WA2K Radio is now on the air

You know, hamburger, folk songs are a dying breed, and I love them because they not only tell of a past culture, but one that we may see once again, unfortunately. Loved yours, Canada, and the picture was awesome.

Here's one my daddy sang, and I have never quite found his exact lyrics. Let's see if I can remember them.

Where did you get those high top shoes,
Where did you get those clothes so fine?

Got my shoes from a railroad man,
And my dress from a driver in the mine.

Don't let the deal go down honey, babe
Don't let the deal go down.
Don't let the deal go down, lawd, lawd,
Til your last gold dollar is gone.

not exactly a folk song , but ...

I FOUND A MILLION DOLLAR BABY
-----------------------------------------

Love it, hbg. I think of Clint Eastwood's movie when I hear that song.

Wonder where edgar be? He'll appreciate this song, methinks.

Eddie Cochran

wah-hoo)
well the boll weevil and the little black bug
come from a-mexico they say
came all the way to texas
just a-lookin' for a place to stay
just a-lookin' for a home, just a-lookin' for a home
(doo-doo-wop-wop)
well the first time that i seen the boll weevil
he was a-sittin' on the square
well the next time that i seen him
he had his a-family there
just a-lookin' for a home, just a-lookin' for a home
(doo-doo-wop-wop)
well the farmer took the boll weevil
and he put him on the red hot sand
well the weevil said this is a-mighty hot
but i take it like a man
this will be my home, this will be my home

well the farmer took the boll weevil
and he put him on a keg of ice
well the weevil said to the farmer
this is mighty cool and nice
this will be my home, this will be my home
(doo-doo-wop-wop)
well if anybody should ask you
who it was who sang this song
say a guitar picker from a-oklahoma city
with a pair of blue jeans on
just a-lookin' for a home, just a-lookin' for a home
(doo-doo-wop-wop)

I do believe, folks, that starlings were imported from England to get rid of the bowl weevil, but will have to check on that.

i was googling for SYLVIA ... this os not what i was looking for ...
still , quite a heart-wrenching song !

Yeah, I know that one, buddy, and if we're going to cry in our beer let's make it a good one.

Hank Snow

Mother dear, come bathe my forehead

For I'm growing very weak

Mother, let one drop of water

Fall upon my burnin' cheek

Tell my loving, little playmates

That I never more shall play

Give them all my toys but, Mother

Put my little shoes away



(You will do this, Mother, won't you)

(Put my little shoes away)

Give them all my toys but, Mother

Put my little shoes away



Santa Claus, he brought them to me

With a lot of other things

And I think he brought an angel

With a pair of golden wings

Mother, soon I'll be an angel

By, perhaps, another day

So if you will, my dearest Mother

Put my little shoes away



(You will do this, Mother, won't you)

(Put my little shoes away)

Give them all my toys but, Mother

Put my little shoes away

OH , WHAT A CRYING SHAME
----------------------------------

I'll tell you what's a crying shame, hbg. I just found a naughty, NAUGHTY version of "Red Wing" and I don't dare play it, 'cause the FCC will not think it funny.

Instead, here is one that my Mamma sang to me and I, in turn, sang to my daughter.

Red Wing

There once was an Indian maid,
A shy little prairie maid,
Who sang a lay, a love song gay,
As on the plain she'd while away the day;

She loved a warrior bold,
This shy little maid of old,
But brave and gay, he rode one day
To battle far away.

Now, the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing
The breeze is sighing, the night bird's crying,
For afar 'neath his star her brave is sleeping,
While Red Wimg's weeping her heart away.

She watched for him day and night,
She kept all the campfires bright,
And under the sky, each night she would lie,
And dream about his coming by and by;

But when all the braves returned,
The heart of Red Wing yearned,
For far, far away, her warrior gay,
Fell bravely in the fray.

and now for my goodnight song, y'all, and we'll dedicate this one to Craven. (although he ain't no preacher)

A preacher went out a-hunting,
Was on a Sunday morn,
And though it was against his religion,
Still he took his gun along.
He shot himself a couple of geese
And one gigantic hare,
And on his way returning home
He met a great big grizzly bear.
The bear marched out
In the middle of the road
And he waltzed to him so you see,
The preacher got excited,
Dropped his gun as he climbed a tree.
The bear sat down upon the ground
And the preacher climbed on a limb,
He cast his eyes to the God in the skies,
And these words he said to Him:

"Oh, Lord, didn't you deliver
Daniel from the lion's den?
Also deliver Jonah
From the belly of the whale and then,
Three little children from the fiery furnace,
So the Good Books do declare.
Now Lord, if you can't help me,
For goodness' sake, don't you help that bear!"

The preacher stayed up in that tree
For all the rest of the night,
He said, "Oh, Lord, if you don't help that bear
Then there'll be one dreadful fight,"
Just about then the limb let go
And he then came tumbling down,
You should have seen him get his razor out
Before he struck the ground.
He hit the ground
Bouncing right and left, it's true,
He put up a really strong fight,
The bear began to hug him,
And he squeezed him with all his might,
The preacher then lost his razor
Still the bear held on with a vim,
He cast his eyes to the God in the skies
And once more he said to Him:

"Oh, Lord, didn't you deliver
Daniel from the lion's den?
Also deliver Jonah
From the belly of the whale and then,
Three little children from the fiery furnace,
So the Good Books do declare.
Now Lord, if you can't help me,
For goodness' sake, don't you help that bear!"

From Letty with love and a smile.

So Rare
Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians

[Music and Lyrics by Jerry Herst and Jack Sharpe]

So rare
You're like the fragrance of blossoms fair
Sweet of a breath of air
Fresh with the morning dew

So rare
You're like the sparkle of old champayne
Orchids in cellophane
Couldn't compare to you
You are perfection
You're my idea
Of angels singing the Ave Maria
For you're an angel
I breathe and live you
With ev'ry beat of the heart that I give you

So rare
This is a heaven on earth we share
Caring the way we care
Ours is a love so rare

Good morning, WA2K listeners and contributors.

edgar, I know that song and I'm humming the melody in my head. I had no idea that Guy Lombardo did it. It's a lovely jazz ballad.

I do think, folks, that there is a bit of gypsy in all of us, and "golden errings" are still a part of me. Thinking of Carmen today, so let's begin the day with that frivolous lady.

Carmen
The sistrums had the clanging sound
That their rods made as they were swaying,
And then with that strange music playing
The Gypsy girls rose to the ground.
The tambourines would race along,
And stubborn hands that kept up with them
Gave their guitars a furious rhythm,
The same refrain, the same old song,
The same refrain, the same old song.
Tra la la la
Tra la la la
Tra la la la
Tra la la la la la la la.

The copper and the silver rings
On swarthy skins were bright and shining;
And skirts with red or orange lining
Would flutter in the wind like wings.
The dance was married to the song,
The dance was married to the song,
At first unsure and hesitating,
Then lively and accelerating…
It all kept rising, rising all along!

The men, with strength as if from hell,
Now beat their instruments to sound them,
And with that dazzling noise around them
The women fell under its spell.
And to the rhythm of the song,
And to the rhythm of the song,
All hot and crazy, fevered, sweating,
Intoxicated, they were letting
The whirlwind carry them along!

I love the line, "....the dance was married to the song..."

Good afternoon WA2K.

Like to wish a Happy 59th to Olivia Newton-John; 51st to Linda Hamilton and 39th to James Caveziel (liked him in the movie, "Angel
Eyes")



My Olivia Newton-John selection:

In the corner of the bar there stands a jukebox
With the best of country music, old and new
You can hear your five selections for a quarter
And somebody else's songs when yours are through

I got good Kentucky whiskey on the counter
And my friends around to help me ease the pain
'Til some button-pushing cowboy plays that love song
And here I am just missing you again

Please, Mr., please, don't play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it's over
Please, Mr., please, if you know what I mean
I don't ever wanna hear that song again

If I had a dime for every time I held you
Though you're far away, you've been so close to me
I could swear I'd be the richest girl in Nashville
Maybe even in the state of Tennessee

But I guess I'd better get myself together
'Cause when you left, you didn't leave too much behind
Just a note that said "I'm sorry" by your picture
And a song that's weighing heavy on my mind

Please, Mr., please, don't play B-17
It was our song, it was his song, but it's over
Please, Mr., please, if you know what I mean
I don't ever wanna hear that song again

There's our Raggedy with a great duet. Thanks, PA.

I liked the movie Angel Eyes as well, puppy. "Catch" always had that blank look on his face but there was that something behind those eyes.

I like this one by Olivia Newton-John, folks.


Wherever you go
Wherever you may wander in your life
Surely you know
I always wanna be there
Holding you hand
And standing by to catch you when you fall
Seeing you through
In everything you do

Let me be there in your morning
Let me be there in you night
Let me change whatever's wrong and make it right
Let me take you through that wonderland
That only two can share
All I ask you is let me be there

Watching you grow
And going through the changes in your life
That's how I know
I always wanna be there
Whenever you feel you need a friend to lean on, here I am
Whenever you call, you know I'll be there

Let me be there in your morning
Let me be there in you night
Let me change whatever's wrong and make it right
Let me take you through that wonderland
That only two can share
All I ask you is let me be there

How about a jazz ballad to match the title of the movie. Many have done this one, and it begins in a minor key, then the bridge moves to major.

Try to think that love´s not around
But it´s uncomfortably near
My old heart ain´t gaining no ground
Because my angel eyes ain´t here

Angel eyes, that old devil sent
They glow unbearably bright
Need I say that my love´s mispent
Mispent with angel eyes tonight

Bridge

So drink up all you people
Order anything you see
Have fun you happy people
The laughs and the jokes are on me

Pardon me but I got to run
The fact´s uncommonly clear
Got to find who´s now number one
And why my angel eyes ain't here
Excuse me while I disappear

Edmund Gwenn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Edmund Kellaway
Born September 26, 1877(1877-09-26)
Wandsworth, London, England
Died September 6, 1959 (aged 81)
Woodland Hills, California, U.S.

Edmund Gwenn (September 26, 1877-September 6, 1959) was an English theatre and film actor.

Born Edmund Kellaway in Wandsworth, London, England[1] Gwenn started his acting career in theatre in 1895. Playwright George Bernard Shaw was impressed with his acting, and cast him in the first production of Man and Superman, and subsequently in five more of his plays. Gwenn's career was interrupted by his military service during World War I, however after the war ended he started appearing in films in London. (Cecil Kellaway was his cousin.)

Gwenn appeared in more than eighty films during his career, including the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, Cheers for Miss Bishop, and The Keys of the Kingdom. He is perhaps best remembered for his role as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Upon receiving his Oscar, he said "Now I know there is a Santa Claus!" He received a second nomination for his role in Mister 880 (1950). Near the end of his career he played one of the main roles in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955). He has a small but hugely memorable role as a Cockney assassin in another Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent (1940)

In 1954, Gwenn played Dr. Harold Medford in the classic science fiction film Them! with James Arness and James Whitmore.

Edmund Gwenn died from pneumonia after suffering a stroke, in Woodland Hills, California. He was cremated and his ashes are stored in the vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles, California.

Edmund Gwenn has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1751 Vine Street for his contribution to motion pictures.

T. S. Eliot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Born: September 26, 1888(1888-09-26)
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Died: January 4, 1965 (age 76)
London, England
Occupation: Poet, Dramatist, Literary critic
Nationality: Born American, became a British subject in 1927
Writing period: 1917 - 1965
Literary movement: Modernism
Debut works: Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
Influences: Homer, Vergil, The Bible, Dante, Shakespeare and Early Modern English Theatre, Dr. Johnson, Laforgue, Baudelaire, Conrad, Tennyson, Hulme, Pound
Influenced: Pound, Yeats, Stevens, Moore Empson, Auden, MacNeice, Hughes, Hill, Heaney[1]


Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. He wrote the poems "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", "Ash Wednesday", and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent". Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.




Life

Early life and education

Eliot was born into the prominent Eliot family of St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Henry Ware Eliot (1843-1919), was a successful businessman, president and treasurer of the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company in St. Louis; his mother, born Charlotte Champe Stearns (1843-1929), wrote poems and was also a social worker. Eliot was the last of six surviving children; his parents were 44 years old when he was born. His four sisters were between eleven and nineteen years older than him; his brother was eight years older. Known to family and friends as Tom, he was the namesake of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Stearns.

From 1898 to 1905, Eliot was a day student at Smith Academy, a preparatory school for Washington University. At the academy, Eliot studied Latin, Greek, French, and German. Upon graduation, he could have gone to Harvard University, but his parents sent him to Milton Academy (in Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston) for a preparatory year. There he met Scofield Thayer, who would later publish The Waste Land. He studied at Harvard from 1906 to 1909, where he earned a B.A.. The Harvard Advocate published some of his poems, and he became lifelong friends with Conrad Aiken. The next year, he earned a master's degree at Harvard. In the 1910-1911 school year, Eliot lived in Paris, studying at the Sorbonne and touring the continent. Returning to Harvard in 1911 as a doctoral student in philosophy, Eliot studied the writings of F.H. Bradley, Buddhism and Indic philology (learning Sanskrit and Pāli to read some of the religious texts.[2]) He was awarded a scholarship to attend Merton College, Oxford in 1914, and, before settling there, he visited Marburg, Germany, where he planned to take a summer program in philosophy. When the First World War broke out, however, he went to London and then to Oxford. In a letter to Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote "I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society)" and then added a complaint that he was still a virgin.[3] Less than four months later, he was introduced by Thayer, then also at Oxford, to Cambridge governess Vivienne Haigh-Wood (May 28, 1888 - January 22, 1947).[4] Eliot was not happy at Merton and declined a second year there. Instead, on 26 June 1915, he married Vivienne in a register office. After a short visit, alone, to the U. S. to see his family, he returned to London and took a few teaching jobs such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. He continued to work on his dissertation and, in the spring of 1916, sent it to Harvard, which accepted it. Because he did not appear in person to defend his dissertation, however, he was not awarded his Ph.D. (In 1964, the dissertation was published as Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley.) During Eliot's university career, he studied with George Santayana, Irving Babbitt, Henri Bergson, C. R. Lanman, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, and Harold Joachim.

Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivien (the spelling she preferred[5]) while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars have suggested that Vivien and Russell had an affair (see Carole Seymour-Jones, Painted Shadow), but these allegations have never been confirmed. Eliot, in a private paper, written in his sixties, confessed: "I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."[6]


A plaque at SOAS's Faber Building, 24 Russell Square commemorating T S Eliot's years at Faber and Faber.After leaving Merton, Eliot worked as a school teacher, most notably at Highgate School, where he taught the young John Betjeman and later at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. To earn extra money, he wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses. In 1917, he took a position at Lloyds Bank in London, where he worked on foreign accounts. In August 1920, Eliot met James Joyce on a trip to Paris, accompanied by Wyndham Lewis. After the meeting, Eliot said he thought Joyce to be arrogant (Joyce doubted Eliot's ability as a poet at the time), but the two soon became friends with Eliot visiting Joyce whenever he was in Paris.[7] In 1925, Eliot left Lloyds to join the publishing firm of Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), where he remained for the rest of his career, becoming a director of the firm.


Later life in England

In 1927, Eliot took two important steps in his self-definition. On June 29 he converted to Anglicanism and in November he dropped his American citizenship and became a British subject. In 1928, Eliot summarised his beliefs when he wrote in the preface to his book, For Lancelot Andrewes that "the general point of view [of the book's essays] may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion."

By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard University offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932-1933 academic year, he accepted, leaving Vivien in England. Upon his return in 1933, Eliot officially separated from Vivien. He avoided all but one meeting with his wife between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. (Vivien died at Northumberland House, a mental hospital north of London, where she was committed in 1938, without ever having been visited by Eliot, who was still her husband.[8])

From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat with his friend, John Davy Hayward, who gathered and archived Eliot's papers and styled himself Keeper of the Eliot Archive.[9] He also collected Eliot's pre-"Prufrock" verse, commercially published after Eliot's death as Poems Written in Early Youth. When Eliot and Hayward separated their household in 1957, Hayward retained his collection of Eliot's papers, which he bequeathed to King's College, Cambridge in 1965.

Eliot's second marriage was happy but short. On January 10, 1957, he married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, to whom he was introduced by Collin Brooks. In sharp contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Miss Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. Like his marriage to Vivien, the wedding was kept a secret to preserve his privacy. The ceremony was held in a church at 6.15 a.m. with virtually no one other than his wife's parents in attendance. Valerie was 38 years younger than her husband. Since Eliot's death, she has dedicated her time to preserving his legacy; she has edited and annotated The Letters of T.S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land.

Eliot died of emphysema in London on January 4, 1965. For many years, he had health problems owing to the combination of London air and his heavy smoking, often being laid low with bronchitis or tachycardia. His body was cremated and, according to Eliot's wishes, the ashes taken to St Michael's Church in East Coker, the village from which Eliot's ancestors emigrated to America. There, a simple plaque commemorates him. On the second anniversary of his death, a large stone placed on the floor of Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey was dedicated to Eliot. This commemoration contains his name, an indication that he had received the Order of Merit, dates, and a quotation from Little Gidding: "the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond / the language of the living."


Eliot's poetry

For a poet of his stature, Eliot's poetic output was small. Eliot was aware of this early in his career. He wrote to J.H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, that "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event."[10]

Typically, Eliot first published his poems in periodicals or in small books or pamphlets consisting of a single poem (e.g., the Ariel poems) and then adding them to collections. His first collection was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). In 1920 Eliot published more poems in Ara Vos Prec (London) and Poems: 1920 (New York). These had the same poems (in a different order) except that "Ode" in the British edition was replaced with "Hysteria" in the American edition. In 1925 Eliot collected The Waste Land and the poems in Prufrock and Poems into one volume and added "The Hollow Men" to form Poems: 1909-1925. From then on he updated this work (as Collected Poems). Exceptions are:

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) ?- a collection of light verse.
Poems Written in Early Youth (posthumously published in 1967) ?- consisting mainly of poems published between 1907 and 1910 in The Harvard Advocate, the student-run literary magazine at Harvard University.[11]
Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 (posthumously published in 1997) ?- poems, verse and drafts Eliot never intended to be published. Densely annotated by Christopher Ricks.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

In 1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor of Poetry magazine, recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine's founder, that she publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". Although Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only 22. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table," were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when the poetry of the Georgians was hailed for its derivations of the 19th century Romantic Poets. The poem then follows the conscious experience of a man, Prufrock, (relayed in the "stream of consciousness" form indicative of the Modernists) lamenting his physical and intellectual inertia, the lost opportunities in his life and lack of spiritual progress, with the recurrent theme of carnal love unattained. Critical opinion is divided as to whether the narrator even leaves his own residence during the course of the narration. The locations described can be interpreted either as actual physical experiences, mental recollections or even as symbolic images from the sub-conscious mind, as, for example, in the refrain "In the room the women come and go."

Its mainstream reception can be gauged from a review in The Times Literary Supplement on June 21, 1917: "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry…"[12][13]

The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante Alighieri (in the Italian). References to Shakespeare's Hamlet and other literary works are present in the poem: this technique of allusion and quotation was developed in Eliot's subsequent poetry.


The Waste Land

In October 1922, Eliot published The Waste Land in The Criterion. Composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot ?- his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivienne suffered from disordered nerves ?-The Waste Land is often read as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation. Even before The Waste Land had been published as a book (December 1922), Eliot distanced himself from the poem's vision of despair: "As for The Waste Land, that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style" he wrote to Richard Aldington on November 15, 1922. Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem ?- its slippage between satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time; its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures--it has become a touchstone of modern literature, a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year, James Joyce's Ulysses. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month"; "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and "Shantih shantih shantih," the utterance in Sanskrit which closes the poem.


Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is the first long poem written by Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930, this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.

Sometimes referred to as Eliot's "conversion poem", Ash Wednesday, with a base of Dante's Purgatorio, is richly but ambiguously allusive and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. The style is different from his poetry which predates his conversion. Ash Wednesday and the poems that followed had a more casual, melodic, and contemplative method.

Many critics were "particularly enthusiastic concerning Ash Wednesday",[14] while in other quarters it was not well received.[15] Among many of the more secular literati its groundwork of orthodox Christianity was discomfiting. Edwin Muir maintained that "Ash Wednesday is one of the most moving poems he has written, and perhaps the most perfect."[16]


Four Quartets

Although many critics preferred his earlier work, Eliot and many other critics considered Four Quartets his masterpiece and it is the work which led to his receipt of the Nobel Prize.[17] The Four Quartets draws upon his knowledge of mysticism and philosophy. It consists of four long poems, published separately: Burnt Norton (1936), East Coker (1940), The Dry Salvages (1941) and Little Gidding (1942), each in five sections. Although they resist easy characterisation, each begins with a rumination on the geographical location of its title, and each meditates on the nature of time in some important respect ?- theological, historical, physical ?- and its relation to the human condition. Also, each is associated with one of the four classical elements: air, earth, water, and fire. They approach the same ideas in varying but overlapping ways, and are open to a diversity of interpretations.

Burnt Norton asks what it means to consider things that might have been. We see the shell of an abandoned house, and Eliot toys with the idea that all these "merely possible" realities are present together, but invisible to us: All the possible ways people might walk across a courtyard add up to a vast dance we can't see; children who aren't there are hiding in the bushes.

East Coker continues the examination of time and meaning, focusing in a famous passage on the nature of language and poetry. Out of darkness Eliot continues to reassert a solution ("I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope").

The Dry Salvages treats the element of water, via images of river and sea. It again strives to contain opposites ("…the past and future/Are conquered, and reconciled").

"Little Gidding" (the element of fire) is the most anthologized of the Quartets. Eliot's own experiences as an air raid warden in The Blitz power the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the German bombing. The beginning of the Quartets ("Houses…/Are removed, destroyed") had become a violent everyday experience; this creates an animation, where for the first time he talks of Love ?- as the driving force behind all experience. From this background, the Quartets end with an affirmation of Julian of Norwich "all shall be well and/All manner of things shall be well".

The Four Quartets cannot be understood without reference to Christian thought, traditions, and history. Eliot draws upon the theology, art, symbolism and language of such figures as Dante, St. John of the Cross and Julian of Norwich. The "deeper communion" sought in Burnt Norton, the "hints" and whispers of children, the sickness that must grow worse in order to find healing, and the exploration which inevitably leads us home all point to the pilgrim's path along the road of sanctification.


Eliot's plays

With the exception of the poems of Four Quartets Eliot did not write any major poetry after "Ash Wednesday" (1930). His creative energies were spent in writing plays in verse, mostly comedies or plays with redemptive endings. He was long a critic and fan of Elizabethian and Jacobean verse drama (witness his allusions to Webster, Middleton, Shakespeare and Kyd in The Waste Land.) In a 1933 lecture he said: "Every poet would like, I fancy, to be able to think that he had some direct social utility. ... He would like to be something of a popular entertainer, and be able to think his own thoughts behind a tragic or a comic mask. He would like to convey the pleasures of poetry, not only to a larger audience, but to larger groups of people collectively; and the theatre is the best place in which to do it."[18]

After writing The Waste Land (1922) Eliot wrote that he was "now feeling toward a new form and style." One item he had in mind was writing a play in verse with a jazz tempo with a character that appeared in a number of his poems, Sweeney. This was a failure; Eliot did not finish it. He did publish two pieces of what he had separately. The two, "Fragment of a Prologue (1926) and "Fragment of a Agon (1927) were published together in 1932 as Sweeney Agonistes. Although noted that this was not intended to be a one-act play, it is sometimes performed as a one.[19]

In 1934 a pageant play called The Rock that Eliot authored was performed. This was a benefit for churches in the Diocese of London. Much of the work was a collaborative effort and Eliot only accepted authorship of one scene and the choruses.[20] The pageant would have a sympathetic audience but one largely consisting of the common churchman, a new audience for Eliot who had to modify his style, often called "erudite."

George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, who was instrumental in getting Eliot to work as writer with producer E. Martin Browne in producing the pageant play The Rock asked Eliot to write another play for the Canterbury Festival in 1935. This play, Murder in the Cathedral, was more under Eliot's control.

Murder in the Cathedral is about the death of Thomas Becket. Eliot admitted being influenced by, among others, the works of 17th century preacher Lancelot Andrewes. Murder in the Cathedral has been a standard choice for Anglican and Roman Catholic curricula for many years.

Following his ecclesiastical plays Eliot worked on commercial plays for more general audiences. These were The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958).

The dramatic works of Eliot are less well known than his poems.


Eliot as critic

Strongly influencing the New Criticism, Eliot is considered by some to be one of the great literary critics of the 20th century. The famous critic William Empson once said, "I do not know for certain how much of my own mind [Eliot] invented, let alone how much of it is a reaction against him or indeed a consequence of misreading him. He is a very penetrating influence, perhaps not unlike the east wind."[21] His essays were a major factor in the revival of interest in the metaphysical poets. A preoccupation with Elizabethan and Jacobean verse drama (for instance, John Webster, who is mentioned in his poem "Whispers of Immortality") is also central to his critical writing, and greatly influenced his own forays into drama.

In his critical and theoretical writing, Eliot is known for his formulation of the "objective correlative," (in the essay "Hamlet and His Problems") the notion that art should not be a personal expression, but should work through objective universal symbols. There is fierce critical debate over the pragmatic value of the objective correlative, and Eliot's failure to follow its dicta. It is claimed that there is evidence throughout his work of contrary practice (e.g. part II of The Waste Land in the section beginning "My nerves are bad tonight"); but of course the worth of the idea is by no means negated by alleged lapses in practice, here as elsewhere.


Other works

In 1939, he published a book of poetry for children, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats ?- "Old Possum" being a name Pound had bestowed upon him. This first edition had an illustration of the author on the cover. In 1954 the composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems for speaker and orchestra, in a work entitled Practical Cats. After Eliot's death, it became the basis of the West End and Broadway hit musical by Andrew Loyd Webber, Cats.

In 1958 the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed Eliot to a commission which resulted in "The Revised Psalter" (1963). A harsh critic of Eliot's, C.S. Lewis, was also a member of the commission but their antagonism turned into a friendship.[22]


Criticism of Eliot

Eliot's poetry was first criticized as not being poetry at all. Another criticism has been of his widespread interweaving of quotations from other authors into his work. "Notes on the Waste Land," which follows after the poem, gives the source of many of these, but not all. This practice has been defended as a necessary salvaging of tradition in an age of fragmentation, and completely integral to the work, as well adding richness through unexpected juxtaposition. It has also been condemned as showing a lack of originality, and for plagiarism. The prominent critic F. W. Bateson once published an essay called 'T. S. Eliot: The Poetry of Pseudo-Learning'. Eliot himself once wrote ("The Sacred Wood"): "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."

Canadian academic Robert Ian Scott pointed out that the title of The Waste Land and some of the images had previously appeared in the work of a minor Kentucky poet, Madison Cawein (1865-1914). Bevis Hillier compared Cawein's lines "… come and go/Around its ancient portico" with Eliot's "… come and go/talking of Michelangelo". (This line actually appears in Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and not in The Waste Land.) Cawein's "Waste Land" had appeared in the January 1913 issue of Chicago magazine Poetry (which contained an article by Ezra Pound on London poets). But scholars are continually finding new sources for Eliot's Waste Land, often in odd places.

Many famous fellow writers and critics have paid tribute to Eliot. According to the poet Ted Hughes, "Each year Eliot's presence reasserts itself at a deeper level, to an audience that is surprised to find itself more chastened, more astonished, more humble." Hugh Kenner commented, "He has been the most gifted and influential literary critic in English in the twentieth century."

C. S. Lewis, however, thought his literary criticism "superficial and unscholarly". In a 1935 letter to a mutual friend of theirs, Paul Elmer Moore, Lewis wrote that he considered the work of Eliot to be "a very great evil".[22] Although, in a letter to Eliot written in 1943, Lewis showed an admiration for Eliot along with his antagonism toward his views when he wrote: "I hope the fact that I find myself often contradicting you in print gives no offence; it is a kind of tribute to you ?- whenever I fall foul of some widespread contemporary view about literature I always seem to find that you have expressed it most clearly. One aims at the officers first in meeting an attack!"[22]


Charges of anti-Semitism

Eliot has sometimes been charged with anti-Semitism. Biographer Lyndall Gordon has noted that many in Eliot's milieu successfully eschewed such views.[23]


Public expressions

The poem "Gerontion" contains a negative portrayal of a greedy landlord known as the "Jew [who] squats on the window sill." Another much-quoted example of anti-Semitism in his work is the poem, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar", in which Eliot implicitly finds the Jews responsible for the decline of Venice ("The rats are underneath the piles/ The Jew is underneath the lot"). In "A Cooking Egg", he writes, "The red-eyed scavengers are creeping/ From Kentish Town and Golder's Green" (Golders Green was a largely Jewish suburb of London).

In his minor work "After Strange Gods" (1933), Eliot deprecates the presence of "free-thinking Jews," who are said to be "undesirable" in large numbers, for 'reasons of race and religion.'. The philosopher George Boas, who had previously been on friendly terms with Eliot, wrote to him that, "I can at least rid you of the company of one." Eliot did not reply. In later years Eliot disavowed the book, and refused to allow any part to be reprinted.

Eliot also wrote a letter to the Daily Mail in January 1932 which congratulated the paper for a series of laudatory articles on the rise of Mussolini. In The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) he says "…totalitarianism can retain the terms 'freedom' and 'democracy' and give them its own meaning: and its right to them is not so easily disproved as minds inflamed by passion suppose." In the same book, written before World War II, he says of J. F. C. Fuller, who worked for the Policy Directorate in the British Union of Fascists:

Fuller… believes that Britain "must swim with the out-flowing tide of this great political change". From my point of view, General Fuller has as good a title to call himself a "believer in democracy" as anyone else. …I do not think I am unfair to [the report that a ban against married women Civil Servants should be removed because it embodied Nazism], in finding the implication that what is Nazi is wrong, and need not be discussed on its own merits.[24]


Protests against

One of the first and most famous protests against T.S. Eliot on the subject of anti-Semitism came in the form of a poem from the Anglo-Jewish writer and poet Emanuel Litvinoff,[25] at an inaugural poetry reading for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1951. Only a few years after the Holocaust, Eliot had republished lines originally written in the 1920s about 'money in furs' and the 'protozoic slime' of Bleistein's 'lustreless, protrusive eye' in his Selected Poems of 1948, angering Litvinoff. When the poet got up to announce the poem, the event's host, Sir Herbert Read, declared 'Oh Good, Tom's just come in'. Litvinoff proceeded in evoking to the packed but silent room his work, which ended with the lines "Let your words/tread lightly on this earth of Europe/lest my people's bones protest". Many members of the audience were outraged; Litvinoff said "hell broke loose" and that no one supported him. One listener, the poet Stephen Spender, claiming to be as Jewish as Litvinoff, stood and called the poem an undeserved attack on Eliot.[25] However, Eliot was heard to mutter 'It's a good poem, it's a very good poem'.[26]


Rebuttals

Leonard Woolf, husband of Virginia Woolf, who was himself Jewish and a friend of Eliot's, judged that Eliot was probably "slightly anti-Semitic in the sort of vague way which is not uncommon. He would have denied it quite genuinely."[27]

In 2003, Professor Ronald Schuchard of Emory University published details of a previously unknown cache of letters from Eliot to Horace Kallen, which reveal that in the early 1940s Eliot was actively helping Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria to re-settle in Britain and America. In letters written after the war, Eliot also voiced support for modern Israel.[28]

Recognition


Formal recognition

Order of Merit (awarded by King George VI (United Kingdom), 1948)
Nobel Prize for Literature "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry" (Stockholm, 1948)
Officier de la Legion d'Honneur (1951)
Hanseatic Goethe Prize (Hamburg, 1955)
Dante Medal (Florence, 1959)
Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, (1960)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964)
13 honorary doctorates (including Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and Harvard)
Two posthumous Tony Awards (1983) for his poems used in the musical Cats
Eliot College of the University of Kent, England, named after him
Celebrated on commemorative postage stamps
Has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame

George Raft
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Birth name George Ranft
Born September 26, 1895(1895-09-26)
New York City, New York
Died November 24, 1980 (aged 85)
Los Angeles, California
Years active 1929 - 1980

George Raft (26 September 1895[1] - 24 November 1980) was an American film actor most closely identified with his portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s.




Biography

Early life

Raft was born George Ranft in Washington Heights (163rd St. and Amsterdam Ave), New York City to Eva Glockner, a German immigrant, and Conrad Ranft, who was from Massachusetts. Raft quickly adopted the "tough guy" persona that he would later use in his films.


Career

Initially interested in dancing, as a young man he showed great aptitude, and this, combined with his elegant fashion sense, allowed him to work as a dancer in some of New York City's most fashionable nightclubs. He became part of the stage act of Texas Guinan and his success led him to Broadway where he again worked as a dancer. He worked in London as a chorus boy at some time in the early 20s.

Vi Kearney, later to be a star dancer in shows for Charles Cochran and Andre Charlot, was quoted as saying:

"Oh yes, I knew him (George Raft). We were in a big show together. Sometimes, to eke out our miserable pay, we'd do a dance act after the show at a club and we'd have to walk back home because all the buses had stopped for the night by that time. He'd tell me how he was going to be a big star one day and once he said that when he'd made it how he'd make sure to arrange a Hollywood contract for me. I just laughed and said: 'Come on, Georgie, stop dreaming. We're both in the chorus and you know it.' [Did he arrange the contract?] Yes. But by that time I'd decided to marry... [Was he (Raft) ever your boyfriend?] How many times do I have to tell you ...chorus girls don't go out with chorus boys."

In the early 1930s Tallulah Bankhead nearly died following a 5-hour hysterectomy for an advanced case of gonorrhea she claimed she got from Raft. Only 70 pounds when she was able to leave the hospital, she stoically said to her doctor, "Don't think this has taught me a lesson!"

In 1929 Raft moved to Hollywood and took small roles. His success came in Scarface (1932), and Raft's convincing portrayal led to speculation that Raft himself was a gangster. He was a close friend of Bugsy Siegel and Raft encouraged the publicity that stimulated his early career, and continued to work steadily. He was also a friend of Owney Madden, who he had grown up with in Hell's Kitchen. Raft was considered one of Hollywood's most dapper and stylish dressers and he achieved a level of celebrity not entirely commensurate with the quality or popularity of his films; Raft became a pop culture icon in the 1930s matched by few other film stars.

He was definitely one of the three most popular gangster actors of the 1930s, along with James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson (Humphrey Bogart never matched Raft's stardom during that decade). Raft and Cagney worked together in Each Dawn I Die (1939) as fellow convicts in prison. His 1932 film Night After Night launched the movie career of Mae West with a supporting part as well as providing Raft's first leading role (they would die within two days of each other 48 years later and their corpses would wind up in the same morgue at the same time). Raft appeared the following year in Raoul Walsh's turn of the century period piece The Bowery as Steve Brodie, the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and survive, with Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Fay Wray, and Pert Kelton.

Some of his other popular films include If I Had A Million (1932), in which he played a forger hiding from police, suddenly given a million dollars with no place to cash the check, Bolero (1934; a rare role as a dancer rather than a gangster), Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key (1935) (remade in 1942 with Alan Ladd in Raft's role), Souls at Sea (1937) with Gary Cooper, two with Humphrey Bogart: Invisible Stripes (1939) and They Drive by Night (1940), each with Bogart in supporting roles, and Manpower (1941) with Edward G. Robinson and Marlene Dietrich (the memorable posters said, "Robinson - He's mad about Dietrich. Dietrich - She's mad about Raft. Raft - He's mad about the whole thing"). Although Raft received third billing in Manpower, he actually played the film's lead.

1940-41 proved to be Raft's career height. He went into a period of decline over the next decade and achieved an unenviable place in Hollywood folklore as the actor who turned down some of the best roles in screen history, most notably High Sierra (he supposedly didn't want to die at the end) and The Maltese Falcon (he didn't want to remake the superb 1931 pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon with a rookie director); both roles transformed Humphrey Bogart from a supporting player into a major force in Hollywood in 1941. Raft was also reported to have turned down Bogart's role in Casablanca (1942), although this story is probably apocryphal.

Approached by director Billy Wilder, he refused the lead role in Double Indemnity (1944), which led to the casting of Fred MacMurray in a towering classic that would have undoubtedly revived Raft's career. His lack of judgment (probably grounded in the fact that he was more or less illiterate, which made judging scripts even more problematic than usual), combined with the public's growing distaste for his apparent gangster lifestyle, effectively ended his career as a leading man in mainstream movies.

He satirized his gangster image with a well-received performance in Some Like it Hot (1959), but this did not lead to a comeback (probably due to his age by that point) despite being billed fourth under Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon in a comedy classic, and he spent the remainder of the decade making films in Europe. He played a small role as a casino owner in Ocean's Eleven (1960) opposite the Rat Pack, and his final film appearances were in Sextette (1978) with Mae West and The Man with Bogart's Face (1980).

Fred Astaire, in his autobiography: Steps in Time, mentions that he was a lighting fast hoofer.


Death

Raft died from leukaemia, aged 85, in Los Angeles, California on November 24th, 1980 and was interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. Only two days before, his old co-star Mae West had died. Their bodies were at the same mortuary at the same time for an eerie posthumous reunion.


Personal life

Ray Danton played Raft in The George Raft Story (1961).

In the 1991 biographical movie Bugsy, the character of George Raft was played by Joe Mantegna.

George Raft has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6150 Hollywood Boulevard, and for Television at 1500 Vine St.

George Gershwin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


George Gershwin (September 26, 1898 - July 11, 1937) was an American composer. He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. George Gershwin composed both for Broadway and for the classical concert hall. He also wrote popular songs with success.

Many of his compositions have been used on television and in numerous films, and many became jazz standards. The jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald recorded many of the Gershwins' songs on her 1959 Gershwin Songbook (arranged by Nelson Riddle). Countless singers and musicians have recorded Gershwin songs, including Bing Crosby, John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Judy Garland, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, Marni Nixon, Natalie Cole, Nina Simone, John Fahey, and Sting.




Biography

Gershwin was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn, New York to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. His father, Morris (Moishe) Gershowitz, changed the family name to Gershwin sometime after emigrating from St. Petersburg, Russia. Gershwin's mother, Rosa Bruskin, also emigrated from Russia; she married Gershowitz four years later.

George Gershwin was the second of four children. He first displayed interest in music at the age of ten, when he was intrigued by what he heard at a friend's violin recital. The sound and the way his friend played captured him. His parents had bought a piano for his older brother Ira, but to his parents' surprise and Ira's relief, it was George who played it. Although his younger sister Frances was the first in the family to make money from her musical talents, she married young and became a housewife, giving up her own singing and dance career?-settling into painting, a hobby of George's.

Gershwin tried various piano teachers for two years, and then was introduced to Charles Hambitzer by Jack Miller, the pianist in the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Hambitzer acted as George's mentor until Hambitzer's death in 1918. Hambitzer taught George conventional piano technique, introduced him to music of the European classical tradition, and encouraged him to attend orchestral concerts. (At home following such concerts, young George would attempt to reproduce at the piano the music he had heard.) He later studied with classical composer Rubin Goldmark and avant-garde composer-theorist Henry Cowell.


His first job as a performer was as a "song plugger" for Remick's, a publishing company on New York City's Tin Pan Alley. His 1917 novelty rag "Rialto Ripples" was a commercial success, and in 1919 he scored his first big national hit with his song "Swanee." In 1916, he started working for Aeolian Company and Standard Music Rolls in New York, recording and arranging piano rolls. He produced dozens, if not hundreds, of rolls under his own and assumed names. (Pseudonyms attributed to Gershwin include Fred Murtha and Bert Wynn.) He also recorded rolls of his own compositions for the Duo-Art and Welte-Mignon reproducing pianos. As well as recording piano rolls, Gershwin made a brief foray into vaudeville, accompanying both Nora Bayes and Louise Dresser on the piano.[1]

In 1924, George and Ira collaborated on a musical comedy, Lady Be Good which included such future standards as "Fascinating Rhythm" and "The Man I Love."

This was followed by Oh, Kay! (1926); Funny Face in (1927); Strike Up the Band (1927 and 1930); Show Girl (1929), Girl Crazy (1930), which introduced the standard "I Got Rhythm," and Of Thee I Sing (1931), the first musical comedy to win a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1924, Gershwin composed his first major classical work, Rhapsody in Blue for orchestra and piano, which was arranged by Ferde Grofé and premiered with Paul Whiteman's concert band in New York. It proved to be his most popular work.

Gershwin stayed in Paris for a short period, where he applied to study composition with Nadia Boulanger. While there, he wrote An American in Paris. This work received mixed reviews. There are orchestral nods towards Ravel's piano concerto of the same period. Eventually he found the music scene in Paris supercilious, and returned to America. Though he hugely admired the French style of music?-and did until the day he died?-Gershwin remained thoroughly American.

His most ambitious composition was Porgy and Bess (1935). Called by Gershwin himself a "folk opera," the piece premiered in a Broadway theater and is now widely regarded as the most important American opera of the twentieth century. Based on the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward, the action takes place in a black neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina, and with the exception of several minor speaking roles, all of the characters are black. The music combines elements of popular music of the day, which was strongly influenced by black music, with techniques found in opera, such as recitative and leit motifs.

Early in 1937, Gershwin began to complain of blinding headaches and a recurring impression that he was smelling burned rubber. He had developed a brain tumor. In June, he performed in a special concert of his music with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra with French maestro Pierre Monteux. It was in Hollywood, while working on the score of The Goldwyn Follies, that he collapsed and, on July 11, 1937, died following surgery for the tumor at the age of 38. Coincidentally, just a few months later in 1937, Gershwin's idol Ravel also died following brain surgery.

Gershwin had a 10-year affair with composer Kay Swift and frequently consulted her about his music. Oh, Kay was named for her. Posthumously, Swift arranged some of his music, transcribed some of his recordings, and collaborated with Ira on several projects. Gershwin also had an affair with actress Paulette Goddard.


George Gershwin's mausoleum in Westchester Hills CemeteryGershwin could be generous, warm, and a good friend, but he could also be vain and more than a trifle egotistical. His friend and champion, the concert pianist Oscar Levant once asked him: "George, if you had it to do all over again, would you still fall in love with yourself?"

Gershwin died intestate, and all his property passed to his mother. He is buried in the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. The Gershwin estate continues to bring in significant royalties from licensing the copyrights on Gershwin's work. The estate supported the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act because its 1923 cutoff date was shortly before Gershwin had begun to create his most popular works. The copyrights on those works expire at the end of 2007 in the European Union and will expire between 2019 and 2027 in the United States of America.

According to Fred Astaire's letters to Adele Astaire, George whispered Fred's name before passing away.[2]

In 2005, The Guardian determined using "estimates of earnings accrued in a composer's lifetime" that George Gershwin was the richest composer of all time.[1]

George Gershwin was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006. The George Gershwin Theatre on Broadway is named after him.


Musical style and influence

Gershwin was influenced very much by French composers of the early twentieth century. Maurice Ravel was quite impressed with the Gershwins' abilities, commenting, "Personally I find jazz most interesting: the rhythms, the way the melodies are handled, the melodies themselves. I have heard of George Gershwin's works and I find them intriguing."[3] The orchestrations in Gershwin's symphonic works often seem similar to those of Ravel; likewise, Ravel's two piano concertos evince an influence of Gershwin. He also asked Ravel for lessons; when Ravel heard how much Gershwin earned, he replied "How about you give me some lessons?" (some versions of this story feature Igor Stravinsky rather than Ravel as the composer; however Stravinsky himself confirmed that he originally heard the story from Ravel).[4]

Gershwin's own Concerto in F was criticized as being strongly rooted in the work of Claude Debussy, more so than in the jazz style which was expected. The comparison didn't deter Gershwin from continuing to explore French styles. The title of An American in Paris reflects the very journey that he had consciously taken as a composer: "The opening part will be developed in typical French style, in the manner of Debussy and the Six, though the tunes are original." (Hyland 126)

Aside from the French influence, Gershwin was intrigued by the works of Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, and Arnold Schoenberg. He also asked Schoenberg for composition lessons. Schoenberg refused, saying "I would only make you a bad Schoenberg, and you're such a good Gershwin already".[5] (This quote may actually belong to Maurice Ravel, who is credited with essentially the same quote in the Wikipedia article for Maurice Ravel.)

Russian Joseph Schillinger's influence as his teacher of composition (1932-1936) was substantial in providing him with a method to his composition. There has been some disagreement about the nature of Schillinger's influence on Gershwin. After the posthumous success of Porgy and Bess, Schillinger claimed he had a large and direct influence in overseeing the creation of the opera; Ira completely denied that his brother had any such assistance for this work. A third account of Gershwin's musical relationship with his teacher was written by Gershwin's close friend and another Schillinger student, Vernon Duke, in an article for the Musical Quarterly in 1947.[6]

What set Gershwin apart was his ability to manipulate forms of music into his own unique voice. He took the jazz he discovered on Tin Pan Alley into the mainstream by splicing its rhythms and tonality with that of the popular songs of his era.

George Gershwin's first published song was "When You Want 'Em You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em." It was published in 1916 when Gershwin was only 17 years old and earned him a sum total of $5, although he was promised much more.

In 2007, the Library of Congress named their Prize for Popular Song after George and Ira Gershwin. Recognizing the profound and positive effect of popular music on culture, the prize is given annually to a composer or performer whose lifetime contributions exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins. On March 1st, 2007, the first Gershwin Prize was awarded to Paul Simon.


Recordings

Early in his career Gershwin made dozens of player piano piano roll recordings and these were a main source of income for him. Many of these are of popular music of the period and many other are of his own works. Once his theatre-writing career took precedence his regular roll recording sessions dwindled as he was otherwise occupied. He did however record further rolls throughout the 1920s including a complete version of his Rhapsody in Blue.

Many fans of George Gershwin have found it strange that, in comparison to the piano rolls, there are very few accessible audio recordings of his live playing. His very first recording was his own Swanee with the Fred Van Eps Trio in 1919. The record is heavy on the banjo playing of Van Eps, and the piano is overshadowed. The recording took place before Swanee became famous as an Al Jolson specialty in early 1920.

Gershwin did record an abridged version of Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and his orchestra for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1924, soon after the world premiere. The same orchestra made an electrical recording of the same abridged version for Victor in 1927. However, a dispute in the studio over interpretation angered Paul Whiteman and he left. The conductor's baton was taken over by Victor's staff conductor Nathaniel Shilkret. Gershwin made a number of solo piano recordings of tunes from his musicals, some including the vocals of Fred and Adele Astaire, as well as his Three Preludes for piano.

In 1929, Gershwin "supervised" the world premiere recording of An American in Paris with Nathaniel Shilkret and the Victor Symphony Orchestra. Gershwin's role in the recording was rather limited, particularly because Shilkret was conducting and had his own ideas about the music. Then someone realized they had not hired anyone to play the brief celeste solo, so they asked Gershwin if he would or could play the instrument, and he agreed. Gershwin can be heard, rather briefly, on the recording during the slow section. Gershwin also appeared on various radio broadcasts, some of which have been preserved on transcription discs.

He appeared on several radio programs, including Rudy Vallee's program, and played some of his compositions, including the third movement of the Concerto in F with Vallee conducting the orchestra. Some of these performances were preserved on transcription discs and have been released on LP and CD.

In 1934, in an effort to earn money to finance his planned folk opera, he hosted his own radio program titled "Music by Gershwin" in which he presented his own work as well as the work of other composers. Recordings from this and other radio broadcasts include his Variations on I Got Rhythm, portions of the Concerto in F, and numerous songs from his musical comedies. He also recorded a run-through of his Second Rhapsody, conducting the orchestra and playing the piano solos. RCA Victor asked him to supervise recordings of highlights from Porgy and Bess in 1935, which were his last recordings.

A 33-second film clip of Gershwin playing I've Got Rhythm has survived and been featured on www.youtube.com; presumably it was taken from an early 1930s newsreel.[7] There are also silent home movies, some in Kodachrome, of Gershwin that have been featured in tributes to the composer.

In 1975, Columbia Records released an album featuring Gershwin's piano rolls playing the Rhapsody In Blue, accompanied by the Columbia Jazz Band playing the original jazz-band accompaniment of conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. The flip side of the Columbia Masterworks release features Tilson Thomas leading the New York Philharmonic in An American In Paris.

In 1993, a selection of piano rolls originally produced by Gershwin were issued on 2 CDs by Nonesuch Records through the efforts of Artis Woodhouse and is entitled "Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls" (ASIN: B000005J1I).

Marty Robbins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin David Robinson
Born: September 26, 1925(1925-09-26)
Birthplace: Glendale, Arizona
Died: December 8, 1982 (aged 57)
Cause of Death: Complications of heart surgery
Awards: Grammy Award winner (1959)
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame 1975 inductee
Hollywood Walk of Fame
NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Statistics
35 races run over 13 years.
Best Cup Position: 48th - 1974 (Winston Cup)
First Race: 1966 in NASCAR
Last Race: 1982 Atlanta Journal 500 (Atlanta)
Wins Top Tens Poles
0 6 0

Marty Robbins (September 26, 1925 - December 8, 1982) was one of the most popular and successful American country and western singers of his era. For most of his nearly four decade career, Robbins was rarely far from the country music charts. Several of his songs also became pop hits. Robbins also made many starts in the NASCAR Winston Cup series.





Life

Robbins was born Martin David Robinson in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, in Maricopa County, Arizona. He was reared in a difficult family situation. His father took odd jobs to support the family of ten children. His father's drinking led to divorce in 1937. Among his warmer memories of his childhood, Robbins recalled having listened to stories of the American West told by his maternal grandfather, Texas Bob Heckle, a former Texas Ranger and medicine show performer.

Robbins left the troubled home at the age of seventeen to serve in the United States Navy as an LCT coxswain during World War II. He was stationed in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. To pass the time during the war, he learned to play the guitar, started writing songs, and came to love Hawaiian music.

After his discharge from the military in 1945, he began to play at local venues in Phoenix, then moved on to host his own radio station show on KTYL. He thereafter had his own television (TV) show on KPHO in Phoenix. After Little Jimmy Dickens made a guest appearance on Robbins' TV show, Dickens got Robbins a record deal with Columbia Records. Robbins became an immensely popular singing star at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennnessee. He was especially known for his kindness toward his many fans.

In addition to his recordings and performances, Robbins was an avid race car driver, competing in NASCAR races, including the Daytona 500. In 1967, Robbins played himself in the car racing film Hell on Wheels. [1]

In 1948, Robbins married the former Marizona Baldwin (September 11, 1930 - July 10, 2001) to whom he dedicated his song My Woman, My Woman, My Wife. They had two children, a son, Ronnie Robbins (born 1949), and a daughter, Janet (born 1959).

Robbins died of complications following cardiac surgery. At the times of their deaths, Marty and Marizona lived in Brentwood in Williamson County, outside Nashville. They are interred in Woodlawn Memorial Park in Nashville.





Music

His musical accomplishments include the first Grammy Award ever awarded for a country song, for his 1959 hit and signature song "El Paso", taken from his album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. "El Paso" was also the first song to hit #1 on the pop chart in the 1960s. He won the Grammy Award for the Best Country & Western Recording 1961, for his follow-up album More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, and was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1970, for "My Woman, My Woman, My Wife." Robbins was named "Artist of the Decade" (1960-69) by the Academy of Country Music, was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982, and was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998 for his song "El Paso".

Robbins was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975. For his contribution to the recording industry, Robbins has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6666 Hollywood Blvd.


Trivia

The Grateful Dead performed "El Paso" live more than 385 times between 1969 and the group's 1995 disbandment. [2]
Robbins was the first country artist to have simultaneous numbers 1, 2 and 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 Pop Chart with 'A White Sport Coat', 'El Paso' and 'Don't Worry.'
'Don't Worry' has what is recognized as the first popular song with electric guitar distortion effects, played as a unique sound on a malfunctioning tube amplifier.
The Who's 2006 album "Endless Wire" includes the song "God Speaks, of Marty Robbins." The song's composer, Pete Townshend, explains that the song is about God's deciding to create the universe just so he can hear some music, "and most of all, one of his best creations, Marty Robbins." [3]
Elvis Presley performed "You Gave Me A Mountain" over 500 times between 1972 and 1977
Robbins portrayed a musician in the 1982 Clint Eastwood film "Honkytonk Man." Robbins died a few weeks before the film's release in December 1982.

Julie London
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Background information

Birth name Gayle Peck
Born September 26, 1926(1926-09-26)
Santa Rosa, California, USA
Origin Los Angeles
Died October 18, 2000
Encino, California, USA
Occupation(s) Singer, Actress
Instrument(s) Vocals
Years active 1955 - 1975

Julie London (September 26, 1926-October 18, 2000) was an American singer and actress. Best known for her smoky, sensual voice, as a singer she was at her peak in the 1950s; her acting career lasted more than 35 years, ending with the role of nurse Dixie McCall, RN, on the TV show Emergency! (1972-1979).




Biography

Born in Santa Rosa, California, as Gayle Peck, she was the daughter of Jack and Josephine Peck, who were a vaudeville song-and-dance team. When she was 14, the family moved to Los Angeles. Shortly after that, she began appearing in movies. She graduated from the Hollywood Professional School in 1945.

She was married to Jack Webb of Dragnet fame. Her widely-regarded beauty and poise (she was a pinup girl prized by GIs during World War II) contrasted strongly with his pedestrian appearance and stiff-as-a-board acting technique (much parodied by impersonators). This unlikely pairing arose from his and her love for jazz music; their marriage lasted from July 1947 to November 1953.[1] They had two daughters, one who was killed in a traffic accident in the 1990s and one who survived her. In 1954, having become somewhat reclusive after her divorce from Jack Webb, she met jazz composer and musician Bobby Troup at a club on La Brea Blvd.[2] They married on December 31, 1959 and remained married until his death in February 1999. Together, they had one daughter and twin sons.

She suffered a stroke in 1995, and was in poor health until her death in Encino, California, at the age of 74, survived by four of her five children.

On her death in October 2000, Julie London was interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.


Singing career

London began singing in public in her teens before appearing in a film. She was discovered by Sue Carol (wife of Alan Ladd) while London was working as an elevator operator. Her early film career did not include any singing roles.

She recorded 32 albums in a career that began in 1955 with a live performance at the 881 Club in Los Angeles.[3] She was named by Billboard the most popular female vocalist for 1955, 1956, and 1957. In 1957, she was the subject of a Life cover article in which she was quoted as saying, "It's only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate."

One of her most famous singles "Cry Me a River", was actually written by her high school classmate Arthur Hamilton, and produced by her husband Troup[4]. The song was featured in the 1956 film The Girl Can't Help It. This became a million-selling single after release in April 1957 and could still sell on re-issue in April 1983 on the back of attention brought by the Mari Wilson version of the song. The song has gained recent attention after being featured in the films Passion of Mind (2000) and V for Vendetta (2006). Other hit singles include "Makin' Whoopee", "Blue Moon", "It Had To Be You". Songs such as "Go Slow" epitomized her career style: her voice is slow, smoky, and sensual. The lyrics strongly suggest sex but never explicitly define it:

Go slow, oooooh honey, take it easy on the curves;
When love is slow, oooooh honey, what a tonic for my nerves.
Go slow, oooooh honey, we've got such a lot of time;
When love is slow, oooooh honey, how the mercury does climb.


Her whispered "you make me feel so good" at the end is breathy and suggests a sexually satisfied partner, serving as later inspiration for Frank Sinatra's lyrically similar song. Aside from her music, the notably suggestive portrait photos used on her album covers made lasting impressions even on the tone deaf.

The song "Yummy Yummy Yummy" was featured on the HBO series Six Feet Under, and appears on the series soundtrack album.

Her last recording was the classic song "My Funny Valentine" for the soundtrack of the 1981 Burt Reynolds film Sharky's Machine.[1]


Television

She appeared in several television programs, beginning with The Big Valley in 1967. In 1972, her ex-husband Jack Webb produced Emergency!, and he hired both his ex-wife and her new husband Bobby Troup to play key roles on the show. Even in middle age, London was the still-sensual bombshell nurse, and Troup played neurosurgeon Dr. Joe Early. She and her co-stars Kevin Tighe, Randolph Mantooth, and Robert Fuller also appeared in an episode of the Jack Webb series Adam-12, reprising their roles on the show that made them household names. London & Troup appeared together in the game show Tattletales in the 1970s.

Olivia Newton-John
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background information

Born September 26, 1948 (1948-09-26) (age 59)
Cambridge, England
Origin Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Genre(s) Pop, Country
Occupation(s) Singer, Actress
Years active 1963 - present
Website olivianewton-john.com
Olivia Newton-John AO OBE (born 26 September 1948) is a Grammy Award-winning and Golden Globe-nominated English-born Australian pop singer, songwriter and actress. Her highly acclaimed vocal musical and acting talents have made her a globally recognized name. Olivia Newton-John is also a small business entrepreneur and an avid activist in ecological or environmental issues.





Early life

Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England. Her parents were Brinley Newton-John and Irene Born (b. 25 May 1914). Irene was the eldest child of Max Born, a Lutheran German Nobel prize-winning physicist who fled from Germany with his wife in the 1930s in order to avoid persecution due to his and his wife's part Jewish heritage. Olivia's father was an MI5 officer attached to the Enigma machine project at Bletchley Park, and the officer who took Rudolf Hess into custody when he parachuted into Scotland in May 1941. After World War II, he became a professor of German at the UNSW annex at Tighes Hill in Newcastle, Australia.

In 1954, at the age of five, Newton-John, her parents Brin and Irene, and her older siblings Hugh and Rona, emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where her father had taken a job at Melbourne University as the Master of Ormond College.


Career

Early career

By the age of 15, Newton-John had formed an all-girl band, Sol Four, and soon was a regular on local television (such as HSV-7's The Happy Show as Lovely Livvy) and radio shows in Australia. She entered a talent contest on the television programme Sing, Sing, Sing, hosted by 1960s Australian icon Johnny O'Keefe, and performed the songs "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and "Everything's Coming Up Roses". She won the contest and received a trip to England as the prize. Initially, she did not want to go, but her mother encouraged her to broaden her horizons.

On her return to Australia she appeared on the Go Show, where she met her lifelong friends, Pat Carroll and John Farrar. (Carroll and Farrar eventually married.) When she was 16 years old, Newton-John returned to England to live with her mother. Newton-John was homesick in England as she missed Australia and her then boyfriend, Ian Turpie (with whom she co-starred in an independently produced Australian telefilm Funny Things Happen Down Under). This changed when friend Pat Carroll also moved to England. The two formed a duo and toured nightclubs in Europe. After Carroll's visa expired, and she had to return to Australia, Newton-John cut her first solo single, "Till You Say You'll Be Mine" b/w "Forever," for Decca Records in England in 1966.

Newton-John was recruited for the group, "Toomorrow"?-the brainchild of American producer Don Kirshner, creator of The Monkees. The group recorded an album and starred in a "science fiction musical" both named after the group released in 1970. The project failed and the group was quickly disbanded.


1971-1977

Newton-John released her first solo album, If Not For You, in 1971. The title track, written by Bob Dylan, was her first international hit (No. 25 Pop, No. 1 Adult Contemporary [hereafter AC]). Her follow-up, Banks Of The Ohio, was a Top 10 hit in England and Australia, but faltered in the US (No. 94 Pop, No. 34 AC). She was voted Best British Female Vocalist two years in a row by the magazine Record Mirror. She made frequent appearances on Cliff Richard's weekly show, It's Cliff Richard, and starred with him in the telefilm The Case. In the United States, Newton-John's career floundered after If Not For You until the release of Let Me Be There in 1973. The song reached the American Top 10 on the Pop (No. 6), Country (No. 7) and AC (No. 3) charts and earned her a Grammy for Best Country Female. The song also propelled the album Let Me Be There to No. 1 on the Country Albums chart for two weeks.

In 1974, Newton-John released her next album, Long Live Love. She represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest with the title track, a song that she disliked,[1] placing fourth at the contest in Brighton behind ABBA's winning Waterloo. The country success of Let Me Be There led her to release this album with some different, more country-orientated tracks in the United States as If You Love Me, Let Me Know. The title track was the first single reaching No. 5 Pop, No. 2 Country (her best country placement ever) and No. 2 AC. The next single, I Honestly Love You, has become Newton-John's signature song. Written by Jeff Barry and Peter Allen, the ballad became her first No. 1 Pop (two weeks) and second No. 1 AC (three weeks) hit and earned Newton-John two more Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Pop Female. The success of both singles helped the album reach No. 1 on both the Pop (one week) and Country (eight weeks) Albums charts.

Newton-John's country success was reviled by purists who believed a foreigner singing country flavored pop music had no place in country music. Besides her Grammy for Let Me Be There, Newton-John was also named the Country Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year in 1974 defeating nominees Loretta Lynn, Canadian Anne Murray, Dolly Parton and Tanya Tucker. Newton-John's win outraged many country artists leading to the formation of the short-lived Association of Country Entertainers (ACE). Newton-John was eventually supported by most in the country music community. Stella Parton, Dolly's sister, recorded Ode To Olivia and Newton-John recorded her 1976 album, Don't Stop Believin' (Olivia Newton-John album), in Nashville.

Encouraged by expatriate Australian singer Helen Reddy, Newton-John left England and moved to the United States. Newton-John topped the Pop (one week) and Country (six weeks) Albums charts with her next album, Have You Never Been Mellow. The album generated two singles - the title track (No. 1 Pop, No. 3 Country, No. 1 AC) and Please Mr. Please (No. 3 Pop, No. 5 Country, No. 1 AC). Newton-John's pop career cooled with the release of her next album, Clearly Love. Her streak of five consecutive gold Top 10 singles ended when the album's first single, Something Better To Do, stopped at No. 13 (also No. 19 Country and No. 1 AC). Although her albums still achieved gold status and usually charted in the Top 10 on the Country Albums chart, she did not return to the Top 10 on the Hot 100 or Pop Albums charts again until 1978.

Newton-John's singles continued to easily top the AC chart where she ultimately amassed ten No. 1 singles including seven consecutively - from 1974's I Honestly Love You through 1976's Don't Stop Believin'. She also continued to reach the Country Top 10 where she tallied seven Top 10 hits through 1976's Come On Over (No. 23 Pop, No. 5 Country, No. 1 AC). By mid-1977, Olivia's AC and country success also began to wane. Her Making A Good Thing Better album (No. 34 Pop, No. 13 Country) failed to be certified gold and its only single, the title track, did not even reach the AC Top 10. Although the release that same year of Olivia Newton-John's Greatest Hits became her first platinum album, Newton-John's career was poised to head in new directions.


1978-1979

Newton-John's career soared after starring in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease in 1978. She was offered the lead role of Sandy Dumbrowski after a chance meeting with producer Allan Carr at a dinner party held by Helen Reddy in her Los Angeles home. Burned by her Toomorrow experience and concerned that she was too old to play a high school senior (she turned 29 during the latter 1977 filming), Newton-John insisted on a screen test with the film's co-star, John Travolta. Their chemistry was obvious and Newton-John happily, but cautiously, signed on. The film accommodated Newton-John's Australian accent by recasting her character to be Sandy Olsson - an Australian who vacations and then moves with her family to the United States.

The film was the biggest box office hit of 1978[2] and remained popular enough that it was re-released in theaters on its 20th anniversary in 1998. The soundtrack spent 12 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 and yielded three Top 5 singles for Newton-John: the No. 1 You're The One That I Want (with John Travolta), the No. 3 Hopelessly Devoted To You and the No. 5 Summer Nights (with John Travolta and the film's cast). The former two songs were both written by Newton-John's long-time producer, John Farrar, specifically for the film. Newton-John became the second female (after Linda Ronstadt in 1977) to have two singles, Hopelessly Devoted To You and Summer Nights, in the Billboard Top 5 simultaneously. She was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical and performed the Oscar-nominated Hopelessly Devoted To You at the 1979 Academy Awards. To this day, the soundtrack still sells several thousand copies per week and is a fixture on Billboard's Soundtracks chart.

Newton-John's transformation in the film from goody-goody "Sandy 1" to spandex-clad "Sandy 2" emboldened Newton-John to do the same with her music career. In November 1978, she released the pop album, Totally Hot, which became her first solo Top 10 (No. 7) album since Have You Never Been Mellow. Dressed on the cover all in leather, the album's singles A Little More Love (No. 3 Pop, No. 94 Country, No. 4 AC), Deeper Than The Night (No. 11 Pop, No. 87 Country, No. 4 AC) and the title track (No. 52 Pop) all demonstrated a more aggressive and up tempo sound for Newton-John. Although the album clearly de-emphasized country, the album still reached No. 4 on the Country Albums chart. Newton-John released the B-side, Dancin' 'Round And 'Round, of the Totally Hot single to country radio where it peaked at No. 29 (as well as No. 82 Pop and No. 25 AC). But, this became Newton-John's last charted country airplay single to date.


1980s

Newton-John began 1980 by releasing I Can't Help It (No. 12 Pop, No. 8 AC), a duet with Andy Gibb from his After Dark album. Later that year, she appeared in her first film since Grease starring in the musical, Xanadu, with Gene Kelly and Michael Beck. While the movie was a critical failure, it was ultimately profitable and its soundtrack was certified double platinum. The soundtrack boasted five Top 20 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 including Newton-John's Magic (No. 1 Pop, No. 1 AC), Suddenly (No. 20 Pop, No. 4 AC) with Cliff Richard and the title-song with ELO (No. 8 Pop, No. 2 AC). The film has since become a cult classic and the basis for a well-reviewed Broadway show in 2007. Newton-John received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in recognition of her career the following year.

1981 saw the release of Newton-John's most successful studio album, the double platinum Physical. The title track, written by Steve Kipner and Terry Shaddick, spent ten weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 matching the then record of most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist held by Debby Boone's You Light Up My Life. The single was certified platinum and ultimately ranked as the biggest song of the decade. The album spawned two more singles, Make A Move On Me (No. 5 Pop, No. 6 AC) and Landslide (No. 52 Pop). To counter the overtly suggestive tone of the title track, Newton-John filmed an exercise-themed video that turned the song into an aerobics anthem (and made headbands a fashion accessory outside the gym). Newton-John became a pioneer in the nascent music video industry by recording a video album for Physical featuring videos of all the album's tracks as well as three of her older hits. The video album earned her a fourth Grammy and was aired as an ABC prime time special, Let's Get Physical, becoming a Top 10 Nielsen hit. The success of Physical led to an international tour and the release of her second hits collection, the double platinum Olivia's Greatest Hits Vol. 2, which yielded two more Top 40 singles: Heart Attack (No. 3 Pop) and Tied Up (No. 38 Pop). The tour was filmed for her Olivia In Concert television special which premiered on HBO in January 1983. The special was subsequently released to video earning Newton-John another Grammy nomination.

Newton-John re-teamed with Travolta in 1983 for the critically and commercially unsuccessful Two of a Kind, redeemed by its platinum soundtrack featuring Twist Of Fate (No. 5 Pop), Livin' In Desperate Times (No. 31 Pop) and a new duet with Travolta, Take A Chance (No. 3 AC). Newton-John released another video package, the Grammy-nominated Twist Of Fate, featuring videos of her four songs on the Two of a Kind soundtrack and the two new singles from Olivia's Greatest Hits Vol. 2. The same year, Newton-John and Pat Farrar founded Koala Blue. The store was originally for Australian imports, but segued into a chain of women's clothing boutiques. The chain was initially successful, but declared bankruptcy and closed in 1992. Newton-John and Farrar would later license the brand name for a line of Australian produced wines and confections.

Newton-John married long-time boyfriend, Matt Lattanzi, in December 1984. The couple had met four years earlier while filming Xanadu. (They divorced in 1995.) Newton-John resumed recording in 1985 with the release of the gold Soul Kiss (No. 29 Pop). By this point, fans were tiring of Newton-John's raunchier image. The album's only charted single was the title track (No. 20 Pop, No. 20 AC). Newton-John's pregnancy with daughter Chloe Rose Lattanzi (b. January 1986) limited her ability to publicize the album. The video album for Soul Kiss featured videos of only five of the album's ten tracks and the album's second single, Toughen Up, failed to even chart.

After a three year hiatus to raise Chloe, Newton-John returned with 1988's The Rumour. The album was promoted by an HBO special, Olivia Down Under, and its first single, the title track, was written and produced by Elton John. Both the single (No. 62 Pop, No. 33 AC) and album (No. 67 Pop) fizzled as the nearly 40 year-old Newton-John seemed "old" when compared to the teen queens Debbie Gibson and Tiffany ruling the charts at that time. The second single, Can't We Talk It Over In Bed, did not chart. (The song was remade the following year by Grayson Hugh as Talk It Over becoming his only Top 20 hit.) A year later, Newton-John recorded her "self-indulgent" album, Warm and Tender (Olivia Newton-John album), featuring lullabies and love songs for parents and their children. This album also did not revive her recording career struggling to only No. 124 Pop.


Later career

Newton-John was primed for another comeback in 1992 when she compiled her third hits collection, Back To Basics - The Essential Collection, and planned her first tour since her Physical trek ten years earlier. Shortly after the album's release, Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer forcing her to cancel all publicity for the album including the tour. Newton-John received her diagnosis on the same day her father passed away. Newton-John recovered and has since become a tireless advocate of breast cancer awareness. She has been a product spokesperson for the Liv-Kit, a breast self-examination product. She is currently raising funds to build the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia.

Newton-John's cancer diagnosis affected the type of music she recorded. In 1994, she released Gaia: One Woman's Journey, which chronicled her ordeal. This was the first album on which Newton-John wrote all of the songs encouraging her to become more active as a songwriter thereafter. In 2005, she released Stronger Than Before which was sold exclusively in the United States by Hallmark. Proceeds from the album's sales benefited breast cancer research. The following year, Newton-John released a healing CD, Grace And Gratitude. The album was sold exclusively by Walgreens also benefitting various charities and was the "heart" of their "Body - Heart - Spirit" Wellness Collection. The collection also featured a re-branded Liv-Kit and breast health dietary supplements.

Newton-John's more spiritual, contemplative music was complemented by her pop oriented releases. In 1998, she returned to Nashville to record Back With A Heart. The album returned her to the Top 10 (No. 9) on the Country Albums chart. Its only single was a remake of I Honestly Love You produced by David Foster and featuring Babyface on background vocals that charted Pop (No. 67) and AC (No. 18). Country radio dismissed the song, although it did peak at No. 16 on the Country Sales chart. The album track, Love Is A Gift, won Newton-John a 1999 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Song after being featured on the daytime serial, As The World Turns. Newton-John resumed touring in 1999.

Newton-John's subsequent albums were all released overseas primarily in Australia. Newton-John, John Farnham and Anthony Warlow toured Australia as The Main Event. The live album won an ARIA Award for Highest Selling Australian CD and was also nominated for Best Adult Contemporary Album. She and Farnham performed Dare To Dream at the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. In 2002, Newton-John released (2), a duets album featuring mostly Australian singers including Darren Hayes, Tina Arena, Jimmy Little, Billy Thorpe and Johnny O'Keefe as well as a heartfelt "duet" with the deceased Peter Allen. The same year, Newton-John was inducted into Australia's ARIA Hall of Fame. 2004 brought the release of Indigo: Women of Song, a tribute album covering songs by The Carpenters, Minnie Riperton, Doris Day, Nina Simone, Joan Baez and others. Newton-John dedicated the album to her mother who died the previous year.

Newton-John acted occasionally during this period. She appeared in a supporting role in the 1996 AIDS drama, It's My Party - her first feature film since Two of a Kind (1983 film). In 2000, she appeared in a dramatically different role as Bitsy Mae Harling, a lesbian ex-con country singer, in Del Shores' Sordid Lives. (Reportedly, Newton-John will reprise this role in Del Shores' Sordid Lives - The Series from LOGO scheduled for 2008.) Newton-John has done some television work as well. She starred in the television movies A Mom For Christmas (1990) and A Christmas Romance (1994) - both Top 10 Nielsen hits. Her daughter, Chloe Rose Lattanzi, starred as one of her children in both A Christmas Romance and in the 2001 Showtime film The Wilde Girls. Newton-John guest-starred as herself in the sitcoms Ned and Stacey, Murphy Brown and Bette. In Australia, Newton-John hosted Wild Life, a show about animals and nature - two major interests for Newton-John. She also guest stared as Joanna on two episodes of the Australian series The Man From Snowy River.

After her 1995 divorce from Matt Lattanzi, Newton-John met gaffer/cameraman Patrick McDermott the following year. The couple dated on and off for nine years until he went missing following a 2005 fishing trip off the California coast. Various theories have abounded regarding his disappearance ranging from his death by accident or foul play to McDermott staging his disappearance to avoid child support payments to his ex-wife, actress Yvette Nipar. To date, there have been no credible leads and he remains missing. Newton-John, who was in Australia at her self-owned Gaia Retreat & Spa at the time of his disappearance, was never a suspect [3] and has refused to comment on any speculation. Newton-John returned to the tabloid headlines again in 2007 when it was revealed that her daughter was recovering from anorexia.

Newton-John is scheduled to release her first proper Christmas album, Christmas Wish, in November 2007. She previously released a Christmas album with Vince Gill through Hallmark and also released a compilation album of seasonal music recorded for various albums and television performances. Newton-John is also scheduled to release another concert video, Olivia Newton-John With The Sydney Symphony, in December 2007.


Honours

In 1979, Newton-John was appointed an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

In 2002, she was inducted into the Australian Music Hall of Fame by the Australian Recording Industry Association.

In 2006, she was named an Officer (AO) in the Order of Australia for "service to the entertainment industry as a singer and actor, and to the community through organisations supporting breast cancer treatment, education, training and research, and the environment".

Linda Hamilton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Birth name Linda Carroll Hamilton
Born September 26, 1956 (1956-09-26) (age 51)
Salisbury, Maryland, U.S.
Occupation Actress
Spouse(s) Peter Horton (1979-1980)
Bruce Abbott(1982-1989) 1 Child
James Cameron (1997-1999) 1 Child

Linda Carroll Hamilton (born September 26, 1956) is an American movie actress.





Biography

Early life

Hamilton was born in Salisbury, Maryland to a physician father who died when she was five.[1][2] She has said that she was raised in a "very boring, white Anglo-Saxon" family, and "voraciously read books" during her spare time.[2] Hamilton went to Wicomico Junior High (now Wicomico Middle School) and Wicomico High School in Salisbury, Maryland, with her identical twin sister, Leslie Hamilton Gearren. She studied for two years at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, before moving on to acting studies in New York. While attending Washington College, her acting professor told her she had no hope of earning a living as an actress. In New York she attended acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg.


Career

Hamilton's acting debut came first with guest starring appearances on television. Hamilton's film debut was a lead role in the horror film Children of the Corn. The movie was panned by critics, but it made a profit at the box office, and had a strong cult following. Hamilton's next role was in The Terminator in 1984. The movie is currently listed at the IMDb Top 250 at number 195 with a score of 7.9 out of 10, and it also was a huge commercial success. Following The Terminator, Hamilton starred in Black Moon Rising, an action thriller starring Tommy Lee Jones. She then returned to television in the mystery comedy Murder, She Wrote, scoring favorable reviews.

Hamilton then starred opposite Ron Perlman in the TV series Beauty and the Beast. The series was critically-acclaimed and she received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Hamilton left the series in 1989; after the series ended in 1990, Hamilton went back to the big screen with the follow-up to The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The film was a smash at the box office, grossing over 500 million, and becoming the highest grossing film of 1991. Her identical twin sister Leslie Hamilton Gearren was Linda's double in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Hamilton reprised her Terminator 2 character, Sarah Connor, for the theme park attraction "T2-3D."

Due to the success of the Terminator series, Hamilton hosted Saturday Night Live. She then returned to television in A Mother's Prayer playing a mother who lost her husband and is diagnosed with AIDS. She earned yet another Golden Globe nomination. That same year, Hamilton filmed two motion pictures, Shadow Conspiracy and Dante's Peak. Shadow Conspiracy flopped at the box office, but Dante's Peak opened in at number two with an opening gross of 18 million, going on to gross 180 million. Hamilton has since appeared on Frasier and has done more TV movies, including On the Line, Robots Rising, Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Couples, Point Last Seen, and The Color of Courage.


Personal life

Hamilton has been married and divorced three times. Her first marriage was to actor Peter Horton, from 1979 to 1980. Her second marriage was to Bruce Abbott, from 1982 to 1989. They had a son, Dalton Abbott, born on October 4, 1989. Her third marriage was to film director James Cameron from 1997 to 1999; they had a daughter, Josephine Archer Cameron, born on February 15, 1993. They divorced after Linda discovered he was having an affair with actress Suzy Amis during the making of the movie Titanic, the end result of that affair netted Linda an 80 million dollar divorce settlement.

Hamilton appeared on the October 14, 2005, episode of Larry King Live to reveal that she suffered from bipolar disorder. She revealed that her condition destroyed her marriages to her first husband, Peter Horton, revealing that she abused him verbally and physically, and that it also ruined her marriage to second husband Bruce Abbott. Linda said that it was her love for her two children that finally forced her to seek treatment and she began taking medication in 1996. Linda says that she will always be grateful she chose treatment and regrets the pain it caused those she loves.

Hamilton is good friends with former Beauty and the Beast co-star Ron Perlman. They reunited in the post-Vietnam war drama Missing in America.