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Frances Farmer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frances Elena Farmer (September 19, 1913 - August 1, 1970) was an American film and theater actress.





Early life and career

Farmer was born in Seattle, Washington, to Ernest Melvin Farmer and Lillian Van Ornum Farmer. In 1931, while attending West Seattle High School, she entered and won $100 in a writing contest sponsored by Scholastic Magazine with her controversial essay God Dies, a precocious attempt to reconcile her wish for, in her words, a "superfather" God with her observations of a chaotic, seemingly Godless, world. In 1935, as a student at the University of Washington, she won a subscription contest for the leftist newspaper The Voice of Action. First prize was a trip to the Soviet Union, which she took despite her mother's strong objections. These two incidents fostered accusations that Farmer was both an atheist and a Communist.

Farmer studied drama at the University of Washington. During the 1930s its drama department productions were considered citywide cultural events and attended accordingly. While there she starred in diverse plays including Helen of Troy, Everyman and Uncle Vanya. In late 1934 she starred in the school's production of Alien Corn, speaking foreign languages, playing the piano and receiving rave reviews in what was the longest running play in the department's history at the time.


Early film career and first marriage

Returning from the Soviet Union in the summer of 1935, Farmer stopped in New York City, hoping to launch a legitimate theater career. Instead, she was referred to a Paramount Studios talent scout, Oscar Serlin, who arranged for a screen test. Paramount offered her a 7-year contract. Farmer signed it in New York on her 22nd birthday and moved to Hollywood. She had top billing in two well-received 1936 B-movies and wed actor Leif Erickson in February 1936 while shooting the first of them. Later that same year, Farmer was cast opposite Bing Crosby in her first "A" feature, Rhythm on the Range. Over the summer of 1936 she was loaned to Samuel Goldwyn to appear in Come and Get It, based on the novel by Edna Ferber. Her portrayals of both the mother and daughter were praised by the public and critics, some of whom wrote of her potential to become a major star.


A rebellious star

Farmer was not entirely satisfied with her career, however. She felt stifled by Paramount's tendency to cast her in films which depended on her looks more than her talent and her naturally outspoken demeanor made her seem uncooperative and contemptuous. In an age when the studios dictated every facet of a star's life, Farmer rebelled against the studio's control and resisted every attempt they made to glamourize her private life, refusing to attend Hollywood parties or to date other stars for the gossip columns. At the time, she was sympathetically described as being indifferent about the clothing she wore and was said to drive an older-model "green roadster," which, according to a columnist, once broke down on Melrose Avenue, blocking traffic as Farmer pushed the stricken car to the side.

Hoping to enhance her reputation as a serious actress, she left Hollywood in 1937 to do summer stock on the East Coast, where she attracted the attention of Harold Clurman and Clifford Odets. They invited her to appear in the Group Theatre production of Odets' play Golden Boy in a performance which at first received highly mixed reviews (Time commented that she had been miscast), but which, due to Farmer's box office appeal, became the biggest hit in the Group's history. By 1938, when the production had embarked on a national tour, regional critics from Washington D.C. to Chicago gave her rave reviews.


Farmer also had an affair with Odets, but he was married to actress Luise Rainer and didn't offer Farmer a commitment. Farmer felt betrayed when Odets suddenly ended the relationship, believing he had used her drawing power to further the success of his play. She returned to Hollywood, and arranged with Paramount to stay in Los Angeles for three months out of every year to make motion pictures, freeing up the remainder of her time for theater activities. However, her two subsequent appearances on Broadway had short runs and she found herself back in Los Angeles, often loaned out by Paramount to other studios for starring roles. At her home studio, meanwhile, she was consigned to costarring appearances, which she often found unchallenging.

By 1939, her temperamental work habits and worsening alcoholism began to damage her reputation. In 1940, after abruptly quitting a Broadway production of a play by Ernest Hemingway, she starred in two major films, both loan-outs to other studios. A year later, however, she was again relegated to co-starring roles. Her performance in Son of Fury (Fox, 1941) was critically praised, but in 1942 Paramount cancelled her contract, reportedly because of her alcoholism and increasingly erratic behaviour.[1] Meanwhile, her marriage to Erickson had disintegrated.


The spiral

On October 19, 1942, she was stopped by the police in Santa Monica for driving with her headlights on bright in the wartime blackout zone that affected most of the West Coast. Some reports say she was unable to produce a driver's license and was verbally abusive. The police suspected her of being drunk and she was jailed overnight. Farmer was fined $500 and given a 180 day suspended sentence. She immediately paid $250.00 and was put on probation. By January 1943, she had failed to pay the rest of the fine and a bench warrant was issued for her arrest. At almost the same time, an assault charge was filed against her by a studio hairdresser who alleged Farmer had dislocated her jaw on the set of a low budget movie. The police traced her to the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood and, getting no answer, entered her room with a pass key. They reportedly found her in bed (some stories include an episode involving the bathroom) and made her dress quickly. By all accounts, she did not surrender peacefully.

At her hearing the next morning she behaved erratically. She claimed the police had violated her civil rights, demanded an attorney and proceeded to throw an inkwell at the judge, who immediately sentenced her to 180 days in jail. When the judge asked if she had had anything to drink since the last time she was in court, she replied that she'd drunk anything she came upon and also that she had been taking Benzedrine. She then knocked down a policeman and bruised another along with a matron. She ran to a phone booth where she tried to call her attorney, but was subdued by the police who physically carried her away as she shouted, "Have you ever had a broken heart?"

Newspaper reports gave sensationalized accounts of her arrest, including claims she had used profanities when speaking to police officers. Through the efforts of her sister-in-law, a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles County at the time, Farmer was transferred to the psychiatric ward of L.A. General Hospital and diagnosed with "manic depressive psychosis."

Within days, having been sent to the San Fernando Valley and the Kimball Sanitarium in La Crescenta, Farmer was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and received insulin shock therapy, a treatment accepted as standard psychiatric procedure at the time, but was later discredited. The side effects included intense nausea. Her family later claimed the treatment was given without their consent (as documented in her sister's self-published book Look Back in Love and in court records). The sanitarium was a minimum security facility and after about nine months, Farmer walked away one afternoon. She appeared at her half-sister Rita's house over 20 miles away, and the pair called their mother in Seattle to complain about the insulin treatment. Lillian Farmer traveled to California and began a lengthy legal battle to have guardianship of her daughter transferred from the state of California to her. Although several psychiatrists testified that Farmer needed further treatment, her mother prevailed, and the two of them left Los Angeles by train on September 13, 1943.


Western State Hospital

Farmer moved back in with her parents in West Seattle but she and her mother fought bitterly. Within six months, Farmer physically attacked her mother, who had her daughter committed as "legally insane" to Western State Hospital at Steilacoom, Washington. There, she was sometimes placed in a strait jacket and received electro-convulsive shock treatment (ECT). Three months later, during the summer of 1944, she was pronounced "completely cured" and released. While traveling with her father to visit at an aunt's ranch in Reno, Nevada, she ran away and spent time with a family who had picked her up hitchhiking, but was eventually arrested for vagrancy in Antioch, California. This received wide publicity and offers of help flooded in from Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco, which she ignored. After a long stay with her aunt in Nevada, she went back to her parents. At her mother's request, Farmer was returned to Western State in May 1945.


Sensationalized accounts

In the years following Farmer's death, her treatment at Western State was the subject of serious discussion and wild speculation. A sensationalized chapter relating to her breakdown was included in Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger. Farmer's ghostwritten, posthumously published autobiography Will There Really Be A Morning described a brutal incarceration and claimed she had been raped, beaten, doused in freezing baths and forced by a warden to eat her own feces. However, Farmer's friend and ghostwriter, Jean Ratcliffe, admitted she had written the book specifically to create a saleable and filmable property. She conceded that she had deliberately exaggerated Farmer's torment, and that most of the finished work was not contributed by Farmer.


The false lobotomy claims

William Arnold

In the fictional biography Shadowland (1978), published eight years after Farmer's death, William Arnold was the first to claim she had been subjected to a transorbital lobotomy performed by Dr. Walter Freeman. This assertion was repeated in Lobotomy, Resort to the Knife (1982) by David Shutts, who cited Frank Freeman (Walter Freeman's eldest son) as saying his father performed a lobotomy on Farmer. As evidence, he offered a dramatic photograph of a lobotomy procedure. This was later shown to be from a series of images accompanying a July 1949 Post-Intelligencer article about Walter Freeman. The same patient's face is completely visible in other photos and she is clearly not Farmer (a link below to Shedding Light on Shadowland includes the photos).

Walter Freeman's younger son disputed the lobotomy story, but it was widely accepted as fact for several years. Wholly fictional scenes of Farmer being subjected to the procedure were used in the 1982 film Frances. In a court case brought by author William Arnold against Brooksfilms and the film's producers (one of whom was comedian Mel Brooks), Arnold admitted he had never intended to create a true biography of Farmer and that much of his story was, in his words, "fictionalized", including the lobotomy episode.[2] Years later, on a DVD commentary track of the film Frances, director Graeme Clifford stated, "We didn't want to nickel and dime people to death with facts."

Also, Arnold acknowledges having received help from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (an anti-psychiatric group created by the Church of Scientology) and Scientology president Heber Jentzsch.[3]


Medical archives

Western State Hospital's medical archives record all of the lobotomies performed during her time there. Since lobotomies were considered a ground-breaking medical procedure at the time, the hospital did not attempt to conceal their work and kept extensive records. Although hundreds of patients underwent the procedure, no evidence has ever been presented to support the claim Farmer was among them. Farmer's own medical records show she was never operated on for any reason while she was institutionalized.[2] Former staff members, including all the lobotomy ward nurses who were on duty during Frances' years at Western State, confirmed during 1983 interviews with Seattle newspapers that Farmer did not receive a lobotomy. Nurse Beverly Tibbetts stated, "I worked on all the patients who had lobotomies, and Frances Farmer never came to that ward." Freeman's own private patient records contain no references to Farmer. Dr. Charles Jones, Psychiatric Resident at Western State during Frances' stays there (and personally trained by Freeman to perform transorbitals) also stated that Farmer was never given a lobotomy. In The Lobotomist, a later biography of Walter Freeman, author Jack El-Hai reported that Freeman's son Frank ultimately hedged his earlier statements and was no longer willing to assert unequivocally that his father operated on Farmer. Farmer's sister, Edith, said her parents were asked for permission to perform the lobotomy, but her father was "horrified" by the notion and threatened legal action "if they tried any of their guinea pig operations on her."


Second career and death

On March 23, 1950, at her parents' request, she was "paroled" back into her mother's care. Farmer's mostly ghostwritten autobiography bitterly stated that her parents needed her to take care of them in their old age. She took a job sorting laundry at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle, the same hotel where, in 1936, Farmer had been feted at the world premiere of Come and Get It. At the time Farmer is said to have believed her mother could have her institutionalized again. In 1953, ten years after her arrest at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood, a judge legally restored Frances Farmer's competency and full civil rights at her request.

In 1954, after a brief second marriage to utility worker Alfred H. Lobley, Farmer moved to Eureka, California, where she worked anonymously for almost three years in a photo studio as a secretary/bookkeeper.


Comeback attempt

In 1957, she met Leland C. Mikesell, an independent broadcast promoter from Indianapolis who helped her move to San Francisco and get work as a receptionist in a hotel, where he then arranged for a reporter to recognize her and write an article. This led to renewed interest. She told Modern Screen magazine, "I blame nobody for my fall... I think I have won the fight to control myself." She made two appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and also appeared on the This Is Your Life, during which she was asked about her alcoholism and mental illness. Farmer said she had never believed she was mentally ill and remarked, "if a person is treated like a patient, they are apt to act like one."

In August 1957, Farmer returned to the stage in New Hope, Pennsylvania, for a summer stock production of The Chalk Garden.

Through the spring of 1958, Farmer appeared in several live television dramas, some of which are preserved on kinescope. The same year, she made her last film, The Party Crashers, produced by Paramount. During this period, she divorced Lobley and married Mikesell, but that marriage was also brief. By the summer of 1958, offers for television and theater appearances had fallen off. Her comeback ended with a six-day performance of The Chalk Garden in Indianapolis, where she accepted an offer to host afternoon movies on a local TV station.


Indianapolis

After her last film appearance, she made a successful TV show called Frances Farmer Presents, and was in demand as a public speaker. She was actress-in-residence at Purdue University during the early 1960s, appearing in some campus productions.

By 1964, however, her behavior had turned erratic again, and she was fired, re-hired and fired from her television program again. Her station manager at the time suggested in a 1983 interview that her turn for the worse was the result of a stressful appearance, which the station manager himself had arranged, on NBC's The Today Show, where she was asked about her years of mental illness.

Her last acting role was in The Visit at Loeb Playhouse on the Purdue University campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, which ran from October 22 to October 30, 1965. During this engagement, she was arrested for drunk driving.

She subsequently attempted two small businesses with her friend Jean Ratcliffe, but both failed. She was arrested again for drunk driving and her license was suspended for a year.

Farmer died from esophageal cancer in 1970 at the age of 56. She is interred at Oaklawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Fishers, Indiana.


Quotes

"It was pretty sad, because [after the publication of God Dies] for the first time I found how stupid people could be. It sort of made me feel alone in the world. The more people pointed at me in scorn the more stubborn I got and when they began calling me the Bad Girl of West Seattle High, I tried to live up to it."

"It's a nuthouse [Hollywood]. The other day a man phoned and wanted me to endorse a certain brand of cigarettes. I had nothing against them and in fact will smoke them or anything else that comes along, but I didn't know why he was bothering me. I thought maybe if I was nice they'd give me a carton as a thank offering, so I rather tentatively broached the matter of remuneration. What was the endorsement worth, I asked, and he said three thousand dollars. What are you going to do in an atmosphere like that?"


Trivia

She allowed the Paramount make-up department to shave off her eyebrows as a part of the routine "makeover" given to any newly contracted actress. Only a year later (1937), studio photographs show they'd grown back and she wasn't trimming them pencil-thin, contrary to the standard practice for Hollywood actresses at the time.
Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain liked to draw parallels between his career and that of Frances Farmer. Cobain cited Farmer in the song "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle", featured in the album In Utero.
Farmer was one of only a very few featured guests of the popular This is Your Life series to have been alerted beforehand about the impending show.[citation needed]
Throughout her career, Farmer was frequently announced for projects she ultimately did not end up performing in. Among the many Paramount films for which she was announced are College Holiday, Hideaway Girl, Spawn of the North, Big Broadcast of 1938, Beau Geste and Take A Letter, Darling. Preston Sturges apparently wanted Farmer for Sullivan's Travels, but the role ultimately went to Veronica Lake. From 1944-45, during her initial institutionalizations and releases from Western State Hospital, several news articles quoted producers as offering her the lead in the film The Enchanted Forest and the Broadway play The Incredible Woodhull.

Biographical films

Jessica Lange played Farmer in the 1982 film Frances, for which she was nominated for an Oscar. However, this film contains a discredited, fictional scene which depicts Farmer undergoing a transorbital lobotomy. It also omits a great deal of factual details and includes a life-long, love-interest character named "Harry" who never actually existed. Lange maintained her compassion and empathy for Farmer in interviews, and remained an ardent supporter.
Susan Blakely portrayed Farmer in a television production which used the title of the autobiography.

References in popular culture

The French singer Mylène Farmer took her last name as a homage to her favorite actress.
Courtney Love wore a dress previously owned by Farmer in her wedding to Kurt Cobain. Contrary to rumor, their daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, is not named after Frances Farmer, but rather after Frances McKee of The Vaselines.[4]
"The Medal Song" by Culture Club was written about Farmer. The single release featured a photograph of Farmer with the caption "From Here to Eternity" and is included on the 1984 album Waking Up with the House on Fire.
"Lobotomy Gets 'em Home" by The Men They Couldn't Hang is about Farmer.
Farmer is the subject of the song "Ugly Little Dreams" by Everything But the Girl on their album Love Not Money.
Author Michael Chabon references Farmer in his novel Wonder Boys.
Farmer is referenced in an episode of The Simpsons entitled "Lady Bouvier's Lover". Marge Simpson's mother, Jackie Bouvier, says,
" Jackie: Boys all paid attention to me and it drove my friends crazy.

Abe: Who were your friends?
Jackie: Oh, Zelda Fitzgerald, Frances Farmer, and little Sylvia Plath.
"

Wu Ming's novel 54 features Frances Farmer as one of the characters. She never appears directly, but her "ghost" (in the world of the narrative; she was still alive at the time the novel is set) haunts Cary Grant throughout his temporary retirement from movies.
A song titled "Frances Farmer" by Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers appears on his solo album "Killers And Stars".

Rosemary Harris
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born September 19, 1930 (1930-09-19) (age 77)
Ashby, Suffolk, England
[show]Awards
Golden Globe Awards
Best TV Actress - Drama
1978 Holocaust
Tony Awards
Best Leading Actress in a Play
1966 The Lion in Winter

Rosemary Ann Harris[1] (born September 19, 1930) is a Tony Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated English actress and a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.




Biography

Early life

Harris was born in Ashby, Suffolk, England to Enid Maude Frances (Campion) and Stafford Berkley Harris.[2] Her grandmother, Bertha, was Romanian.[3] Her father was in the British Air Force and as a result, Harris' family lived in India during her childhood.[3] She attended convent schools, and later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1951 to 1952.


Career

Early in her acting career, she gained experience in English repertory theatre (In 1948, she acted in Kiss and Tell at Eastbourne with Tilsa Page and John Clark) before training at RADA. She first appeared in New York in 1951 in Moss Hart's Climate of Eden, and then returned to England for her West End debut in The Seven Year Itch which ran for a year at the Aldwich. She then entered a classical acting period in productions with the Bristol Old Vic and then the Old Vic.

Her first film followed, Beau Brummel with Stewart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor, and then a touring season with The Old Vic brought her back to Broadway in Tyrone Guthrie's production of Troilus and Cressida. She met Ellis Rabb who had plans to start his own producing company on Broadway. By 1959, the Association of Producing Artist (APA) was established, and she and Rabb were married in December of that year. Over the next two years their energies were combined into making the APA a ten year success. In 1962, she returned to England and Laurence Olivier's Chichester Festival Theatre, and in 1964 again, when she was Ophelia to Peter O'Tooles's Hamlet, for the inaugural production of the new Royal National Theatre of Great Britain.

Returning to New York, she worked further with the APA, and then was cast as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, a performance that garnered her a Tony Award in 1966. Rabb directed her one last time as Natasha in War and Peace in 1967, the same year they agreed to divorce. And a little while later, Harris married again to the American writer John Ehle. They settled in the countryside of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and it was there that their daughter Jennifer was born. Jennifer Ehle followed in her mother's footsteps by becoming a noted film, television and Broadway actress.

Adam West
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name William West Anderson
Born September 19, 1928 (1928-09-19) (age 79)
Walla Walla, Washington, U.S.
Spouse(s) Billie Lou Yeager (1950-1956)
Frisbie Dawson (1957-1962)
Marcelle Tagand Lear (1971-present)
Official site http://www.adamwest.com

Adam West (born William West Anderson on September 19, 1928) is an American actor who is best known for playing the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne on the 1960's TV series Batman (which also had a film adaptation). He is also known for his current role as the delusional Mayor Adam West on the show Family Guy.




Biography

Early life

Adam West was born in Walla Walla, Washington to Otto West Anderson and Audrey V. Speer.[1] He has a younger brother, named John. He attended Walla Walla High School during his freshman and sophomore years. Later he enrolled in Lakeside School (a prestigious high school in Seattle). He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and a minor in Psychology from Whitman College[2] in Walla Walla.

At Whitman, he was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, a member of the debate team, a singer in the school choir, a writer for the school newspaper, and a member of the Economics Club. He also swam, skied, ran track, and played water polo.[2] He also was a graduate student at Stanford University.[3]

In 1950, West married 17 year old Billi Lou Yeager. He was drafted into the United States Army in the early 1950s and served two years. After the Army, West and his wife travelled through Europe before settling in Hawaii.


Acting career

Early roles

In Hawaii, West landed a role as the sidekick on a children's show called The Kini Popo Show, which featured a chimp. West later took over as the star of the show.[4]

In 1959, West moved to Hollywood and took the stage name, "Adam West." He co-starred in the film, The Young Philadelphians, with Paul Newman, and guest starred in a number of television Westerns. He soon snagged a supporting role as Sgt. Steve Nelson in the cop show The Detectives. He also made a brief appearance on the 1964 film Robinson Crusoe on Mars.


Batman


Producer William Dozier cast West as Batman and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, in Batman, the hit television series. West has said he was also invited to play James Bond after Sean Connery decided to give up the role, and that he enjoys that he was almost a majority of the three big B's of the 1960s: Bond, Batman, and The Beatles. The popular, campy show ran from 1966 to 1968; a film version was released in 1966.


Post-Batman career

Typecasting

After his high profile role in Batman, West, Burt Ward and Yvonne Craig were badly typecast in their roles. West's first post-Caped Crusader role was in the 1969 release The Girl Who Knew Too Much. He played against type as a tough, hard-boiled assassin. The movie was a failure and has almost become a lost film. For a time, West was forced to make a living entirely doing personal appearances as Batman. He appeared in the theatrical films The Marriage Of A Young Stockbrocker (1971), The Curse Of The Moon Child (1972), Partizani/Hell River (1974), The Specialist (1975), Hardcore (1977), Hooper (as himself 1978), The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980) and One Dark Night (1983). Mister West also appeared in such television films as The Eyes Of Charles Sand (1972), Poor Devil (1973), Nevada Smith (1975), For The Love Of It (1980) and I Take These Men (1983). He also did guest shots on the popular tv shows Love American Style, Night Gallery, Alias Smith And Jones, Mannix, Emergency, Alice, Police Woman, Operation Petticoat, The American Girls, Vegas, Big Shamus Little Shamus, Laverne And Shirley, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat and Hart To Hart. He mentioned there were several prospects for him, such as him replacing Sean Connery as James Bond. His typecasting, however, always brought these to naught. Although in recent years, however, West has exploited his typecasting to receive a number of roles that are either self-parody or otherwise poke fun at his status as a pop-culture icon.


Return to the Batman role

During this period, West often played the voice of Batman, first in the short-lived animated series, The New Adventures of Batman, and in other shows like SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show, The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. In 1979, West once again put on the Batsuit for the live-action TV special, Legends of the Superheroes.[4]

West continued to maintain an association with the character that made him famous. He had a cameo appearance in a 1992 episode of Batman: The Animated Series on FOX, but not as Batman. Instead, West ironically voiced the part of a washed-up actor who used to play a superhero in a TV series called "The Gray Ghost" and who, now typecast as the Gray Ghost, has difficulty finding work. West later had a recurring role as the voice of Mayor Grange in the WB animated series The Batman.

Adam West once again provided the voice of Batman, in the CGI animated brickfilm, Batman: New Times. In that movie, he starred alongside Mark Hamill who provided the voice of The Joker, who had originally played the role on Batman: The Animated Series.


Recent years

During the 1990s, West's status as a pop culture icon led to appearances as himself in the film Drop Dead Gorgeous and in several television series, including NewsRadio, Murphy Brown, The Adventures Of Pete And Pete and The Ben Stiller Show.[5] In 1991, he starred in the pilot episode of Lookwell, in which he portrayed a has-been TV action hero who falsely believes he can solve crimes in real life. The pilot, written by Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel, aired on NBC that summer but was not picked up as a series.[6] It was later broadcast on the Trio channel, under the "Brilliant But Cancelled" imprint.[7]

Noticeably, he played a washed up superhero in the Goosebumps television series episode "Attack of the Mutant." The boy hero is a comic book geek whose favorite superhero, Galloping Gazelle (West's character), is portrayed as fading and on the verge of retirement. Towards end, the boy is shocked to learn that the Gazelle is real, though he must save the day by himself.

In 2005, West appeared in the CBS show The King of Queens. In the episode, Spence first asks Lou Ferrigno to go to a sci-fi convention. But when Spence meets West (playing himself), he leaves Ferrigno and asks West to come with him.

West appears prominently in the 2006 video for California band STEFY's song "Chelsea" as "Judge Adam West", presiding over the courtroom scene.


Voice-over work

West has built a career doing voice-over work on a number of animated series (often as himself), including appearances on The Simpsons, The Boondocks, Histeria!, Kim Possible, and Johnny Bravo. He also appeared in five episodes of Nickelodeon's cartoon, The Fairly OddParents, as a cat-obsessed version of himself who is famous for playing a superhero called Catman, and who actually believes he is Catman. A later appearance of Adam West in the Fairly OddParents world was a parody of himself, hired to play the role of the Crimson Chin in the movie of the same name. West also voices many characters related to his famous Batman character, as mentioned above in the typecasting section.

Since 2000, West has made semi-regular appearances on the animated series Family Guy, on which he plays Mayor Adam West, a parody of West himself, the lunatic mayor of fictional Quahog, Rhode Island.[8] He also voiced over as a man in an office with Ted Turner on Robot Chicken's spoof of Captain Planet. His latest voice-over performance was playing the role of Uncle Art in the Disney film Meet the Robinsons.

West also played the voice of General Carrington in the video game XIII, and has voiced other video games like Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, Chicken Little: Ace in Action and Scooby Doo! Unmasked.


Quotes

On being typecast as Batman: "It was inescapable. I'd just about land something substantial, something I like or a good career move. Then some dinosaur would rear up and say, 'But the audience will think of him as Batman.' It was formidable. It was there like a brick wall."[9]
"Batman was an expensive show and it was losing money. I became extremely frustrated and unhappy and wanted out. There was nothing I could do to convince the producers or the studio to make improvements. I was just a hired hand. Eventually, I lost all interest because I felt the series was being neglected. They weren't spending the money they should have, and we weren't getting the scripts we deserved. I didn't want any part of this situation any more. I was tired of fighting for better shows. The program I wanted to do was no longer possible. But I hated to leave the character because Batman had been good to me."[citation needed]
On I've Got a Secret: "I had a very playful dentist...", prior to revealing his secret of once being marked with a bat picture on a tooth of his.[citation needed]

David McCallum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name David Keith McCallum
Born 19 September 1933 (1933-09-19) (age 74)
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Spouse(s) Katherine Carpenter

David Keith McCallum, Jr. (born September 19, 1933) is a prolific Scottish actor and the son of concertmaster violinist David McCallum, Sr.. He is best known for his role as Illya Kuryakin, a Russian-born secret agent, on the popular 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E..





Biography

Career

McCallum was born in Glasgow, and was educated at University College School, a famous boys' independent school in Hampstead, London. He began his career as a bit-part actor in British films of the late-1950s and early-1960s. The Man from U.N.C.L.E., intended as a vehicle for Robert Vaughn, unexpectedly made McCallum into a sex symbol, his Beatle-style blonde haircut providing a trendy contrast with Vaughn's rather traditional appearance. Hero worship even led to a record, Love Ya, Illya, performed by Alma Cogan under the name Angela and the Fans ("I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish that Illya loved me"), which was a "pirate radio" hit in Britain in 1966.

Although McCallum subsequently became a familiar face on television, he was never able to achieve the same level of popular success as he had done with his role as Kuryakin. His best-known roles were in Sapphire and Steel (opposite Joanna Lumley), as the lead in a mid-1970s remake of The Invisible Man, and as Judas Iscariot in The Greatest Story Ever Told.

In the 1960s, McCallum recorded some albums for Capitol Records with producer David Axelrod, such as Music: A Bit More of Me (1966) and Music: It's Happening Now! (1967). The most well known of his pieces today is arguably The Edge, which was sampled by Dr. Dre as the intro and riff to the track The Next Episode. There is some controversy over what role McCallum actually played in these recordings, as he did not sing on the tracks (they are instrumentals), nor did he write them.

McCallum co-starred with Charles Bronson in The Great Escape. He introduced then-wife Jill Ireland to Bronson on the set and she later left him and married Bronson. McCallum married Katherine Carpenter in September 1967, and they have two children: Peter and Sophie. As of December 2006, he is one of only four surviving stars of the film, the others being Richard Attenborough, James Garner and John Leyton.

McCallum appeared on stage in Australia when he appeared in the play Run For Your Wife , during 1987-1988 and the production toured the country. Other members of the cast in the production were Jack Smethurst, Eric Sykes and Katy Manning.

McCallum also guest starred in the television series seaQuest DSV as the law enforcement officer Frank Cobb of the fictional Broken Ridge of the Ausland Confederation, an underwater mining off the coast of Australia by the Great Barrier Reef during the series' first season.

In 1994, McCallum narrated the critically acclaimed documentaries Titanic: Death of a Dream and Titanic: The Legend Lives On for A&E Television Networks, the second Titanic-centric project he worked on. The first was the 1958 film A Night to Remember. A 1990s rock/rap group from Argentina named themselves Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas in honor of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. character.

As of 2003, He is starring in the CBS television series NCIS as Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard. In an inside joke on that program, when Agent Gibbs is asked the question, "What did Ducky look like when he was younger?," Gibbs simply responds, "Illya Kuryakin."

According to the behind-the-scenes featurette on the 2006 DVD release of season 1, McCallum took it upon himself to become an expert in forensics in order to better play the role of Dr. "Ducky" Mallard, including appearing at medical examiner conventions. Bellisario says McCallum's knowledge of the subject became so vast that Bellisario (at the time of the interview) was seriously considering making him a technical advisor for the series.


Personal life

He was married to the late actress Jill Ireland from 1957 to 1967. They had three sons: Paul, Jason (who died from an accidental drug overdose in 1985), and Valentine. He has been married to Katherine Carpenter since 1967. They have a son, Peter, and a daughter, Sophie.

Paul Williams (songwriter)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Paul Hamilton Williams (born September 19, 1940, in Omaha, Nebraska, USA) is an American musician, composer, songwriter and actor.





Musical career

Williams is responsible for a number of enduring pop hits from the 1970s, including "(Just an) Old Fashioned Love Song", a U.S. top-ten hit for the band Three Dog Night in late 1971, and a number of Carpenters hits, most notably "We've Only Just Begun", which has since become a cover-band standard and de rigueur for weddings throughout North America. An early collaboration with Roger Nichols, "Someday Man", was covered by The Monkees (a group for which he auditioned but was not cast) on a 1969 single, and was the first Monkees' release not published by Screen Gems.

A frequent cowriter of Williams was musician Kenneth Ascher; their songs together included the popular children's favorite "The Rainbow Connection", sung by Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie. Most recently, he collaborated with Scissor Sisters on their second album, Ta-Dah.

Williams has worked on the music of a number of films, including writing and singing on Bugsy Malone.

He is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and his songs have been performed by both pop and country music artists. He has won one Academy Award, two Grammy Awards and several Golden Globes.


Film and television career

Although predominantly known for his music, Paul Williams is also an actor, appearing in films and many television guest appearances, notably as the Faustian record producer Swan in the cult film Phantom of the Paradise, a rock and roll remake of Phantom of the Opera, and as Virgil, the genius orangutan in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. His most recognizable role is "Little Enos Burdette" in Smokey and the Bandit. He also played Miguelito Loveless Jr. in The Wild Wild West Revisited, a reunion movie of the original Wild Wild West.

Williams worked closely with Jim Henson's Henson Productions on The Muppet Movie, most specifically on the soundtrack, and even had a cameo in the movie as the piano player in the nightclub where Kermit the Frog meets Fozzie Bear.

He provided the voice of The Penguin in Batman:The Animated Series.


Personal life

Williams has been active in the field of recovery from addictions. Paul Williams is married to writer Mariana Williams. He has two children, Sarah and Cole. Paul's brother, Mentor Williams (fiance of country legend Lynn Anderson), is a successful songwriter in his own right and penned Dobie Gray's 1972 hit, "Drift Away."

Television

He made numerous television appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, including guest appearances on Hawaii Five-O, Match Game '79, The Love Boat, The Hardy Boys,The Muppet Show and The Fall Guy. He has also appeared on an episode of Babylon 5 as the aide to an alien ambassador whose species finalizes treaties and agreements by having sex with the other signees. Williams appeared on an episode of Picket Fences as the brother of the just deceased Ginny Weedon (Zelda Rubinstein). He starred as Ferdinand the Bull in a musical 1/2 hour TV production of the same name written by the Sherman Brothers. In October, 1980 he was host of the "Mickey Mouse Club 25th Anniversary Special" on NBC-TV. He stated that he tried out for the show in early 1955 and was turned down.

He is also known as the voice of the Penguin in Batman: The Animated Series.

He also starred as himself in an episode of Dexter's Laboratory, entitled, "Just An Old Fashioned Lab Song", and, also as himself, in an episode of "The Odd Couple".

Bill Medley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background information

Birth name William Thomas Medley
Born September 19, 1940 (1940-09-19) (age 67)
Genre(s) Blue-eyed soul
Occupation(s) Singer
Instrument(s) Voice
Years active 1962 - present
Associated
acts The Righteous Brothers
Bobby Hatfield

William Thomas Medley (born September 19, 1940 in Los Angeles, California) is an American singer and songwriter, best known as one half of The Righteous Brothers singing duo.

Medley met his singing partner Bobby Hatfield while attending California State University, Long Beach. The pair began singing as a duo in 1962. Their first single was "Little Latin Lupe Lu"; their first hit was "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", produced by Phil Spector in 1964. Follow-up hits included "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" and "Unchained Melody".

The duo broke up in 1968, but returned with another hit in 1974, "Rock And Roll Heaven", and they continued to appear together until Hatfield's death in November 2003. The Righteous Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2003 by one of their biggest fans, Billy Joel.

Medley also had a moderately successful solo career. In 1987 his duet with Jennifer Warnes, "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", was included on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack album and the single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The song also won a 1988 Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Among his other notable songs are "Most of All You", the closing theme to the movie Major League; "Friday Night's A Great Night For Football" from Tony Scott's movie, The Last Boy Scout; and the theme song for the Growing Pains spinoff, Just The Ten of Us.

Bill Medley also recorded a vocal track for the song Lullabye on Jimmy Chamberlin's (of Smashing Pumpkins fame) solo album, Life Begins Again.

Bill Medley appeared in the two-part episode "Finally!" of the hit TV show, Cheers.

Medley's daughter, McKenna Medley, is herself a singer and as of November 2006 was performing in Branson, Missouri as opening act for The Comets.[1]

Bill Medley currently performs at Dick Clark's American Bandstand Theater in Branson, Missouri.

Jeremy Irons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Birth name Jeremy John Irons
Born September 19, 1948 (1948-09-19) (age 59)
Cowes, Isle of Wight, England , UK
Spouse(s) Sinéad Cusack
[show]Awards
Academy Awards
Best Actor
1990 Reversal of Fortune
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie
2005 Elizabeth I
Outstanding Voice-Over Performance
1997 The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century

Golden Globe Awards
Best Supporting Actor - Miniseries
2007 Elizabeth I
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Best Actor - Miniseries/TV Movie
2006 Elizabeth I
Tony Awards
Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play
1984 The Real Thing

Jeremy John Irons (born September 19, 1948) is an Academy Award, Tony Award, Screen Actors Guild, two-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning English film, television and stage actor.





Biography

Early life

Irons was born in Cowes, Isle of Wight to Paul Dugan Irons, an accountant, and Barbara Anne Brereton Brymer Sharpe, a homemaker. Part of his maternal ancestry is Irish, and his great-grandfather was one of the first Metropolitan Policemen and later a Chartist.[1] Irons has a brother, Christopher. He was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset, (c. 1962-1966). He achieved some fame as the drummer and harmonica player (most memorably for his rendition of "Moon River" on harmonica) in a four-man school band called the Four Pillars of Wisdom. They performed, in a classroom normally used as a physics lab, for the entertainment of boys compulsorily exiled from their houses for two hours on Sunday afternoons. He was also known within Abbey House as half of a comic duo performing skits on Halloween and at end-of-term House Suppers.


Career

Irons trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and is now president of its fundraising appeal. He performed a number of plays and supported himself by busking on the streets of Bristol, before appearing on the London stage as John the Baptist opposite David Essex in Godspell. After several appearances on British television, including the children's television series Playaway, and an adaptation of the H.E. Bates novel Love for Lydia in 1977, his film debut came in 1980 in Nijinsky. The role which brought him fame was that of Charles Ryder in the television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited in 1981. Brideshead reunited him with Anthony Andrews, with whom he had appeared in The Pallisers seven years earlier. Also in 1981, he starred in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman opposite Meryl Streep.

In 1985, Irons directed a music video for Carly Simon and her heavily promoted single, "Tired of Being Blonde". Although the song was not a hit, the video - featuring the fast cutting, parallel narratives and heavy use of stylized visual effects that were a staple of pop videos at the time - received ample attention on MTV and other outlets. Irons has contributed to other musical performances, recording William Walton's Façade with Dame Peggy Ashcroft, and the songs from My Fair Lady with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. He is also known for playing the evil wizard Profion, along with Bruce Payne as Damodor, in the 2000 film, Dungeons and Dragons, from Time Warner studio New Line Cinema. The film was also based on the Tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons.

In 1984 Irons won a Tony Award for his Broadway performance opposite Glenn Close in The Real Thing. He appeared sporadically in films during the 1980s, including the Cannes Palme d'Or winner The Mission in 1986, and in the dual role of twin physicians in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers in 1988. Other films include Reversal of Fortune (1990), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, Kafka (1991), Damage (1993), The House of the Spirits (1993) appearing again with Glenn Close and Meryl Streep, Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995), Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996), the 1997 remake of Lolita and as the musketeer Aramis opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the 1998 film version of The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). In 2004, Irons played Severus Snape in Comic Relief's Harry Potter parody, "Harry Potter and the Secret Chamberpot of Azerbaijan". He has co-starred with John Malkovich in two movies; The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and Eragon (2006), though they did not have any scenes together in Eragon. Irons read the audio book recording of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist.

One of his best known film roles has turned out to be the voice of Scar in The Lion King (1994). Irons has since provided voiceovers for two Disney World attractions. He narrated the Spaceship Earth ride, housed in the large geodesic globe at Epcot, and voiced H.G. Wells in the English version of the former Disney attraction The Timekeeper. In 2005, he appeared in the films Casanova opposite Heath Ledger, and Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. Also in 2005, Irons won both an Emmy award and a Golden Globe award for his supporting role in the TV mini-series, Elizabeth I. He is appearing on the West End stage in the play Embers.

Irons was one of the participants in the third series of their documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?.[2] He also played the storyteller Brom in the 2006 film version of Eragon. He will be the narrator for Val Kilmer and Bill Pullman's brand-new Lewis and Clark movie from Revolution Studios.


Personal life

Irons is married to Irish actress Sinéad Cusack (since September 16, 1978), and is the father of two sons, Samuel James Irons and Maximilian Paul Irons (October 17, 1985), both of whom have appeared in films with their father. He now lives in the small town of Watlington in Oxfordshire.


Trivia


At the 1991 Tony Awards, Irons was one of the few celebrities to wear the recently created red ribbon to support the fight against AIDS, and he was the first celebrity to wear it onscreen.[3][4] He supports a number of other charities, including the Prison Phoenix Trust of which he is an active patron.[5]

He is famous among fans of The Simpsons for having a name difficult to anagram (when Lisa tries to come up with an anagram of his name, the best she can do is "Jeremy's Iron").[6] One anagram of 'Jeremy Irons' is 'Minor jersey.'

Irons owns Kilcoe Castle (which he had painted a rusty pink) in County Cork, Ireland, and has become involved in local politics there.

Irons is a fan of English football club Portsmouth F.C. He sang a number of Noel Coward songs at the 1999 Last Night of Proms in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Coward's birth.

Upset by the sight of beer-soaked tables and overflowing ashtrays in a lounge at Shannon airport in southwestern Ireland during a flight delay on August 8th, 2002, he grabbed a cleaner's trolley and cloth and started mopping up the mess, much to the surprise of fellow passengers.

The "Series of Unfortunate Events" novels by Daniel Handler make reference to three of his characters. In Reversal of Fortune, he plays Klaus von Bulow, husband to Sunny von Bulow. Two of the lead characters in Handler's novels are named Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire. In The Carnivorous Carnival, Klaus and his other sister Violet disguise themselves as circus freaks named Beverly and Elliot, which are the names of the identical twin gynecologists that Irons plays in Dead Ringers.


Quotes

"I've never been passionate about acting, and I find more and more that I work to live the life I want to live. An actor like Al Pacino lives to act. I'm not sure though, there's something about the detachment I have, the feeling of the lack of importance about what I do, that is healthy."
"As you get older, you look back and try to make sense of the sort of person you have become. And I think the most important thing that happened in my childhood was the first night I went to boarding school at the age of seven. I remember that night, and the loneliness. Also, my parents' marriage broke up when I was 15. But I think it was that first night at seven years old when I felt something had broken, and I've spent my life trying to get back to that feeling of home. It's the same sense of family that you find in the theater and movies. In fact, I'm hoping to make a film about that very subject - the need for home. You don't really have a home until you have children. And that home is created by the children."
"If we have to pay taxes [for Emmy gift bags], so be it. But don't spend it on bombs, for Christ's sake."
"The movie industry is run by accountants in Hollywood and it's as simple as this; everyone has a number on their computer. They can look up Jeremy Irons and see what my last five movies have made. Say you want to make a $20m picture, which is relatively cheap. If Jeremy makes $9m, the director makes $5m, then you need a leading lady, and they just go through those figures - that's how casting happens. And none of my movies has made a lot of money."
(When asked by an interviewer about why he accepted his role in Dungeons & Dragons) "Are you kidding? I'd just bought a castle, I had to pay for it somehow!"

Twiggy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Lesley Hornby
Date of birth 19 September 1949 (1949-09-19) (age 58)
Place of birth Neasden, London, England
Height 5'6" (1.68 m)
Hair color Blonde
Eye color Blue
Measurements 32-23-32
Weight 41 kg
Spouse(s) Michael Witney (1977-1983)
Leigh Lawson (1988)- Current
Official web site

Twiggy (born 19 September 1949) is an English supermodel, actress, and singer, now also known by her married name of Twiggy Lawson. A 1960s pop icon known for her large eyes, long eyelashes, and thin build, she is regarded as one of the most famous models of all time. Twiggy went on to star in movies, and is currently a judge in the reality show, America's Next Top Model.




Early life

Twiggy, also known as Lesley Hornby, was born in the London suburb of Neasden, the daughter of William Norman Hornby, a master carpenter and joiner, and Nellie Lydia "Helen" Reeman, a factory worker at a printing firm and a counter girl at Woolworth's.[1][2] She attended Brondesbury and Kilburn High School in Salusbury Road, Kilburn.


Modeling career

In 1966, Nigel Daves noticed the young Lesley Hornby working in a hair salon and offered her a modelling contract. She was only sixteen and weighed 6½ stone (41 kg, 90 lbs).[3] Daves advised her to go by her childhood nickname, Twiggy, and renamed himself Justin de Villeneuve. Twiggy arrived in New York in March 1967. It was believed that the Twiggy craze would die down within a month; Twiggy, however, became an instant icon and supermodel. Known for the high fashion mod look created by Mary Quant, Twiggy changed the world of fashion. Whereas most women fashion models were full-figured with traditionally feminine hairstyles, Twiggy was famous for her slender, short-haired androgynous look. Her style has dominated the runways for forty years. She was also famous for drawing long, fake eyelashes under her bottom lashes. These are, unsurprisingly, named Twiggys.

Twiggy was regarded as the face of 1960s Swinging London, along with other models such as Celia Hammond.

On June 16, 1967, Capitol Records released Twiggy's first single for the label "When I Think Of You" with "Over And Over" on the flip side.

In early 1968, Twiggy toured Japan and filmed commercials for Toyota Motors and Choco Flakes breakfast cereal. In 1969 she did commercial work in the United States for Diet Rite Cola.

Twiggy was the first teenage female supermodel.


Life after modeling

After four years of modeling, Twiggy retired, claiming "You can't be a clothes hanger for your entire life!" She embarked on an award-winning acting and singing career, including Ken Russell's 1971 film version of Sandy Wilson's musical, The Boy Friend, for which she won two Golden Globe Awards. Since then she has played a variety of roles on stage and screen, including My One and Only and as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, opposite Robert Powell, in a 1981 television production.

Twiggy married the American actor Michael Witney in 1977. They had one daughter, Carly, born in 1978. That marriage ended with his sudden death in 1983 from a heart attack. She met Leigh Lawson on the film Madame Sousatzka, and married him in 1988. They reside in London.

In 1976, Twiggy signed to Mercury records and released the albums "Twiggy" and "Please Get My Name Right", great discs that contained both pop and country tunes. "Twiggy" sold very well peaking on the UK charts at no.33 and gave Twiggy's a silver disc for good sales. The album contains Twiggy's top twenty hit single, "Here I Go Again" and "Please Get My Name Right" made it to no.35 in 1977.

In 2003, she released another album, "Midnight Blue".

In 2005, Twiggy joined the cast of the TV show America's Next Top Model as one of four permanent judges. She also returned to modeling, fronting a major new TV, press and billboard campaign for Marks & Spencer, a British department store chain. In 2006, she portrayed herself as a nineteen year-old in the radio play Elevenses with Twiggy for BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Play series.

RED SKELTON'S RECIPE FOR THE PERFECT MARRIAGE

1. Two times a week, we go to a nice restaurant, have a
little beverage, good food and companionship.
She goes on Tuesdays, I go on Fridays.

2. We also sleep in separate beds.
Hers is in California and mine is in Texas.

3. I take my wife everywhere.....
but she keeps finding her way back.

4. I asked my wife where she wanted to go for our
anniversary. "Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!"
she said.
So I suggested the kitchen.

5. We always hold hands.
If I let go, she shops.

6. She has an electric blender, electric toaster and electric
bread maker.
She said "There are too many gadgets and no place
to sit down!" .. So I bought her an electric chair.

7. My wife told me the car wasn't running well because
there was water in the carburetor.
I asked where the car was; she told me "In the lake."

8. She got a mud pack and looked great for two days.
Then the mud fell off.

9. She ran after the garbage truck, yelling "Am I too late
for the garbage?" . The driver said "No, jump in!"

10. Remember: Marriage is the number one cause of divorce.

11. I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her
first name was Always.

12. I haven't spoken to my wife in 18 months.
I don't like to interrupt her.

13. The last fight was my fault though.
My wife asked "What's on the TV?"
I said "Dust!"

Coconut woman is calling out
And everyday you can hear her shout
Coconut woman is calling out
And everyday you can hear her shout
Get your coconut water, four for five
Man it's good for your daughter, four for five
Coco got a lotta iron, four for five
Make you strong like a lion, four for five

A lady tell me the other day
No one can take her sweet man away
I ask her what was the mystery
She say coconut water and rice curry
You can cook it in a pot, four for five
You can serve it very hot, four for five
Coco got a lotta iron, four for five
Make you strong like a lion, four for five

Coconut woman says you'll agree
coconut make very nice candy
The thing that's best if you're feelin' glum
Is coconut water with a little rum
It could make you very tipsy, four for five
Make you feel like a gypsy, four for five
Coco got a lotta iron, four for five
Make you strong like a lion, four for five

Coconut

Harry Belafonte

Way down in New Orleans everythings fine

All them cats just drinkin' that wine

Drinkin' that mess is sure delight

When they get slop drunk they sing all night

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De Drinkin' Wine

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De Drinkin' Wine

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De

Pass that bottle to me!

Well I got a nickle you got a dime

Lets get together and by some wine

Wine over here Wine over there

Drinking that mess everywhere!

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De Drinkin' Wine

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De Drinkin' Wine

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De

Pass that bottle to me!

Yeah!

Piano Solo

Roy Boy!

Guitar Solo

Weeeeeeellll

Wine Wine Wine Elderberry

Wine Wine Wine Oh Sherry

Wine Wine Wine Blackberry

Wine Wine Wine Half and Half

Wine Wine Wine Oh Boy

Pass that bottle to me

Yeah!

Piano Solo

Well all the way down on Bourbon Street Willies been

Uncle Willie wasn't selling but a little gin

One cat order a bottle of wine

Tip that cat for a dollar and a dime

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De Drinkin' Wine

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De Drinkin' Wine

Drinkin' Wine Spo-De-O-De

Pass that bottle to me!

Wine Wine Wine Elderberry

Wine Wine Wine Oh Sherry

Wine Wine Wine Blackberry

Wine Wine Wine Half and Half

Wine Wine Wine Oh Boy

Pass that bottle to me!

Jerry Lee Lewis

Yesterday I was a young man
Searching for my way
Not knowing what I wanted
Living life from day to day, yeah

Till she came along
There was nothing but an empty space
Not a trace
Feels like colored rain
Tastes like colored rain
Bring down colored rain
Rain, oh yeah

I can feel those colored changes
Going through my mind
United with a feeling
Bringing love into my eyes, yeah

Till she came along
There was nothing but an empty space
Not a trace
Feels like colored rain, baby
Tastes like colored rain
Bring down colored rain
Rain, oh yeah

Bring it on down baby

I can feel those colored changes
Going through my mind
United with a feeling
Bringing love into my eyes, yeah

Till she came along
There was nothing but an empty space
Not a trace
Feels like colored rain, baby
Don't you know it feels like colored rain
Don't you know baby
Its not all the time
That the sun won't shine, baby, yeah
If you love me and you want me to be your man, yeah yeah
Theres one thing baby
Every woman should understand, hmmm
Without rain babe
Our love will never come to be
And if you want my sunshine
You've got to accept my hail rain and snow
There's one thing baby
That I want you to do for me yeah
I want you to take our body close
I want you to work that up I know
Take that colored rain
Bring it down yeah
Bring it on down yeah
Bring it on down yeah
Bring it on down yeah
Bring it on down yeah

Bring down colored rain

The Animals

listening to simon and garfunkel

the craftsmanship of these guys is second only to the beatles in my humble opinion

Keep the Customer Satisfied
Simon and Garfunkel

Gee but it's great to be back home
Home is where I want to be.
I've been on the road so long my friend,
And if you came along
I know you couldn't disagree.

It's the same old story
Everywhere I go,
I get slandered,
Libeled,
I hear words I never heard
In the Bible
And I'm one step ahead of the shoe shine
Two steps away from the county line
Just trying to keep my customers satisfied,
Satisfied.

Deputy Sheriff said to me
Tell me what you come here for, boy.
You better get your bags and flee.
You're in trouble boy,
And now you're heading into more.

It's the same old story
Everywhere I go,
I get slandered,
Libeled,
I hear words I never heard
In the Bible
And I'm one step ahead of the shoe shine
Two steps away from the county line
Just trying to keep my customers satisfied,
Satisfied.


The Dangling Conversation
Simon and Garfunkel

It's a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.

And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
"Can analysis be worthwhile?"
"Is the theater really dead?"
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You're a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.


America
Simon and Garfunkel

"Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together"
"I've got some real estate here in my bag"
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And we walked off to look for America

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said "Be careful his bowtie is really a camera"

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"
"We smoked the last one an hour ago"
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
All gone to look for America

a favourite song from paul simon solo

American Tune
Paul Simon

Many's the time I've been mistaken, and many times confused
Yes and I've often felt forsaken, and certainly misused
Ah but I'm alright, I'm alright, I'm just weary to my bones
Still you don't expect to be bright and bon-vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or driven to its knees
But it's alright, it's alright, for we lived so well, so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong, I can't help it I wonder what's gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying, I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me, smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying, and high up above my eyes could clearly see
The statue of liberty, sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was flying

But we come on a ship they called Mayflower
We come on a ship that sailed the moon
We come in the ages' most uncertain hours and sing an American tune
And it's alright, oh it's alright, it's alright, you can be forever blessed
Still tomorrow's gonna be another working day and I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying, to get some rest

Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky.
Your back is straight, your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie.
But I don't sense affection
No gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me
But to the stars above.

One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.

Your daddy he's an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He'll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade.
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude
His voice it trembles as he calls out
For another plate of food.

One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.

Your sister sees the future
Like your mama and yourself.
You've never learned to read or write
There's no books upon your shelf.
And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark.

One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.




Bob Dylan

Upton Sinclair
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born: September 20, 1878(1878-09-20)
Baltimore, Maryland
Died: November 25, 1968 (aged 90)
Bound Brook, New Jersey
Occupation: Novelist, writer, journalist, political activist
Nationality: American

Upton Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 - November 25, 1968), was a prolific American author who wrote over 90 books in many genres and was widely considered to be one of the best investigators advocating socialist views and supporting anarchist causes. He achieved considerable popularity in the first half of the 20th century. He gained particular fame for his 1906 novel The Jungle, which dealt with conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry and caused a public uproar that partly contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906.[1]




Biography

Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland and later, in 1888, moved to New York City. Sinclair married his first wife, joe Fuller, in 1900.

An early success was the Civil War novel Manassas, written in 1903 and published a year later. Originally projected as the opening book of a trilogy, the success of The Jungle caused him to drop his plans, although he did revise Manassas decades later by "moderating some of the exuberance of the earlier version".[citation needed] The Jungle brought to light many major issues in America, such as poverty.

Sinclair created a socialist commune, named Helicon Hall Colony, in 1906 with proceeds from his novel The Jungle. One of those who joined was the novelist and playwright Sinclair Lewis, who worked there as a janitor.


Upton Sinclair's The JungleSinclair made several bids for office. His first was in 1906. The Socialist Party of America sponsored his candidacy for Congress in New Jersey. He lost with just over 3% of the votes.[1][2]

The colony burned down in 1907, apparently from arson. After the famed fire of Helicon Hall, he moved to Arden, Delaware, where many Georgist, Socialist, and Communist "Free Thinkers" lived, including Mother Bloor's son Hamilton "Buzz" Ware. Some say that he worked in a tree house behind his home during these years.

Around 1911, Sinclair's wife ran off with the poet Harry Kemp (later known as the Dunes Poet of Provincetown, Massachusetts). Within a few years, Sinclair moved to Pasadena, California, where he founded the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1920s. Sinclair went on to run unsuccessfully for Congress twice on the Socialist ticket: in 1920, for the United States House of Representatives, and in 1922, for the Senate.[3]

Sinclair's 1928 book, Boston, created controversy by proclaiming the innocence of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists who were accused of a murder/robbery in that city. Sinclair faced what he would later call "the most difficult ethical problem of my life," when he was told in confidence by Sacco and Vanzetti's former attorney, Fred Moore, that they were guilty and how their alibis were supposedly arranged.[4] However, in the letter revealing that discussion with Moore, Sinclair also wrote, "I had heard that Moore was using drugs. I knew that he had parted from the defense committee after the bitterest of quarrels... Moore admitted to me that the men themselves, had never admitted their guilt to him."[citation needed] Although the two men were ultimately executed, this episode has been used by some to claim that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty and that Sinclair knew that when he wrote his novel. However, this account has been disputed by Sinclair biographer Greg Mitchell.[citation needed]

In 1934, Sinclair made his most successful run for office, this time as a Democrat. Sinclair's platform for the California gubernatorial race of 1934, known as EPIC (End Poverty in California), galvanized the support of the Democratic Party, and Sinclair gained its nomination. Conservatives in California were themselves galvanized by this, as they saw it as an attempted communist takeover of their state. They used massive political propaganda portraying Sinclair as a Communist, even as he was being portrayed by American and Soviet communists as a capitalist following the Que Viva Mexico! debacle.[citation needed] Robert A. Heinlein, the science fiction author, was deeply involved in Sinclair's campaign, a point which Heinlein tried to obscure from later biographies, as Heinlein tried to keep his personal politics separate from his public image as an author.[citation needed]

Sinclair was defeated by Frank F. Merriam in the election, and largely abandoned EPIC and politics to return to writing. However, the race of 1934 would become known as the first race to use modern campaign techniques like motion pictures.

Of his gubernatorial bids, Sinclair remarked in 1951: "The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."[5]


Sinclair's grave in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, DCAside from his political and social writings, Sinclair took an interest in psychic phenomena and experimented with telepathy, writing a book titled "Mental Radio", published in 1930. According to Sinclair, a 34-pound table was once levitated eight feet over his head by a young psychic in a seance.[6][7]

After Sinclair's first wife left, he married Mary Craig Kimbrough (1883 - 1961), a woman who was later tested for psychic abilities. After her death, Sinclair married a third time, to Mary Elizabeth Willis (1882 - 1967). Late in life, he moved from California to Buckeye, Arizona, and then to Bound Brook, New Jersey. Sinclair died in 1968, and is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC, next to his third wife, who died a year before him.

The Upton Sinclair House in Monrovia, California, is now a National Historic Landmark. The papers, photographs, and first editions of most of his books are found at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.[8]


Political and social activism

Sinclair believed that the main point of The Jungle was lost on the public, overshadowed by his descriptions of the unhealthy conditions in packing plants. The public health concerns dealt with in The Jungle were not as significant to Sinclair as the human tragedy lived by his main character and other workers in the plants. His main goal for the book was to demonstrate the inhumane conditions of the wage earner under capitalism, not to inspire public health reforms in how the packing was done. Indeed, Sinclair lamented the effect of his book and the public uproar that resulted: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Still, the fame and fortune he gained from publishing The Jungle enabled him to write books on almost every issue of social injustice in the Twentieth Century. [2]

Sinclair is well-known for his principle: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." This quotation by Sinclair has appeared in many political books, essays, articles, and other forms of media.[citation needed]


The Lanny Budd series

Between 1940 and 1953, Sinclair wrote the World's End series of 11 novels about Lanny Budd, the "red" son of an American arms manufacturer who was a socialite, an art expert and an acquaintance of Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler.

They cover in sequence much of the political history of the Western world (particularly Europe and America), in the first half of the twentieth century. Almost totally forgotten today, they were all bestsellers upon publication and were published in 21 countries. The third book in the series, Dragon's Teeth, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943.

Long out of print, the World's End or Lanny Budd series, have recently been re-issued by Simon Publications. For technical reasons, each original volume is issued in two parts, forming a 22-volume set. The series was originally published by Viking Press in New York and T. Werner Laurie in London.





Sinclair in culture

In Sinclair Lewis' novel, It Can't Happen Here, Upton Sinclair is depicted as an eccentric and a supporter of fascism out of opportunistic motives, who is rewarded for his support of an American fascist government by being made ambassador to Great Britain.

Sinclair is extensively featured in Harry Turtledove's American Empire trilogy, in which the American Socialist Party succeeds to become a major force in US politics. He wins the 1920 and 1924 presidential elections and becomes the first Socialist President of the United States, his inauguration attended by crowds of jubilant militants waving Red Flags. However, the actual policies which Turtledove attributes to him, once in power, are not particularly radical.[citation needed]

Sinclair is featured as one of the main characters in Chris Bachelder's satirical fictional book, U.S.!: a Novel. Sinclair is the frequently assassinated and resurrected personification of the contemporary failings of the American-left and portrayed as a Quixotic reformer attempting to stir an apathetic American public to implement Socialism in America.


Films

Upton Sinclair was the writer or producer of several films, including his involvement, in 1930-32, with Sergei Eisenstein, for Que Viva Mexico!, which turned into a debacle.[citation needed] Charlie Chaplin got him involved in the project.[3]

His 1937 novel, The Gnomobile, was the basis of a 1967 Disney musical motion picture, The Gnome-Mobile. [4].

His 1927 novel Oil! was the basis of There Will Be Blood (2007), starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. It was screenwritten, produced, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. [5]

Gogi Grant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background information

Birth name Myrtle Audrey Arinsberg
Born September 20, 1924 (1924-09-20) (age 83), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Genre(s) Traditional pop
Years active 1955- present
Label(s) Era, RCA Victor

Gogi Grant (born Myrtle Audrey Arinsberg, September 20, 1924) is an American popular singer.




Life and career

She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the age of twelve she moved to Los Angeles, California. In California she won a teenage singing contest and appeared on television talent shows. In 1952 she began to record, using first the name "Audrey Brown" and later "Audrey Grant". She was given the name "Gogi" by Dave Kapp, the head of Artists and Repertory at RCA Records, who liked to patronize a restaurant called "Gogi's LaRue."

In 1955 she signed with a small record company, Era Records, and had her first top ten hit with "Suddenly There's a Valley." The next year, she had an even bigger hit (reaching Billboard magazine's number one spot) with "The Wayward Wind" and she was voted most popular female vocalist by Billboard magazine.

In 1957 she supplied the vocals for Ann Blyth in the movie portrayal of Helen Morgan's life. The soundtrack occasioned her return to RCA (the soundtrack album climbed to #25 in the Billboard album chart), where she also had a minor hit the following year with "Strange Are the Ways of Love".

Although she made albums and appeared on television into the 1960s, her popularity declined and she retired from singing in 1967, nevertheless an album of hers was released in England some twenty years later.

Miss Grant is still performing, currently she headlined with The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies in Palm Springs, California. Her last show was on December 31, 2006 with the Follies, and she continues to perform well into her 80s.