Good morning WA2K folks, and a special good morning to Urs in Germany.
That was a fabulous Soccer song, gal, it made me want to get up and dance, but it's too early for that here in Florida. I can see why spectators get all worked up if they had that song to encourage them. Thanks, Urs, for the vicarious experience.
Well, today is the legendary James Dean's birthday, so here's one by The Eagles. First, the lyrics as that quartet is about as easy to understand as is German. Strange, however, as their latest is called Long Road Out of Eden.
James Dean
James Dean, James Dean
I know just what you mean
James Dean, you said it all so clean
And I know my life would look allright
If I could see it on the silver screen
You were the lowdown rebel if there ever was
Even if you had no cause
James Dean, you said it all so clean
And I know my life would look all right
If I could see it on the silver screen
We'll talk about a low-down bad refrigerator,
You were just too cool for school
Sock hop, soda pop, basketball and auto shop,
The only thing that got you off was breakin' all the rules
James Dean, James Dean
So hungry and so lean
James Dean, you said it all so clean
And I know my life would look all right
If I could see it on the silver screen
Little James Dean, up on the screen
Wond'rin' who he might be
Along came a Spyder and picked up a rider
And took him down the road to eternity
James Dean, James Dean, you bought it sight unseen
You were too fast to live, too young to die, bye-bye
You were to fast to live, too young to die, bye-bye
Bye-bye, Bye-bye, Bye-bye, Bye, bye
Born February 8, 1828(1828-02-08)
Nantes, France
Died March 24, 1905 (aged 77)
Amiens, France
Occupation Novelist
Nationality French
Genres Science Fiction
Influences Edgar Allan Poe
Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828-March 24, 1905) was a French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre. He is best known for novels such as Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised. He is the third most translated author in the world, according to Index Translationum. Some of his books have been made into films. Verne, along with H. G. Wells, is often popularly referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction".[1]
Biography
Early years
Jules Gabriel Verne was born to Pierre Verne, an attorney (died 1871), and his wife, Sophie-Henriette Allotte de la Fuÿe (died 1887), in Nantes. The eldest of five children, he spent his early years at home with his parents in the bustling harbor city of Nantes. The family spent summers in a country house just outside the city, on the banks of the Loire River. Jules and his brother Paul would often rent a boat for a franc a day. The sight of the many ships navigating the river sparked Jules' imagination, as he describes in the autobiographical short story Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse. At the age of nine, Jules and Paul, of whom he was very fond, were sent to boarding school at the Saint Donatien College (Petit séminaire de Saint-Donatien). As a child, he developed a great interest in travel and exploration, a passion he showed as a writer of adventure stories and science fiction.
At the boarding school, Verne studied Latin, which he used in his short story Le Mariage de Monsieur Anselme des Tilleuls in the mid-1850s. One of his teachers may have been the French inventor Brutus de Villeroi, professor of drawing and mathematics at the college in 1842, and who later became famous for creating the US Navy's first submarine, the USS Alligator. De Villeroi may have inspired Verne's conceptual design for the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, although no direct exchanges between the two men have been recorded.
Literary debut
After completing his studies at the lycée, Jules Verne went to Paris to study law. About 1848, in conjunction with Michel Carré, he began writing librettos for operettas. For some years his attentions were divided between the theatre and work, but some travellers' stories which he wrote for the Musée des Familles revealed to him his true talent: the telling of delightfully extravagant voyages and adventures to which cleverly prepared scientific and geographical details lent an air of verisimilitude.
When Verne's father discovered that his son was writing rather than studying law, he promptly withdrew his financial support. Verne was forced to support himself as a stockbroker, which he hated despite being somewhat successful at it. During this period, he met Alexandre Dumas, père and Victor Hugo, who offered him writing advice.
Verne also met Honorine de Viane Morel, a widow with two daughters. They were married on January 10, 1857. With her encouragement, he continued to write and actively looked for a publisher. On August 3, 1861, their son, Michel Jean Verne, was born. A classic enfant terrible, Michel was sent to Mettray Penal Colony in 1876 and later would marry an actress in spite of Verne's objections, had two children by his 16 year old mistress, and buried himself in debts. The relationship between father and son did improve as Michel grew older.
Verne's situation improved when he met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, one of the most important French publishers of the 19th century, who also published Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, and Erckmann-Chatrian, among others. They formed an excellent writer-publisher team until Hetzel's death. Hetzel helped improve Verne's writings, which until then had been repeatedly rejected by other publishers. Hetzel read a draft of Verne's story about the balloon exploration of Africa, which had been rejected by other publishers for being "too scientific". With Hetzel's help, Verne rewrote the story, which was published in 1863 in book form as Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon). Acting on Hetzel's advice, Verne added comical accents to his novels, changed sad endings into happy ones, and toned down various political messages.
From that point to years after Verne's death, Hetzel published two or more volumes a year. The most successful of these include: Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864); De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon, 1865); Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, 1869); and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days), which first appeared in Le Temps in 1872. The series is collectively known as "Les voyages extraordinaires" ("extraordinary voyages"). Verne could now live on his writings. But most of his wealth came from the stage adaptations of Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1874) and Michel Strogoff (1876), which he wrote with Adolphe d'Ennery. In 1867 Verne bought a small ship, the Saint-Michel, which he successively replaced with the Saint-Michel II and the Saint-Michel III as his financial situation improved. On board the Saint-Michel III, he sailed around Europe. In 1870, he was appointed "Chevalier" (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur. After his first novel, most of his stories were first serialised in the Magazine d'Éducation et de Récréation, a Hetzel biweekly publication, before being published in the form of books. His brother Paul contributed to 40th French climbing of the Mont-Blanc and a collection of short stories, Doctor Ox (1874). According to the Unesco Index Translationum, Jules Verne regularly places among the top five most translated authors in the world.
Last years
On March 9, 1886, as Verne was coming home, his twenty-five-year-old paranoid nephew, Gaston, shot him with a gun. One bullet missed, but the second entered Verne's left leg, giving him a limp that would not be cured. This left Verne limping for life. Gaston spent the rest of his life in an asylum.
After the deaths of Hetzel and his beloved mother in 1887, Jules began writing darker works. This may partly be due to changes in his personality, but an important factor is the fact that Hetzel's son, who took over his father's business, was not as rigorous in his corrections as Hetzel Sr. had been. In 1888, Jules Verne entered politics and was elected town councilor of Amiens, where he championed several improvements and served for fifteen years. In 1905, while ill with diabetes, Verne died at his home, 44 Boulevard Longueville (now Boulevard Jules-Verne). Michel oversaw publication of his last novels Invasion of the Sea and The Lighthouse at the End of the World. The "Voyages extraordinaires" series continued for several years afterwards in the same rhythm of two volumes a year. It has later been discovered that Michel Verne had made extensive changes in these stories, and the original versions were published at the end of the 20th century.
In 1863, Jules Verne wrote a novel called Paris in the 20th Century about a young man who lives in a world of glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains, gas-powered automobiles, calculators, and a worldwide communications network, yet cannot find happiness and comes to a tragic end. Hetzel thought the novel's pessimism would damage Verne's then booming career, and suggested he wait 20 years to publish it. Verne put the manuscript in a safe, where it was discovered by his great-grandson in 1989. It was published in 1994.
Reputation in English-speaking countries
While Verne is considered in many countries such as France as an author of quality books for young people, with a good command of his subjects, including technology and politics, his reputation in English-speaking countries suffered for a long time from poor translation.
It has been said that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea portrays the British Empire in a bad light, and so the first English translator, Reverend Lewis Page Mercier working under a pseudonym, removed many such passages, such as those describing the political actions of Captain Nemo in his incarnation as an Indian nobleman. Such negative depictions were not, however, invariable in Verne's works; for example, Facing the Flag features Lieutenant Devon, a heroic, self-sacrificing Royal Navy officer worthy of any written by British authors. Captain Nemo, an Indian, was balanced by Ned Land, a Canadian. Some of Verne's most famous heroes were British (e.g. Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days).
Mercier and subsequent British translators also had trouble with the metric system that Verne used, sometimes dropping significant figures, at other times keeping the nominal value and only changing the unit to an Imperial measure. Thus Verne's calculations, which in general were remarkably exact, were converted into mathematical gibberish. Also, artistic passages and whole chapters were cut because of the need to fit the work in a constrained space for publication.
For those reasons, Verne's work initially acquired a reputation in English-speaking countries for not being fit for adult readers. This in turn prevented him from being taken seriously enough to merit new translations, leading to those of Mercier and others being reprinted decade after decade. Only from 1965 on were some of his novels re-translated more accurately, but even today Verne's work has still not been fully rehabilitated in the English-speaking world.
Verne's works may also reflect the bitterness France felt in the wake of defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871, and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. The Begum's Millions (Les Cinq cents millions de la Begum) of 1879 gives a highly stereotypical depiction of Germans as monstrous cruel militarists. By contrast, almost all the protagonists in his pre-1871 works, such as the sympathetic first-person narrator in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, are German.
Hetzel's influence
Hetzel substantially influenced the writings of Verne, who was so happy to finally find a willing publisher that he agreed on almost all changes that Hetzel suggested. Hetzel rejected at least one novel (Paris in the 20th Century), and asked Verne to significantly change his other drafts. One of the most important changes Hetzel enforced on Verne was the adoption of optimism in his novels. Verne was in fact not an enthusiast of technological and human progress, as can be seen in his works created before he met Hetzel and after his death. Hetzel's demand of the optimistic text proved correct. For example, The Mysterious Island originally ended with the survivors returning to mainland forever nostalgic about the island. Hetzel decided that the heroes should live happily, so in the revised draft, they use their fortunes to build a replica of the island. Many translations are like this. Also, in order not to offend France's then-ally, Russia, the origin and past of the famous Captain Nemo were changed from those of a Polish refugee avenging the partitions of Poland and the death of his family in the January Uprising repressions to those of an Indian prince fighting the British Empire after the Sikh War.
Predictions
Jules Verne's novels have been noted for being startlingly accurate anticipations of modern times. Paris in the 20th Century is an often cited example of this as it describes air conditioning, automobiles, the internet, television, and other modern conveniences very similar to their real world counterparts. Another good example is From the Earth to the Moon, which is uncannily similar to the real Apollo Program, as three astronauts are launched from the Florida peninsula and recovered through a splash landing. His other notable predictions were of helicopters, submarines, projectors, jukeboxes, etc.
Scholars' jokes
Verne, who had a large archive and always kept up with the scientific and technological progress, sometimes seemed to joke with the readers, using so called "scholars' jokes" (that is, a joke that only a scientist may recognise). These appear for example in Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen, where it is a Manticora beetle which helps Cousin Bénédict to escape from imprisonment, when the aforementioned, not guarded in a garden, follows the beetle. Since the beetle escapes from him by flying, while in fact the genus is flightless, it is possible that this is one such joke. Other examples appear for example in Mysterious Island (its fauna and flora - note that one of the main characters, the sailor Bonadventure Pencroff talks to Cyrus Harding whether the latter believes in islands made specially as ideal ones for castaways) or From the Earth to the Moon (the material used for the cannon - in this case it was probably poetic license, since the description of the making of the gun became far more dramatic), or The Begum's Millions, where the methods used for making steel in "Steel City", described as the most modern steel factory in the world, were rather dated, but, again, much more spectacular to describe. (See Neff, 1978)
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:17 am
Charles Ruggles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Sherman Ruggles (more often known as Charlie Ruggles) (February 8, 1886 - December 23, 1970) was a comic American actor. In a career spanning six decades, Ruggles appeared in close to 100 feature films. He was also the brother of director, producer, and silent actor Wesley Ruggles (1889 - 1972).
Career
Charlie Ruggles was born in Los Angeles, California in 1886. Despite training to be a doctor, Ruggles soon found himself on the stage, appearing in a stock production of Nathan Hale in 1905. He moved to Broadway to appear in Help Wanted in 1914. His first screen role came in the silent Peer Gynt the following year. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s Ruggles continued to appear in silent movies, though his passion remained the stage, appearing in long-running productions such as The Passing Show of 1918, The Demi-Virgin and Battling Butler. His most famous stage hit was one of his last before a twenty year hiatus, Queen High, produced in 1930.
From 1929, Ruggles appeared in talking pictures. His first was Gentleman of the Press in which he played a comic, alcoholic, newspaper reporter; a role he was to repeat several times over the years. He struck up a comic partnership with the formidable actress Mary Boland with whom he appeared with in half-a-dozen farces in the 1930s, notably Six of a Kind, Ruggles of Red Gap, and People Will Talk. He remains perhaps best remembered today as the big game hunter in Bringing Up Baby. In other films he often played the "comic relief" character in otherwise straight films. In all, he appeared in about 100 movies.
In 1949, Ruggles halted in his film career to return to the stage and to move into television. He was the headline character in the TV series The Ruggles, where he played a character also called Charlie Ruggles, and The World of Mr. Sweeney. He returned to the big screen in 1961, playing Charles McKendrick in The Parent Trap and Mackenzie Savage in The Pleasure of His Company. He was a guest star on The Beverly Hillbillies, in the mid-1960's and had a recurring role as Lowell Redlings Farquahr, father-in-law of Milburn Drysdale (Raymond Bailey).
Ruggles died of cancer at his Hollywood home in 1970 at the age of 84. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard.
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:20 am
Edith Evans
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Birth name Edith Mary Evans
Born February 8, 1888
London, England
Died October 14, 1976 (aged 88)
Kent, England
Spouse(s) George Booth (1925-1935)
[show]Awards
BAFTA Awards
Best Actress
1967 The Whisperers
Golden Globe Awards
Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1968 The Whisperers
Dame Edith Mary Evans DBE (8 February 1888-14 October 1976) was an Academy Award nominated and Golden Globe award winning actress.
Born in London, the daughter of Edward Evans, a civil servant, and his wife, Caroline Ellen Foster. She was educated at St Michael's Church of England School, Pimlico, before being apprenticed at the age of 15 in 1903 as a milliner.
Her first stage appearance was with Miss Massey's Streatham Shakespeare Players in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night in October 1910. In 1912 she was discovered by the noted producer William Poel and made her first professional appearance for Poel in August of that year, playing the role of Gautami in an obscure sixth-century Hindu classic, Sakuntala. She received much attention with her performance as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida in London and subsequently at Stratford upon Avon.
Her distinguished career which spanned sixty years and during which she played over 150 different roles, included numerous works by Shakespeare, Congreve, Ibsen, Wycherley, Wilde, and contemporary playwrights including Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry and Coward. She created six of the characters of George Bernard Shaw: the Serpent, the Oracle, the She-Ancient, and the Ghost of the Serpent in Back to Methuselah (1923); Orinthia in The Apple Cart (1929); and Epifania in The Millionairess (1940). Other performances which many considered definitive were as Millamant in The Way of the World (1924), Rosalind in As You Like It (1926 and 1936), the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet (1932, 1934, 1935, and 1961), and, most notably, as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of being Earnest (1939), a role with which she became identified in the public's mind.
She had begun her film career in 1915, but was noted mostly for her stage work until she appeared in the 1949 film The Last Days of Dolwyn. From then until close to her death, she made several acclaimed films, including the following:
1952 The Importance of Being Earnest
1958 Look Back in Anger
1959 The Nun's Story
1963 Tom Jones (nominated for Best Supporting Actress)
1964 The Chalk Garden (nominated for Best Supporting Actress)
1967 The Whisperers (for which she received The Golden Bear for the Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress)
1967 Fitzwilly
1969 The Madwoman of Chaillot
1969 Crooks and Coronets
1970 Scrooge
1973 A Doll's House
1976 The Slipper and the Rose
1977 Nasty Habits
Edith Evans was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1946. She also received four honorary degrees from the universities of London (1950), Cambridge (1951), Oxford (1954), and Hull (1968).
Walter Sickert painted Edith Evans as Katharina, the lead character in Shakespeare's romantic comedy, The Taming of the Shrew. A sculpted head of her was for many years on display at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
Her ashes rest at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London. There is a blue plaque outside her house at 109 Ebury Street, London.
Trivia
In the 1997 movie Love! Valour! Compassion!, Jason Alexander's (homosexual) character declares, presumably tongue-in-cheek, that Dame Edith Evans and Deborah Kerr are the only heterosexual British actresses.
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:22 am
Betty Field
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Betty Field (February 8, 1913[1] in Boston, Massachusetts - September 13, 1973 in Hyannis, Massachusetts) was an American film and stage actress.
Field began her acting career on the London stage in Howard Lindsay's farce, She Loves Me Not. Following its run she returned to the United States and appeared in several stage successes, before making her film debut in 1939. Her role as Mae, the only female character, in Of Mice and Men (1939) established her as a dramatic actress. She starred opposite John Wayne in the 1941 film The Shepherd of the Hills. Field played supporting roles in films such as Kings Row (1942), in which she played a victim of incest, although that fact was not readily apparent due to the heavy censorship of the time.
Field preferred performing on Broadway in plays like Elmer Rice's Dream Girl and Jean Anouilh's The Waltz of the Toreadors, but returned to Hollywood regularly, appearing in Flesh and Fantasy (1943), The Southerner (1945), The Great Gatsby (1949), Picnic (1955), Bus Stop (1956), Peyton Place (1957), BUtterfield 8 (1960) and Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). Her final film role was in Coogan's Bluff in 1968.
Her first marriage, to playwright Elmer Rice, ended in divorce. The couple had three children. Field died from a cerebral haemorrhage in Hyannis, Massachusetts, aged 60.
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:27 am
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:29 am
Audrey Meadows
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Birth name Audrey Cotter
Born February 8, 1922
Wuchang, China
Died February 3, 1996 (aged 73)
Los Angeles, California
Spouse(s) Robert F. "Bob" Six (1961-1986, his death)
Audrey Meadows Cotter Six (February 8, 1922 - February 3, 1996) was an Emmy Award-winning American actress best known for playing the deadpan housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television comedy The Honeymooners.
Biography
Early life
Audrey Meadows was born on February 8, 1922, in Wu-ch'ang (now Wuchang), China, to Episcopal missionaries Rev. James Cotter and his wife, Ida.
According to the Social Security Death Index[1], Audrey was born in 1922. Her sister, actress Jayne Meadows, long claimed to have been born in 1926, but was really born in 1920. Thus Audrey was long-regarded as the elder sister, when she was really the younger. The year of birth on Meadows' gravestone is inaccurate.
Career
Shortly after Audrey's birth, the family returned to their home in Sharon, Connecticut. After high school, Audrey moved to New York City and became a singer in the Broadway show Top Banana before becoming a regular on the Bob and Ray Show. She was then hired to play Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show after the original Alice (Pert Kelton) was blacklisted. Pert Kelton had originated the role of Alice when The Honeymooners was a skit on Gleason's variety show, but lost the role due to the blacklist, and her absence was explained away as due to her health.
Audrey retained the role when The Honeymooners became a half-hour situation comedy on CBS. She then returned to play Alice after a long hiatus, when Gleason produced occasional Honeymooners specials in the 1970s. Meadows had auditioned for Gleason and was initially turned down for being too chic and pretty for the drab Alice. Meadows later submitted a photo of herself as plain and decidedly un-chic, which won her the role. She and Gleason remained close friends for the rest of their lives.
After the show's run, Meadows played in a number of films, worked with Dean Martin on his variety hour, and then returned to situation comedy in the 1980s playing the mother-in-law on Too Close for Comfort. She had a notable appearance in an episode of The Simpsons, "Old Money", where she did the voice of Bea Simmons, Grampa Simpsons' girlfriend; her character died in that episode.
Marriage
On August 24, 1961, Meadows married Robert F. "Bob" Six, President of Continental Airlines, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Their marriage was happy, but childless. Audrey served as Director of the First National Bank of Denver for eleven years, the first woman to hold this position, and was also an Advisory Director of Continental Airlines. Bob died in 1986.
Death
In 1995, Audrey, a life-long chain smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer, but declined treatment. She was apparently estranged from her sister and her sister's family and had not been on speaking terms with them for at least a year. Jayne Meadows was unaware of Audrey's illness and first learned her sister was hospitalized when she was on a Hollywood soundstage appearing on an episode of the short-lived sitcom High Society. She rushed to the hospital but Audrey was already in a coma.
Audrey died on February 3, 1996, just five days before her 74th birthday. She is interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, although she was not known to be a Roman Catholic.
In October 1994, Meadows published her memoirs, entitled, Love, Alice.
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:31 am
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:37 am
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:41 am
Mary Steenburgen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born February 8, 1953 (1953-02-08) (age 55)
Newport, Arkansas, United States
Years active 1978 - present
Spouse(s) Malcolm McDowell (1980-1990)
Ted Danson (1995-)
[show]Awards
Academy Awards
Best Supporting Actress
1980 Melvin and Howard
Golden Globe Awards
Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
1981 Melvin and Howard
Mary Steenburgen (IPA: /ˈstiːnbɜrdʒən/; born February 8, 1953) is an Academy Award-winning American actress.
Biography
Personal life
Steenburgen was born in Newport, Arkansas, daughter of Nell, a school-board secretary, and Maurice Steenburgen, a freight-train conductor.[1][2] Steenburgen married Malcolm McDowell in 1980 and they had two children together: Lily Amanda, born January 21, 1981 and Charles Malcolm born July 10, 1983, before divorcing in 1990, and has been married to actor Ted Danson since 1995. In 2006, Steenburgen received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas.
She is a close personal friend of former first lady, New York Senator, and new presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. She currently resides in Oxford, Mississippi.
Career
Steenburgen moved to New York City in 1972, working at Doubleday's while studying acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.[3] Her break came when she discovered by Jack Nicholson in the reception room of Paramount's New York office, and soon after cast her as the lead in his second directorial effort, the 1978 Western Goin' South.[3] She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1980 film Melvin and Howard. She played Clara Clayton in Back to the Future Part III (1990), a role which her children, fans of the Back to the Future movies, convinced her to play. She reprised the role by providing the character's voice in the Back to the Future: The Animated Series. She also had a role in the 1979 film Time After Time in which she played the love interest to H.G. Wells played by her husband-to-be Malcolm McDowell. In both films, she played the love interest of a time traveller. She also starred in the sitcom Ink and the television miniseries of Gulliver's Travels with her husband Ted Danson.
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:44 am
Gary Coleman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born February 8, 1968 (1968-02-08) (age 40)
Zion, Illinois
Years active 1975 ─ present
Gary Wayne Coleman (born February 8, 1968) is an American actor known for his role as Arnold Jackson in the American sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978-1986), and his character's catchphrase "what'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?"
Biography
Coleman was born in Zion, Illinois on February 8, 1968. He was adopted by Willie and Sue Coleman. He suffers from a congenital kidney disease causing nephritis (an autoimmune destruction of the kidney), which halted his growth at an early age, leading to a small stature (4 ft 8 in; 1.42 m). He has undergone two kidney transplants, one in 1973 and one in 1984, and requires daily dialysis.
Coleman appeared in several media productions, but is best known for his role as Arnold Jackson in Diff'rent Strokes.
Media appearances
While best known for his role on Diff'rent Strokes, he appeared before on The Jeffersons, and Good Times and Facts of Life as Penny's smart-lipped friend Gary.
Diff'rent Strokes
Due to his cherubic face and keen comic timing, Coleman captured the role of Arnold Jackson on Diff'rent Strokes, portraying a child adopted by a wealthy widower. The show was broadcast from 1978 to 1986, and was a quick success.
At the height of his fame on Diff'rent Strokes, Coleman earned $70,000 per episode. As he grew older, however, he fell from public favor.
Later character appearances
Capitalizing on this fame, Coleman became a popular figure, starring in a number of feature films and made-for-TV movies including On the Right Track, and The Kid with the Broken Halo. The latter eventually served as the basis for the Hanna-Barbera-produced animated series The Gary Coleman Show from 1982.
In 1994, Coleman appeared in an episode of Married... with Children, playing a building code inspector whom Al Bundy called to report an illegal driveway. (Season 8, Episode 16, "How Green Was My Apple")
In 1995, Coleman was featured as the character "Mad Dog No Good" on the television show Martin, in which he played an ex-convict whom Martin helped to imprison. Once released, Mad Dog No Good comes looking for Martin. (Episode 74, "High Noon")
In 1996, Coleman played Arnold Jackson on the final episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He and Conrad Bain (as Mr. Drummond) were looking to buy the mansion from the Banks family.
In 1997, Coleman did voice work for The Curse of Monkey Island, the third installment in the Monkey Island series of comedy adventure games developed by LucasArts, as Kenny Falmouth, the lemon juice boy.
In 1999, Coleman played himself in an episode of The Simpsons titled "Grift of the Magi" (Episode 235).
Coleman also played himself in the 2001 Scooby-Doo parody, Night of the Living Doo, produced by the Cartoon Network.
In 2001, Coleman was employed as a shopping mall security guard in the Los Angeles area. A surveillance video of Coleman trying to stop a vehicle from entering the mall while the driver ridiculed him was broadcast on numerous television shows.
Coleman played a supporting role in the controversial 2003 computer game Postal² by Running With Scissors, Inc. Coleman, who played himself, appeared at a shopping mall, and one of the game's objectives was to secure his autograph. Coleman's role was almost certainly based on a 1998 incident in which Coleman punched a fan who sought his autograph while he was at a shopping mall. Upon the player securing his autograph, police storm the mall to arrest him for an unknown crime, which leads to a violent shootout. Coleman was also featured prominently in the 2005 expansion pack to Postal², Apocalypse Weekend.
Coleman was featured in the 2004 season of The Surreal Life. He managed the restaurant at which the other cast members worked.
Gary Coleman had a brief appearance on Family Guy in the episode Brian Goes Back to College. He had replaced Stewie since he owed him a favor.
Coleman occasionally is able to cash in on his camp value to members of Generation X, by appearing in cameo roles in film and TV. As with Day-Glo, Rubik's Cube, Valley girls, Care Bears, Mr. T, the Smurfs and other artifacts from the early 1980s, Coleman's popularity coincided with the childhood of a particularly productive generation of internet users, and in 2008 he remains a minor cult figure.
During 2006 and 2007, Coleman appeared in a commercial for a cash-advance loan company called CashCall. He ends the commercial by saying, "Pay your bills on time and everyone will love you."
Appearances as himself
Coleman played himself in World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) superstar John Cena's music video for "Bad Bad Man". Coleman was also featured in Kid Rock's video for "Cowboy", in which, appropriately garbed, he took on Rock's diminutive sidekick, Joe C.
Coleman made an appearance on E!'s short-lived celebrity dating show Star Dates, in which former celebrities went on blind dates with regular people. Other former celebrities who appeared on the show included Jimmie Walker (Good Times), Butch Patrick (The Munsters), and Susan Olsen (The Brady Bunch).
Coleman also appeared in a Nickelodeon sitcom called Drake & Josh. The two main characters were selling a product called the "Gary Coleman Grill" (a parody of the George Foreman Grill). At the end of the show, Coleman appears as himself.
Coleman made an appearance as himself in the TV show "My Wife and Kids", which Damon Wayans starred in. He was one of Kady's boyfriends when Micheal Kyle (Wayans) was dreaming about what boys she would bring home. He said sarcasticly, Gary Coleman and in the dream Kady brings Gary Coleman home.
In June 2005, VH-1 named Coleman No. 1 on its list of the Top 100 Child Stars Ever.
Avenue Q character
Gary Coleman is a character (not an actor) in the hit 2003 Broadway musical, Avenue Q, which won the 2004 Tony Award for best musical. The character works as the superintendent of the apartment complex where the musical takes place. In the song, "It Sucks to be Me", he laments his fate.
In the Broadway musical, Coleman states:
I'm Gary Coleman from TV's Diff'rent Strokes
I made a lot of money that got stolen by my folks
Now I'm broke, and I'm the butt of everyone's jokes
But I'm here - The superintendent! - On Avenue Q!
In the London production, Coleman's lyrics are:
I was the cutest little Black kid on TV
I made a zillion dollars that my parents stole from me
My life was over when I hit puberty
But I'm here - Fixing the toilets! - On Avenue Q!
In both versions, Coleman continues:
Try having people stopping you to ask you "What'chu talkin' 'bout, Willis?"
It... gets ... old!!
When the real Gary Coleman was asked his opinion on the Avenue Q character, he responded, "I wish there was a lawyer on Earth that would sue them for me."[1]
Legal struggles
In 1989, Coleman sued his parents and former manager over misappropriation of his $8.3 million trust fund.[2] He won a $1,280,000 ruling on February 23, 1993.[3] Coleman later filed for bankruptcy in 1999; he attributed his financial problems to mismanagement of his trust.[4]
Coleman was charged with assault in 1998 after he punched a woman. Coleman was working as a security guard, and bus driver Tracy Fields had asked for his autograph while he was shopping for a bulletproof vest in a California mall. The two argued about the autograph, and Fields mocked Coleman's lackluster career as an adult actor. Coleman testified that "I was getting scared, and she was getting ugly"; he said that he thought Fields was going to hit him, so he punched her. Coleman pleaded no contest and received a suspended sentence. He was also ordered to pay Fields $1,665 for hospital bills resulting from the fight.[5] The incident was later parodied on Chappelle's Show.
On July 26, 2007, Coleman was cited for misdemeanor disorderly conduct by a Provo, Utah, police officer after he was seen having a "heated discussion" with a woman.[6]
Candidate for Governor of California
Coleman was a candidate for governor in the 2003 California recall election. This campaign was sponsored by the free newsweekly the East Bay Express as a satirical comment on the recall. After Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy, Coleman stated that he would be voting for Schwarzenegger. Coleman placed 8th in a field of 135 candidates, receiving 14,242 votes.
0 Replies
bobsmythhawk
1
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 08:45 am
MICROSOFT SHOULD MAKE CARS, GM SHOULD MAKE SOFTWARE
At a recent computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments/General Motors issued a press release stating the following: "If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would accept this, restart, and drive on.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart;
in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought 'Car95' or 'CarNT.' Then you would have to buy
more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was more reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
7. The oil, water, temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car fault' warning light.
8. New seats would force everyone to have the same butt size.
9. The airbag system would say 'Are you sure?' before going off.
10. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more.
12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You'd press the 'Start' button to shut off the engine.
0 Replies
Letty
1
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Fri 8 Feb, 2008 09:07 am
Good morning, hawkman. Love the observations about GM and Bill Gates. General Motors got it right, because every few minutes last evening I had to shut down for no reason. Too true to be funny, Boston.
Thanks again for the great background on the celeb's.
I had no idea that Jules Verne was French, folks. So in honor of the writer who was ahead of his time, let's watch this video that challenges NASA.
I can see why spectators get all worked up if they had that song to encourage them. Thanks, Urs, for the vicarious experience.
