when Bruce McGill met him to discuss the role that this wasn't the McGill Straczynski had in mind, Straczynski decided to use Bruce McGill instead.

He played Willard Cates in the short-lived series Wolf Lake.

Trivia

In Animal House, he plays the William Tell Overture by drumming his fingers on his windpipe, a talent McGill learned to do as a youngster.

This poem will give you goose bumps:

A drunken man in an Oldsmobile
They said had run the light
That caused the six-car pileup
On 109 that night.
When broken bodies lay about
"And blood was everywhere,"
"The sirens screamed out eulogies,"
For death was in the air.
"A mother, trapped inside her car,"
Was heard above the noise;
Her plaintive plea near split the air:
"Oh, God, please spare my boys!"
She fought to loose her pinned hands;
"She struggled to get free,"
But mangled metal held her fast
In grim captivity.
Her frightened eyes then focused
"On where the back seat once had been,"
But all she saw was broken glass and
Two children's seats crushed in.
Her twins were nowhere to be seen;
"She did not hear them cry, "
"And then she prayed they'd been thrown free, "
"Oh, God, don't let them die! "
Then firemen came and cut her loose, "
"But when they searched the back, "
"They found therein no little boys, "
But the seat belts were intact.
They thought the woman had gone mad
"And was traveling alone, "
"But when they turned to question her, "
They discovered she was gone.
Policemen saw her running wild
And screaming above the noise
"In beseeching supplication, "
Please help me find my boys!
They're four years old and wear blue shirts;
"Their jeans are blue to match.""
"One cop spoke up, ""They're in my car, "
And they don't have a scratch.
They said their daddy put them there
"And gave them each a cone, "
Then told them both to wait for Mom
To come and take them home.
"I've searched the area high and low, "
But I can't find their dad.
"He must have fled the scene, "
"I guess, and that is very bad."
"The mother hugged the twins and said, "
"While wiping at a tear, "
"He could not flee the scene, you see, "
"For he's been dead a year."
"The cop just looked confused and asked, "
"Now, how can that be true? "
"The boys said, ""Mommy, Daddy came "
"And left a kiss for you."
He told us not to worry
"And that you would be all right, "
And then he put us in this car with
"The pretty, flashing light. "
"We wanted him to stay with us, "
"Because we miss him so, "
"But Mommy, he just hugged us tight "
And said he had to go.
He said someday we'd understand
"And told us not to fuss, "
"And he said to tell you, Mommy, "
"He's watching over us."
The mother knew without a doubt
"That what they spoke was true, "
"For she recalled their dad's last words, "
" I will watch over you."
The firemen's notes could not explain
"The twisted, mangled car, "
And how the three of them escaped
Without a single scar.
"But on the cop's report was scribed, "
"In print so very fine, "
An angel walked the beat tonight on Highway 109.

Oh, my God, Bob. I thought all my tears to be gone. That poem just brought them back. Maybe that is a good thing, hawkman.

Think I'll wait for Raggedy, listeners, before I comment on our Bob's info.

Good morning to all those tuning in to radio land, this one made me laugh.


Status Quo
Do It Again Lyrics

If you ever found anything better than working
you'd want to do it again
like flying a plane or nude body surfing
you'd want to do it again
that casanova he had it right
he'd just do it again
he'd do it again all day and all night
then he'd do it again

you gonna drink too much say never no more
but you're gonna do it again
trust me i'm a doctor i know for sure
you're gonna do it again

do it again, do it again
if you all like it do it again
do it again, do it again
if it hits you right just do it again

me i get time off i twiddle my thumbs
cos i want to do it again
i get a rush every night when 8.45 comes
can't wait to do it again
there is a price to pay, it ain't cheap
if you want to do it again
but i sold my soul yeah i'm in deep
might as well do it again

life is short, never complain
you could be hit by a truck, fall under a train
enjoying yourself is the name of the game
gotta go back tonight and do it again

do it again, do it again
if you all like it do it again
do it again, do it again
if it hits you right just do it again

that mona lisa now she could smile
and do it again
she'd sit and grin for quite a while
then she'd do it again
you is here then you ain't, that was never in doubt
better do it again
don't take no einstein to work it out
so do it again

do it again, do it again
if you all like it do it again
do it again, do it again
if it hits you right just do it again
do it again, do it again
if you all like it do it again
do it again, do it again
if it hits you right just do it again

Today's birthday celebs, Bruce McGill and Tab Hunter:

Hey, Try. That is a funny song. Do it again? Well, I think dys said: If I had to do all over, I do it all over you. <smile>

You managed to get all the continentals in that song, and a few of the working class as well.

I hadn't realized that Sheryl Crow had been engaged to Lance Armstrong, nor that she had cancer.

Let's hear one from that lovely lady:


Artist: Sheryl Crow Lyrics
Song: It's So Easy Lyrics

All I want to know
Is when you go
Do you think of me?
'Cause I could let you go
But there'd be a hole
Where my heart used to be(e...)

[CHORUS:]
It's so easy holding you near
I could melt in your arms and disappear
Loving you baby is breaking my heart tonight
'Cause it's so easy but it isn't right

I saw you today
Then you walked away
And I couldn't breathe
'Cause I know how it would be
The love so real
When you're touching me ooooo

[CHORUS]

Every night I lay here alone
After you leave me and go home
But she doesn't know that we can't let go
And it's hurting me so

It's so easy holding you near
I could melt in your arms and disappear
Loving you baby is breaking my heart tonight
'Cause it's so easy but it isn't right
It's so easy, but it isn't right...No...
It's so easy, but it isn't right.

Baby it's so easy.

Back later, listeners, to take a second look at our Raggedy's photos

For the life of me, I simply cannot remember having seen Bruce McGill, although I have seen many of the movies.

Well, listeners, I do remember Tab Hunter, but never liked him. This is a song that I found that he did, but it was a surprise to me.

Young Loves as done by Tab Hunter:


YOUNG LOVE - 22/02/1957
7 weeks at #1 - 18 weeks on chart

They say for every boy and girl
There's just one love in this whole world
And I know I've found mine
The heavenly touch of your embrace
Tells me no one could take your place
Ever in my heart

Young love, first love
Filled with true devotion
Young love, our love
We share with deep emotion

Just one kiss from your sweet lips
Will tell me that you love is real
And I can feel that it's true
We will vow to one another
There will never be another
Love for you or for me

Young love, first love
Filled with true devotion
Young love, our love
We share with deep emotion

Wow! That song was more like a poem.

George Strait said:
You're Something Special To Me


As I hold you close tonight
Hear what I say
There's no doubt
It's love alright
'Cause I've never felt this way.

An angel's what you are
And now I see
You're not just someone else
You're something special to me.

Chorus:
Ev'ry man has a dream
And you made mine come true.
How it happened
I don't know or care.
I'm just happy I found you.
Wrapped in the arms of love
Is where I'll be
For all the world to see
You're something special to me.

Ah, Try. "special" is a special word, no? Love being back to country again buddy. Thanks.

Here's an answer from Creedence Clearwater Revival

The Midnight Special
(From the album "WILLY AND THE POORBOYS")

Well, you wake up in the mornin', you hear the work bell ring,
And they march you to the table to see the same old thing.
Ain't no food upon the table, and no pork up in the pan.
But you better not complain, boy, you get in trouble with the man.

CHORUS:
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me,
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me,
Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me,
Let the Midnight Special shine a everlovin' light on me.

Yonder come miss Rosie, how in the world did you know?
By the way she wears her apron, and the clothes she wore.
Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand;
She come to see the gov'nor, she wants to free her man.

CHORUS

If you're ever in Houston, well, you better do the right;
You better not gamble, there, you better not fight, at all
Or the sheriff will grab ya and the boys will bring you down.
The next thing you know, boy, Oh! You're prison bound.

CHORUS

CHORUS

Unknown Soldier
The Doors

Wait until the war is over
And we're both a little older
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living, dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head

And it's all over
For the unknown soldier
It's all over
For the unknown soldier

Hut
Hut
Hut ho hee up
Hut
Hut
Hut ho hee up
Hut
Hut
Hut ho hee up
Comp'nee
Halt
Preeee-zent!
Arms!

Make a grave for the unknown soldier
Nestled in your hollow shoulder
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Bullet strikes the helmet's head

And, it's all over
The war is over
It's all over
The war is over
Well, all over, baby
All over, baby
Oh, over, yeah
All over, baby
Wooooo, hah-hah
All over
All over, baby
Oh, woa-yeah
All over
All over
Heeeeyyyy

Good morning, WA2K listeners and contributors.

Thank goodness I slept through the night.

edgar, That song was one of those that can be a tribute or a wail. Thanks, Texas.

Let's hear a brief poem from Emily:

Split the Lark

Split the Lark--and you'll find the Music--
Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled--
Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the Flood--you shall find it patent--
Gush after Gush, reserved for you--
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

-- Emily Dickinson

Good afternoon. Where did everybody go? It's not a holiday, is it?

I better get the afternoon started with a few birthday celebs . Maybe Bob will stop by with their bios.



Bill Cosby is 69 today and Cheryl Ladd is 55.

Well, Raggedy, I was wondering the same thing. Love the pictures, PA. By golly, Bill and Cheryl look great, no?

I have an amber alert out for Bio Bob, and our Walter and Yitwail are fine. Not certain where that Status Quo is hiding. <smile>

Well, since we all seem to be wondering:

Elton John
» Where Have All The Good Times Gone

See the changes here on every street
As time goes marching to a different beat
Moving on into the restless age
As the kids today find their feet
(Long enough to hold on)

Young enough to chase our dreams
We were captured by romantic things
Touched by love until it made us cry
How our hearts could fly without wings

Oh won't somebody tell me
Tell me where have all the good times gone
Say that you remember
Remember all those good old Four Tops songs
Won't somebody tell me
Where have all the good times gone

Stolen moments in the smoky room
Monday mornings that would come too soon
Crazy summers that would never end
When the time was spent loving you
(Yeah we had a good time)

Some things never seem to last
Ain't it funny how we missed the past
Love has changed but the clock still turns
While the flame still burns for you

They've gone away
Gone they've gone away
Gone they've gone away
They've gone away

It's hard enough to lose the game
And sad to see it played again
What makes you happy for a while
Is gonna make you smile through the rain

Won't you please tell me where have all the good times gone

Just as I thought, folks. BioBob is battling with his equipment, but he is alive and well and living in Boston, and did I mention singing?

His karaoke fans loved this one:

Artist: Toby Keith Lyrics
Song: I Love This Bar Lyrics

.
We got winners, we got losers
Chain smokers and boozers
And we got yuppies, we got bikers
We got thristy hitchhikers
And the girls next door dress up like movie stars

Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar

We got cowboys, we got truckers
Broken-hearted fools and suckers
And we got hustlers, we got fighters
Early birds and all-nighters
And the veterans talk about their battle scars

Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar

[Chorus:]
I love this bar
It's my kind of place
Just walkin' through the front door
Puts a big smile on my face
It ain't too far, come as you are
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar

I've seen short skirts, we got high-techs
Blue-collar boys and rednecks
And we got lovers, lots of lookers
And I've even seen dancing girls and hookers
And we like to drink our beer from a mason jar

Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
Yes I do

I like my truck (I like my truck)
I like my girlfriend (I like my girlfriend)
I like to take her out to dinner
I like a movie now and then

But I love this bar
It's my kind of place
Just trollin' around the dance floor
Puts a big smile on my face
No cover charge, come as you are
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar

We got divorcees and a big bouncer man
An old jukebox and a real bad band
We got waitresses and we got barflies
A dumb-ass and a wise-guy
If you get too drunk just sleep out in your car

Reason number 672 why

Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
Play it on out boys
Beer-thirty's over
Got to take it on home

Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
I just love it


Miss you hawkman. Come back when you can.

Henry David Thoreau
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, development critic, naturalist, transcendentalist, pacifist, tax resister and philosopher who is famous for Walden, on simple living amongst nature, and Civil Disobedience, on resistance to civil government and many other articles and essays. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

Life and work

David Henry Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, of John and Cynthia Thoreau. He was named after a recently deceased paternal Uncle, David Thoreau. He did not change his name to "Henry David" until he had graduated from Harvard, although he never petitioned the government to do so officially. He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia. [1] Thoreau's birthplace still exists in a somewhat dilapidated state on Virginia Road in Concord. The house is original, but it was moved 50-100 yards away from the original site in the twentieth century.

Bronson Alcott notes in his journal that Thoreau pronounced his family name THOR-eau, accented on the first syllable, not the last as is common today. A Concord variant is THUR-eau, like the standard American pronunciation of the word "thorough." In appearance he was homely, with a nose that he called "my most prominent feature" (Cape Cod). Of his face, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: "[Thoreau] is as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and rustic, though courteous manners, corresponding very well with such an exterior. But his ugliness is of an honest and agreeable fashion, and becomes him much better than beauty." [2]

Thoreau studied at Harvard between 1833 and 1837, majoring in English. Legend states that Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma. In fact, the Masters' degree he declined to purchase had no academic merit: Harvard College offered it to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college" (Thoreau's Diploma). His comment was Let every sheep keep its own skin.

Upon graduation, he returned home, where he became a companion of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson took a strong paternal, and sometimes patronizing liking to Thoreau, and delighted advising the young man and introducing him into his social circle, which consisted of some of the most important American writers and thinkers of the period including Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his son Julian who was just a boy at the time. Of the many esteemed authors who made their home at Concord, he was the only town native. Emerson referred to him as the man of Concord.

Emerson constantly pushed Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to the transcendentalist magazine, The Dial, but editor Margaret Fuller consented to publish Thoreau's work only after pressure from Emerson. His first work to garner any praise was Natural History of Massachusetts; half book review, half natural history essay, it was published in The Dial in 1842. Like most of his works, the essay was mostly made up of observations Thoreau had made in his journal. Thoreau had begun keeping a journal in 1837 at Emerson's suggestion. His first entry on October 22, 1837 reads, "'What are you doing now?' he [Emerson] asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry today."

Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years, he accepted the ideas of Transcendentalism, an eclectic idealist philosophy advocated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. Among their core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is only realized through the individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions.

Thoreau had already taught school in Canton, Massachusetts as part of a program that allowed him to work during the school year at Harvard in 1835. After graduating in 1837, Thoreau secured a teaching position at The Concord Academy in Concord. His tenure was short-lived because he loathed the corporal punishment of students required by the school board.

Thoreau worked in his father's pencil workshop in 1837-1838. This workshop was in the basement of the Thoreau household on Main Street. He and his brother John opened a grammar school in Concord in 1838, teaching there until John became fatally ill in 1841.[3] In 1841, he was invited into the Emerson household, where he lived sporadically until 1843 working as an all-around handyman, gardener, and assistant to Emerson. He spent a few months of 1843 in New York, serving as a tutor to William Emerson's sons, and attempting to break into the New York publishing industry with the help of his future literary representative Horace Greeley.[4]

The Walden Years: 1845-1847

A reproduction of Thoreau's cabin with a statue of ThoreauThoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845 when he moved to a second-growth forest around the shores of beautiful Walden Pond and lived in a tiny self-built house on land owned by Emerson. The house was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from his family home. On a trip into town, he ran into the local tax collector who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes (1846). Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War and slavery, for which he spent a night in jail. (Thoreau was freed the next day, over his loud protests, when his aunt paid his taxes.) His later essay on this experience, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, influenced Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

At Walden Pond he completed a first draft of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, an elegy to his brother John Thoreau Jr, who had died in 1842 of lock-jaw, describing their 1839 trip to the White Mountains. When the book failed to find a publisher, Emerson urged Thoreau to publish at his own expense. He did so with Munroe, Emerson's own publisher, who did little to publicize the book. Its failure put Thoreau into debt that took years to pay off, and Emerson's flawed advice caused a schism between the friends that never entirely healed.

In August of 1846, Thoreau briefly left Walden to make a trip to Mount Katahdin in Maine, a journey later recorded in "Ktaadn," the first part of The Maine Woods.

Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. Over several years he worked off his debts and also continuously revised his manuscript. In 1854 he published Walden, or Life in the Woods, recounting the two years, two months and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of four seasons to symbolize human development. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, Walden at first won few admirers, but today critics regard it as a classic American book that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.

After Walden: 1850s

Henry David Thoreau, photograph published circa 1879.In 1851, Thoreau became increasingly fascinated with natural history (what we would now call science) and travel/expedition narratives. In 1851 he read avidly on the subject, particularly botany, and would often transcribe passages from the books he was reading into his journal. He greatly admired William Bartram, and Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. This interest increasingly became evident in his work and journals. He began a project of taking increasingly detailed observations of Concord, recording everything from the ways fruit would ripen over time, to the fluctuating depths of Walden Pond, to the days that certain birds would migrate. The point of his frustrating task was, in his words, to "anticipate" nature.

He became a land surveyor, "travelling a good deal in Concord," and writing natural history observations about the 26 mile² (67 km²) township in his Journal, a two-million word document he kept for 24 years. His observations, far more objective than his previous journals, became so numerous that he began to take a separate natural history notebook for them.

These observations became the source for all of Thoreau's late natural history essays, such as Autumnal Tints, The Succession of Trees, and Wild Apples, an essay bemoaning the destruction of indigenous and wild apple species.

Until recently, Thoreau's scientific interests and pursuits were dismissed by critics as amateur and sloppy science coupled with a declined prose style. Only recently, with the 1993 publication of Faith in a Seed?-a collection of not just his late natural history essays but also including the first publication of his unfinished manuscripts?-has it become apparent that Thoreau had accomplished something important. In "Faith," he demonstrated by observation, experimentation and analysis, how 99 percent of forest seeds are dispersed; and how forests change over time, and regenerate after fire or human destruction.

Thoreau worked at his family's pencil factory in 1837-38, 1844, and 1849-50. He had a natural gift for mechanics. According to Henry Petroski, Thoreau discovered how to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite by using clay as the binder; this invention improved upon graphite found in New Hampshire in 1821 by Charles Dunbar. Later, Thoreau converted the factory to producing plumbago, used to ink typesetting machines. Frequent contact with minute particles of graphite may have weakened his lungs.

He traveled to Quebec once, Cape Cod twice, and Maine three times; these landscapes inspired his "excursion" essays, A Yankee in Canada, Cape Cod, and The Maine Woods, in which travel intineraries frame his thoughts about geography, history and philosophy. Other travels took him southwest to Philadelphia and New York City in 1854, and west across the Great Lakes region in 1861, visiting Niagara Falls, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Mackinac Island.

Hailed as an early American environmentalist, Thoreau wrote essays on autumnal foliage, the succession of forest trees, and the dispersal of seeds, collected in Excursions. Scientists regard these works as anticipating ecology, the study of interactions between species, places, and seasons. He was an early advocate of recreational hiking and canoeing, of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. Thoreau was also one of the first American supporters of Darwin's theory of evolution. Although he was not a strict vegetarian, he ate relatively little meat and advocated vegetarianism as a means of self-improvement.

Thoreau on Nature

Thoreau's retreat to Walden is often seen as a rejection of civilization. However Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor did he fully embrace wilderness in the sense of pristine untouched land. Instead he sought a balance, appreciating both nature and civilization. The wildness Thoreau enjoyed was the nearby swamp. He preferred "partially cultivated country." He saw the wilderness of Maine as a place to visit to re-create but not to remain. Thoreau's concept of wilderness was a place used by man. For Thoreau "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail" rather then the pristine untouched wilderness we often associate with the word wilderness today.

Last years and death

Thoreau family graves at Sleepy Hollow CemeteryThoreau first contracted tuberculosis in 1835 and suffered from it sporadically over his life.[5] In 1859, following a late night excursion to count the rings of tree stumps during a rain storm, he became extremely ill. His health declined over three years with brief periods of remission, until he eventually became bedridden. Recognizing the terminal nature of his disease, Thoreau spent his last years editing, rewriting, and organizing his unpublished works, particularly The Dispersion of Seeds, and petitioning publishers to produce his essays and books. He also maintained correspondences and his journals until he became too weak, after which he would dictate to his sister. His friends' letters and journals are filled with both alarm at his diminished appearance and impending death, as well as fascination with Thoreau's tranquility with his situation. When a friend asked him in his last weeks whether he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded quite simply: "We've never quarreled."

Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862 at age 44. Originally buried in the Dunbar family plot, he and members of his immediate family were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at his funeral. Thoreau's best friend Ellery Channing published his first biography, Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist, in 1873, and Channing and another friend Harrison Blake edited some poems, essays, and journal entries for posthumous publication in the 1890s. Thoreau's Journal, often mined but largely unpublished at his death, appeared in 1906 and helped to build his modern reputation. It is currently being reproduced in a multi-volume set. Today, Thoreau is regarded as one of the foremost American writers, both for the modern clarity of his prose style and the prescience of his views on nature and politics. His memory is honored by the international Thoreau Society, the oldest and largest society devoted to an American author.

Criticisms

Thoreau was not without his critics. Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson judged Thoreau's endorsement of living alone in natural simplicity, apart from modern society to be a mark of effeminacy: "...Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain virtuous self-indulgences." Stevenson was sickly much of his life, bed-ridden and cared for by his mother and wife, but craved a life of adventure and travel. However, English novelist George Eliot, writing in the Westminster Review, characterized such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded: "People?-very wise in their own eyes?-who would have every man's life ordered according to a particular pattern, and who are intolerant of every existence the utility of which is not palpable to them, may pooh-pooh Mr. Thoreau and this episode in his history, as unpractical and dreamy." Throughout the 19th century, Thoreau was dismissed as a cranky provincial, hostile to material progress. In a later era, his devotion to the causes of abolition, Native Americans, and wilderness preservation have marked him as a visionary.

Famous persons influenced

A bust of Thoreau from the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at the Bronx Community College.Thoreau's writings had far reaching influences on many public figures. Political Leaders and reformers like Mahatma Gandhi, President John F. Kennedy, Civil rights activist Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and Russian author Leo Tolstoy all spoke of being strongly affected by Thoreau's work, particularly On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.[6] So did many artists and authors including Edward Abbey, Willa Cather, Marcel Proust, William Butler Yeats, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, E. B. White and Frank Lloyd Wright and naturalists like John Burroughs, John Muir, Edwin Way Teale, Joseph Wood Krutch and David Brower.[7] Anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman also appreciated Thoreau, and referred to him as "the greatest American anarchist".

Relationship with Harrison Blake

Thoreau received his first letter from Harrison Blake, an ex-minister (Unitarian) widower of Worcester, Massachusetts, in March of 1848. Thus began a correspondence which lasted at least until May 3, 1861. Only Blake's first letter remains, but forty-nine of Thoreau's replies have been recovered. Harrison Blake, a year older than Thoreau, heard of Thoreau's experiment at Walden only six months after Thoreau had returned, but still six years before the book Walden was to be published. And while Thoreau was not yet widely recognized for either his philosophical initiating a discourse with the author was strictly for that reason. Blake's first letter makes it clear that he seeks a spiritual mentor, and Thoreau's replies reveal that he was eager to fill the role.

Trivia

One of the most famous quotes often mistakenly attributed to either Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, "That government is best which governs least", actually came from Henry David Thoreau in On the Duty of Civil Disobedience[8][9]. Thoreau was paraphrasing the motto of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, "The best government is that which governs least[10]."

Oscar Hammerstein II
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oscar Hammerstein II (July 12, 1895 - August 23, 1960) was an American writer, producer, and (usually uncredited) director of musicals for almost forty years. His father, William, was from a non-practicing Jewish family; his mother, née Alice Nimmo, was the daughter of Scottish immigrants and their children were raised as Christians.

The most famous "Hammerstein" of American history is actually the second "Oscar Hammerstein". The first (with whom he is often confused) was his grandfather, the great opera impresario and theater builder Oscar Hammerstein I, one of the most remarkable, and most famous, personalities of his time. Although his father managed the highly successful Victoria Theatre for his father and was an innovative producer of vaudeville (he is generally credited with inventing the pie-in-the-face routine), he was against his son's desire to participate in the arts. Hammerstein II therefore entered Columbia University under their pre-law program and it wasn't until his father's death on June 10, 1914 that he went on to participate in his first play with the Varsity Show entitled On Your Way. Throughout the rest of his college career the younger Hammerstein wrote and performed in several Varsity Shows. After quitting law school to pursue theater, Hammerstein II began his first real collaboration with Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach, and Frank Mandel. He began as an apprentice, and went on to form a 20 year collaboration with Harbach. Out of this collaboration came his first musical, Always You, for which he wrote the book and lyrics. It opened on Broadway in 1921. Throughout the next forty years of his life, he would team with many others including a successful collaboration with composer Jerome Kern producing such musicals as Sweet Adeline, Music In the Air, Three Sisters, Very Warm for May, and their biggest hit, Show Boat, in 1927. Show Boat, often revived, is still considered to be one of the masterpieces of the American musical theatre. Other collaborators include Vincent Youmans with Wildflower, Rudolph Friml with Rose Marie, and Sigmund Romberg with Desert Song and New Moon.

Hammerstein II's most successful and sustained collaboration however, came in 1943 when he teamed up with Richard Rodgers to write a musical adaptation of the play Green Grow the Lilacs. Rodgers' first partner, Lorenz Hart, was originally going to join in the collaboration but was too deeply entrenched in alcoholism to be of any use. The result of this new collaboration was Oklahoma!, a show which revolutionized the American musical theatre by tightly integrating all the aspects of musical theater, with the songs and dances arising out of the plot and characters. It also began a partnership which would produce such classic Broadway musicals as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, Me & Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music as well as the musical film State Fair and the television musical Cinderella. Hammerstein also produced the book and lyrics for Carmen Jones, an adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen with an all-black cast.

Oscar Hammerstein II is today considered one of the most important figures in the history of American musical theater. He was probably the best "book writer" in Broadway history - he made the story, not the songs or the stars, central to the musical, and brought it to full maturity as an art form. His reputation for being "sentimental," is based largely on the movie versions of the musicals, especially The Sound of Music. As recent revivals of Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I in London and New York, show, Hammerstein could be very tough-minded indeed. Oscar Hammerstein believed in love; he did not believe that it would always end happily.

Hammerstein is the only person named Oscar ever to win an Oscar (Academy Award). He won two Oscars for best original song - in 1941 for "The Last Time I Saw Paris" in the film Lady Be Good, and in 1945 for "It Might As Well Be Spring" in State Fair.

Hammerstein died of cancer at the age of 65- shortly after the opening of The Sound of Music on Broadway- ending one of the most remarkable collaborations in the history of the American musical theatre. The final song he wrote was "Edelweiss" which was added during rehearsals near the end of the second act. To this day, many think it is an Austrian folk song. Sadly, he never lived to see The Sound of Music made into the 1965 film adaptation which became internationally loved, won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and became perhaps his most well-known legacy.

Universally mourned, with the lights of Times Square and London's West End being dimmed in recognition of his contribution to the musical, he was interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Hammerstein's name is often mispronounced as "ham-err-steen" Hammerstein himself, however, pronounced it as "ham-err-styne"

Milton Berle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born July 12, 1908
New York City
Died March 27, 2002
Los Angeles, California

Milton Berle, (July 12, 1908 - March 27, 2002), born Milton Berlinger, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater (1948 -1955), he became known as Uncle Miltie to millions.

Early life

Milton Berle was born in a five-story walkup at 68 West 118th Street in New York City, New York. His father was Moses Berlinger, a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger, was stagestruck and changed her name to Sandra Berle when Milton became famous. His onstage antics got underway in 1913 when he won a lookalike contest with his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin.

Berle appeared a child actor in silent films, beginning with The Perils of Pauline (1914), filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey with Pearl White.[1] The director told Berle that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography (1975), he explained, "I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. Which is exactly what happened, except that at the crucial moment they threw a bundle of rags instead of me from the train. I bet there are a lot of comedians around today who are sorry about that."

He continued to play child roles in other films: Bunny's Little Brother (1914) with John Bunny; Tess of the Storm Country (1914) with Mary Pickford; Birthright (1920) with Flora Finch; Love's Penalty (1921) with Hope Hampton; Divorce Coupons (1922) with Corinne Griffith and the serial Ruth of the Range (1923) with Ruth Roland. Berle recalled, "There were even trips out to Hollywood--the studios paid--where I got parts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, with Mary Pickford; The Mark of Zorro, with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Tillie's Punctured Romance, with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler." Berle's claim that he played the newsboy in the 1914 Tillie's Punctured Romance is disputed by some.

In 1916, Berle enrolled in the Professional Children's School, and at age 12 he made his stage debut in Florodora. After four weeks in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the show moved to Broadway. It catapulted him into a comedic career that spanned eight decades in nightclubs, Broadway shows, vaudeville, Las Vegas, films, television and radio.

Radio

In 1934-36, Berle was heard regularly on The Rudy Vallee Hour, and he got much publicity as a regular on The Gillette Original Community Sing, a Sunday night comedy-variety program broadcast on CBS from September 6, 1936 to August 29, 1937. In 1939, he was the host of Stop Me If You've Heard This One with panelists spontaneously finishing jokes sent in by listeners. Three Ring Time, a comedy-variety show sponsored by Ballantine Ale was followed by a 1943 program sponsored by Campbell's Soups. The audience participation show Let Yourself Go (1944-45) could best be described as slapstick radio with studio audience members acting out long suppressed urges (often directed at host Berle). Kiss and Make Up, on CBS in 1946, featured the problems of contestants decided by a jury from the studio audience with Berle as the Judge. He also made guest appearances on many comedy-variety radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.

Scripted by Hal Block and Martin Ragaway, The Milton Berle Show brought Berle together with Arnold Stang, later a familiar face as Berle's TV sidekick. Others in the cast were Pert Kelton, Mary Schipp, Jack Albertson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ed Begley, vocalist Dick Forney and announcer Frank Gallop. The Ray Bloch Orchestra provided the music for the series. Sponsored by Philip Morris, it aired on NBC from March 11, 1947, until April 13, 1948.

His last radio series was The Texaco Star Theater, which began September 22, 1948 on ABC and continued until June 15, 1949, with Berle heading the cast of Stang, Kelton and Gallop, along with Charles Irving, Kay Armen and double-talk specialist Al Kelly. It employed top comedy writers (Nat Hiken, brothers Danny and Neil Simon, Aaron Ruben), and Berle later recalled this series as "the best radio show I ever did... a hell of a funny variety show." It served as a springboard for Berle's rise as television's first major star.

Mr. Television

Milton Berle was featured in 1947 NBC promotional art by caricaturist Sam Berman.In 1948, NBC decided to bring Texaco Star Theater from radio to television, with Berle as one of the show's four rotating hosts. For the fall season, NBC named Berle the permanent host. His highly visual, sometimes outrageous vaudeville style proved ideal for the burgeoning new medium. Berle and Texaco owned Tuesday nights for the next several years, reaching the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings and keeping it, with as much as an 80% share of the recorded viewing audience. Berle and the show each won Emmy Awards after the first season. Fewer movie tickets were sold on Tuesdays. Some theaters, restaurants and other businesses shut down for the hour or closed for the evening so their customers wouldn't miss Berle's antics [2]. Berle's autobiography notes that in Detroit, "an investigation took place when the water levels took a drastic drop in the reservoirs on Tuesday nights between 9 and 9:05. It turned out that everyone waited until the end of the Texaco Star Theater before going to the bathroom. "

Berle is credited for the huge spike in the sale of TV sets during the medium's early years. After Berle's show began, set sales more than doubled, reaching two million in 1949. His stature as the medium's first superstar earned Berle the sobriquet "Mr. Television." [3] He also earned a slightly more familiar nickname after ending a 1949 broadcast with a brief ad lib remark to children watching the show: "Listen to your Uncle Miltie and go to bed." [4]

Berle asked NBC to switch to film to make possible future reruns and residuals, and he was not happy when NBC showed little interest. He also risked his newfound TV stardom at its zenith to challenge Texaco when the sponsor tried to prevent black performers from appearing. In his autobiography, Berle recalled the incident:

Another thing that was a constant anger to me was that I didn't have approval on the acts and performers I wanted on the show. I remember clashing with the sponsor and the advertising agency and the sponsor over my signing the four Step Brothers for an appearance on the show. The only thing I could figure out was that there was an objection to black performers on the show, but I couldn't even find out who was objecting. "We just don't like them,: I was told, but who the hell was "we"? Because I was riding high in 1950, I sent out the word: "If they don't go on, I don't go on." At ten minutes of eight--ten minutes before show time--I got permission for the Step Brothers to appear. If I broke the color-line policy or not, I don't know, but later on I had no trouble booking Bill Robinson or Lena Horne."

Berle's TV decline

NBC signed him to an exclusive, unprecedented 30-year television contract in 1951. The problem with Berle's 30-year deal was that NBC could not have realized the relatively short lifespan of a comedian on television, compared to radio, where careers went on for two decades or longer. In part, this was due to the more ephemeral nature of visual comedy (those who don't adapt quickly don't survive), and a single television appearance could equal years of exposure on the nightclub circuit. It has also been said that Berle had less appeal with audiences outside the Borscht Belt as television expanded from big East Coast markets to smaller cities. In any event, Berle wore out his welcome on television almost as quickly as he had built it.

Texaco pulled out of sponsorship of the show in 1953. Buick picked it up, prompting a renaming to The Buick-Berle Show, but Berle's ratings continued to fall and Buick pulled out after two seasons. By the time the again-renamed Milton Berle Show finished its only full season, Berle was already becoming history - though his final season provided some of the earliest television appearances by a young rock and roll singer named Elvis Presley.

NBC finally cancelled the Berle show in 1956. He later appeared in the Kraft Music Hall series, but NBC was finding increasingly fewer roles for its one-time superstar. By 1960, he was reduced to hosting a game show, Jackpot Bowling, delivering his quips between the efforts of bowling contestants.

Life after The Milton Berle Show

In Las Vegas, Berle played to packed showrooms at Caesar's Palace, the Sands, the Desert Inn and other casino hotels. Berle had appeared at the El Rancho, one of the first Vegas hotels, in the late 1940s. In addition to constant club appearances, Berle performed on Broadway in Herb Gardner's The Goodbye People in 1968.

He appeared in numerous films, including Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) with Virginia Mayo and Bert Lahr; Let's Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand (1960); It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963); The Loved One (1965); The Oscar (1966); Lepke (1975); Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose (1984) and Driving Me Crazy (1991).

Freed in part from the obligations of his NBC contract, Berle was signed in 1966 to a new weekly variety series on ABC. The show failed to capture a large audience and was cancelled after one season. He later appeared as guest villain Louie the Lilac on ABC's Batman series. His other TV guest appearances included The Jack Benny Show, Make Room for Daddy, The Lucy Show, The Big Valley, Get Smart, The Mod Squad, Ironside, Mannix, McCloud, The Love Boat, CHiPs, Fame, Fantasy Island, Gimme a Break, Diff'rent Strokes, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, Beverly Hills 90210, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Nanny, Roseanne and Sister, Sister.

Like his contemporary Jackie Gleason, Berle proved a solid dramatic actor and was acclaimed for several such performances, most notably his lead role in "Doyle Against The House" on The Dick Powell Show in 1961, a role for he later received an Emmy nomination for. He also played the part of a blind survivor of an airplane crash in Seven in Darkness, the first in ABC's popular Movie of the Week series, and was often seen on the Hollywood Palace variety show on ABC.

During this period, Berle was named to the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of charity performances made by a show-business performer. Unlike the high-profile shows done by Bob Hope to entertain the troops, Berle did more shows, over a period of 50 years, on a lower-profile basis. Berle received an award for entertaining at stateside military bases in World War I as a child performer, in addition to traveling to foreign bases in World War II and Vietnam. The first charity telethon (for the Damon Runyan Cancer Fund) was hosted by Berle in 1949 [5]. A permanent fixture at charity benefits in the Hollywood/Los Angeles area, he was instrumental in raising millions for charitable causes.

Uncle Miltie offstage

Berle presided as the master of ceremonies for countless Friar's Club roasts and other gatherings. He was also an occasional guest on the Howard Stern radio show, during which he endured Stern's questions about the enormity of his genitals (rumors of which were legendary in Hollywood) and what Marilyn Monroe was like in bed. The television show Mad About You refered to his size in an episode where Jamie's aunt confirmed it was 100% true. In an episode of the popular situation comedy Friends, it was suggested that Milton Berle was "well-endowed." It was also referenced in the Family Guy episode "Fifteen Minutes of Shame." Rumors of Berle's size were well-known in Hollywood, but this episode brought the legend to a wider audience. Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel, in Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, is quoted, noting that while Berle's SNL episode was in production, he had revealed his penis to Zweibel, who testifies that it was enormous, "like a pepperoni".

In comparison to many of his peers, Berle's off-stage lifestyle never included drugs or drinking, but did include cigars, a "who's who" list of beautiful women, and a lifelong addiction to gambling, primarily horse racing. His obsession with "the ponies" would be responsible for Berle never amassing the wealth or business success of others in his position.

Berle was known to have a colorful vocabulary and few limits on when it was used. Surprisingly, however, he "worked clean" for his entire onstage career, except for the infamous Friars Club all-male, private celebrity roasts. Berle often admonished younger comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin about their X-rated humor, and challenged them by saying that they could be just as funny without the four-letter words. Hundreds of younger comics, including several who are now comedy superstars, were encouraged and given guidance by Berle. Despite some less than flattering (and true) stories told about Berle being difficult to work with, he was a source of encouragement and technical assistance for many new comics who were fortunate enough to meet him. Young comics were always "invited over to the table" with a smile, and given an audience with "the King". (via William Berle)

Berle was well known among his peers to have one of the greatest joke collections in the world, the size of which Berle himself estimated as being somewhere in the vicinity of five to six million jokes. Occasional claims by Berle and others that all of these jokes had been transferred to computer media are suspect, as a member of Berle's family verified that the vast majority of the jokes were on sheets and scraps of paper and index cards in a vast, disorganized collection amassed over decades, well before the age of personal computers. The books Milton Berle's Private Joke File and The Rest of the Best of Milton Berle's Private Joke File each contained 10,000 of these jokes.

The SNL debacle

On April 14, 1979, Berle guest-hosted Saturday Night Live. During the performance, Berle seemed to spend as much time trying to upstage the show's youthful cast as he did trying to work with or augment them. Berle's long reputation for taking control of an entire television production?-whether invited to do so or not?-was a cause of stress on the set. Thirty years earlier, Berle had designed and built the studio that SNL used and was apparently not ready to accept that he didn't know how to do everyone's job (from the stagehands to the lighting crew) better than they did.

In Shales and James Andrew Miller's Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, one of the show's writers, Rosie Shuster, described the rehearsals for the Berle SNL show and the telecast as "sort of like watching a comedy train accident in slow motion on a loop." Upstaging, camera mugging, inserting old comedy bits and a maudlin performance of "September Song" complete with pre-arranged standing ovation (something creator Lorne Michaels and company had never sanctioned), resulted in Berle being banned from the show. In the weeks that followed, Berle's household in Beverly Hills received rambling, stoned phone calls from John Belushi, loudly proclaiming that Berle was the greatest comedian in history. The Berle episode of SNL has reportedly been banished to the vaults on the direct order of Michaels.

Another well-known incident of upstaging occurred during the 1982 Emmy Awards, when Berle and Martha Raye were the presenters of the Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a variety or music program. Berle was reluctant to give up the microphone to the award's recipients, from Second City Television, and interrupted actor Joe Flaherty's acceptance speech several times. The SCTV actors and writers left the stage looking very upset, and later created a parody sketch of the incident, in which Flaherty's character beats up a Berle look-alike, shouting, "You'll never ruin another acceptance speech, Uncle Miltie!"

Later life and death

As "Mr. Television," Berle was one of the first seven people to be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984. The following year, he appeared on NBC's Amazing Stories (created by Steven Spielberg) in an episode called "Fine Tuning". In this episode, friendly aliens from space receive TV signals from the Earth of the 1950s and travel to Hollywood in search of their idols, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Burns and Allen?-and Milton Berle. Speaking gibberish, Berle is the only person able to communicate directly with the aliens.

In 1988, a series of syndicated TV specials with the umbrella title "Milton Berle: The Second Time Around," recycled footage from the live Texaco Star Theater programs (unseen for decades) helped to introduce Berle's brand of comedy to a new audience. One of his most popular performances in his later years was guest starring in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a womanizing, joke-making patient who leads Will to think that he died because the patient fell asleep right away. Most of his dialogue was improvised and shocked the audience in one blooper where he screamed out a four-letter word by mistake.

Berle made a notorious appearance with RuPaul at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, where the younger performer, appearing in drag as Berle had often done on television, made a remark that was perceived by many as treating the legendary Berle poorly.

Milton Berle died of colon cancer on March 27, 2002, at the age of 93. Berle left detailed arrangements for burial with his third wife, Ruth, at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Burbank. However, his fourth wife, Lorna Adams, altered the plan so that Berle was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. He was survived by two adopted children; a daughter, Victoria, born in 1945, and a son, William, born in 1961

Bill Cosby
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr., Ed.D (born July 12, 1937) is an American actor, comedian, television producer and activist.

Bill Cosby is one of the United States' most popular and admired entertainers, known for his wit and warmth both onstage and off. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start working clubs and making comedy albums, then moved into television with a vanguard role in the 1960s action show I Spy. He later starred in his own series, The Bill Cosby Show, in the early 1970s, and created the humorous educational cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, about a group of young friends growing up in the city. Cosby also acted in numerous films, although none has received the acclaim of his television work. During the 1980s, Cosby produced and starred in one of the decade's defining cultural products, The Cosby Show, which aired from 1984 to 1992 and featured a upper-class African-American family without resorting to the kinds of vulgar stereotypes previously seen among African-American characters in prime-time television. Though some argued that The Cosby Show ignored the issues of racial inequity still prevalent in society, others maintained that it showcased positive role models.

The late 1990s brought trouble for Cosby, first in early 1997 with the death of his only son, Ennis, who was shot to death on a Los Angeles freeway in a random act of violence. Also that year, he was dragged into a court case that involved a young woman who was charged with extortion in claiming that he was her biological father - a shocking accusation that Cosby denied. Cosby admitted to having a one-time affair with the woman's mother. Despite these personal setbacks, Cosby did not slow down at all in the 1990s, starring in Cosby , which first aired in 1996, and hosting Kids Say the Darndest Things, which began in 1998, as well as making more movies. He has also continued appearing on the stand-up circuit, delighting audiences with his gentle, paternal brand of comedy. His material consists mainly of anecdotal tales, often dealing with his upbringing and raising his own family, and he is known for having a clean, kid-friendly routine. His good-natured, fatherly image has made him a popular personality and earned him the nickname of "America's Black Dad," and he has also been a sought-after spokesman for products like Jell-O Pudding and Coca-Cola.

Biography

Early life and success

William Henry Cosby, Jr., was born on July 12, 1937, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [1] Cosby's mother, Anna Cosby, worked as a housekeeper, sometimes as many as 12 hours a day, and when Cosby was eight, his father, William Henry Cosby, joined the U.S. Navy and served as a mess steward, [2] which meant he was away from home for months at a stretch. Cosby was thus often left in charge of his younger brothers, Russell and Richard (another younger brother, James, died at age six of rheumatic fever [3]). Despite all the hard work, his family's finances suffered, and they were forced to sell their home and move to a smaller house, then into the Richard Allen housing project in the Germantown district of North Philadelphia.[4] Although the neighborhood was rough, Cosby's mother provided a firm moral ground for her sons by reading to them from the Bible and authors such as Mark Twain. However, he also enjoyed the serial radio programs of the time, such as The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Lights Out, and the humor of Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Fred Allen, and George Burns with Gracie Allen. [5]

In school, Cosby was bright and athletic, the captain of the baseball and track teams at Mary Channing Wister Elementary School as well as class president. Early on, though, teachers noted his propensity for clowning around rather than studying. At Fitz-Simmons Junior High, Cosby began acting in plays as well as continuing his devotion to playing sports. He went on to Central High School, which was known to be academically challenging, but his full schedule of playing football, basketball, baseball, and running track, not to mention his dedication to joking in class, made it hard for him. In addition, Cosby was working before and after school, selling produce, shining shoes, and stocking shelves at a supermarket to help out the family. He transferred to Germantown High School, but failed the tenth grade. [6] Instead of repeating, he got a job as an apprentice at a shoe repair shop, which he liked, but could not see himself doing the rest of his life. Subsequently, he joined the Navy, serving at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia and at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. [7]

While serving in the Navy medical corps for four years, Cosby worked in physical therapy with some seriously injured Korean War casualties, [7] which helped him discover what was important to him. He immediately realized the need for an education, and finished his equivalency diploma via correspondence courses. [8] He then won a track and field scholarship to Philadelphia's Temple University in 1961, [9] and studied physical education while running track and playing right halfback on the football team. However, he had continued to hone his talent for humor, joking with fellow enlistees in the service and then with college friends. When he began tending bar at the Cellar, a club in Philadelphia, to earn money, he became fully aware of his ability to make people laugh. He worked his customers and saw his tips increase, then ventured on to the stage. [10]

Cosby left Temple as a sophomore to pursue a career in comedy. His parents were not pleased, but he lined up gigs at clubs in Philadelphia and soon was off to New York City, where he appeared at the Gaslight Cafe starting in 1962. Later, the university would grant him his bachelor's degree on the basis of "life experience." Cosby's career took off quickly, and he lined up dates in Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Washington DC, among others. He received national exposure on NBC's Tonight Show in the summer of 1963 and released, Very Funny Fellow ... Right!, the first of a series of popular comedy albums in 1964.

While many comics were using the growing freedom of that decade to explore controversial, sometimes risqué material, Cosby was making his reputation with humorous recollections of his childhood. Many Americans wondered about the absence of race as a topic in Cosby's stories. As Cosby's success grew he had to defend his choice of material regularly; as he argued, "A white person listens to my act and he laughs and he thinks, `Yeah, that's the way I see it too.' Okay. He's white. I'm Negro. And we both see things the same way. That must mean that we are alike..... So I figure I'm doing as much for good race relations as the next guy."

I Spy

Cosby on I SpyIn 1965, Cosby achieved a first for African-Americans when he costarred with Robert Culp in I Spy, an adventure show that reflected cold-war America's seemingly endless appetite for James Bond-style espionage fantasies. But Cosby's presence as the first black star of a dramatic television series made I Spy unique; Cosby and NBC executives were concerned that some affiliates might be unwilling to carry the series. At the beginning of the 1965 season, however, only four stations--in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama--declined the show. But the rest of the country was taken with the show's exotic locales and the authentic chemistry of the stars, and it became one of the ratings hits of that television season. I Spy finished among the twenty most-watched shows that year, and Cosby was honored with an Emmy award for outstanding actor in a dramatic series, as he would be again for the next two consecutive years. Although ostensibly focused on Culp's character, the show had clearly become a vehicle for his costar.

Yet throughout the series' three-year run Cosby was repeatedly confronted with the question of race. For him it was enough that I Spy portrayed two men who worked as equals despite their different races; but critics took the show to task for not having a black character engage the racial issues that inflamed the country at that time. Cosby was relieved when the series ended, enabling him to concentrate on his family (he and wife Camille had two daughters by this time) and to return to live performing.

The Bill Cosby Show and the 1970s

Cosby on The Bill Cosby ShowHe still pursued a variety of television projects: as a regular guest host on The Tonight Show and the star of an annual special for NBC. He returned with another series in 1969, The Bill Cosby Show, a situation comedy that ran for two seasons. Cosby played a physical education teacher at a Los Angeles high school (he had actually majored in physical education at Temple University); while only a modest critical success, the show was a ratings hit, finishing eleventh in its first season.

After The Bill Cosby Show left the air Cosby returned to his education, actively pursuing an advanced degree in education from the University of Massachusetts. This professional interest led to his involvement in the PBS series The Electric Company, for which he recorded several segments teaching reading skills to young children. In 1972, he was back in prime time, with a variety series, The New Bill Cosby Show, but this time he met with poor ratings, and the show lasted only a season. More successful was a Saturday morning show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, hosted by Cosby and based on his own childhood, running from 1972 to 1979, then from 1979 to 1984 as The New Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Some schools used the program as a teaching tool, and Cosby himself wrote his thesis on it in order to obtain his doctorate in Education in 1977.


Also during the 1970s, Cosby and other African American actors, including Sidney Poitier, joined forces to make some successful comedy films which countered the violent "blaxploitation" films of the era. Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Let's Do It Again (1975) were generally praised, but much of Cosby's film work has fallen flat. Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976) costarring Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel; A Piece of the Action, with Poitier; and California Suite, a compilation of four Neil Simon plays; were all panned. In addition, Cos (1976) an hour-long variety show featuring puppets, sketches, and musical numbers, was canceled within the year. Cosby was also regular on children public programs starting in the 70's hosting the "Picture Pages" segments which lasted into the early 80s.

The Cosby Show and the 1980s

Cosby's greatest television success came in 1984 with the debut of The Cosby Show. For Cosby the new situation comedy was a response to the increasingly violent fare the networks usually offered. Cosby insisted on and got total creative control of the series, and he was involved in every aspect of the series. Not surprisingly, the show had parallels to Cosby's actual family life: like the characters Cliff and Claire Huxtable, Cosby and his wife Camille were college educated, financially successful, and had five children. Essentially a throwback to the wholesome family situation comedy, The Cosby Show was unprecedented in its portrayal of an intelligent, affluent, nonstereotypical African-American family.


Cosby and Malcolm Jamal Warner on The Cosby ShowMuch of the material from the pilot and first season of The Cosby Show was taken from his then popular video Bill Cosby: Himself, released in 1983. The series was an immediate success, debuting near the top of the ratings and staying there for most of its long run. The familiar question of relevance came up again but was more or less drowned out by praise for the series. People Magazine called the show "revolutionary," and Newsday concurred that it was a "real breakthrough." Cosby's formula for success, as had been the case throughout his career, was to appeal to the common humanity of his audience rather than to the racial differences that might divide it.

In the 1990s

After The Cosby Show went off the air in 1992, Cosby embarked on a number of other projects, including the ill-fated series I Spy Returns (1994) and The Cosby Mysteries (1996). He also made appearances in two more film flops, The Meteor Man (1993); and Jack (1996); in addition to being interviewed in Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls (1997), a documentary about the racist bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, church in 1963. Also in 1996, he started up a new show for CBS, Cosby, again costarring Phylicia Rashad, his onscreen wife on The Cosby Show (early on she replaced Telma Hopkins). Cosby co-produced the show for Carsey-Werner Productions. The show was based on a cynical British program called One Foot in the Grave, but Cosby lightened the humor. It centered on Cosby as Hilton Lucas, an iconoclastic senior citizen who tries to find a new job after being "downsized," and in the meantime, gets on his wife's nerves. The late Madeline Kahn costarred as Rashad's goofy business partner. In addition, Cosby in 1998 became the host of Kids Say the Darndest Things. After four seasons, Cosby was cancelled. The last episode aired April 28, 2000. Cosby continued to work with CBS through a development deal and other projects.

His wellspring of creativity became manifest again with a series for preschoolers, Little Bill, which made its debut on Nickelodeon in 1999. The network renewed the popular program in November of 2000. In 2001, at an age when many give serious consideration to retirement, Cosby's agenda included the publication of a new book, as well as delivering the commencement addresses at Morris Brown College and at Ohio State University. Also that year he signed a deal with 20th Century Fox to develop a live-action feature film centering on the hilarious and popular Fat Albert character from his 1970s cartoon series. Fat Albert was released in theaters in December of 2004.

Personal life

Cosby met his wife, the former Camille Hanks, while he was performing stand-up in Washington D.C., in the early 1960s, and she was a student at the University of Maryland. They married on January 25, 1964, and had five children: daughters Erika Ranee, Erinn Chalene, Ensa Camille, and Evin Harrah, and son Ennis William. Tragically, Ennis was killed on January 16, 1997, shot while changing a flat tire on the side of a Los Angeles freeway. In 1998, a jury found teenage gang member Mikail Markhasev guilty of the random crime. Around the same time, fans were startled when a 22-year-old woman, Autumn Jackson, tried to extort $40 million from Cosby, claiming he was her biological father. He admitted to having a one-time fling with Jackson's mother and had provided money to the family until Jackson turned 18, though he disputed the paternity claim from the start. She was found guilty of extortion and sentenced to 26 months in prison; two accomplices were sentenced to five years and three months. The convictions were overturned in June 1999 on a technicality. The case was retried later, and the convictions were returned.

Cosby, as of 2005, maintains a home in Shelburne, Massachusetts.

Honors

Cosby received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cincinnati during the 2001 graduation ceremony.
Cosby recieved an Honorary Degree in 2003 presented by President William Harjo LoneFight from the Sisseton Wahpeton College on the Lake Traverse Reservation for his contributions to minority education.
Cosby received an Honorary Doctorate from West Chester University of Pennsylvania during the 2003 graduation ceremony.
Cosby received an Honorary Doctorate from Baylor University (September 4, 2003 "Spirit Rally").
In a British 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
He received Kennedy Center Honors in 1998, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.
He received an Honorary Doctor of Music Degree from Berklee College of Music during the 2004 commencement ceremony.
Won the 2003 Bob Hope Humanitarian Award

Political views

Bill Cosby's sociopolitical views, especially about the black community, are complex and have often been reduced to a simplistic representation. He has a long history of endeavors to advance African-Americans, which he sometimes tries to accomplish by being critical of African-Americans. He opposes Affirmative Action on the premise that it does the African American community more harm than good.
The media was not very accepting of Cosby's Pound Cake Speech with Richard Leiby of the Washington Post saying "Bill Cosby was anything but politically correct in his remarks Monday night at a Constitution Hall bash commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision," (Leiby, Richard).
He was the first bigtime entertainer to cancel an appearance in Cincinnati after a boycott was called in response to the 2001 Cincinnati Riots. His support of this cause encouraged other stars to follow.
Cosby has been critical of African-Americans regarding those who hold low standards and allowing fatherless single parent households, high crime rates, and high illiteracy rates. He encouraged a more proactive effort from African-Americans to reduce those problems. He expanded upon his remarks in San Jose, California during an event to promote the Read-2-Lead Classic. The way his speeches were portrayed by popular media provoked a great deal of anger from some African-Americans.
Cosby was the impetus for the formation of ARISE Detroit! when, in a January 13, 2005, speech at Wayne County Community College he challenged black Detroiters to stop blaming white people for problems they could solve themselves. "It's not what they're doing to us. It's what we're not doing," the entertainer told the audience of nearly 2,000 people. A little more than a year later, ARISE Detroit was formed to address this issue. [1]

In May 2004 after receiving an award at the celebration of the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that outlawed school segregation (Wu, Frank H.), Cosby made public remarks critical of those Blacks who put higher priorities on sports and fashion than on education and self-improvement. He has made a plea for African American families to educate their children on the many different aspects of American culture (Baker). According to Washington Times, he has had a long history of endeavors to advance African Americans (DeBose, Brian).

In "Pound Cake," Cosby, whose doctorate degree is in education, asks that African American parents begin teaching their children better morals at a younger age. He directed this address to the leaders in the lower and middle economic classes of the African American community. Cosby told reporters of the Washington Times, "Parenting needs to come to the forefront. If you need help and you don't know how to parent, we want to be able to reach out and touch" (DeBose, Brian).

The U.S. national media focused on limited content and, without any national opinion polls or quantitative study, declared his speech was divisive and suggested that Cosby was addressing all blacks.(see main article). Other African-American leaders such as Jesse Jackson, have made similar public comments that a particular subset of blacks are their own worst enemy (Segregated Expectations, USA Today).

Cosby again came under sharp criticism, and again he was largely unapologetic for his stance. He made similar remarks during a speech on July 1 at a Rainbow Coalition meeting commemorating the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. During that speech, he admonished Blacks for not assisting or concerning themselves with the individuals who are involved with crime or have counter-productive aspirations. He further described those who needed attention as "Blacks (who) had forgotten the sacrifices of those in the Civil Rights Movement." The talk was interrupted several times by applause and received praise from leaders such as Jesse Jackson.

Cosby and jazz

Since his youth in 1950s Philadelphia, Cosby has been a fan and supporter of jazz music. He hosted at his home the 1983 wedding of jazz innovator Miles Davis and actress Cicely Tyson, and on The Cosby Show he wrote the fathers of both Cliff Huxtable and his wife to be aged jazz musicians.

Controversy

In January 2005 a woman alleged she was drugged and fondled by Cosby in May 2004. In a statement from Cosby's publicist, Cosby's attorney said, "the charges are categorically false and we have no further comment." Pennsylvania authorities found "insufficient credible and admissible evidence" to support the woman's claims, according to Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor.
In February 2005 a second woman, California lawyer Tamara Green (nee Lucier), came forward alleging that in the 1970s she was drugged and groped by Cosby. Cosby's attorney has denied any merit to the allegations, stating "Mr. Cosby does not have any knowledge of a woman named Tamara Green or Tamara Lucia."
While prosecutors have declined to press charges against Cosby, the first accuser has filed a federal civil suit against the performer. Attorneys for the woman suing Bill Cosby for sexual assault claim that at least ten other women are prepared to testify about "prior similar sexual assaults and/or drugging incidents" perpetrated by the comedian.

Cheryl Ladd
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheryl Ladd (born July 12, 1951 in Huron, South Dakota) is an American actress and singer.

Born as "Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor", she was known as "Cherie Moor" when she performed on the album based on Hanna-Barbera's Josie and the Pussycats animated series.

Later she married David Ladd, son of the famous actor Alan Ladd, by whom she had a daughter, Jordan, and Cheryl took his surname as her own, which she kept even after their divorce. She is currently married to Brian Russell.

Her most famous role was Kris Munroe on Charlie's Angels, when she replaced Farrah Fawcett starting in the second season of the series (1977). She also starred in the 1994-1996 series One West Waikiki.

In 2005, Ladd released her first book, Token Chick. Among other things, it addresses her love of golf.

She appeared on Broadway as Annie Oakley in the revival of Irving Berlin's musical, Annie Get Your Gun after Susan Lucci left the show and before Reba McEntire arrived to take on the role.