WA2K Radio is now on the air

First, let me say to hamburger that Heppler is a bear of a man, and I adore Grieg, especially his piano concerto. I think most of our listeners already realize how much I love Romberg's serenade. Don't know Heppler's folk songs, hbg, but the Foggy, Foggy Dew sounds familiar.

edgar, That one by Andy I am not familiar with, but I do recall his Canadian Sunset. <smile> Perfect for the evening, no?

dj, it is always good to see you here, honey, and I promise that I will have a second look at your "Shopping Cart of Love."

We don't want to fool around with them married men, however.

Time for me to say goodnight, all, and hbg has led me right into it.




SERENADE
Sigmund Romberg

Overhead, the moon is beaming
White as blossoms on the bough
Nothing is heard but the song of a bird
Filling all the air with dreaming
Could I hear this song forever
Calling to my heart anew, my Darling
While I drift along forever
Lost in a dream of you

I hear your voice in the wind that stirs the willows
I see your face in the stars that shine above
(Hold me closer, tonight we love)
The willows bending, the stars that shine
The shore lights blending, they're yours and mine
Drifting along, in my heart there's a song
And the song in my heart will not fade
Oh, hear my serenade, my moonlight serenade

(Love me)

Overhead, the moon is beaming
White as blossoms on the bough
Nothing is heard but the song of a bird
Filling all the air with dreaming
Could this beauty last forever
I would ask for nothing more, believe me
Let this night but live forever
Forever and ever more

Also like his desert song.

Thank you for a wonderful session, my friends.

From Letty with love

Close your eyes, close the door,
You don't have to worry any more.
I'll be your baby tonight.

Shut the light, shut the shade,
You don't have to be afraid.
I'll be your baby tonight.

Well, that mockingbird's gonna sail away,
We're gonna forget it.
That big, fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon,
But we're gonna let it,
You won't regret it.

Kick your shoes off, do not fear,
Bring that bottle over here.
I'll be your baby tonight.

Bob Dylan

Good morning, WA2K listeners and contributors.

Well, edgar, I see that Dylan hasn't lost his touch. I slept like the proverbial baby last evening.

How about a gypsy poem for the day, folks.

A Vagabond Song
By Bliss Carman
1861-1929

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood --
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Good looking Canuck, right?

William Faulkner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born: September 25, 1897(1897-09-25)
New Albany, Mississippi, U.S.A.
Died: July 6, 1962 (aged 64)
Byhalia, Mississippi, U.S.A.
Occupation: Novelist, short story writer
Genres: Southern Gothic
Literary movement: Modernism, stream of consciousness
Influences: James Joyce, William Shakespeare, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot
Influenced: Flannery O'Conner, Cormac McCarthy, Harper Lee, Peter Carey

William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 - July 6, 1962) was an American novelist and poet whose works feature his native state of Mississippi. He is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Faulkner's writing is often criticized as being dense,and being asubjective to meandering and difficult to understand because of his heavy use of such literary techniques as symbolism, allegory, multiple narrators and points of view, non-linear narrative, and especially stream of consciousness. Faulkner was known for an experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence, in contrast to the minimalist understatement of his peer Ernest Hemingway. Faulkner is sometimes lauded as the inventor of the "stream-of-consciousness" technique in fiction, although this is misleading; other writers, specifically the French novelists of the nineteenth century, probably used this technique first.

Along with Mark Twain and possibly Tennessee Williams, Faulkner is considered to be one of the most important "Southern writers". Although his work came out on a regular basis from the mid-1920s until the late 1940s, he was relatively unknown before receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949, but his work is now favored by the general public and critics.[1]




Life

Faulkner was born William Falkner (without a "u")[2] in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in and heavily influenced by that state, as well as by the history and culture of the South. He moved with his family at the age of four to the nearby town of Oxford, where he lived on and off for the rest of his life. Oxford is the model for the town of "Jefferson" in his fiction, and Lafayette County, which contains the town of Oxford, is the model for his fictional "Yoknapatawpha County". Faulkner's roots in North Mississippi ran deep. His great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner, was an important figure in northern Mississippi who served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, founded a railroad, and gave his name to the town of Falkner in nearby Tippah County. Perhaps most importantly, he wrote several novels and other works, establishing a literary tradition in the family. More relevantly, Colonel Falkner served as the model for Colonel John Sartoris in his great-grandson's writing.

It is understandable that the older Falkner was influenced by the history of his family and the region in which they lived. Mississippi marked his sense of humor, his sense of the tragic position of blacks and whites, his keen characterization of usual Southern characters and his timeless themes, one of them being that fiercely intelligent people dwelled behind the façades of good old boys and simpletons. After being snubbed by the United States Army because of his height, Faulkner first joined the Canadian and then the Royal Air Force, yet did not see any World War I wartime action. The definitive reason for Faulkner's change in the spelling of his last name is still unknown. Some possibilities include adding an "u" to appear more British when entering the Royal Air Force, or so that his name would come across as more aristocratic. He may have also simply kept a misspelling that an early editor had made.

Although Faulkner is heavily identified with Mississippi, he was living in New Orleans in 1925 when he wrote his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, after being influenced by Sherwood Anderson into trying fiction. The small house at 624 Pirate's Alley, just around the corner from St. Louis Cathedral, is now the premises of Faulkner House Books, and also serves as the headquarters of the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society.

Faulkner married Estelle Oldham (19 February 1896 to 11 May 1972) in June 1929 at College Hill Presbyterian Church just outside of Oxford, Mississippi. They honeymooned on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, at Pascagoula, then returned to Oxford, first living with relatives while they searched for a home of their own to purchase. In 1930 Faulkner purchased the antebellum home Rowan Oak, known at that time as "The Bailey Place" where he and his family lived until his daughter Jill, after her mother's death, sold the property to The University of Mississippi in 1972. The house and furnishings are maintained much as they were in Faulkner's time. Still, today, one can find Faulkner's scribblings on the wall here, notably, the day-by-day outline covering an entire week that he wrote out on the walls of his small study to help him keep track of the plot twists in the dense novel A Fable.

On writing, Faulkner remarked, "Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him", in an interview with The Paris Review in 1956. Another esteemed Southern writer, Flannery O' Connor, stated that "The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down."

-- Flannery O'Connor, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction"


Works

Faulkner's most celebrated novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and The Unvanquished (1938). Faulkner was a prolific writer of short stories: his first short story collection, These 13 (1932), includes many of his most acclaimed (and most frequently anthologized) stories, including "A Rose for Emily", "Red Leaves", "That Evening Sun", and "Dry September". In 1931 in an effort to make money, Faulkner crafted Sanctuary, a sensationalist "pulp fiction"-styled novel. Andre Malraux characterised "Sanctuary" as "intrusion of Greek tragedy in the pulp fiction". Its themes of evil and corruption (bearing Southern Gothic tones) resonate to this day. A sequel to the book, Requiem for a Nun, is the only play that he published, except for his "The Marionettes" which he 'self-published' as a young man. "Requiem for a Nun" includes an introduction that is actually one sentence spanning more than a page.

Faulkner was also an acclaimed writer of mysteries, publishing a collection of crime fiction, Knight's Gambit, that featured Gavin Stevens (who also appeared in Light in August, Go Down, Moses, The Town, Intruder in the Dust, and the short story "Hog Pawn"), an attorney, wise to the ways of folk living in Yoknapatawpha County. He set many of his short stories and novels in this fictional location, based on?-and nearly identical to in terms of geography?-Lafayette County, of which his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, is the county seat. His former home in Oxford, Rowan Oak, is operated as a museum by the University of Mississippi and recently underwent a multi-million dollar restoration to preserve the house and its furnishings. Faulkner wrote three volumes of poetry -- The Marble Faun (1924) and A Green Bough (1933), all of which were well received but which were printed in very small editions. As a result, they are among his more valuable works to collect.


Awards

Faulkner's literary accolades are numerous. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 for "his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel". Although Faulkner won two Pulitzer Prizes, they were not awarded for his most famous novels, but were both given to what are considered as Faulkner's "minor" novels. First was his 1954 novel A Fable, which took the Pulitzer in 1955, and then his 1962 novel, The Reivers, which was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer in 1963. He also won two National Book Awards, first for his Collected Stories in 1951 and once again for his novel A Fable in 1955.

In 1946, Faulkner was one of three finalists for the first Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Award. He came in second to Manly Wade Wellman.[1]

Personal

Much has been made of the fact that Faulkner had a serious drinking problem throughout his life. He was not alone in this area; a list of contemporaneous American writers who struggled with alcohol would stretch to several pages. But as Faulkner himself stated on several occasions, and as was witnessed by members of his family, the press, and friends at various periods over the course of his career, he did not drink while writing, nor did he believe that alcohol helped to fuel the creative process. It is now widely believed that Faulkner used alcohol as an "escape valve" from the day-to-day pressures of his regular life, including his never-ending and maddening financial straits, rather than the more romantic vision of a brilliant writer who needed alcohol to pursue his craft. From 1949 to 1953, he conducted an affair with a young writer who considered him her mentor. The relationship with Joan Williams (1928-2004) became the subject of her third novel, called The Wintering (1971). Williams' son, Matt Bowen, wrote a dramatic adaptation of his mother's novel in 2005.[3]


Later years

In the 1930s Faulkner moved to Hollywood to be a screenwriter (producing scripts for Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, both directed by Howard Hawks). Faulkner became good friends with director Howard Hawks, as well as screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides. Faulkner also befriended actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Also at that time, Faulkner started an affair with Hawks's secretary and script girl Meta Carpenter. In Hollywood, Faulkner was rather famous for drinking as well, and throughout his life was known to be an alcoholic. Faulkner's Hollywood experience is treated in fictionalized fashion in the Joel and Ethan Coen 1991 film Barton Fink. That film's supporting character, W.P. Mayhew, is intended as a composite of Faulkner and his Lost Generation peer, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

An apocryphal story regarding Faulkner during his Hollywood years found him with a case of writer's block at the studio. He told Hawks he was having a hard time concentrating and would like to write at home. Hawks was agreeable, and Faulkner left. Several days passed, with no word from the writer. Hawks telephoned Faulkner's hotel and found that Faulkner had checked out several days earlier. It seems Faulkner had been quite literal and had returned home to Mississippi to finish the screenplay.

Faulkner donated a portion of his Nobel winnings "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers", eventually resulting in the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He donated another portion to a local Oxford bank to establish an account to provide scholarship funds to help educate African-American education majors at nearby Rust College in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Faulkner served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Virginia from 1957 until his death at Wright's Sanitorium in Byhalia, Mississippi of a heart attack at the age of 64.

Aldo Ray
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Aldo DaRe
Born September 25, 1926(1926-09-25)
Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania
United States
Died March 27, 1991 (aged 64)
Martinez, California

Aldo Ray, born Aldo DaRe (September 25, 1926 - March 27, 1991) Aldo Ray was born Aldo DaRe on September 25, 1926 to an Italian American family of five brothers and one sister. In 1944, at the age of eighteen, Ray entered the Navy, where he served with the prestigious Frogman unit until 1946 on an underwater demolition team, and saw action at Okinawa.

Upon leaving the Navy, Ray entered the University of California at Berkeley, but his studies there were brief. Shortly after leaving Berkeley, Ray settled in Crockett, California with his first wife Shirley Green. They had one child, a daughter named Claire DaRe, and Aldo was even elected the 12th Township Constable of Crockett, a small bedroom community just north of San Francisco.

While constable of Crockett, California, Aldo drove his brother Guido to an audition for the film "Saturday's Hero". Director David Miller was more interested in Aldo, because, it is rumored, of his voice, than in his brother, and hired him for the small role of a cynical football player opposite John Derek and Donna Reed. Columbia Pictures wasted no time in signing Ray to an exclusive contract, and despite having no acting experience, Aldo soon appeared in several films under his birth name, Aldo DaRe.

Ray's husky frame, thick neck and raspy voice made him perfect for playing tough sexy roles. In his first film as Aldo Ray, he starred with Judy Holliday in 1952's "The Marrying Kind", directed by film legend George Cukor. Cukor famously suggested that Ray go to ballet school because he walked too much like a football player. That same year, Ray appeared in "Pat and Mike", starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in the seventh of their nine films together, and again directed by Cukor.

Ray's work in "Pat and Mike" led to his nomination, along with Richard Burton and Robert Wagner, for a Golden Globe as Best Newcomer. Burton won the award that year, but Ray's career was launched.

The following year, 1953, Aldo's personal life didn't go nearly as well as his professional life. Although he and first wife Shirley Green were divorced, he starred opposite Rita Hayworth in "Miss Sadie Thompson", a remake of the W. Somerset Maugham story "Rain." This began the most productive period of Aldo's career, preceded by his marriage to actress Jean Marie "Jeff" Donnell in 1954, a marriage that would only last two years.

In 1955, Ray appeared in starring roles in "Battle Cry", "Three Stripes in the Sun", and one of his best loved films, "We're No Angels", in which he starred with Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Basil Rathbone, Leo G. Carroll, and the lovely Joan Bennett. By then he was firmly associated with the macho roles that would continue to characterize his work.

This period of Ray's career would culminate with a starring role in "God's Little Acre", an honest adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's steamy novel. The film featured Robert Ryan, with whom Ray had also worked in "Men in War", and a beautiful, young Tina Louise in her big screen debut. He was also memorable in "The Naked and the Dead", a gritty adaptation of Norman Mailer's novel.

By the dawn of the 1960's Aldo was most often type-cast as the tough guy, capitalizing on his husky good looks and gravelly voice. He also married Johanna Bennet, who continues to work today, under the name Johanna Ray, as a respected casting director. They were divorced in 1967. (Johanna, a long time collaborator with David Lynch, cast Eric DaRe, her son with Aldo, in Lynch's "Twin Peaks" series, as well as the movie "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.") Aldo's work of this decade included "The Day They Robbed the Bank of England", "What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?' and "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round." His best known work of the 1960's, however, was his portrayal of Drill Sergeant Muldoon, alongside John Wayne, in "The Green Berets."

Aldo also did two pilots for television in the 1960's. Although neither was ever picked up, one, an American adaptation of the British comedy "Steptoe and Son", was eventually reworked by Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear as a vehicle for Redd Foxx as "Sanford and Son."

Hollywood's appetite for Ray's machismo continued to wane in the 1970's. He was typically cast as gruff and gravelly rednecks. Perhaps overly eager for work, Aldo even appeared in a pornographic movie, "Sweet Savage", in a non-sexual role. This decline continued in the 1980's. Aldo, diagnosed with throat cancer, accepted virtually any role that came his way in order to maintain his costly health insurance. What was worse, Aldo's SAG membership was revoked in the 1980s when it was found out he was acting in non-union productions. His last film was the campy "Shock Em Dead" in which he appeared with Traci Lords and Troy Donahue.

In his last years he remained in Crockett, California with his mother and family and friends, where he died on March 27, 1991 at the age of 64. He was cremated and buried in Crockett, with a majority of the residents coming out to pay their respects[citation needed]. Aldo Ray is still considered Crockett California's favorite son and the small Crockett Museum still displays his pictures on a wall depicting his life and times.

[citation needed]

Glenn Gould
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Glenn Herbert Gould (birth name "Glenn Herbert Gold"[1]; September 25, 1932 - October 4, 1982) was a Canadian pianist, noted especially for his recordings of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He gave up concert performances in 1964, dedicating himself to the recording studio for the rest of his career, and performances for television and radio.




Life


Glenn Gould was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 25, 1932, to Russell Herbert ("Bert") Gould and Florence ("Flora") Emma Greig Gould, Presbyterians of Scottish extraction. (Greig is the original Scottish spelling of this name, unlike the Norwegian variant Grieg.) His mother's grandfather was a cousin of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.

Gould's first piano teacher was his mother until the age of ten. From the age of ten he began attending the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where he studied piano with Alberto Guerrero, organ with Frederick C. Silvester and theory with Leo Smith.

At age 5 Gould decided to be a composer, and was playing his own little compositions for family and friends. A lady of advanced years gives an eyewitness account of an occasion when he came with his mother to perform some of these pieces at a meeting of the Women's Missionary Society at Emmanual Presbyterian Church, a few blocks from Gould house.

When he was six Glenn was taken for the first time to hear a live musical performance by a celebrated soloist.

In his own words: "It was Hoffmann. It was, I think, his last performance in Toronto,and it was a staggering impression. The only thing I can really remember is that, when I was being brought home in a car, I was in that wonderful state of through your mind. They were all orchestral sounds, but I was playing them all, and suddenly I was Hoffman. I was enchanted

In 1945, he gave his first public performance (on the organ), and the following year he made his first appearance with an orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, in a performance of Beethoven's 4th piano concerto. His first public recital followed in 1947, and his first recital on radio came with the CBC in 1950. This was the beginning of his long association with radio and recording.

In 1957, Gould toured the Soviet Union, becoming the first North American to play there since World War II. His concerts featured Bach, Beethoven, and the serial music of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, which previously had been suppressed in the Soviet Union during the era of Socialist Realism.

On April 10, 1964, Gould gave his last public performance in Los Angeles, California, at the Wilshire Ebell Theater.[2] Among the pieces he performed that night were Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30, selections from Bach's Art of Fugue, and the Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 92 No. 4 by Ernst Krenek. For the rest of his life he eschewed live performance, focusing instead on recording, writing, and broadcasting. Towards the end of his life he began conducting; he had earlier directed Bach's Brandenburg concerto no.5 and cantata BWV 54, Widerstehe doch der Sünde from the harpsipiano [a piano with metal hammers to simulate harpsichord sound] in the 1960s. His last recording was as a conductor, Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in its original chamber music scoring. He had intended to give up the piano at the age of 50, spending later years conducting, writing on music and perhaps composing. He died in Toronto in 1982 after suffering a stroke, and is buried in Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery.


Gould as a pianist

Gould was known for his vivid musical imagination, and listeners regarded his interpretations as ranging from brilliantly creative to, on occasion, outright eccentric. His piano playing had great clarity, particularly in contrapuntal passages. Gould was not only a child prodigy, but also in adulthood was viewed by some as a musical phenomenon. He often swayed his torso, always in a clockwise motion, as he played.[3] In 1949 Gould injured his tailbone on a paved boatlaunch near his Ontario home. This incident appears to be associated with injury to Gould's back that affected his playing posture. But it is not clear whether this occasioned the need for the chair that Gould's father subsequently modified with screws to adjust its height, and which Gould sat in to play for the rest of his life. The 1945 photo at the above right, however, shows Gould as a teenager seated at the piano with his back against the back of a chair. This posture is unorthodox, but characteristic of Gould's later posture at the piano, hence suggesting that he developed it very early in life.

Gould disliked and rebelled against what he believed to be a hedonistic approach to music which had become popular in the 19th and 20th centuries. He was rarely virtuosic for the sake of being virtuosic, but rather, often had a refreshingly thoughtful and withdrawn interpretation of the music he played.

Gould had a formidable technique that enabled him to choose very fast tempos while retaining the separateness and clarity of each note. He took an extremely low position at the instrument, which allowed him more control over the keyboard. Charles Rosen's view is that a low position at the piano is unsuitable for playing the technically demanding music of the 19th century. However, this did not seem to impede Gould, as he showed considerable technical skill in both his recordings of Bach, and in virtuosic and romantic works like his own arrangement of Ravel's La Valse and his playing of Liszt's transcriptions of Beethoven's 5th and 6th symphonies. Gould worked from a young age with his teacher Alberto Guerrero on a technique known as finger-tapping, a method of training the fingers to act more independently from the arm.

Gould claimed he practiced little on the piano, preferring to study music by reading it rather than playing it, a technique he had also learnt from Guerrero. His voluminous repertoire, however, would also seem to betray a natural mnemonic gift. He stated that he didn't understand the requirement of other pianists to continuously reinforce their relationship with the instrument by practicing many hours a day.[4] It seems that Gould was able to practice mentally without access to an instrument, and even took this so far as to prepare for a recording of Brahms piano works without ever playing them until a few weeks before the recording sessions. This is all the more staggering considering the absolute accuracy and phenomenal dexterity exhibited in his playing.

Regarding the performance of Bach on the piano, Gould said, "the piano is not an instrument for which I have any great love as such... [But] I have played it all my life and it is the best vehicle I have to express my ideas." In the case of Bach, Gould admitted, " fixed the action in some of the instruments I play on ?- and the piano I use for all recordings is now so fixed ?- so that it is a shallower and more responsive action than the standard. It tends to have a mechanism which is rather like an automobile without power steering: you are in control and not it; it doesn't drive you, you drive it. This is the secret of doing Bach on the piano at all. You must have that immediacy of response, that control over fine definitions of things."[5]


Recordings

In creating music, Gould much preferred the control and intimacy provided by the recording studio, and he disliked the concert hall, which he compared to a competitive sporting arena. After his final public performance in 1964, he devoted his career solely to the studio, recording albums and several radio documentaries. He was attracted to the technical aspects of recording, and considered the manipulation of tape to be another part of the creative process. Although his producer at CBS, Andrew Kazdin, has stated that he was the classical artist least in need of splices or dubs, Gould used the process to give him total artistic control over a recording. He recounted his recording of the A minor fugue from Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier, and how it was spliced together from two takes, with the fugue's expositions from one take and its episodes from another.[6]

Gould's first major recording, Bach: The Goldberg Variations came in 1955, at Columbia Masterworks' 30th Street Studios in New York City. He performed the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. Although there was initially some controversy at CBS as to whether this was the most appropriate piece to record, the finished product received phenomenal praise, and was among the best-selling classical music albums of its time. Gould became closely associated with the piece, playing it in full or in part at many of his recitals. Another version of the Goldberg Variations, recorded in 1981, would be among his last recordings, and one of only a few pieces he recorded twice in the studio. The 1981 recording was one of CBS Masterworks' first digital recordings. The two recordings are very different, the first highly energetic and often frenetic, the second slower and more introspective. In his second recording of the Goldberg Variations, Gould treats the Aria and its thirty variations as one cohesive piece.

Gould recorded most of Bach's other keyboard works, including the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, Partitas, French Suites, English Suites and keyboard concertos. For his only recording at the organ, he recorded about half of The Art of Fugue. He also recorded all five of Beethoven's piano concertos and 23 of the 32 piano sonatas.

Gould also recorded works by many other prominent piano composers, though he was outspoken in his criticism of some of them, apparently not caring for Frédéric Chopin, for example. In a radio interview, when asked if he didn't find himself wanting to play Chopin, he replied: "No, I don't. I play it in a weak moment ?- maybe once a year or twice a year for myself. But it doesn't convince me." Although Gould recorded all of Mozart's sonatas, he was a harsh critic of Mozart's music. He was fond of many lesser-known composers, such as the early keyboard music of Orlando Gibbons, who he claimed was his favourite composer in terms of Gibbons' spiritual quest in music, alongside his favouritism of Bach in general for his technical mastery.[7] He made recordings of little-known piano music by Jean Sibelius (the sonatines, Kyllikki), Georges Bizet (the Variations Chromatiques de Concert and the Premier nocturne), Richard Strauss (the piano sonata, the five pieces, Enoch Arden), and Paul Hindemith (the three sonatas, the sonatas for brass and piano). He made recordings of the complete piano works and lieder of Arnold Schoenberg.

One of Gould's performances of the Prelude and Fugue in C Major from Book Two of The Well-Tempered Clavier was chosen for inclusion on the NASA Voyager Golden Record by a committee headed by Carl Sagan. The disc was placed on the spacecraft Voyager 1, which is now approaching interstellar space and is the most distant human-made object from Earth.


Radio documentaries

Less well-known is Gould's work in radio documentary. This work was, in part, the result of Gould's long association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for which he produced numerous television and radio programs. Notable recordings include his Solitude Trilogy, consisting of The Idea of North, a meditation on Northern Canada and its people; The Latecomers, about Newfoundland; and The Quiet in the Land, on Mennonites in Manitoba. All three use a technique which Gould called "contrapuntal radio," in which several people are heard speaking at once, much like the voices in a fugue.


Lost footage of a live performance

In 2002, during preparations for Queen Elizabeth II's Jubilee Tour of Canada, lost footage of a Glenn Gould performance was discovered; part of a CBC programme, with various musical performances, which had followed the Queen's 1957 television address to Canadians from Rideau Hall. Within this footage was a seven-minute live performance of Glenn Gould, unseen for the previous 45 years, where he plays the second and third movements of Bach's Piano Concerto in F Minor.[8]


Gould as a composer

As a teenager, Gould wrote chamber music and piano works in the style of the Second Viennese school of composition. His only significant work was the String Quartet, Op. 1, which he finished when he was in his 20s, and perhaps his cadenzas to Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1, which can be heard on his recording of the piece and have recently been recorded by the pianist Lars Vogt. As well as composing, Gould was a prolific arranger of orchestral repertoire for piano; not only his Wagner and Ravel transcriptions which he recorded, but also the operas of Richard Strauss and the symphonies of Schubert and Bruckner, which he played privately for his own pleasure.[9]

Early works:

5 little pieces (Piano)
2 pieces (Piano)
Sonata for Piano (unfinished)
Sonata for Bassoon and Piano
Slightly later works:

Lieberson Madrigal (SATB and Piano)
String Quartet Op. 1
So You Want To Write A Fugue? (SATB with piano or string quartet accompaniment)
Cadenzas to Beethoven's 1st piano concerto.
The majority of his work is published by Schott Music. The recording Glenn Gould: The Composer contains his original works excepting the cadenzas.


Eccentricities

Glenn Gould usually hummed while he played, and his recording engineers varied in how successfully they were able to exclude his voice from recordings. Gould claimed that his singing was subconscious and increased proportionately with the inability of the piano in question to realize the music as he intended.

Gould was known for his peculiar body movements while playing, (circular swaying, conducting, or grasping at the air as if to reach for notes as he did in the taping of Beethoven's Tempest Sonata) and for his insistence on sameness. He would only play concerts while sitting on the old chair his father had made. He continued to use this chair even when the seat was completely worn through.[10] His chair is so closely identified with him that it is shown in a place of honor in a glass case at the National Library of Canada. Conductors responded diversely to Gould and his playing habits. George Szell, who led Gould in 1957 with the Cleveland Orchestra, remarked to his assistant, "That nut's a genius."[11] Leonard Bernstein said, "There is nobody quite like him, and I just love playing with him."[12]

Gould was averse to cold and wore heavy clothing, including gloves, even in warm places. He also disliked social functions. He had an aversion to being touched, and in later life he limited personal contact, relying on the telephone and letters for communication. Upon one visit to historic Steinway Hall in New York City in 1959, the chief piano technician at the time, William Hupfer, greeted Gould by giving him a slap on the back. Gould was shocked by this, and complained of aching, lack of coordination, and fatigue due to the incident; he even went on to explore the possibility of litigation against Steinway & Sons if his apparent injuries were permanent.[13]

In his liner notes and broadcasts, Gould created more than two dozen alter egos for satirical, humorous, or didactic purposes, permitting him to write hostile reviews or incomprehensible commentaries on his own performances. Probably the best known are "Karlheinz Klopweisser", the English conductor "Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite", and the American pianist "Theodore Slutz".[14]

Fran's Restaurant was a constant haunt of Gould's. A CBC profile noted, "sometime between two and three every morning Gould would go to Fran's, a 24-hour diner a block away from his Toronto apartment, sit in the same booth and order the same meal of scrambled eggs." [15]


Philosophical and aesthetic views

Gould stated that had he not been a musician, he would have been a writer. He wrote music criticism and espoused his philosophy of music and art, in which he rejected what he deemed banal in music composition and its consumption by the public. In seeming contrast to his geniality, open-mindedness and modernism, Gould's remarks on jazz and other popular music were mostly disdainful, though rare. He believed that the keyboard is fulfilled as an instrument primarily through counterpoint. Much of the homophony that followed that period, he felt, belongs to a less serious and less spiritual period of art.

Gould was convinced that the institution of the public concert with audience en masse and the tradition of applause was a force of evil, and that these practices should be abandoned. This doctrine he set forth, half in jest and half seriously, in "GPAADAK," the Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds.[16]

Gould enjoyed solitude, and expressed that theme in his trio of radio documentaries, the Solitude Trilogy.


Health

Early in his life Gould suffered a spine injury which prompted his physicians to prescribe him an assortment of painkillers and other drugs. His continued use of prescribed medications throughout his career is speculated to have had a deleterious effect on his health. He was highly concerned about his health throughout his life, such as his high blood pressure, and was worried about the safety of his hands. It is often claimed that Gould never shook hands with anyone and always wore gloves.[17] However, there are documented cases of Gould shaking hands.[18]

Gould's experience with psychoanalytic treatment and medication is documented. Dr. Timothy Maloney, the director of the Music Division of the National Library of Canada, has written about and discussed the possibility that Gould also had Asperger syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. This idea was first tentatively proposed by Gould's biographer, Dr. Peter Ostwald, though Ostwald died before he could develop this theory. (The diagnosis of Asperger syndrome did not exist in Gould's lifetime.) Gould's eccentricities, such as rocking and humming, isolation and difficulty with social interaction, and the uncanny focus and technical ability he displayed in music-making, can be related to the symptoms displayed by persons with Asperger's, according to Maloney. Others, such as Dr. Helen Mesaros, a Toronto psychiatrist and author, dismiss this theory as post-mortem diagnosis based on circumstantial evidence. Mesaros wrote a rebuttal to Maloney's paper, suggesting that there are ample psychological and emotional explanations for Gould's eccentricities, and that it is not necessary to resort to neurological explanations.


Relationships

In 1956, Gould met Cornelia Foss and Lukas Foss in Los Angeles. Cornelia was an art instructor and had studied sculpture at the American Academy in Rome. Lukas was a pianist composer and conducted both the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Brooklyn Philharmonic. Over the years, Glenn and Cornelia became lovers. Cornelia left Lukas in 1967 for Toronto, taking her two children with her. She purchased a house near Gould's apartment at 110 St. Clair Avenue West. Their affair lasted until 1972, when she returned to Lukas. In a newspaper article, Cornelia is quoted as saying, "There were a lot of misconceptions about Glenn and it was partly because he was so very private. But I assure you, he was an extremely heterosexual man. Our relationship was, among other things, quite sexual." (Toronto Star, August 25, 2007)


Awards and recognitions

Glenn Gould received many honors during his lifetime and posthumously, however ironically, as he despised competition in all its forms. In 1983, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

The Glenn Gould School of the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto was founded and named after him in 1997.[19]
The Glenn Gould Studio at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto was named after him.
The Glenn Gould Foundation was established in Toronto in 1983 to honour Gould and preserve his memory. Among other activities, the foundation awards the Glenn Gould Prize every three years to "an individual who has earned international recognition as the result of a highly exceptional contribution to music and its communication, through the use of any communications technologies." The prize consists of CAD$50,000 and an original work by a Canadian artist.

Juliet Prowse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Juliet Anne Prowse
Born September 25, 1936(1936-09-25)
Bombay, Maharashtra, India
Died September 14, 1996 (aged 59) (pancreatic cancer)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation Actress and dancer
Spouse(s) Eddie Frazier (1969-1970)
John McCook (1972-1979), one child

Juliet Anne Prowse (September 25, 1936-September 14, 1996) was a South African reared American dancer, whose four decade career include stage, television and film but dancing remained her true love. She was known for her striking beauty, sultry smile and famous long legs. Prowse stood nearly 6 feet tall.




Early life

Prowse was born in Bombay and raised in South Africa.

Prowse began studying dance at the age of four. In her early twenties she was dancing at a club in Paris when she was spotted by a talent agent and eventually signed to play the part of "Claudine" in the 1960 Walter Lang film, Can-Can.


Her dancing labeled "immoral" by Nikita Khrushchev

It was during the filming of Can-Can in 1959, that she captured the international spotlight. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited the set of the film Can-Can and after she performed a rather saucy can-can for the Russian leader, he proclaimed her dancing "immoral". Little did Khrushchev know that he was a great press agent, because soon afterwards Prowse was appearing in every magazine cover in the United States. From there, her career took off.[1]


Film and television career

She met Frank Sinatra on the set of Can-Can and also received good reviews and notoriety for her role. Time magazine didn't necessarily care for the movie but said Prowse was the best thing in it, stating In fact, the only thing really worth seeing is Juliet Prowse, a young South African hoofer who puts some twinkle in the stub-toed choreography. And the only thing really worth hearing is the crack that Frank flips back at Juliet when she whips a redoubtable hip in his direction. "Don't point," he gasps. "It's rude." [2] She would go on to appear with him and other notable guest such as Ella Fitzgerald, Peter Lawford, Hermione Gingold, The Hi-Lo's, Red Norvo, Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra on the 1959, Frank Sinatra Show. She at times would sing in the chorus with other guest or Sinatra would adoringly sing to her. [3] Prowse and Sinatra announced their engagement in 1962. Soon afterwards, they called it quits, they broke, according to publicity handouts because Prowse wanted to concentrate on her career. Actually, she admitted: "I was as much flattered as I was in love. He (Sinatra) was a complex person, and after a few drinks he could he very difficult."[4]

Juliet Prowse went on to co-star alongside Elvis Presley in G.I. Blues. During shooting of the film she had a short and intense fling with Elvis, confessing "Elvis and I had an affair.... We had a sexual attraction like two healthy young people, but he was already a victim of his fans. We always met in his room and never went out." [5]

She also had her own NBC sitcom for one season; 1965's Mona McCluskey, which was produced by George Burns. She also did various feature films, including The Fiercest Heart in 1961, and Who Killed Teddy Bear?, with Sal Mineo in 1965.

Although her film and television career didn't make her the big star that everyone predicted, Prowse had a rather philosophical way of looking at it, stating that, "Things generally happen for the best,...I never worry about what happens in my career, because I can always do something else."[6] Prowse would later go on to headline successful Las Vegas shows, commanding thousands of dollars per week. Stating that Las Vegas was the most demanding place she every worked, she won Entertainer of the Year for the Vegas run of Sweet Charity. She would later show off her famous dancer's legs in a series of lucrative nationwide commercials for L'eggs.

Juliet Prowse was the first guest on The Muppet Show.

In the late eighties, she was mauled by an 80 pound leopard - twice. Once, while filming a scene for Circus of the Stars, in 1989 and later that same year during a promotional stint the same leopard attacked her. However, the latter was much more serious, requiring upwards of 20 stitches to reattach her ear.

Throughout the mid 1980's and 1990's, Prowse hosted the Championship Ballroom Dance Competition on PBS.


Battle with cancer and death

In 1994 she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In 1995, she went into remission and was well enough to tour with Mickey Rooney in Sugar Babies. Unfortunately, the cancer returned, and Juliet Prowse succumbed to the disease on September 14, 1996, just two weeks short of her sixtieth birthday. She was survived by her son and her mother. Her ex-husband, TV actor John McCook, who is the father of her only child, reconciled with her shortly before she died after many years of acrimony.

Michael Douglas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Michael Kirk Douglas
Born September 25, 1944 (1944-09-25) (age 63)
New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States
Spouse(s) Diandra Luker (1977-2000)
Catherine Zeta-Jones (2000-)
Children Cameron Douglas (b.1978)
Dylan Michael Douglas (b.2000)
Carys Zeta Douglas (b.2003)
[show]Awards
Academy Awards
Best Picture
1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Best Actor
1987 Wall Street
Golden Globe Awards
Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
1988 Wall Street
Cecil B. DeMille Award
2004 Lifetime Achievement

Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. Douglas's first television exposure was that of Karl Malden's young college educated partner, Insp. Steve Keller in the popular 1970s crime drama, The Streets of San Francisco (a role he played from 1972 to 1976). He also won a 1987 Oscar, for his role on Wall Street.





Biography

Early life

Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey to celebrated American actor Kirk Douglas and Bermudian actress Diana Dill. His paternal grandparents, Herschel Danielovitch and Bryna Sanglel, were Jewish immigrants from Russia[1], while his mother and maternal grandparents, Lt. Col. Thomas Melville Dill and Ruth Rapalje Neilson, were natives of Devonshire, Bermuda;[2] his maternal grandfather served as the Attorney General of Bermuda and was a commanding officer of the Bermuda Militia Artillery. Douglas graduated from the prestigious Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Massachusetts before going on to Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, which is the same school Glenn Close attended. Douglas graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1968 with a B.A. in dramatic arts where he is also the Honorary President of the UCSB Alumni Association.


Career

Having a famous father opened many doors to Michael that would have been closed to other young Hollywood hopefuls. Douglas starred in the long-running TV series The Streets of San Francisco from 1972 to 1976. He received an Academy Award as producer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975. Although Douglas was a capable actor on Streets, his career was somewhat stagnant after the series, and he only appeared in occasional movies which were usually less than popular (e.g., 1979's Running).

His fortunes changed when he starred in the 1984 romantic adventure comedy Romancing the Stone. The film was followed a year later in 1985 by a sequel, The Jewel of the Nile. In 1987, Douglas starred playing in Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and the film became a world-wide hit. In 1988, Douglas received an Academy Award for acting in the leading role of Wall Street which would lead to many roles playing characters much like Gordon Gekko. Douglas later starred as Mister Rose a successful lawyer similar to this character's personality in The War of the Roses, which featured previous co-stars Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito.

In 1992, Douglas revived his slick, worldly character when he appeared alongside Sharon Stone in the film Basic Instinct. The movie was a huge hit, and sparked controversy over its depictions of bisexuality and lesbianism. In 1998, Douglas received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.[3]

Douglas's skill at character acting continued to make him one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood and commands a hefty sum for his roles. After the commercial failure of It Runs in the Family (2003), Douglas did not star in a movie for three years, until The Sentinel in 2006. A year prior to the release of It Runs in the Family, he guest-appeared on an episode of the popular television sitcom Will and Grace, as his familiar visage but as a gay cop attracted to Will Truman (Eric McCormack); the performance earned Douglas an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Show. His Fatal Attraction co-star, Glenn Close, appeared in the following episode of the series and also earned an Emmy nomination for her performance.

Douglas on being asked to do Basic Instinct 2: "Yes, they asked me to do it a while ago, I thought we had done it very effectively; (Paul) Verhoeven is a pretty good director. I haven't seen the sequel. I've only done one sequel in my life, The Jewel of the Nile, from Romancing The Stone. Besides, there were age issues, you know? Sharon still looks fabulous. The script was pretty good. Good for her, she's in her mid-40s and there are not a lot of parts around. The first one was probably the best picture of her career?-it certainly made her career and she was great in it."[4]


Personal life

Douglas married Diandra Luker on March 20, 1977. They had one son, Cameron (born December 13, 1978). In 1980, Douglas was involved in a serious skiing accident which sidelined his acting career for three years. In September of 1992, he underwent treatment for alcohol abuse at Sierra Tucson Center. In 2000, after 23 years of marriage, Diandra divorced Douglas.

Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones on November 18, 2000; they were both born on September 25, though 25 years apart. She claims that when they met in Deauville, he used the line "I'd like to father your children." [5] They have two children, Dylan Michael (born August 8, 2000) and Carys Zeta (born April 20, 2003).[6]

Douglas and Zeta-Jones hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway on December 11, 2003. They acted as co-masters of ceremony in the concert celebrating the award given to Shirin Ebadi. In 2006, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) from the University of St. Andrews. Douglas and his family divide their time between their homes in Pacific Palisades, California, New York City, Aspen, Colorado, Bermuda, Majorca, Swansea and Ridgewood, NJ.

Douglas is an advocate of nuclear disarmament, is a supporter of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and sits on the Board of Directors of the Ploughshares Fund. In 1998 he was appointed UN Messenger of Peace by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.[7] He is a notable Democrat, has donated money mainly to Democratic candidates[8] and is backing Hillary Clinton as next US President.[9]

In 1997, New York caddy James Parker, sued Douglas for USD$25 million.[10] Parker accused Douglas of hitting him in the groin with an errant golf ball, causing Parker to lose a testicle and his job. The case was later settled out of court.

Mark Hamill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Mark Richard Hamill
Born September 25, 1951 (1951-09-25) (age 56)
Oakland, California, U.S.A.
Spouse(s) Marilou York

Mark Richard Hamill (born September 25, 1951) is an American actor. Hamill is best known for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy.




Early life

Hamill was born in Oakland, California, to Bill and Sue Hamill. He was one of seven children; two brothers, Will and Patrick, and four sisters, Terry, Jan, Jeanie, and Kim. As a child, his father's military career meant numerous relocations, and he graduated from Nile C. Kinnick High School in Japan. He majored in drama at Los Angeles City College.


Early Career

Hamill's early career included voicing the character Corey Anders on the Saturday morning cartoon Jeannie by Hanna-Barbera Productions. He also portrayed the oldest son David on the pilot episode of Eight Is Enough, though the role was later performed by Grant Goodeve. He acted in TV series such as The Texas Wheelers, the first comedy TV series without a laughtrack, General Hospital, One Day At A Time, and Matlock. One of his earliest movies was the made-for-TV film The City.


The original Star Wars trilogy

For his portrayal of Luke Skywalker, Hamill was twice honoured with the Saturn Award for Best Actor (Film) (given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films), in 1980 for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and in 1983 for Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

George Lucas once asked Hamill to reprise the role of Luke Skywalker in a Star Wars sequel trilogy as an Obi-Wan Kenobi type character who passes the torch to the next generation of Jedi Knights and that it would be made around 2011. Lucas has recently dismissed it as nothing more than an off-hand comment.[1]

Reprints of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces (which influenced Lucas as he was developing the Star Wars films) issued after the release of Star Wars in 1977, used the image of Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the cover. [2]


Car accident

On January 11, 1977, a day before he was set to shoot one of the final scenes needed for Star Wars, Hamill was in a car accident[3] that severely injured his face. An A&E Network Biography special from 2002, entitled Mark Hamill: A Force to Be Reckoned With, claimed the damage was extensive and that Hamill had to have multiple plastic surgeries to reconstruct his face. The nature of the accident was recounted in the A&E special by members of Hamill's family, including his older brother, William, and his cousin, Eric Johnson.[4]


Animation

DC Animated Universe

Hamill was the voice of the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series (which debuted in 1992), as well as most of the other spin-off series, video games and films. It is perhaps his most popular role outside of his work in the Star Wars series. He replaced Tim Curry, who was originally cast in the role. (Coincidentally, Curry had been considered for the role of the Joker in the 1989 Batman film but lost out to Jack Nicholson). Hamill had initially voiced a guest role as evil businessman Ferris Boyle in the episode "Heart of Ice", and was delighted when offered the role of the Joker, one of his favorite characters.

He received praise from fans and critics for his portrayal of the comic book icon, which combined the Joker's manic, darker qualities with a theatrical, bombastic flair. As a huge comic book fan (and creator) himself, Hamill has said it was an honor and a thrill to play the character. When asked by fans to perform the role in person, he would often insist that they turn around so as not to ruin the illusion.

He had many appearances as the Joker to date, like the two-part Justice League episode "Wild Cards". His last appearance, in terms of DCU chronological order, was in the direct-to-DVD film Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker. "Wild Cards" was the last aired episode in which he appears as the Joker.

While many fans suggested that Hamill be chosen to reprise the role in live-action form for the upcoming The Dark Knight (2008) - the sequel to Batman Begins (2005) - the younger Heath Ledger was ultimately cast.

Hamill also provided voices for villains Solomon Grundy and the Trickster in the DC Animated Universe series Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. On a sidenote Hamill also played the Trickster in the Flash TV Series. Hamill has since voiced the criminal Tony Zucco in The Batman, a more recent animated series which is unrelated to the various DC animated universe series.


Other villainous roles

His success as Joker has led to other villain roles in other animated series, including the Gargoyle in the animated series of The Incredible Hulk, the Hobgoblin in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Maximus in Fantastic Four, Captain Stickybeard in Codename: Kids Next Door, and the deranged shock jock Dr. Jak in Phantom 2040. He even parodied his Joker role in the Tom and Jerry Kids episode "Droopy Man Returns," and in the Animaniacs episode "The Cranial Crusader", as Johnny Bad-Note. He voiced Py-Ro in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Dr. Julius Pendecker in The Tick, and recorded voice tracks for Zim on Nickelodeon's Invader Zim[citation needed]. He ultimately was turned down for the role; the part was later given to Richard Steven Horvitz. Hamill does the voice of the villain Undergrowth in the Danny Phantom episode "Urban Jungle." More recently, he provides the voice of the shadowed Fire Lord Ozai in Avatar: The Last Airbender and Skeleton King on Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go.


Anime

Two recent notable voice performances are Colonel Muska in the English language version of Castle in the Sky and the Mayor of Pejite in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, both directed by Hayao Miyazaki and distributed by Disney. (His role as Muska, in particular, drew praise.) Hamill provided the voice of Commander Taylor in Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, the sequel to the 1980s adapted anime series Robotech. He also voiced Christopher "Maverick" Blair in the animated series Wing Commander Academy.

Hamill provides the voice of Jameson Burkright in the mini-series comedy The Wrong Coast, and Yamma in the joint Cartoon Network/Production I.G. anime series IGPX Immortal Grand Prix.


Other work

After the success of the Star Wars trilogy, Hamill found that audiences identified him very closely with the role of Luke Skywalker. Not wanting to be typecast, he left Hollywood and for a few years acted on Broadway. He starred in Amadeus, The Elephant Man, Harrigan and Hart (which was a musical) and other plays, for which he received positive reviews.

Despite his stints on Broadway, Hamill has had an expansive film career. He played the bad guy (known as Hawkins) in the Swedish action movie Hamilton in 1998. Some of his other film credits include Corvette Summer, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, The Big Red One, Slipstream, The Guyver, and the 1995 remake of Village of the Damned. He also narrated the four-part documentary on the influence of science fiction upon present society, The Sci-Fi Files. In 2001, Hamill starred in the feature film Thank You, Good Night as a pragmatic father along side Christian Campbell, J.P. Pitoc, and Sally Kirkland.

In live-action television, Hamill had recurring roles in General Hospital and The Texas Wheelers (both pre-Star Wars), and, foreshadowing his later famous role of the Joker, he appeared as The Trickster in the live-action television series of The Flash, a role he would later reprise in the animated series Justice League Unlimited. He has made cameo appearances on MADtv (where he played the estranged father of Ms. Swan), and appeared on Saturday Night Live (playing himself being sold on a Star Wars themed home shopping sale)[5]. Hamill appeared on an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, and playing Luke Skywalker during one of the scenes. He appeared on an episode of Just Shoot Me! He also had a guest spot on The Muppet Show as both himself and his "cousin" Luke Skywalker, along with C-3PO, Chewbacca and R2-D2. In 1986, he appeared in an episode of the TV series Amazing Stories (TV series) ("Gather Ye Acorns") in the role of Jonathan, who is advised by "Mother Nature's only son" to not discard his childhood belongings, which causes him trouble during his adult life. As he grows older, he is able to auction off his belongings as memorabilia, becoming wealthy in the process. He also had a recurring role as Tobias LeConte on seaQuest DSV.

He also has done numerous voices for TV series and episodes: the Joker in the 2002 TV series Birds of Prey, Larry 3000 in Time Squad, Guinness on Samurai Jack, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Swat Kats: The Radical Squadron, Principal John Smith on Totally Spies, Bruno the Kid on The Outer Limits, Dr. Cesarian on Stripperella, Himself on The Simpsons Mayored to the Mob, Family Guy, Grim & Evil, The Blues Brothers Animated Series, Cow and Chicken, The Legend of Calamity Jane, Two Stupid Dogs, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Pinky and the Brain, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Loonatics Unleashed, and Night Light (Spongebob episode). He is also a recurring voice actor on Seth Green's Robot Chicken, and as of August 2006, on Adult Swim's Metalocalypse.


Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

He appeared as Cock-Knocker in the film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (his entrance heralded by a still shot of him with the caption, "HEY, KIDS! IT'S MARK HAMILL! (applause)", during which he used his "Joker Voice." He parodies The Trickster. He also parodies Luke Skywalker in a "blunt saber" duel with Jay and Silent Bob in which he says, "Don't **** with the Jedi Master, son." When his large, fake right hand prop is cut off in the film's duel, he sighs, looks at the camera and says, "Not again."

This was actually the first time that Hamill and his Star Wars co-star Carrie Fisher appeared in a film together since Return of the Jedi. However, neither of the stars were aware of this until the film's premiere.


Comic Book: The Movie

Hamill also directed and starred in the 2004 direct-to-DVD Comic Book: The Movie. A comic book fan who attended sci-fi and comic conventions before he became famous, Hamill claimed that his character was based on an exaggerated version of himself. He and his crew shot most of the "mockumentary" film during the 2002 San Diego Comic-Con, and enlisted even Stan Lee, Kevin Smith, and Hugh Hefner in small roles. The movie won an award for Best Live-Action DVD Premiere Movie at the 2005 DVD Exclusive Awards.


Wing Commander

When the Wing Commander series of computer games started using full motion video cut scenes, Hamill was cast as the series protagonist, Colonel Christopher Blair, a role he played in Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994), Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (1995), and Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997). (In the 1999 Wing Commander film, set earlier in the series, the character was played by Freddie Prinze, Jr.) He did however, have a cameo, as did many of the other actors who did voiceovers for the game. Hamill was also cast as the voice of Christopher Blair in the animated television series Wing Commander Academy.



Other computer and video game roles

Other notable computer-game roles (voice only) include Lieutenant Mosely in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Assistant Director Wilson in Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, several characters in the LucasArts game Full Throttle (including the game's main villain, Adrian Ripburger), and Wolverine in X2: Wolverine's Revenge, the tie-in game to the movie X2: X-Men United. Hamill also provided the voice for two of the primary characters of Starsiege, one of them a young warrior leading a rebellion against an empire.

He voiced the Joker in a few Batman games, notably Batman Vengeance and the Sega CD version of The Adventures of Batman & Robin. While some have mistakenly suspected that he reprised his role as Luke Skywalker for LucasArts' Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and its sequel, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, the character is in fact voiced by Bob Bergen (also the voice of Porky Pig and a host of others). Hamill provided voices for The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian. He also voiced the role of Emperor Griffon in the PS2 RPG Dark Cloud 2.

He narrated a documentary on the United States' 1st Infantry Division. Footage from the documentary was used in the video game Call of Duty 2: Big Red One.

Mark Hamill's latest voiceover role is for the PlayStation 2 game, Yakuza, where he plays Goro Majima, a crazed and ruthless lieutenant of a Yakuza family.


As a writer

Mark Hamill is also the co-writer of The Black Pearl, a comic book miniseries published by Dark Horse Comics. He also wrote an introduction to the Trade Paperback Batman: Riddler Two-Face which reprints various stories of the title villains to tie in with Batman Forever.


Personal life

In 1978, he married dental hygienist Marilou York. They have three children together: Nathan, Griffin and Chelsea.[6]

Christopher Reeve
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born September 25, 1952(1952-09-25)
New York, New York, U.S.A.
Died October 10, 2004 (aged 52)
Mount Kisco, New York, U.S.A.
Spouse(s) Dana Reeve (1992-2004)
Children Matthew Reeve (b.1979)
Alexandra Reeve (b.1982)
Will Reeve (b.1992)
Official site Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation
[show]Awards
BAFTA Awards
Best Newcomer
1978 Superman
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Informational Special
1997 Without Pity: A Film About Abilities
Grammy Awards
Best Spoken Word Album
1998 Still Me
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Best Actor - Miniseries/TV Movie
1998 Rear Window

Christopher D'Olier Reeve[1] (September 25, 1952 - October 10, 2004) was an American actor, director, producer and writer. He established himself early as a Juilliard-trained stage actor before portraying Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent in four films, from 1978 to 1987. In the 1980s, he starred in several films, including Somewhere in Time (1980), Deathtrap (1982), The Bostonians (1984), and Street Smart (1987). He also starred in many plays, including the Broadway plays Fifth of July (1980 - 1982) and The Marriage of Figaro (1985). In 1987, he led a public rally in support of 77 Chilean actors, directors, and playwrights who had been sentenced to death by the dictator Augusto Pinochet for criticizing his regime in their works. Pinochet canceled the sentence after the ensuing media coverage, and Reeve was awarded with three national distinctions from Chile for his actions. In the 1990s, Reeve acted in such films as Noises Off (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993), and Village of the Damned (1995).

In May 1995, Reeve was paralyzed in an accident during the cross country portion of a three day equestrian competition. He was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He lobbied on behalf of people with spinal cord injuries, and for human embryonic stem cell research. He founded the Christopher Reeve Foundation and co-founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center. Reeve died at age 52 on October 10, 2004 from cardiac arrest caused by a systemic infection.[2]

Reeve married Dana Morosini in April 1992, and they had a son, Will. Reeve also had two children, Matthew and Alexandra, from a previous relationship with Gae Exton. Dana Reeve died of lung cancer in March 2006.[3]




Early life

Reeve was born in New York City on September 25, 1952. His father, Franklin D'Olier Reeve, was a teacher, novelist, poet and scholar.[4] He was a Princeton University graduate and, when Christopher was born, was studying for a master's degree in Russian language at Columbia University. Franklin's father, Colonel Richard Henry Reeve, had been the CEO of the Prudential Financial for over twenty-five years. Despite being born wealthy, Franklin Reeve spent summers working at the docks with longshoremen. Reeve's mother, Barbara Pitney Lamb, a journalist, had been a student at Vassar College, but transferred to Barnard College to be closer to Franklin, whom she had met through a family connection. They had another son, Benjamin, born on October 6, 1953.[5] Richard Henry Reeve was a descendant from a sister of Elias Boudinot, from Massachusetts governors Thomas Dudley and John Winthrop, from Pennsylania deputy governor Thomas Lloyd, and from Henry Baldwin, a US Supreme Court Justice.[6] Barbara Pitney Lamb was the granddaughter of Mahlon Pitney, another US Supreme Court Justice, and was also a descendant of William Bradford, a Mayflower passenger.

Franklin Reeve's interests in socialism and English language and literature became increasingly important to him, and he and Barbara divorced in 1956. She moved with her two sons to Princeton, New Jersey, where they attended Nassau Street School. Franklin Reeve married Helen Schmidinger in 1956, a Columbia University graduate student. Barbara Pitney Lamb married Tristam B. Johnson, a stockbroker, in 1959. Johnson had Christopher and his brother, Benjamin, enroll in Princeton Country Day, a private school. Reeve was one of the few kids to excel in both academics and sports; he was on the honor roll and played soccer, baseball, tennis and hockey. Reeve later admitted that he put pressure on himself to act older than he actually was in order to gain his father's approval.[7]

Reeve found his true passion in 1962 at age nine when an amateur group held tryouts for the play The Yeomen of the Guard, and he was cast; it was the first of many student plays that he would act in.[8] In the summer of 1968, at age fifteen, Reeve was accepted as an apprentice at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The other apprentices were mostly college students, but Reeve's older appearance and maturity helped him fit in. In a workshop, he played a scene from A View From The Bridge that was chosen to be presented in front of an audience. After the performance, actor Olympia Dukakis said to him, "I'm surprised. You've got a lot of talent. Don't mess it up."[9] The next summer, Reeve was hired at the Harvard Summer Repertory Theater Company in Cambridge for $44 per week. He played a Russian sailor in The Hostage and Belyayev in A Month in the Country. Famed theater critic Elliot Norton called his performance as Belyayev "startlingly effective." The 23-year-old lead actress in the play, a Carnegie Mellon graduate, turned out to be Reeve's first romance. She was engaged to a fellow Carnegie Mellon graduate at the time; they mutually ended the relationship when he made a surprise visit to her dorm room at seven in the morning and found Reeve with her. Reeve's romance with the actress fizzled a few months later when the age difference became an issue for them.[10]


Cornell

After graduating from Princeton Day School in June 1970, Reeve acted in plays in Boothbay, Maine, and planned to go to New York City to find a career in theater. Instead, at the advice of his mother, he applied for college. He was accepted into Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, and Cornell. Reeve claims that he chose Cornell primarily because it is a five-hour drive from New York City, where he planned to start his career as an actor[11], although Columbia's location in New York City itself suggests other motives.

Reeve joined the theater department in Cornell and played Pozzo in Waiting for Godot, Segismundo in Life Is a Dream, Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Polixenes in The Winter's Tale.[12] In the fall of his Freshman year, Reeve received a letter from Stark Hesseltine, a high-powered agent who had discovered Robert Redford and represented actors such as Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon and Richard Chamberlain. Hesseltine had seen Reeve in A Month in the Country and wanted to represent him. The two met and decided that instead of dropping out of school, Reeve could come to New York once a month to meet casting agents and producers to find work for the summer vacation. That summer, he toured in a production of Forty Carats with Eleanor Parker.[13]

The next year, Reeve received a full-season contract with the San Diego Shakespeare Festival, with roles as Edward IV in Richard III, Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Dumaine in Love's Labour's Lost at the Old Globe Theatre.[14]

Before his third year of college, Reeve took a three-month leave of absence. He flew to Glasgow and saw theatrical productions throughout Scotland and England. He was inspired by the actors and often had conversations with them in bars after the performances. He helped actors at the Old Vic with their American accents by reading the newspaper aloud for them. He then flew to Paris, where he spoke fluent French for his entire stay; he had studied it from third grade until his second year in Cornell. He watched many performances and immersed himself into the culture before finally going back to New York to reunite with his girlfriend.[15]


Juilliard

After coming back from Europe, Reeve decided that he wanted to focus solely on acting. In Cornell, he was still required to take classes such as Intellectual History and Physics. He managed to convince theater director John Clancy and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences that, as a theater major, he would achieve more in Juilliard than in Cornell. They agreed that his first year at Juilliard would be counted as his senior year at Cornell.[16]

In 1973, around two thousand students auditioned for twenty places in the freshman class at Juilliard. Reeve's audition was in front of ten faculty members, including John Houseman, who had just won an Academy Award for The Paper Chase. Reeve and Robin Williams were the only students selected for Juilliard's prestigious Advanced Program[17] They had several classes together in which they were the only students. In their dialects class with Edith Skinner, Williams had no trouble mastering all dialects naturally, whereas Reeve was more meticulous about it. Williams and Reeve developed a close friendship; they were able to laugh together, and were also able to confide in each other about their relationship problems.[18]

In a meeting with John Houseman, Reeve was told, "Mr. Reeve. It is terribly important that you become a serious classical actor. Unless, of course, they offer you a shitload of money to do something else."[19] Houseman then offered him the chance to leave school and join the Acting Company, among actors such as Kevin Kline and David Ogden Stiers. Reeve declined as he had not yet received his Bachelor's degree from Cornell.[20]

In the spring of 1974, Reeve and other Juilliard students toured the New York City middle school system and performed The Love Cure. In one performance, Reeve, who played the hero, drew his sword out too high and accidentally destroyed a row of lights above him. The students applauded and cheered with approval. Reeve later said that this was the greatest ovation of his career.[21] After completing his first year at Juilliard, Reeve graduated from Cornell in the Class of '74.


Soap operas and Broadway

Reeve took a job in the soap opera Love of Life in July 1974. He played Ben Harper, an antagonistic character with a polygamist lifestyle and history of criminal behavior. By August, his character had become popular, and ratings for the show improved. Reeve was no longer an anonymous actor; people on buses would give him advice as to which female character to marry. The soap opera schedule eventually forced him to drop out of Juilliard. He took acting classes at HB Studios, performed at the Theater for the New City, and starred in Berkeley Square, which became a hit. He also starred in Berchtesgaden as a Nazi.[22]

In the fall of 1975, he auditioned for the Broadway play A Matter Of Gravity. Katharine Hepburn watched his audition and cast him as her character's grandson in the play. With Hepburn's influence over the CBS network, Reeve was able to work out the schedules of Love of Life and the play so that he would be able to do both. Due to his busy schedule, he ate candy bars and drank coffee in place of meals, and suffered from exhaustion and malnutrition. On the first night of the play's run, Reeve entered the stage, said his first line, and then promptly fainted. Hepburn turned to the audience and said, "This boy's a goddamn fool. He doesn't eat enough red meat." The understudy finished the play for him, and Reeve was treated by a doctor who advised him to eat a healthier diet. He stayed with the play throughout its year-long run and was given very favorable reviews. He and Hepburn became very close. She said, "You're going to be a big star, Christopher, and support me in my old age." He replied, "I can't wait that long." A romance between the two was rumored in some gossip columns. Reeve said, "She was sixty-seven and I was twenty-two, but I thought that was quite an honor...I believe I was fairly close to what a child or grandchild might have been to her." Reeve said that his father, who was a professor of literature and came to many of the performances, was the man that Hepburn was most captivated by. When the play moved to Los Angeles in 1976, Reeve dropped out, to Hepburn's disappointment. They stayed in touch for years after the run of the play. Reeve later regretted not staying closer instead of just sending messages back and forth.[23]

Reeve's first role in a Hollywood film was a small part as a submarine officer in the disaster movie Gray Lady Down. He then acted in the play My Life with friend William Hurt.[24]


Superman

After My Life, Stark Hesseltine told Reeve that he had been asked to audition for the leading role as Clark Kent/Superman in the big budget film, Superman: The Movie (1978). Lynn Stalmaster, the casting director, put Reeve's picture and resume on the top of the pile three separate times, only to have the producers throw it out each time. Through Stalmaster's persistent pleading, a meeting between director Richard Donner, producer Ilya Salkind and Reeve was set in January 1977 at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on Fifth Avenue.[25] The morning after the meeting, Reeve was sent a 300 page script. He was thrilled that the script took the subject matter seriously, and that Richard Donner's motto was verisimilitude. Reeve immediately flew to London for a screen test, and on the way was told that Marlon Brando was going to play Jor-El and Gene Hackman was going to play Lex Luthor. Reeve still did not think he had much of a chance. Though he was 6 ft 4, he was a self-described "skinny WASP." On the plane ride to London, he imagined how his approach to the role would be. He later said, "By the late 1970s the masculine image had changed... Now it was acceptable for a man to show gentleness and vulnerability. I felt that the new Superman ought to reflect that contemporary male image." He based his portrayal of Clark Kent on Cary Grant in his role in Bringing up Baby. After the screen test, his driver said, "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you've got the part."[26]

Although Reeve was tall enough for the role and had the blue eyes and handsome features, his physique was slim. He refused to wear fake muscles under the suit, and instead went through an intense two-month training regimen supervised by former British weightlifting champion David Prowse, the man under the Darth Vader suit in the Star Wars films. The training regimen consisted of running in the morning, followed by two hours of weightlifting and ninety minutes on the trampoline. In addition, Reeve doubled his food intake and adopted a high protein diet. He put on thirty pounds of muscle to his thin 190 pound frame. He later made even higher gains for Superman III (1983), though for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) he decided it would be healthier to focus more on cardiovascular workouts.[27]


Reeve was never a Superman or comic book fan, though he had watched Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves. However, he found that the role offered a suitable challenge because it was a dual role. He said, "there must be some difference stylistically between Clark and Superman. Otherwise, you just have a pair of glasses standing in for a character."[28][29]

The film grossed $300,218,018 worldwide (unadjusted for inflation).[30] Reeve received positive reviews for his performance:

"Christopher Reeve's entire performance is a delight. Ridiculously good-looking, with a face as sharp and strong as an ax blade, his bumbling, fumbling Clark Kent and omnipotent Superman are simply two styles of gallantry and innocence." - Newsweek
"Christopher Reeve has become an instant international star on the basis of his first major movie role, that of Clark Kent/Superman. Film reviewers - regardless of their opinion of the film - have been almost unanimous in their praise of Reeve's dual portrayal. He is utterly convincing as he switches back and forth between personae." - Starlog
Reeve used his newfound celebrity for good causes. Through the Make-a-Wish Foundation, he visited terminally-ill children. He joined the Board of Directors for the worldwide charity Save the Children. In 1979, He served as a track and field coach at the Special Olympics, alongside O.J. Simpson.[31]


Sequels

Superman II was filmed at the same time as the first film. After most of the footage had been shot, the producers had a disagreement with director Richard Donner about going over budget and fired him. He was replaced by director Richard Lester, who changed the script and reshot most of the footage. The cast was unhappy with this, but Reeve later said that he liked Lester and considered Superman II to be his favorite film of the series.[32] Due to fan encouragement, Richard Donner's version of Superman II, titled Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, was released on DVD in 2006 and dedicated to Reeve.

Superman III, released in 1983, was filmed entirely by Lester. Reeve believed that the producers ruined it by turning it into a Richard Pryor comedy. He missed Richard Donner and believed that Superman III's only saving grace was the junkyard scene in which evil Superman fights Clark Kent in an internal battle.[32]

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, released in 1987, was initially never going to be made; after Superman III, Reeve vowed that he was done with Superman.[33] However, he accepted the role on the condition that he would have partial creative control over the script. The nuclear disarmament plot was his idea. The production rights were given to Cannon Films, who cut the budget in half to $17 million. The film was a major flop and Reeve later said, "the less said about Superman IV the better."[32]


Career, family, and political involvement

Following the first Superman movie, Reeve found that Hollywood producers all wanted him to be an action star. He later said, "I found most of the scripts of that genre poorly constructed, and I felt the starring roles could easily be played by anyone with a strong physique." In addition, he did not feel that he was right for the other films he was offered, and turned down the lead roles in American Gigolo, The World According to Garp, and Body Heat. Katharine Hepburn recommended Reeve to director David Lean for the role of Fletcher Christian in a remake of Mutiny on the Bounty starring Anthony Hopkins. After considering it, Reeve decided that he would be miscast, and Lean went with his second choice, Mel Gibson.[34]


Reeve's first role after Superman was as Richard Collier in the 1980 romantic fantasy, Somewhere in Time. Jane Seymour played Elise McKenna, his love interest. The film was shot on Mackinac Island in May 1979 and was Reeve's favorite film to ever shoot. Early reviews and screenings were favorable. However, the film did not do well at the box office and was Reeve's first public disappointment. He immediately returned to London to shoot Superman II. Since then, Somewhere In Time has developed a wide cult following. INSITE, the International Network of Somewhere in Time Enthusiasts, has thousands of members. Thanks to the activism of these members, Reeve was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1997. The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island became a much larger tourist actraction. Jane Seymour remained a life-long friend of Reeve's and named one of her sons after him.[35]

Gae Exton, Reeve's girlfriend at the time, gave birth to their son, Matthew Reeve, on December 20, 1979. After finishing Superman II, the family left London and rented a house in Hollywood Hills. Soon after, Reeve grew tired of Hollywood and took the family to Williamstown, Massachusetts where he played the lead in the successful play The Front Page, directed by Robert Allan Ackerman. In the fall, Reeve played a disabled Vietnam veteran in the critically-acclaimed play The Fifth of July. In his research for the role, he was coached by an amputee on how to walk on artificial legs.[36]

After The Fifth of July, Reeve stretched his acting range further and played a psychopath opposite Michael Caine in Sydney Lumet's film Deathtrap. The film was well-received. Reeve was then offered the role of Basil Ransom in The Bostonians alongside Vanessa Redgrave. Though Reeve ordinarily commanded over one million dollars per film, the producers could only afford to pay him one-tenth of that. Reeve had no complaints, as he was happy to be doing a role that he could be proud of. The film exceeded expectations and did very well at the box office for what was considered to be an art house film. The New York Times called it "the best adaptation of a literary work yet made for the screen."[36] Katharine Hepburn called Reeve to tell him that he was "absolutely marvelous" and "captivating" in the film. When told that he was currently shooting Anna Karenina, she said, "Oh, that's a terrible mistake."[37]

Reeve was a licensed pilot and flew solo across the Atlantic twice. During the filming of Superman III, he raced his sailplane in his free time. He joined The Tiger Club, a group of aviators who had served in the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain. They let him participate in mock dogfights in vintage World War I combat planes. The producers of the film The Aviator approached him without knowing that he was a pilot and that he knew how to fly a Stearman, the plane used in the film. Reeve readily accepted the role. The film was shot in Kranjska Gora, and Reeve did all of his stunts. At this time, Gae Exton gave birth to their second child, Alexandra.[38]

In 1984, Reeve appeared in The Aspern Papers with Vanessa Redgrave. He then played Tony in The Royal Family and the Count in Marriage of Figaro. In 1986, he was still struggling to find scripts that he liked. A script named Street Smart had been lying in his house for years, and after re-reading it, he had it green-lit at Cannon Films. He starred opposite Morgan Freeman, who was nominated for his first Academy Award for the film. The film received excellent reviews but performed poorly at the box office, possibly because Cannon Films had failed to properly advertise it.[39]

After Superman IV in 1987, Reeve's relationship with Exton fell apart and they separated. He moved to New York without his children. He became depressed and decided that doing a comedy might be good for him. He was given a lead in Switching Channels. Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner had a feud during filming, which made the time even more unbearable for Reeve. The film did not do well, and Reeve believed that it marked the end of his movie star career. He spent the next years mostly doing plays. He tried out for the Richard Gere role in Pretty Woman, but walked out on the audition because they had a half-hearted casting director fill in for Julia Roberts.[40]

Although Reeve's career was bottoming-out, these were some of the happiest times of his life. In the summer of 1987, Reeve returned to Williamstown, where he appeared in a production of The Rover at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. One night he attended a performance of WTF's Cabaret Corp at the Williams Inn, where Dana Morosini sang. Following the performance he attended a company party called "The Zoo". Seeing Morosini at the party, Reeve abandoned the actress who'd accompanied him to the show and after party and stood in rapt conversation with Morosini in the middle of the party for over an hour. His companion eventually just left. In Reeve's book "Still Me" he claimed that his "secret" relationship with Morosini began five months after separating from Gae Exton. However, that summer the National Enquirer carried pictures taken of the pair outside the Williams Inn accusing Reeve of having an affair behing Exton's back. During the course of the WTF Season Reeve made several singing appearances with Morosini in the theatre's Late Night Cabaret Series. By his own admission, Reeve was not much of a singer, but he did manage to talk-sing his way through several duets with Morosini including "You say Tomato..." [41]

In the late 1980s, Reeve became more active than ever. He was taking horse riding more seriously, and trained five to six days a week for competition in combined training events. He built a sailboat, The Sea Angel, and sailed from the Chesapeake to Nova Scotia. He campaigned for Senator Patrick Leahy and made speeches throughout the state. He served as a board member for the Charles Lindbergh Fund, which promotes environmentally safe technologies. He lent support to causes such as Amnesty International, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and People for the American Way. He joined the Environmental Air Force, and used his Cheyenne II turboprop plane to take government officials and journalists over areas of environmental damage. In the fall of 1987, 77 actors in Santiago, Chile were threatened with execution by the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Reeve was asked by Ariel Dorfman to help save their lives. Reeve flew to Chile and helped lead a protest march. A cartoon then ran in a newspaper showing him carrying Pinochet by the collar with the caption, "Where will you take him, Superman?" For his heroics, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Bernardo O'Higgins Order, the highest Chilean distinction for foreigners. He also received the Obie Prize and the Annual Walter Brielh Human Rights Foundation award.[42] Reeve's friend Ron Silver later started the Creative Coalition, an organization designed to teach celebrities how to speak knowledgeably about political issues. Reeve was an early member of the group, along with Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, and Blythe Danner.[43]

On June 7, 1992, Will Reeve was born to Dana and Christopher. In October, Reeve was offered the part of Lewis in The Remains of the Day. The script was one of the best he had read, and he unhesitatingly took the part. The film was deemed an instant classic and was nominated for eight Academy Awards.[44]

In 1994, Reeve was elected as a co-president of the Creative Coalition. The organization's work was noticed nationwide, and Reeve was asked by the Democratic Party to run for the United States Congress. He replied, "Run for Congress? And lose my influence in Washington?" At this time, he had received scripts for Picket Fences and Chicago Hope and was asked by CBS if he wanted to start his own television series. This meant moving to Los Angeles, which would place him even further from Matthew and Alexandra, who lived in London. In Massachusetts, Reeve could take a Concorde and see them any time. He declined the offers. Reeve did not mind making trips, however; he went to New Mexico to shoot Speechless and went to Point Reyes to shoot Village of the Damned.

Shortly before his accident, Reeve played a paralyzed police officer in the HBO special Above Suspicion. He did research at a rehabilitation hospital in Van Nuys, and learned how to use a wheelchair to get in and out of cars. Reeve was then offered the lead in Kidnapped, to be shot in Ireland. He was excited to be going to Ireland, and he and Dana decided that they would conceive their second child there. Reeve also planned to direct his first big screen film, a romantic comedy entitled Tell Me True. Not long after making these plans, the family went to Culpeper, Virginia for an equestrian competition.[45]

Then, he directed the family film Everyone's Hero, which was inspired by a story that the producer told his children at bedtime, called Yankee Irving. Unfortunately, he died before the film opened in Fall 2006, it was dedicated to him and wife Dana Reeve, who also died soon after Chris passed. The film was about a young boy, that after Babe Ruth's bat Darlin' is stolen, he goes out on an adventure along with his talking baseball Screwie, to take the bat back to Chicago before the World Series in the 1930's.


Injury

Reeve took up horse riding in 1985 after learning to ride for the film Anna Karenina. He was initially allergic to horses, so he took antihistamines. He trained at Martha's Vineyard, and by 1989 he began eventing. As with every other sport and activity he participated in (sailing, scuba diving, skiing, flying, windsurfing, cycling, gliding, parasailing, mountain climbing, baseball, tennis), he took horse riding seriously and was intensely competitive with it. His allergies soon disappeared.[46]

Reeve bought a twelve-year-old American Thoroughbred horse named Eastern Express, nicknamed Buck, while filming Village of the Damned. He trained with Buck in 1994, and planned to do Training Level events in 1995 and move up to Preliminary in 1996. Though Reeve had originally signed up to compete at an event in Vermont, his coach invited him to go to the Commonwealth Dressage and Combined Training Association finals at the Commonwealth Park equestrian center in Culpeper, Virginia. Reeve finished at fourth place out of twenty-seven in the dressage, before walking his cross-country course. He was concerned about jumps sixteen and seventeen, but paid little attention to the third jump, which was a routine three-foot-three fence shaped like the letter 'W'.[47]

On May 27, 1995, Reeve became paralyzed from the neck-down, after his horse had a refusal and he fell off.[48] He had no recollection of the incident. Witnesses said that Buck started the jump over the third fence, and then suddenly stopped. Someone said that a rabbit spooked the horse, and another person claimed that it might have been a shadow. Reeve held on and the bridle, the bit, and the reins were pulled off the horse and tied his hands together. He landed headfirst on the other side of the fence. His helmet prevented any brain damage, but the impact of his 215 pound body hitting the ground shattered his first and second vertebrae. Reeve had not been breathing for three minutes before paramedics arrived. He was taken to the local hospital, and then flown by helicopter to the University of Virginia medical center.[49]


Recovery

For the first few days after the accident, Reeve was heavily sedated. He began to suffer from ICU psychosis and would wake up sporadically and mouth words to Dana such as "get the gun" and "they're after us." After five days, he regained full consciousness, and Dr. John Jane explained that he had destroyed his first and second cervical vertebrae, which meant that his head and spine were not connected. His lungs were filling with fluid and were suctioned by entry through the throat; this was the most painful part of Reeve's recovery.[50]

After considering his situation, believing that not only would he never walk again, but that he may never move a body part again, Reeve considered suicide. He mouthed to Dana, "maybe we should let me go." She tearfully replied, "I am only going to say this once: I will support whatever you want to do, because this is your life, and your decision. But I want you to know that I'll be with you for the long haul, no matter what. You're still you. And I love you." Reeve never considered suicide as an option again.[51][52]

Reeve went through inner anguish in the ICU, particularly when he was alone during the night. As he lay there one day, the door opened and a man with glasses wearing a yellow surgical gown and a blue scrub hat entered. He said that he was a proctologist and was going to perform a rectal exam on Reeve. It was Robin Williams. Reeve said, "For the first time since the accident, I laughed." They had a long conversation and Williams assured Reeve that he would do anything for him. It was this support from family and friends that convinced Reeve that his life was still worth living.[53]

Dr. John Jane performed the surgery that reconnected Reeve's head to his body. He put wires underneath both laminae and used bone from Reeve's hip to fit between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. He inserted a titanium pin and fused the wires with the vertebrae, then drilled holes in Reeve's skull and fit the wires through to connect the head to the spinal column.[54]


Rehabilitation

On June 28, 1995, Reeve was taken to the Kessler Rehabilitation Center in West Orange, New Jersey. He was given several blood transfusions in the first few weeks due to very low haemoglobin and protein levels. Many times his breathing tube would disconnect and he would be at the mercy of nurses to come in and save his life.[19] His aide was a Jamaican man named Glenn Miller, nicknamed Juice. Juice gave him invaluable support in adapting to his new condition. He helped him learn how to get into the shower and how to use a wheelchair, which moved by blowing air through a straw. Juice and Reeve would watch the film Cool Runnings and joke about Reeve directing the sequel, Bobsled Two.[55]

In the physical therapy gym, Reeve worked on moving his trapezius muscle. Electrodes connected to him sent out readings to therapists, and every day he would try to beat his numbers from the day before. The most difficult part of rehabilitation was respiratory therapy. The therapist, Bill Carroll, used a hose to see how much air Reeve could suck in, measured in cubic centimeters as the vital capacity. In order to even consider getting off the artificial respirator, a patient needs a vital capacity of 750 cc's. Initially, Reeve could hardly get above zero. By the end of October, he was able to get around 50 cc's. This inspired him, and he felt his natural competitive edge coming back. The next day, he went up to 450 cc's. He reached 560 cc's the day after. Bill Carroll said, "I've never seen progress like that. You're going to win. You're going to get off this thing." On December 13, 1995, Reeve was able to breathe without a respirator for 30 minutes.[56]


Activism

Reeve left Kessler feeling deeply inspired by the other patients he had met. Because he was constantly being covered by the media, he realized that he could use his name to the benefit of everyone with spinal cord injuries. In 1996, he appeared at the Academy Awards to a long standing ovation and gave a speech about Hollywood's duty to make movies that face the world's most important issues head-on. He also hosted the Paralympics in Atlanta and spoke at the Democratic National Convention. He traveled across the country to make speeches, never needing a teleprompter or a script. For these efforts, he was placed on the cover of TIME on August 26, 1996.[57] In the same year, he narrated the HBO film Without Pity: A Film About Abilities. The film won the Emmy award for "Outstanding Informational Special." He then acted in a small role in the film A Step Towards Tomorrow.[58]

Reeve was elected Chairman of the American Paralysis Association and Vice Chairman of the National Organization on Disability. He co-founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center, which is now one of the leading spinal cord research centers in the world. He created the Christopher Reeve Foundation to speed up research through funding, and to use grants to improve the quality of the lives of people with disabilities. The Foundation to date has given more than $65 million for research, and more than $8.5 million in quality-of-life grants.[59][60] The Foundation has funded a new technology called "Locomotor Training" that uses a treadmill to mimic the movements of walking to help develop neural connections, in effect re-teaching the spinal cord how to send signals to the legs to walk. This technology has helped several paralyzed patients walk again.[61]

In 1997, Reeve made his directorial debut with the HBO film In the Gloaming with Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Bridget Fonda and David Strathairn. The film won four Cable Ace Awards and was nominated for five Emmy Awards including "Outstanding Director for a Miniseries or Special." Dana Reeve said, "There's such a difference in his outlook, his health, his overall sense of well-being when he's working at what he loves, which is creative work."[62] In 1998, Reeve produced and starred in Rear Window, a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film. He was nominated for a Golden Globe and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance. On April 25, 1998, Random House published Reeve's autobiography, Still Me. The book spent eleven weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and Reeve won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.[63]

Throughout this time, Reeve kept his body as physically strong as possible by using specialized exercise machines. He did this both because he believed that the nervous system could be regenerated through intense physical therapy, and because he wanted his body to be strong enough to support itself if a cure was found. In 2000, he began to regain some motor function, and was able to sense hot and cold temperatures on his body. His doctor, John MacDonald of Washington University in St. Louis, asked him if anything was new with his recovery. Reeve then moved his left index finger on command. "I don't think Dr. MacDonald would have been more surprised if I had just walked on water", said Reeve in an interview.[64]

In 2002, the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center, a federal government facility created through a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention non-compete grant,[65] was opened in Short Hills, New Jersey. Its mission is to teach paralyzed people to live more independently. Reeve said, "When somebody is first injured or as a disease progresses into paralysis, people don't know where to turn. Dana and I wanted a facility that could give support and information to people. With this new Center, we're off to an amazing start."[66]

Reeve lobbied for expanded federal funding on embryonic stem cell research to include all embryonic stem cell lines in existence and for open-ended scientific inquiry of the research by self-governance.[67] In an interview with Brian Williams, Reeve responded to the controversy by noting that the research would only use embryos that had already been discarded. He said, "We don't want to create embryos just for research. We want to rescue these cells from the garbage...I don't understand how you can be opposed to that. I don't." President George W. Bush limited the federal funding to research only on human embryonic stem cell lines created on or before August 9, 2001, the day he announced his policy, and allotted approximately $100 million for it. Reeve initially called this "a step in the right direction", admitting that he did not know about the existing lines and would look into them further. He fought against the limit when scientists revealed that most of the old lines were contaminated by an early research technique that involved mixing the human stem cells with mouse cells.[68] In 2002, Reeve lobbied for the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001,[69] which would allow somatic cell nuclear transfer research, but would ban reproductive cloning. He argued that stem cell implantation is unsafe unless the stem cells contain the patient's own DNA, and that because somatic cell nuclear transfer is done without fertilizing an egg, it can be fully regulated.[70] In June 2004, Reeve provided a videotaped message on behalf of the Genetics Policy Institute to the delegates of the United Nations in defense of somatic cell nuclear transfer, which was under consideration to be banned by world treaty.[71] In the final days of his life, Reeve urged California voters to vote yes on Proposition 71,[72] which would establish the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and allot $3 billion of state funds to stem cell research.[73] Proposition 71 was approved less than one month after Reeve's death.

On February 25, 2003, Reeve appeared in the television series Smallville as Dr. Swann in the episode "Rosetta". In that episode, Dr. Swann brings to Clark Kent, (Tom Welling) information about where he comes from and how to use his powers for the good of mankind. The scenes of Reeve and Welling feature music cues from the 1978 Superman movie, composed by John Williams and arranged by Mark Snow. At the end of this episode, Reeve and Welling did a short spot inviting people to support the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation.

He also appeared in the episode "Legacy". In this episode, He met again with fellow stage actor John Glover who plays Lionel Luthor in the show. "Rosetta" set ratings history for The WB network.[74]

Christopher Reeve's campaign for stem cell research was satirized in South Park episode 702 titled Krazy Kripples which originally aired on March 26, 2003.

In April 2004, Random House published Reeve's second book, Nothing is Impossible. This book is shorter than Still Me and focuses on Reeve's world views and the life experiences that helped him shape them.

Also in 2004, Reeve directed the A&E film The Brooke Ellison Story. The film is based on the true story of Brooke Ellison, the first quadriplegic to graduate from Harvard University.[75] Reeve at this time was also directing the animated film Everyone's Hero.[76]


Death

Reeve had an unusual medical history. He suffered from asthma and allergies since childhood. At age sixteen, he began to suffer from alopecia areata, a condition that causes patches of hair to fall out from an otherwise healthy head of hair. Generally he was able to comb over it and often the problem disappeared for long periods of time. Later in life, the condition became more noticeable and he shaved his head.[77] He had experienced several illnesses, including Infectious mononucleosis and malaria. He suffered from mastocytosis, a blood cell disorder. More than once he had a severe reaction to a drug. In Kessler, he tried a drug named Sygen which was theorized to help reduce damage to the spinal cord. The drug caused him to go into anaphylactic shock and his lungs shut down. He had an out-of-body experience. He remembered saying, "I'm sorry, but I have to go now", before leaving his body. In his autobiography, he wrote, "and then I left my body. I was up on the ceiling...I looked down and saw my body stretched out on the bed, not moving, while everybody?-there were fifteen or twenty people, the doctors, the EMTs, the nurses?-was working on me. The noise and commotion grew quieter as though someone were gradually turning down the volume." After receiving a large dose of epinephrine, he woke up and was able to stabilize later that night.[78]

In 2003 and 2004, Reeve fought off a number of serious infections believed to have originated from the bone marrow. He recovered from three that could have been fatal. In early October 2004, he was being treated for a pressure wound that was causing a systemic infection called sepsis, a complication that he had experienced many times before. On October 9, Reeve felt well and attended his son Will's hockey game. That night, he went into cardiac arrest after receiving an antibiotic for the infection. He fell into a coma and was taken to North Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York. Eighteen hours later, on October 10, 2004, Reeve died of heart failure at the age of 52.[79] His doctor, John McDonald, believed that it was an adverse reaction to the antibiotic that caused his death.[80] A memorial service for him was held at the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut, where he and his wife had attended.[81]

Dana Reeve headed the Christopher Reeve Foundation after his death. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005. She died on March 6, 2006 at age 44.[3]

Christopher and Dana Reeve are survived by their son, Will, and Christopher's son Matthew and daughter Alexandra. Christopher is also survived by his parents and Dana by her father. Matthew and Alexandra now serve on the board of directors for the Christopher Reeve Foundation.[82]

Will Smith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Background information

Birth name Willard Christopher Smith, Jr.
Also known as The Fresh Prince
Born September 25, 1968 (1968-09-25) (age 39)
Origin Wynnefield, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Genre(s) East coast hip hop
Pop rap
Urban
Mainstream rap
Occupation(s) Actor
Hip-Hop rapper
Years active 1986 ?-
Label(s) Jive 1986 - 1994,
Columbia 1997 - 2002,
Interscope 2004 ?-
Associated
acts DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince
DJ Jazzy Jeff
Ready Rock C
Tatyana Ali
Muhammad Ali
Website WillSmith.com

Willard Christopher "Will" Smith, Jr. (born September 25, 1968) is a Golden Globe and a two time Academy Award-nominated American actor, and a multiple Grammy Award-winning hip hop artist. He is one of a small group of people who have enjoyed success in three major entertainment media in the United States: feature films, television, and the music industry. Newsweek has named him the most powerful actor on the planet.[1]

Smith's most notable television role was that of "Will" Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In his film work, his notable roles include Agent J in Men in Black and Men in Black II, Muhammad Ali in Ali, as well as his role in the blockbuster Independence Day and more recently as Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness with his son Jaden Smith.




Biography

Early life

Will Smith was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His charming and sly demeanor in school resulted in the nickname "Prince" which eventually turned into the "Fresh Prince." While still in his teens, Smith began rapping and eventually began collaborating with Jeff Townes (a.k.a. D.J. Jazzy Jeff) whom he met at a party. He attended Overbrook High School in West Philadelphia. D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince was born with Smith handling the rhymes and Townes overseeing the mastery of mixing and scratching ?- the combination was a pop and hip-hop hit during the '80s and early '90s.


MIT

While it is widely reported that Smith turned down a scholarship to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Smith denied this in a Reader's Digest interview stating, "My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college."[2] This is corroborated in a Wired interview where he states he never applied to MIT.[3]

Despite the above, when Smith appeared on Inside the Actors Studio, he stated that he was admitted to the "pre-engineering program" at MIT.[4]


Career

Smith started as the MC of the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, with his childhood friend Jeffrey "DJ Jazzy Jeff" Townes as turntablist and producer as well as Ready Rock C (Clarence Holmes) as the human beat box. The trio was known for performing humorous, radio-friendly songs, most notably "Parents Just Don't Understand" and "Summertime." They gained critical acclaim for winning the first ever Grammy in the Rap category (1988). He had a line in "Voices That Care", a 1991 Gulf War song by a celebrity group.

Smith was nearing bankruptcy when in 1990, the NBC television network signed him to a contract and built a sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, around him. The show was successful and launched his acting career. Although he made a notable dramatic film debut in Six Degrees of Separation (in which he played against type as a gay con man) while still appearing in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Smith's film career took off with his role in the buddy cop action film Bad Boys (1995) along with co-star Martin Lawrence.


After The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ended in 1996, Smith began a successful solo music career while simultaneously starring in a series of films. The first two films were hugely successful summer blockbusters: Independence Day (1996), in which he played a fearless and confident fighter pilot, and Men in Black (1997), where he played the comic and confident Agent J against Tommy Lee Jones's deadpan Agent K. Smith's acting in Men in Black won critical praise. He originally rejected the lead role in Men in Black, but wife Jada Pinkett Smith coaxed him into acceptance. The two films established Smith's commercial reputation as a bankable star whose appeal across age, race, and gender lines could "open" a film at the box office. Smith turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix in favor of Wild Wild West. After the failure of Wild Wild West and watching Keanu Reeves' performance, he suggests that he would not have been the appropriate actor for the role at the time, but still considers passing on The Matrix as a big mistake. He then gained lead roles in several box office successes including Men in Black II, Bad Boys II, Hitch, and I, Robot.

Smith is one of only two hip-hop artists to receive an Oscar nomination in an acting category (Best Actor, Ali, 2001), for his portrayal of the boxer Muhammad Ali, formerly known as Cassius Clay, in the biopic. He was also nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his role in another true-life movie, The Pursuit of Happyness where he played Chris Gardner in his rags to riches story.

Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith created the UPN (later CW) sitcom All of Us, which was loosely based on their lives. The show debuted on UPN in September 2003 and aired there for three seasons before moving to The CW in October 2006 for one more season. The CW cancelled All of Us in May 2007.

Smith appeared as himself in Jersey Girl delivering the Silent Bob speech that appears in nearly all Kevin Smith movies. The lead character's situation is due to the claim, "Will Smith is just a rapper".

Smith also released a string of hit singles, often associated with his most recent film, throughout the late 1990s. The most notable of these were his #1 hit theme song "Men in Black," the #1 hit "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" (which made jiggy a catchphrase for a while in 1998), and a cover of "Just the Two of Us," an affectionate message to his young son. His first two solo albums went platinum, but his third, on Columbia Records, was a sales disappointment compared to his past efforts, and after a quick Greatest Hits release that was almost not advertised at all, he was dropped by the label. He signed a recording contract with Interscope Records and released the successful Lost & Found in 2005. The album was propelled solely on the smash hit single, "Switch", which appealed to the mainstream a la "Summertime". The single stayed atop the charts for months and returned Smith to the forefront of Hip Hop.

Smith appeared at Nickelodeon Kid's Choice awards in 2005 performing "Switch", as well as the Black Entertainment Television awards in 2005. He appeared in the second game of the NBA Finals (San Antonio vs. Detroit) performing "Switch" in 2005. Smith also made a special appearance in the reality talent contest show "Indian Idol", when he visited India.

Smith was considered for the role of John Smith in the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith; Brad Pitt eventually received the role. He was also considered for the role of Willy Wonka in the remake of the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He has planned to star in a feature film remake of the television series It Takes a Thief.

Smith can be found most recently starring in The Pursuit of Happyness with his son Jaden Smith; he received his second Academy Award nomination for the role for Best Actor but lost to Forest Whitaker.

Smith's next film will be I Am Legend in 2007, based on the novel of the same name. In the film, Smith will play the last man on Earth.


Personal life

Smith married Sheree Zampino in 1992. They had a son, Willard Christopher III, also known as "Trey", but divorced in 1995. Trey appeared in his father's music video for the 1997 single, "Just The Two Of Us." Smith married actress Jada Pinkett in 1997. Together they have had two children: Jaden Christopher Syre (born 1998), his co-star in The Pursuit of Happyness, and Willow Camille Reign (born 2000). Along with his brother, Harry Smith, he owns Treyball Development Inc., a Beverly Hills-based company named after his first son. He has been consistently listed in Fortune Magazine's "Richest 40" list of the forty wealthiest Americans under the age of 40. Smith and his family reside on Star Island (Florida) in Miami, Florida, Los Angeles, Stockholm, Sweden and in Philadelphia. He helped the community by giving money to Katrina victims. Smith is politically liberal and has made several large donations to the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama. He was also contacted as a guest among the STAR list[5] to attend the annual Passover Unity Event at the House of Yahweh in Israel that is sponsored by the Amariel Family.

On July 2, 2005, Smith served as host for the Live 8 concert in his native Philadelphia in front of an enormous crowd, and later performed a set with DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Smith also produced All of Us, a program loosely based on his love, life, and family in 2005.

Smith is an enthusiast for the games of chess, bingo and rummoli. He is also quite fond of video games.

Once every year Will takes his mother to Canyon Ranch spa in Tucson, Arizona for a week.

Smith remains good friends with Tatyana Ali, former co-star on Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Will was the one that mainly convinced her to enter the field of music, due to her singing shown on some episodes of the show. He also has taken credited for kick starting the career of Sam Phillips in the film business.

Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith are good friends of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, which has led to rumors that Will Smith is a believer in Scientology. He has denied that he has joined the Church of Scientology but has said "I just think a lot of the ideas in Scientology are brilliant and revolutionary and non-religious."[6][7]

Catherine Zeta-Jones
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Catherine Jones
Born September 25, 1969 (1969-09-25) (age 38)
Treboeth, Swansea, Wales
Spouse(s) Michael Douglas (2000-Present)
[show]Awards
Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actress
2002 Chicago
BAFTA Awards
Best Supporting Actress
2002 Chicago

Catherine Zeta-Jones (born 25 September 1969) is a Welsh actress. She began her career on stage at an early age. After starring in a number of television films and small roles in films, she came to prominence with roles in films such as The Phantom, The Mask of Zorro, and Entrapment in the late 1990s. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of Chicago. Zeta-Jones is married to Michael Douglas, with whom she starred in the 2000 film Traffic.




Biography

Early life

Zeta-Jones, the middle of three children, was born Catherine Zeta Jones[1] in Treboeth, a working-class area of Swansea, West Glamorgan in South Wales. Her father, David "Dai" Jones, is Welsh and a former sweets factory owner, and her mother, Patricia (Fair), is Irish and a seamstress.[2][3] Her father's cousin is married to singer Bonnie Tyler, who is also from Swansea. Her uncle owns Swansea's Škoda car dealership as well as Llanelli A.F.C. football club. Her name stems from those of her grandmothers ?- her maternal grandmother, Katherine Fair, and her paternal grandmother, Zeta Jones.

Zeta-Jones was raised Catholic.[1][4][5] After her parents won £100,000 at bingo in the 1980s, they moved to St. Andrews Drive in Mayals, an upper class area of Swansea. Zeta-Jones attended Dumbarton House School in Swansea. Comedian and actor Rob Brydon also went there. She left school early to further her acting ambitions without obtaining O levels and went on to attend The Arts Educational Schools in Chiswick for a full-time three year course in musical theatre.


Career

Zeta-Jones' stage career began in childhood. She often performed at friends and family functions when she was younger. She was a part of a Catholic congregation's performing troupe before she was 10. She also starred in a London production of Annie, as well as a version of Bugsy Malone. By 1987 she was starring in 42nd Street as Peggy Sawyer in the West End. Once the show closed, Zeta-Jones travelled to France, where she received the lead role in French director Philippe de Broca's 1001 Nights (also known as Sheherazade), her feature film debut.

Her exotic looks, along with her singing and dancing ability, suggested a promising future, but it was in a straight acting role, as Mariette in the successful television adaptation of H. E. Bates' The Darling Buds of May), that made her name. She briefly flirted with a musical career, beginning with a part in the 1992 album: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of Spartacus, from which the single "For All Time" was released in 1989. It failed to chart. She went on to release the singles "In the Arms of Love", "I Can't Help Myself", and a duet with David Essex, "True Love Ways". The Duet was her only chart single, reaching #38 in the UK singles chart in 1994. She also starred in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, as well as in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.


Playing Elena Montero in The Mask of Zorro was Zeta-Jones' first leading role.She continued to find moderate success with a number of television projects, including The Return of the Native (1994) and the mini-series Catherine the Great (1995). She also appeared in Splitting Heirs (1993), a comedy starring Eric Idle, Rick Moranis and John Cleese.

In 1996, she was cast as the evil aviatrix "Sala" in the action film, The Phantom , based on the comic created by Lee Falk. Her character did her best to kill Billy Zane's Phantom, while assisting villain Xander Drax (Treat Williams) in taking over the world with a weapon of doom. The following year, she starred in the CBS mini-series Titanic, which also starred Tim Curry and Peter Gallagher. Steven Spielberg, who noted her performance in the mini-series, recommended her to Martin Campbell, the director of The Mask of Zorro.[6] Zeta-Jones subsequently landed a lead role in the film, alongside Antonio Banderas. The following year she co-starred with Sean Connery in the film Entrapment, and alongside Liam Neeson and Lili Taylor in The Haunting. In 2000, she starred in Traffic with future husband Michael Douglas.


In 2003, she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Velma Kelly in the film Chicago. Chicago also won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year. On 22 October 2005, she referenced her award, as guest host on the television show Saturday Night Live, surrounded by four male dancers, mimicking the Bob Fosse-inspired Chicago-style dancing, suggesting in song that, no matter how bad she might be that night, "They Can't Take My Oscar Away".[7] For her role in Chicago, she specifically requested a 1920s-style short bob haircut, so her face could be seen and fans wouldn't doubt she did all her dancing herself.

In 2003 she voiced Marina in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, as well as starring in Intolerable Cruelty with George Clooney. In 2004 she was in The Terminal, as well as Ocean's Twelve, the sequel to Ocean's Eleven. In 2005 she reprised her role as Elena in The Legend of Zorro, the sequel to The Mask of Zorro. She stars in and produces the rugby-related comedy, Coming Out. The film is produced by her company Milkwood Films.[8]


Personal life

Zeta-Jones is married to actor Michael Douglas. She has the same birthday as her husband, although he is 25 years her senior. She claims that when they met, he used the line "I'd like to father your children".[9] They were married at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on 18 November 2000. A traditional Welsh choir (Côr Cymraeg Rehoboth) sang at her wedding; her wedding ring includes a Celtic motif and was bought in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth. Their son, Dylan Michael Douglas, was born 8 August 2000. Their daughter, Carys Zeta Douglas, was born April 20, 2003. While pregnant with Carys, photos were published of Zeta-Jones smoking cigarettes on a private balcony; afterwards, she became the target of anti-smoking and child health and welfare groups due to her behaviour.

Zeta-Jones has decided that her children will grow up aware of their Welsh heritage and has built a seaside home for her parents in her hometown of Swansea. She wants her children to know the Welsh language.[citation needed]

Her elder brother, David A. Jones (also known as Cameron Jones), is Vice President of the film company, Initial Entertainment. He was an executive producer of Gangs of New York. Her younger brother, Lyndon Jones, is her personal manager and producer for Milkwood Films. Catherine's parents recently moved from their Mayals property to a £2 million home two miles away, paid for by their daughter.

Apart from her acting career, Zeta-Jones is also an advertising spokeswoman. In 2003, she became spokeswoman for the mobile phone company T-Mobile. However, in September 2006, T-Mobile dropped Zeta-Jones for a more "man on the street" advertising campaign.[10] She is currently the global spokeswoman for cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden. Zeta-Jones lives predominantly with her family in Bermuda.


In popular culture

Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders parodied Zeta-Jones as a vacuous über-celebrity named Catherine Spartacus-Zeta-Douglas-Jones on their show French & Saunders in the series Back With a Vengeance. Catherine Spartacus-Zeta-Douglas-Jones alternates between a strong Welsh accent and a strong American accent and uses Welsh-language phrases when she speaks.

In the U.S. version of the sitcom The Office, Catherine Zeta-Jones is the name of Agent Michael Scarn's secretary/love interest in Michael Scott's screenplay "Threat Level: Midnight".[11]

Four old-timers were playing their weekly game of golf, and one
remarked how nice it would be to
wake up on Christmas morning, roll out of
bed, and without an argument
go directly to the golf course, meet his
buddies and play a round.
His buddies all chimed in and said, "Let's do it! We'll make it a
priority, figure out a way and meet
here early Christmas morning."
Months later, that special morning arrives,
and there they are on the
golf course. The first guy says,
"Boy this game cost me a
fortune! I bought my wife
such a diamond ring that she can't take her eyes off it."
The second guy says, "I spent a ton, too.
My wife is at home planning
the cruise I gave her. She was up to her eyeballs in brochures."
The third guy says, "Well, my wife is at home admiring her new car,reading the manual."
They all turned to the last guy in the group who is staring at them
like they have lost their minds. "I can't
believe you all went to such
expense for this golf game. I slapped
my wife on the butt and said,
'Well babe, Merry Christmas!
It's a great morning for sex or golf,'
and she said, 'Take a sweater.'"

ah, Bob of Boston, the jokes about golfers. You know, hawkman. "Old golfers never die they just lose their......"

Love yours too.

Thanks, once again for the great bio's, buddy. I skimmed most of them and found that I knew most of the celebs.

Hope our Raggedy whirls in to our wee studio today. We miss her.

Here's one by Will Smith, folks.

HE'S A NICE GUY
how ya doin
HE'S A NICE GUY
Good to see you
HE'S A NICE GUY
How ya momma now

[VERSE 1]
Mr. Niceguy relationship advice guy
Liked on the vices priceless smile
Look at the eyes got the look of a survivor
Husband, father
Dissed by Eminem but did it bother him (yup)
But he classy Big Will just get another 20 mil
And walk right pass E.
I'm a nice guy why ya'll harassing me, huh
On the radio they be over exaggerating
So blahzay with they lies
They be aggravating me, agitating me
But they waiting and hating me
They be making me crazy but I be taking it patiently
People be messing with me testing me F.ing wit me
I wanna send a message to them
Teach em a lesson quickly
Publicly addressing me, disrespecting me heavily
They better be lucky the way my blessings effected me
But aaaaaaaaaaaaah, Calm down Willy
You don't wanna drop the bomb now Willy
Keep a nice flow for your mom down in Philly
On the news you go if you blow and act silly, you know



[CHORUS]
HE'S A NICE GUY
(how you doin)
HE'S A NICE GUY
(good to see you)
HE'S A NICE GUY
Sometimes ya'll mistake nice for soft
So before I go off I just
RA RA RA RA RA RA RA RA

[VERSE 2]
Will's a nice guy, why he's so nice
I'd let him date my daughter
Like he was a white guy
He's not like the rest, he's a private flight guy
Why if I were gay on Friday night I'd
Larry Elder (uncle Tom)
You lucky I didn't make you the whole damn rhyme
Wendy Williams, you don't know me
I'm not your punching bag
You gon blow me up girl you better leave me alone
Before I buy your radio station and send you home
Yo this is a warning shot over the bawl
Truth be told this ain't my style
You gotta understand some stuff a man can't allow
You better chill before you climb a tree you can't get down

[B SECTION]
Ok, people dissing Will sat on a wall
People dissing Will had a great fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put none of their careers together again
You get it

Just a wee whirl for starters, Letty.




Christopher Reeve; Aldo Ray and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones

Hip hip hoorah! Raggedy whirled in with a quartet, folks.



and one about the whirling ballerina from Nat Cole, listeners.

Dance, ballerina, dance
And do your pirouette in rhythm with your achin' heart.
Dance, ballerina, dance
You mustn't once forget a dancer has to dance the part.


Whirl, ballerina, whirl
And just ignore the chair that's empty in the second row.
This is your moment, girl,
Although he's not out there applauding as you steal the show.


Once you said his love must wait it's turn
You wanted fame instead.
I guess that's your concern,
We live and learn.


And love is gone, ballerina, gone
So on with your career, you can't afford a backward glance.
Dance on and on and on
A thousand people here have come to see the show
As 'round and 'round you go
So ballerina, dance
Dance, dance!




Whirl, ballerina!




Once you said his love must wait it's turn,
You wanted fame instead.
I guess that's your concern,
We live and learn.


And love is gone, ballerina, gone
So on with your career, you can't afford a backward glance
Dance on and on and on
A thousand people here have come to see the show
As 'round and 'round you go
So ballerina, dance!


Dance!

And the birthday ballerina I forgot (did lots of twirling with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, too)

Juliet Prowse



and Mark Hamill and Will Smith



And that's enough whirling for me today. You all have a good day.

Hmmm. What's that puppy doing with a black eye?

Well, I have searched everywhere for lyrics that might reflect the movie, The Ghost and the Darkness. Val Kilmer was, once again, outstanding and Michael Douglas did a bit in the flic as well. No luck, however, so let's do one by Catherine Zeta-Jones then.

All That Jazz

come on babe, why dont we paint the town?
And all that jazz
i'm gonna rouge my knees and roll my stockings down
And all that jazz

start the car
i know a whoopee spot
where the gin is cold
but the piano's hot
it's just a noisy hall
where there's a nightly brawl
And all...that...jazz!

skidoo
And all that jazz
Hot shot
whoopee!
And all that jazz

slick you hair and wear your buckle shoes
And all that jazz
i hear that father dip is gonna blow the blues
And all that jazz

hold on hun
we're gonna bunny hug
i bought some aspirin
down at united drug
in case you shake apart
and want a brand new start
to do...that...JAZZ!

find a flask we're playing fast and loose
And all that jazz
right up here is where i store the juice
And all that jazz

come on babe
we're gonna brush the sky
i betcha lucky lindy
never flew so high
cause in the stratosphere
how could he lend an ear
to all that jazz!

ooohhh, you're gonna see your sheba shimmy shake
And all that jazz

ooohhh, she's gonna shimmy til her garters break
And all that jazz

show her where to park her girdle
oh, her mother's blood will curdle
if she'd hear her baby's queer
for all...that..jazz!
all...that...jazz!

come on babe why dont we paint the town
And all that jazz
i'm gonna rouge my knees and wear my stockings down
And all that jazz

start the car
i know a whoopee spot
where the gin is cold
but the piano's hot
its just a noisy hall
where there's a nightly brawl
And all that jazz!

nooo, i'm no one's wife
but, oohh i love my life
And all that jazz!
That Jazz!

another one of those wonderful folksongs BEN HEPPNER sang on sunday :



with RACHELLE DURKIN at the sydney opera house earlier this year