Imur, it's nice to see you back again. That song by Dylan is rather like conversation set to music. Thanks, Irish.
Well, had a wonderful dinner date last evening, and sat outside for a moment feeling the Eastern breeze blow across the ocean. It was like a captured moment in time.
How about a little of India this morning, folks. Although these are not the original lyrics, they are lovely.
In today's news, I noticed that Dick Martin, partner in Rown and Martin comedy team has died. Here is a tribute to him.
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Letty
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Sun 25 May, 2008 09:25 am
Well, edgar, perhaps The Beatles and George's guitar are weeping for Dick Martin. He gave us a lot of laughs, Texas, and the tribute with the music was truly memorable. Thanks, buddy.
Speaking of The Beatles, folks, here's one by Goldie.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Name Ralph Waldo Emerson
Birth May 25, 1803(1803-05-25)
Boston, Massachusetts
Death April 27, 1882 (aged 78)
Concord, Massachusetts
School/tradition Transcendentalism
Main interests Poetry
Notable ideas Abolitionism, Individualism, Nondualism, Self-reliance
Influenced by Michel de Montaigne, Vedas, William Wordsworth, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Influenced Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Orestes Brownson, Walt Whitman, Harold Bloom, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Ives, George Santayana, Ivan Cankar
Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 May 1803 - 27 April 1882) was an American essayist, philosopher, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s.
Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".[1] Emerson once said "Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you."
Considered one of the great orators of the time, Emerson's enthusiasm and respect for his audience enraptured crowds. His support for abolitionism late in life created controversy, and at times he was subject to abuse from crowds while speaking on the topic, however this was not always the case. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."
Biography
Emerson was born in Boston, Mass., son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister, from a well-known line of ministers.[2] Emerson's father, who called his son "a rather dull scholar", died in 1811, less than two weeks short of Emerson's eighth birthday. The young Emerson was subsequently sent to the Boston Latin School in 1812 at the age of nine. In October 1817, at fourteen, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed the Freshman's President, a position which gave him a room free of charge. He waited tables at Commons, a dining hall at Harvard, reducing the cost of his board to one quarter of the full fee, and he received a scholarship. To complement his meager salary, he tutored and taught during the winter vacation at his Uncle Ripley's school in Waltham, Massachusetts.
After Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821 at the age of eighteen, he assisted his brother in a school for young ladies established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his brother went to Göttingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School, and emerged as a Unitarian minister in 1829. A dispute with church officials over the administration of the Communion service, and misgivings about public prayer led to his resignation in 1832.
Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New Hampshire and married her when she was 18.[3] She died of tuberculosis at the age of 20 on February 8, 1831. Emerson was heavily affected by her death, visiting her grave daily and once even opening her coffin to see for himself that she was dead.[4] Despite his marriage, there is evidence pointing to Emerson being bisexual.[5] During early years at Harvard, he found himself 'strangely attracted' to a young freshman named Josh Gay about whom he wrote sexually charged poetry.[6][7] Gay would be only the first of his infatuations and interests, with Nathaniel Hawthorne numbered among them.[8]
Emerson toured Europe in 1832 and later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1856). During this trip, he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson maintained contact with Carlyle until the latter's death in 1881. He also served as Carlyle's agent in the U.S. His travels abroad brought him to England, France (in 1848), Italy, and the Middle East.
In 1835, Emerson bought a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts, now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House, and quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He married his second wife Lydia Jackson of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in Concord in 1835. He called her Lydian and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lydia's suggestion.
Emerson lived a financially conservative lifestyle.[9] He had inherited some wealth after his wife's death, though he brought a lawsuit against the Tucker family in 1836 to get it.[10] He did, however, pay the rent of his neighbor Bronson Alcott.[11]
Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts
Literary career
In September 1836, Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement. The group did not publish its journal, The Dial, until July 1840. Emerson anonymously published his first essay, Nature, in September 1836.
In 1838 Emerson was invited into Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School, for the school's graduation address, which came to be known as his Divinity School Address. Emerson discounted Biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God. His comments outraged the establishment and the general Protestant community. For this, he was denounced as an atheist, and a poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another thirty years, but by the mid-1880s his position had become standard Unitarian doctrine.
In January of 1842, Emerson lost his first son, Waldo, to scarlet fever.[12] Emerson wrote of his grief in the poem "Threnody", and the essay "Experience". In the same year, William James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather.
In the 1840's Emerson was hospitable to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family, and appears to have heavily influenced Hawthorne during these three years.
Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and the rest of the country outside of the South. During several scheduled appearances he was not able to make, Frederick Douglass took his place. Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects. Many of his essays grew out of his lectures.
Emerson associated with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau and often took walks with them in Concord. Emerson encouraged Thoreau's talent and early career. The land on which Thoreau built his cabin on Walden Pond belonged to Emerson. While Thoreau was living at Walden, Emerson provided food and hired Thoreau to perform odd jobs. When Thoreau left Walden after two years' time, it was to live at the Emerson house while Emerson was away on a lecture tour. Their close relationship fractured after Emerson gave Thoreau the poor advice to publish his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, without extensive drafts, and directed Thoreau to his own agent who made Thoreau split the price/risk of publishing. The book found few readers, and put Thoreau heavily into debt. Eventually the two would reconcile some of their differences, although Thoreau privately accused Emerson of having drifted from his original philosophy, and Emerson began to view Thoreau as a misanthrope. Emerson's eulogy to Thoreau is largely credited with the latter's negative reputation during the 19th century.
Emerson was noted as being a very abstract and difficult writer who nevertheless drew large crowds for his speeches. The heart of Emerson's writing were his direct observations in his journals, which he started keeping as a teenager at Harvard. The journals were elaborately indexed by Emerson. Emerson went back to his journals, his bank of experiences and ideas, and took out relevant passages, which were joined together in his dense, concentrated lectures. He later revised and polished his lectures for his essays and sermons.
He was considered one of the great orators of the time, a man who could enrapture crowds with his deep voice, his enthusiasm, and his egalitarian respect for his audience. His outspoken, uncompromising support for abolitionism later in life caused protest and jeers from crowds when he spoke on the subject, however this was not always the case. He continued to speak on abolition without concern for his popularity and with increasing radicalism. He attempted, with difficulty, not to join the public arena as a member of any group or movement, and always retained a stringent independence that reflected his individualism. He always insisted that he wanted no followers, but sought to give man back to himself, as a self-reliant individual.
" Emerson's journals show that he was concerned with the evil of slavery from his youth forward, and he even dreamed that he might somehow deliver slaves from bondage. As a minister, Emerson frequently used slavery as an example of a human injustice. But it was not until 1837 that Emerson was provoked by the murder of an abolitionist publisher, Elijah P. Lovejoy, in Alton, Illinois, into delivering a moderate antislavery address. At this point Emerson still maintained that reform was best achieved by the moral suasion of individuals rather than by the militant action of groups. Over the next seven years Emerson read more deeply into the horrors of slavery, his fears concerning its expansion grew, and he acquired a deep admiration for the abolitionist movement, which he expressed in a moving speech in Concord on August 1, 1844. He stated, 'we are indebted mainly to this movement, and to the continuers of it, for the popular discussion of every point of practical ethics.' Thereafter, he was welcomed by the abolitionists with enthusiasm.[13] "
In 1845, Emerson's Journal records that he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas.[14] Emerson was strongly influenced by the Vedas, and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in his essay "The Over-soul":
" We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.[15] "
Emerson was strongly influenced by his early reading of the French essayist Montaigne. From those compositions he took the conversational, subjective style and the loss of belief in a personal God. He never read Kant's works, but, instead, relied on Coleridge's interpretation of the German Transcriptal Idealist. This led to Emerson's non-traditional ideas of soul and God.
Emerson's "Collected Essays: First (1841) and Second (1844) Series," including his seminal essays on "History," "Self-Reliance," "Compensation," "Spiritual Laws," "Love," "Friendship," "Prudence," "Heroism," "The Over-soul," "Circles," "Intellect," and "Art" in the first and "The Poet," "Experience," "Character," "Manners," "Gifts," "Nature," "Politics," and "Nominalist and Realist" in the second, is often considered to be one of the 100 greatest books of all time.
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bobsmythhawk
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Sun 25 May, 2008 11:05 am
Bill Robinson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born May 25, 1878(1878-05-25)
Richmond, Virginia, U.S.
Died November 25, 1949 (aged 71)
New York, New York, U.S.
Occupation Dancer
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878 - November 25, 1949) was a pioneer and pre-eminent African-American tap dance performer.
Childhood
Born in Richmond, Virginia on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell Robinson, a machine-shop worker, and Maria Robinson, a choir singer, Bill Robinson was brought up by his grandmother after the death of his parents when he was still a baby: his father died of a chronic heart disease, and his mother died of a natural cause. The details of Robinson's early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Bill Robinson himself. He claims he was christened "Luther" - a name he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother Bill that they should exchange names. When Bill objected, Luther applied his fists, and the exchange was made (The new 'Luther' later adopted the name Percy and became a well-known drummer, and died by poison that a so called "hater" put in his drink).
Career
At the age of six, he began dancing for a living appearing as a "hoofer" or song-and-dance man in local beer gardens. At seven, Bill dropped out of school to pursue dancing. He invented a type of dancing called stair dancing in 1884. Two years later in Washington, DC, He toured with Mayme Remington's troupe. In 1891 (Ed: another source-1892), at the ripe age of 12, he joined a traveling company in The South Before the War, and in 1905 (Ed: another source 1902) worked with George Cooper as a vaudeville team. He gained great success as a nightclub and musical comedy performer, and during the next 25 years became one of the toasts of Broadway. Not until he was 50 did he dance for white audiences, having devoted his early career exclusively to appearances on the black theater circuit.
(There is an urban legend in Richmond, Virginia that Robinson was discovered while working as a bellhop at the Jefferson Hotel. However, this is most likely untrue. When the Jefferson Hotel opened in 1895, Robinson (then 16) was already touring with traveling shows.)
In 1908 in Chicago, he met Marty Forkins, who became his lifelong manager. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act in nightclubs, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3500 per week. The publicity that gradually came to surround him included the creation of his famous "stair dance" (which he claimed to have invented on the spur of the moment when he was receiving some honor--he could never remember exactly what-- from the King of England. The King was standing at the top of a flight of stairs, and Bojangles' feet just danced up to be honored), his successful gambling exploits, his bow ties of multiple colors, his prodigious charity, his ability to run backward (he set a world's record of 8.2 seconds for the 75-yard backward dash) and to consume ice-cream by the quart, his argot--most notably the neologism copacetic--and such stunts as dancing down Broadway in 1939 from Columbus Circle to 44th St. in celebration of his 61st birthday.
Because his public image became preeminent, little is known of his first marriage to Fannie S. Clay in Chicago shortly after World War I, his divorce in 1943, or his marriage to Elaine Plaines on January 27, 1944, in Columbus, Ohio.
Toward the end of the vaudeville era, a white impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928, a black revue for white audiences featuring Robinson and other black stars. From then on, his public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the white world, maintaining a tenuous connection with the black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. Consequently, blacks and whites developed differing opinions of him. To whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the black variety artist Tom Flatcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler." Political figures and celebrities appointed him an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants major league baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open handed generosity and frequently credited the white dancer James Barton for his contribution to Robinson's dancing style.
After 1930, black revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with white audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances. His most frequent role was that of an antebellum butler opposite Shirley Temple in such films as The Little Colonel (1935), The Littlest Rebel (1935), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) and Just Around the Corner (1938), or Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky. Rarely did he depart from the stereotype imposed by Hollywood writers. In a small vignette in Hooray For Love (1935) he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile From Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite African American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for blacks. Audiences enjoyed his style, which eschewed the frenetic manner of the jitterbug. In contrast, Robinson always remained cool and reserved, rarely using his upper body and depending on his busy, inventive feet and his expressive face. He appeared in one film for black audiences, Harlem Is Heaven (1931), a financial failure that turned him away from independent production.
In 1939, he returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta produced at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the greatest hits of the fair. His next performance, in All in Fun (1940), failed to attract audiences. His last theatrical project was to have been Two Gentlemen From the South with James Barton, in which the black and white roles reverse and eventually come together as equals, but the show did not open. Thereafter, he confined himself to occasional performances, but he could still dance in his late sixties almost as well as he ever could, to the continual astonishment of his admirers. He explained this extraordinary versatility--he once danced for more than an hour before a dancing class without repeating a step--by insisting that his feet responded directly to the music, his head having nothing to do with it.
Robinson died of a chronic heart condition at Columbia Presbyterian Center in New York City in 1949. His body lay in state at an armory in Harlem; schools were closed, thousands lined the streets waiting for a glimpse of his bier, and he was eulogized by politicians, black and white--perhaps more lavishly than any other African American of his time. "To his own people", wrote Marshall and Jean Stearns, "Robinson became a modern John Henry, who instead of driving steel, laid down iron taps." He was buried in the cemetery of the Evergreens in New York City.
Film career
Whether he was performing in get a small town theater or a grand Broadway playhouse, Robinson gave his best and his national popularity became such that he was invited by studio executive Darryl F. Zanuck to come to Hollywood to appear in motion pictures, albeit limited to stereotypical roles. In all, he appeared in more than a dozen films but is best remembered for a number of 1930s film performances with the child star Shirley Temple including director Allan Dwan's very successful 1938 production of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
Other notable performances
In 1939 Robinson returned to the New York stage to take on the lead role in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The much-loved performer brought his show great publicity when in his sixties, he danced his way backwards down Broadway from Columbus Circle to 44th Street. Robinson had spoken out against being stereotyped by Hollywood and in 1943 he went back there to star opposite Lena Horne and Cab Calloway in the film musical, Stormy Weather.
Legacy
Robinson was dogged by lifelong personal demons, enhanced by having to endure the indignities of racism that, despite his great success, still limited his opportunities. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if the entertainer left, Robinson smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one." The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay. [1]
A notorious gambler and a high liver but with a big heart, he was a soft touch for anyone down on their luck or with a good story. During his lifetime Robinson spent a fortune but his generosity was not totally wasted and his haunting memories of surviving on the streets as a child never left him. In 1933, while in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, he saw two children risk speeding traffic to cross a street because there was no stoplight at the intersection. Robinson went to the city and provided the money to have a safety traffic light installed. In 1973, a statue of "Bojangles" was erected in a small park at that intersection.
Robinson's favorite adjective was copasetic. He claimed to have coined the word; in any event, there is little argument that he popularized the term sufficiently to make it part of the English vocabulary. [2].
Bojangles co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948.
In 1989 a joint U.S. Senate / House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25th, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.
Death
In 1949, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson died penniless in New York City at the age of 71 from chronic heart disease. Television host Ed Sullivan personally paid for the funeral. More than half a million people lined the streets when Robinson's funeral procession made its way through Harlem and down Broadway to Times Square on its way to his interment in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.
Jerry Jeff Walker wrote a song called "Mr. Bojangles" which is often thought to have been inspired by Robinson. A friend of Mr. Bojangles said on the day of his funeral "He was the fastest tapper I knew."
Mr. Bojangles memorialized
There is a statue of Bill Robinson sculpted by Jack Witt in Richmond, Virginia at the intersection of Adams and West Leigh Streets.
Fred Astaire paid tribute to Bill Robinson in the tap routine Bojangles of Harlem from the 1936 classic Swing Time. In it he famously dances to three of his shadows. Duke Ellington composed 'Bojangles (A Portrait of Bill Robinson)', a set of rhythmic variations as a salute to the great dancer.
Bill Robinson's biography was published in 1988 and a made-for-television film titled Bojangles was released in 2001. The film earned the NAACP Best actor Award for Gregory Hines' performance as Bill Robinson.
Bill Robinson's character was, in effect, memorialized in Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" that was later recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Harry Nilsson, Harry Chapin, Chet Atkins, King Curtis, Jim Croce, Bob Dylan, Harry Belafonte, Arlo Guthrie, Nina Simone, John Denver, David Bromberg, Neil Diamond, Sammy Davis, Jr, Tom T. Hall, John Holt, Robbie Williams, the Nervous Rex, and David Campbell, it was also again preformed, by the 60/70s folk rock band The Byrds. The song, however, is not about Robinson himself. It is apparently about an obscure imitator, one of several reported, who danced for tips. In a sense, his influence passed into the "folk culture" by inspiring talented, but poor, individuals to dance, thus sharing in his legacy.
In Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005), the character "Bonejangles" was named after him.
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Sun 25 May, 2008 11:11 am
Steve Cochran
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Film actor Steve Cochran (May 25, 1917 - June 15, 1965) was born Robert Alexander Cochran in Eureka, California. The son of a California lumberman, he was a graduate of the University of Wyoming in 1939. After a stint working as a cowpuncher, Cochran developed his acting skills in local theater and gradually progressed onto Broadway.
Film career
From 1949 to 1952, he worked for Warner Brothers (mostly supporting roles, often playing boxers and gangsters) and appeared in many films including The Chase (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), A Song Is Born (1948), Highway 301 (1950), The Damned Don't Cry! (1950), and Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951), which inspired Johnny Cash to write his song "Folsom Prison Blues".
One of his most memorable roles was as psychotic mobster James Cagney's deceitful, power-hungry henchman, Big Ed Somers, in the gangster classic White Heat (1949). He won critical acclaim for his performances as a disgraced, alcoholic itinerant farmer struggling to regain the love of his family in Come Next Spring (1956), and as a troubled drifter in Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido (1957), produced in Italy.
Cochran starred in a string of B-movies throughout the 1950s, including Carnival Story (1954). He also frequently appeared in episodes of the most popular television series of the era, including guest spots on Bonanza, The Untouchables, Route 66 and The Twilight Zone.
Personal life
Cochran was a notorious womanizer and attracted tabloid attention for his tumultuous private life, which included well-documented affairs with actresses such as Mae West, Jayne Mansfield, Barbara Payton, Joan Crawford, Sabrina, Merle Oberon, Kay Kendall, Virginia Lord, and Ida Lupino. Perhaps his most famous affair was with Mamie Van Doren, who later wrote about their sex life in graphic detail in her tell-all autobiography Playing the Field: My Story (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1987). He was also three times married and divorced, to actress Fay McKenzie, and to non-celebrities Florence Lockwood and Jonna Jensen.
Death
On June 15, 1965, at the age of 48, Cochran died on his yacht off the coast of Guatemala due to an acute lung infection. His body, along with three alive but upset female assistants, remained onboard for ten days since the three women didn't know how to operate the boat. The boat drifted to shore in Port Champerico, Guatemala and was found by authorities. There were various rumors of foul play and poisoning, and Merle Oberon tried to use her influence to push for further police investigations. No new evidence was found.
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bobsmythhawk
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Sun 25 May, 2008 11:12 am
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Sun 25 May, 2008 11:15 am
Jeanne Crain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born Jeanne Elizabeth Crain
May 25, 1925
Barstow, California, USA
Died December 14, 2003, age 78
Santa Barbara, California, USA
Jeanne Elizabeth Crain (May 25, 1925 - December 14, 2003) was an American actress.
Biography
Early life
Crain was born in Barstow, California to George A. Crain (a school teacher) and Loretta Carr; she was of Irish heritage on her mother's side, and of English and distant French descent on her father's. She moved to Los Angeles as a young child. An excellent ice skater, Crain first attracted attention when she was crowned Miss Pan Pacific at L.A.'s Pan Pacific Auditorium. Later, while still in high school, she was asked to make a screen test opposite Orson Welles. She did not get the part, but in 1943, at the age of 18, she appeared in a bit part in the movie The Gang's All Here.
Career
In 1944 she starred in Home in Indiana and In the Meantime, Darling. Her acting was critically panned, but she rebounded in the hit Winged Victory. During World War II, Crain's fan mail was second in volume only to that of Betty Grable. In 1945 she co-starred with Dana Andrews in State Fair, and Leave Her to Heaven with Gene Tierney. In 1949 she starred in three films: A Letter to Three Wives, The Fan, and Pinky, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Pinky was a controversial movie, since it told the story of a light-skinned African-American young woman who passes for white in the northern United States. Although Lena Horne and other black actresses were considered for the role, Darryl F. Zanuck chose to cast a white actress for box-office reasons.
In 1950, Crain starred opposite Myrna Loy and Clifton Webb in Cheaper by the Dozen. Next, Crain paired up with Cary Grant, for the Joseph L. Mankiewicz production of People Will Talk (1951). Crain was again teamed with Loy in Belles on Their Toes (1952), the sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen.
While still at Fox, Crain gave an excellent performance as a young wife quickly losing her mind amidst high seas intrigue in Dangerous Crossing, co-starring Michael Rennie. Crain then starred in a string of pictures for Universal Pictures, including notable pairings with Kirk Douglas, such as Man Without a Star (1955).
Also in 1955, Crain also showed off her lively dancing abilities in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, co-starring Jane Russell, Alan Young, and Rudy Vallee. The production was filmed on location in Paris and Crain's singing in the film was dubbed, as was customary. The film was based on the Anita Loos novel that was a sequel to her acclaimed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Gentlemen Marry Brunettes was popular throughout Europe at the time and was released in France as A Paris Pour les Quatre ("To Paris For The Four"), and in Belgium as Cevieren Te Parijs. Later in the 1950s, Crain, Russell, and another actress teamed up for a short-lived singing and dancing lounge act at one of the hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.
In 1956, Crain starred opposite Glenn Ford, Russ Tamblyn, and Broderick Crawford in the compelling Western, The Fastest Gun Alive. The film was directed by Russell Rouse. In 1957, she was a socialite who helps a crushed singer (Frank Sinatra) redeem himself in The Joker Is Wild.
In 1959, Crain appeared in a prestigious CBS Television special production of Meet Me in St. Louis. Also starring in the broadcast were Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, Jane Powell, and Ed Wynn. However, top billing on the program went to co-star Tab Hunter.
Film roles became fewer in the 1960s as Crain went into semi-retirement. Crain was captivating as Nefertiti in the Italian production of Queen of the Nile (1961) with Edmund Purdom and Vincent Price. During this period Crain did a stint as one of the What's My Line? Mystery Guests on the popular Sunday night CBS-TV program. She also starred again with Dana Andrews in Hot Rods To Hell (1967). Crain's last film role was in Skyjacked (1972).
Personal life
Against her mother's wishes, Crain married former RKO Studios contract player Paul Brinkman on December 31, 1946; the first of their 7 children was born the following April. During the early 1950s, Crain was earning approx. $3,500 per week. Crain and her husband Brinkman bought a large, lovely home for their growing family on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. (The home can be seen and is described by Bette Davis in candid footage of a driving sequence in the 1952 now cult-classic, The Star.) The marriage was rocky for some years. In the mid-50s, Crain obtained an interlocutory divorce decree, each spouse claiming the other had been unfaithful (she also claimed Brinkman had been abusive), but the couple reconciled on the eve of their 11th wedding anniversary.
As a lifelong devout Roman Catholic, Jeanne Crain Brinkman and her husband Paul remained married, though they lived separately in Santa Barbara, California, until Brinkman's death in October of 2003. Crain died a few months later and it was later confirmed that the cause was a heart attack. Crain's funeral Mass was held at the Old Santa Barbara Mission. Crain is buried in the Brinkman family plot at Santa Barbara Cemetery. The couple outlived two of their children. The Brinkmans were survived by five adult children, including Paul Brinkman Jr., a successful television executive, most known for his work on CBS TV's JAG. Crain was also survived by many grandchildren, nieces, and nephews.
Crain's eldest granddaughter, actress and singer/songwriter Bret Crain, set up a website dedicated to Crain's memory: jeannecrain.org. On the website one can read about Bret's fond memories of her grandmother. Bret Crain can be seen being interviewed on the upcoming DVD release of Jeanne Crain's "Dangerous Crossing." Bret Crain is married to and has three children with Gabor Csupo, producer of "The Rugrats" and director of "Bridge to Terrabithia". Gabor Csupo is currently slated to direct "Moon Princess."
Crain's career is fully documented by an extraordinary collection of memorabilia about her assembled by the late Charles J. Finlay (longtime publicist at 20th Century Fox). The Jeanne Crain collection resides perpetually at the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives in Middletown, Connecticut. These archives also hold the papers of Frank Capra, Ingrid Bergman, Clint Eastwood, and others.
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bobsmythhawk
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Sun 25 May, 2008 11:20 am
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Sun 25 May, 2008 11:25 am
Anne Heche
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born Anne Celeste Heche
May 25, 1969 (1969-05-25) (age 39)
Aurora, Ohio
Spouse(s) Coleman Laffoon (2001-2007)
Domestic partner(s) Ellen DeGeneres (1997-2000)
James Tupper (2007-)
Awards won
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series
1991 Another World
Other Awards
NBR Award for Best Supporting Actress
1997 Donnie Brasco ; Wag the Dog
Anne Celeste Heche (IPA: /ˈheɪtʃ/; born May 25, 1969) is an American actress, director and screenwriter.
Biography
Early life
Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio, the daughter of Nancy and Donald Heche. Her father was an organist, church founder, Baptist minister, and choir director.[1] In her book, Call Me Crazy, she claimed that her father molested her during her childhood, giving her herpes. Her father later disclosed his homosexuality to his family, before dying of AIDS in 1983. In that same year, Heche's older brother Nate, who was also an actor, was killed in a car accident just a few months before his graduation from high school.[2] Heche was a noted actress even at Francis W. Parker School, in Chicago, and the soap opera As the World Turns offered her a contract in 1985, when she was 16. However, both she and her mother felt it best that she finish high school first.
Heche's relationship with comedienne Ellen DeGeneres and the events following their breakup became subjects of widespread media interest. The couple started dating in 1997 shortly after the famous "Puppy Episode" of DeGeneres' eponymous sitcom. At one point, the two said they would get a civil union if such became legal in Vermont. They also worked on film and TV projects together. The couple split up in August 2000 and Heche began dating cameraman Coleman Laffoon, whom she met while Laffoon was filming a comedy special for DeGeneres. They were married in September 2001 and have a son, Homer Heche Laffoon, born March 2, 2002. On January 24, 2007, it was confirmed that Heche had split from Laffoon after five years of marriage..[3][4] Lafoon filed for divorce on February 2, 2007.[5] Sources say Heche left him for Men in Trees co-star James Tupper.[6]
A year after her split with DeGeneres, Heche made claims in television interviews and in her autobiography, Call Me Crazy, that she was mentally ill for the first 31 years of her life after being sexually abused by her father. She also claimed to have an alter ego that was the daughter of God and half-sibling of Jesus named "Celestia," who had contacts with extraterrestrial life forms. In her book, she explained that before her split with DeGeneres, she was contacted by "God" and told He would walk with her for seven days.[citation needed]
Her mother, Dr. Nancy Heche, is a Christian and psychotherapist. She has toured the nation as a Christian speaker giving testimony of the impact on her life by her husband's death from AIDS in 1983, by the sudden "death bed" revelation of his secret adulterous relationship, and by Anne's lesbian relationship. Nancy Heche has described how her spiritual views toward homosexuals have changed. In her recent book, The Truth Comes Out she describes how prayers and her own personal spiritual awakening coincided with Anne's change from a lesbian relationship.
Heche said her split with DeGeneres was not because of a change in her own sexual orientation.[7] In an interview with The Advocate following the split, Heche said she does not give a label to her own sexual orientation and said "I have been very clear to everybody that just because I'm getting married does not mean I call myself a straight."
Before dating DeGeneres, Heche dated comedian Steve Martin for two years (she is rumored to be the basis for Heather Graham's character in Bowfinger, although Martin denies it).[8] She also dated musician Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac for a year in the early 1990s. Some speculate that she is the subject of Buckingham's barbed song "Come." Others speculate that he wrote "Down on Rodeo" (on the Under the Skin album) about her because he can be heard saying "Do you hear me, Annie?" at the end.
In 1998, Heche's sister, Susan Bergman, wrote a book about the family and their relationship with their father. Bergman was also estranged from their mother. Heche and Bergman were reportedly estranged after the release of Bergman's book; Bergman died in January 2006 after a lengthy battle with brain cancer.
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bobsmythhawk
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Sun 25 May, 2008 11:26 am
Signs seen near church
The following are actual signs found on church property.
"No God-No Peace. Know God-Know Peace."
"Free Trip to heaven. Details Inside!"
"Try our Sundays. They are better than Baskin-Robbins."
"Searching for a new look? Have your faith lifted here!"
An ad for St. Joseph's Episcopal Church has a picture of two hands holding stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed and a headline that reads, "For fast, fast, fast relief, take two tablets."
When the restaurant next to the Lutheran Church put out a big sign with red letters that said, "Open Sundays," the church reciprocated with its own message: "We are open on Sundays, too."
"Have trouble sleeping? We have sermons-come hear one!"
A singing group called "The Resurrection" was scheduled to sing at a church. When a big snowstorm postponed the performance, the pastor fixed the outside sign to read, "The Resurrection is postponed."
"People are like tea bags-you have to put them in hot water before you know how strong they are."
"God so loved the world that He did not send a committee."
"Come in and pray today. Beat the Christmas rush!"
"When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out alright."
"Sign broken. Message inside this Sunday."
"Fight truth decay-study the Bible daily."
"How will you spend eternity-Smoking or Non-smoking?"
"Dusty Bibles lead to Dirty Lives"
"Come work for the Lord. The work is hard, the hours are long and the pay is low. But the retirement benefits are out of this world."
"Our arms are the only ones God has to hug His children."
"It is unlikely there'll be a reduction in the wages of sin."
"Do not wait for the hearse to take you to church."
"If you're headed in the wrong direction, God allows U-turns."
"If you don't like the way you were born, try being born again."
"Looking at the way some people live, they ought to obtain eternal fire insurance soon."
"This is a ch_ _ ch. What is missing?" ---> (U R)
"Forbidden fruit creates many jams."
"In the dark? Follow the Son."
"Running low on faith? Stop in for a fill-up."
"If you can't sleep, don't count sheep. Talk to the Shepherd."
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edgarblythe
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Sun 25 May, 2008 11:50 am
I always look forward to the joke.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxrMRNsxPQk
Listening to Little Richard tody. When I moved to Texas, in 1957, little Richard was already a great artist. Jenny Jenny was hs very latest, and my Mom and I listened to it quite a bit. She once remarked that it seemed he might not make through the entire song.
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Ragman
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Sun 25 May, 2008 12:53 pm
Good Golly Miss Molly
Yay, Edgar along those same lines, this is THE quintessential "Good Golly Miss Molly" rendition and balls-to-the-wall R&R:
When you look up what R&R is all about...Little Richard's photo is emblazoned there.
(Start at 0:26 into the Video...Try to ignore the video...or at least block out the idiotic John Goodman stuff around Little Richard)
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edgarblythe
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Sun 25 May, 2008 12:57 pm
Of course. Little Richard's Good Golly Miss Molly is one of his best recordings. I have vinyl albums of all his greatest works. I suppose I should upgrade to the new technology.
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Ragman
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Sun 25 May, 2008 01:03 pm
Nahhh...stick with vinyl. I've got both versions...I just love hearing it on a good copy of vinyl better...it lessens the feeling on CD...a little hiss and some ticks and pops (not big ones) seem appropos.
Think of the early Beatles (pre-stardom) studying LR for a graduate class in how to Rock out!
For a time warp contrast, you gotta see this 1958-ish kine-video of LR doing "Long Tall Sally". Notice how subdued it (and he) is...for the national audience de jour..(he's still himself though):
