Today is the 92nd birthday of the actress Kim Stanley.  She was the narrator of To Kill A Mockingbird and played Francis Farmer‘s mother in Frances, two gorgeous films that are so very powerful and important.  Her body of work is so incredibly impressive and valuable.  The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss because she has left.

NAME: Patricia Reid
DATE OF BIRTH: February 11, 1925
BIRTHPLACE: Tularosa, New Mexico, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH: August 20, 2001 (aged 76)
PLACE OF DEATH: Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.
EMMY 1963 for Ben Casey, “A Cardinal Act of Mercy”
EMMY 1985 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

BEST KNOWN FOR: American actress, primarily in television and theatre, but with occasional film performances.

Kim Stanley (born Patricia Reid) was an American actress, primarily in television and theatre, but with occasional film performances.

She began her acting career in theatre, and subsequently attended the Actors Studio in New York City, New York. She received the 1952 Theatre World Award for her role in The Chase (1952), and starred in the Broadway productions of Picnic (1953) and Bus Stop (1955). Stanley was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for her roles in A Touch of the Poet (1959) and A Far Country (1962).

During the 1950s, Stanley was a prolific performer in television, and later progressed to film, with a well-received performance in The Goddess (1959). She was the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and starred in Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), for which she won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She was less active during the remainder of her career; two of her later film successes were as the mother of Frances Farmer in Frances (1982), for which she received a second Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and as Pancho Barnes in The Right Stuff (1983). She received an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress – Miniseries or a Movie for her performance as Big Mama in a television adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1985).

She did not act during her later years, preferring the role of teacher, in Los Angeles, California, and later Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she died in 2001, of uterine cancer.

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (19-Aug-1984) · Big Mama
The Right Stuff (9-Sep-1983) · Pancho Barnes
Frances (3-Dec-1982) · Lillian Farmer
The Three Sisters (1966)
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (20-Jun-1964) · Myra
The Goddess (24-Jun-1958)

Source: Kim Stanley – Wikipedia

Source: Kim Stanley

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Today is the 79th birthday of the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.  His strength and grace are unparalleled.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Rudolf Nureyev
OCCUPATION: Ballet Dancer
BIRTH DATE: March 17, 1938
DEATH DATE: January 06, 1993
PLACE OF BIRTH: Irkutsk, Russia
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France
Full Name: Rudolf Hametovich Nureyev

Best Known For:  Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, whose primary dance partner was Margot Fonteyn, was ballet director for the Paris Opera and appeared in the film Valentino.

Ballet dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev was born, the youngest child and only son to a peasant family of Tartar heritage, on March 17, 1938, in Irkutsk, Russia. When Germany invaded the U.S.S.R., Rudolf and his family evacuated from Moscow to Ufa, Bashkir. Although the family lived in poverty there, Rudolf’s mother, Farida, managed to buy a single ticket to the opera and sneak her children in. At his first glimpse of ballerina Zaituna Nazretdinova, Rudolf knew he wanted to become a dancer.

At the age of 11, Nureyev started ballet classes under Anna Udeltsova. A year and a half later, he moved on to teacher Elena Vaitovich.

Any time you dance, what you do must be sprayed with your blood.

Nureyev started dancing professionally as an extra at the local opera when he was 15. From there he landed a job with the corps de ballet and toured with them in Moscow.

When Nureyev turned 17, he got into the Leningrad Ballet School, where Alexander Pushkin became his teacher. When he graduated, Nureyev accepted a soloist contract with the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg and debuted opposite Natalia Dudinskaya. Over the next few years, he would dance an additional 15 major roles in productions at the Kirov Theater, including The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake.

In 1961, Nureyev and the Kirov company toured in Paris. That year, he also made his London debut at ballerina Margot Fonteyn’s yearly gala for the Royal Academy of Dancing. As a result, Nureyev was invited to dance with Fonteyn during the following year’s gala. Their chemistry as a dance team would captivate audiences and garner large fees for years to come, although the partnership was never exclusive. Nureyev’s gallery performance was also the start of his long-lasting relationship with the Royal Ballet, his home base up until the mid-1970s.

Concurrent with his success as a dancer, Nureyev took his first stab at choreography in 1964 with revised versions of Raymonda and Swan Lake. He would go on to re-choreograph four more ballets during his career.

In 1977 Nureyev was considered for the position of director at the Royal Ballet. At the time, he refused because he wanted the time to dance. Six years later, he said yes to a job as ballet director for the Paris Opera, which permitted him to continue dancing six months out of the year. During this time, Nureyev began to take on roles in films such as Valentino and Exposed. Over the course of his career, he achieved success on the stage and both large and small screens.

In the years preceding his death, Nureyev expanded his repertoire to include orchestral conducting. He died of AIDS on January 6, 1993, in Paris.

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Today is the 94th birthday of the French mime Marcel Marceau.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Marcel Marceau
OCCUPATION: Actor, Artist
BIRTH DATE: March 22, 1923
DEATH DATE: September 22, 2007
EDUCATION: Ecole des Beaux-Arts
PLACE OF BIRTH: Strasbourg, France
PLACE OF DEATH: Cahors, France
ORIGINALLY: Marcel Mangel

BEST KNOWN FOR: Marcel Marceau was best known for his work as a mime artist in France.

Mime artist. Marcel Mangel was born March 22, 1923, in Strasbourg, NE France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and with Etienne Decroux. In 1948 he founded the Compagnie de Mime Marcel Marceau, developing the art of mime, becoming himself the leading exponent. His white-faced character, Bip, based on the 19th-c French Pierrot, a melancholy vagabond, is famous from his appearances on stage and television throughout the world.

Among the many original performances he has devised are the mime-drama Don Juan (1964), and the ballet Candide (1971). He has also created about 100 pantomimes, such as The Creation of the World. In 1978 he became head of the Ecole de Mimodrame Marcel Marceau.

Marcel Marceau died on September 22, 2007 in Cahors, France.

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (8-Nov-2007) · Himself
Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin (11-Sep-2003) · Himself
Kinski Paganini (1989)
Silent Movie (16-Jun-1976) · Himself
Shanks (9-Oct-1974)
Barbarella (10-Oct-1968)

Source: Marcel Marceau

Source: Marcel Marceau – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Marcel Marceau – Artist, Actor – Biography.com

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Today is the 131st birthday of the photographer Edward Weston. His images are hauntingly beautiful. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Edward Weston
OCCUPATION: Photographer
BIRTH DATE: March 24, 1886
DEATH DATE: January 1, 1958
EDUCATION: Illinois College of Photography
PLACE OF BIRTH: Highland Park, Illinois
PLACE OF DEATH: Carmel, California

BEST KNOWN FOR: Edward Weston’s photography captured organic forms and texture. Portraits of his family taken in the 1940s are some of his best work.

Edward Henry Weston was born March 24, 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. He spent the majority of his childhood in Chicago where he attended Oakland Grammar School. He began photographing at the age of sixteen after receiving a Bull’s Eye #2 camera from his father. Weston’s first photographs captured the parks of Chicago and his aunt’s farm. In 1906, following the publication of his first photograph in Camera and Darkroom, Weston moved to California. After working briefly as a surveyor for San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, he began working as an itinerant photographer. He peddled his wares door to door photographing children, pets and funerals. Realizing the need for formal training, in 1908 Weston returned east and attended the Illinois College of Photography in Effingham, Illinois. He completed the 12-month course in six months and returned to California. In Los Angeles, he was employed as a retoucher at the George Steckel Portrait Studio. In 1909, Weston moved on to the Louis A. Mojoiner Portrait Studio as a photographer and demonstrated outstanding abilities with lighting and posing.) Weston married his first wife, Flora Chandler in 1909. He had four children with Flora; Edward Chandler (1910), Theodore Brett (1911), Laurence Neil (1916) and Cole (1919). In 1911, Weston opened his own portrait studio in Tropico, California. This would be his base of operation for the next two decades. Weston became successful working in soft-focus, pictorial style; winning many salons and professional awards. Weston gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies. Articles about his work were published in magazines such as American Photography, Photo Era and Photo Miniature. Weston also authored many articles himself for many of these publications. In 1912, Weston met photographer Margrethe Mather in his Tropico studio. Mather becomes his studio assistant and most frequent model for the next decade. Mather had a very strong influence on Weston. He would later call her, “the first important woman in my life.” Weston began keeping journals in 1915 that came to be known as his “Daybooks.” They would chronicle his life and photographic development into the 1930’s.

In 1922 Weston visited the ARMCO Steel Plant in Middletown, Ohio. The photographs taken here marked a turning point in Weston’s career. During this period, Weston renounced his Pictorialism style with a new emphasis on abstract form and sharper resolution of detail. The industrial photographs were true straight images: unpretentious, and true to reality. Weston later wrote, “The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” Weston also traveled to New York City this same year, where he met Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler and Georgia O’Keeffe.

In 1923 Weston moved to Mexico City where he opened a photographic studio with his apprentice and lover Tina Modotti. Many important portraits and nudes were taken during his time in Mexico. It was also here that famous artists; Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco hailed Weston as the master of 20th century art.

After moving back to California in 1926, Weston began his work for which he is most deservedly famous: natural forms, close-ups, nudes, and landscapes. Between 1927 and 1930, Weston made a series of monumental close-ups of seashells, peppers, and halved cabbages, bringing out the rich textures of their sculpture-like forms. Weston moved to Carmel, California in 1929 and shot the first of many photographs of rocks and trees at Point Lobos, California. Weston became one of the founding members of Group f/64 in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cunningham and Sonya Noskowiak. The group chose this optical term because they habitually set their lenses to that aperture to secure maximum image sharpness of both foreground and distance. 1936 marked the start of Weston’s series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, California, which are often considered some of his finest work. Weston became the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for experimental work in 1936. Following the receipt of this fellowship Weston spent the next two years taking photographs in the West and Southwest United States with assistant and future wife Charis Wilson. Later, in 1941 using photographs of the East and South Weston provided illustrations for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

Weston began experiencing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in 1946 and in 1948 shot his last photograph of Point Lobos. In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art, New York featured a major retrospective of 300 prints of Weston’s work. Over the next 10 years of progressively incapacitating illness, Weston supervised the printing of his prints by his sons, Brett and Cole. His 50th Anniversary Portfolio was published in 1952 with photographs printed by Brett. An even larger printing project took place between1952 and 1955. Brett printed what was known as the Project Prints. A series of 8 -10 prints from 832 negatives considered Edward’s lifetime best. The Smithsonian Institution held the show, “The World of Edward Weston” in 1956 paying tribute to his remarkable accomplishments in American photography. Edward Weston died on January 1, 1958 at his home, Wildcat Hill, in Carmel, California. Weston’s ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Pebbly Beach at Point Lobos.

Source: Edward Weston – Photographer – Biography.com

Source: Edward Weston – edward-weston.com

Source: Edward Weston | American photographer | Britannica.com

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Today is the 89th birthday of the French artist Yves Klein.  His influence in the minimalist discipline is undeniable.  His vision has pushed the art world forward.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Yves Klein
OCCUPATION: Painter, Sculptor
BIRTH DATE: April 28, 1928
DEATH DATE: June 6, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH: Nice, France
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: Yves Klein was a French painter, sculptor and performance artist whose work greatly influenced the development of minimalism.

Klein was born in Nice, in the Alpes-Maritimes department of France. His parents, Fred Klein and Marie Raymond, were both painters. His father painted in a loose Post-Impressionist style, while his mother was a leading figure in Art informel, and held regular soirées with other leading practitioners of this Parisian abstract movement.

From 1942 to 1946, Klein studied at the École Nationale de la Marine Marchande and the École Nationale des Langues Orientales and began practicing judo. At this time, he became friends with Arman (Armand Fernandez) and Claude Pascal and started to paint. At the age of nineteen, Klein and his friends lay on a beach in the south of France, and divided the world between themselves; Arman chose the earth, Pascal, words, while Klein chose the ethereal space surrounding the planet, which he then proceeded to sign:

With this famous symbolic gesture of signing the sky, Klein had foreseen, as in a reverie, the thrust of his art from that time onwards—a quest to reach the far side of the infinite.

Between 1947 and 1948, Klein conceived his Monotone Symphony (1949, formally Monotone Silence Symphony) that consisted of a single 20-minute sustained chord followed by a 20-minute silence[3][4] – a precedent to both La Monte Young’s drone music and John Cage’s 4′33″.[citation needed] During the years 1948 to 1952, he traveled to Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and Japan. In Japan, at the age of 25, he became a master at judo receiving the rank of yodan (4th dan/degree black-belt) from the Kodokan, which at that time was a remarkable achievement for a westerner. He also stayed in Japan in 1953. Klein later wrote a book on Judo called Les fondements du judo. In 1954, Klein settled permanently in Paris and began in earnest to establish himself in the art world.

The critic Pierre Restany, whom he had met during his first public exhibition at the Club Solitaire, founded the Nouveau Réalisme group in Klein’s apartment on 27 October 1960. Founding members were Arman, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, and Jacques Villeglé, with Niki de Saint Phalle, Christo and Gérard Deschamps joining later. Normally seen as a French version of Pop Art, the aim of the group was stated as ‘New Realism=New Perceptual Approaches To The Real’.

A large retrospective was held at Krefeld, Germany, January 1961, followed by an unsuccessful opening at Leo Castelli’s Gallery, New York, in which Klein failed to sell a single painting. He stayed with Rotraut Uecker at the Chelsea Hotel for the duration of the exhibition; and, while there, he wrote the “Chelsea Hotel Manifesto”, a proclamation of the “multiplicity of new possibilities.” In part, the manifesto declared:

At present, I am particularly excited by “bad taste.” I have the deep feeling that there exists in the very essence of bad taste a power capable of creating those things situated far beyond what is traditionally termed “The Work of Art.” I wish to play with human feeling, with its “morbidity” in a cold and ferocious manner. Only very recently I have become a sort of gravedigger of art (oddly enough, I am using the very terms of my enemies). Some of my latest works have been coffins and tombs. During the same time I succeeded in painting with fire, using particularly powerful and searing gas flames, some of them measuring three to four meters high. I use these to bathe the surface of the painting in such a way that it registered the spontaneous trace of fire.

He moved on to exhibit at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, and traveled extensively in the Western U.S., visiting Death Valley in the Mojave Desert. On 21 January 1962, in an elaborate ceremony in which Klein dressed as a Knight of the Order of St Sebastian, he married Rotraut Uecker, sister of German artist Günther Uecker, at Saint-Nicholas-des-Champs, Paris. His last works included painting geophysical reliefs of France and casting his friends’ torsos, painting them blue, and attaching them to gold-leafed supports.

He suffered a heart attack while watching the film Mondo cane (in which he is featured) at the Cannes Film Festival on 11 May 1962. Two more heart attacks followed, the second of which killed him on 6 June 1962. His son, Yves Amu Klein, was born on 6 August in Nice. Yves Amu studied architecture, design, cybernetics theory of systems, and Fine Arts sculpture. He went on to create robotized sculptures. Rotraut Klein remarried, and has homes in Paris; Phoenix, Arizona; and Sydney, Australia.

Alongside works by Andy Warhol and Willem de Kooning, Klein’s painting RE 46 (1960) was among the top-five sellers at Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art sale in May 2006. His monochromatic blue sponge painting sold for $4,720,000. Previously, his painting RE I (1958) had sold for $6,716,000 at Christie’s New York in November 2000. In 2008, MG 9 (1962), a monochromatic gold painting, sold for $21,000,000 at Christie’s. FC1 (Fire Color 1) (1962), a nearly 10-foot long panel created with a blowtorch, water and two models, sold for $36.4 million at Christie’s in 2012.

In 2013, Klein’s Sculpture Éponge Bleue Sans Titre, SE 168, a 1959 sculpture made with natural sea sponges drenched in blue pigment fetched $22 million, the highest price paid for a sculpture by the artist.

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Today is the 101st birthday of Dick Proenneke.  Who doesn’t love a recluse?  Especially one that is not writing a manifesto and sending letter bombs, but is simply building a log cabin in the Alaska wilderness and talking to himself.  A lot.  I will watch this series on PBS whenever it is on, it is my “Law and Order,” so to speak.  The take away from Dick’s story is that he did all this after he retired, so it is never too late to follow your dreams.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Dick Proenneke
DATE OF BIRTH: May 4, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH: Primrose, Harrison Township, Lee County, Iowa
DATE OF DEATH: April 20, 2003
PLACE OF DEATH: Hemet, Riverside County, California, USA
RESIDENCE: Twin Lakes, Alaska
OCCUPATION: naturalist, carpenter, mechanic
AWARDS: 1999 National Outdoor Book Award

BEST KNOWN FOR: Richard Louis “Dick” Proenneke was an American naturalist, who lived alone in the high mountains of Alaska at a place called Twin Lakes. Living in a log cabin he constructed by hand, Proenneke made valuable recordings of both meteorological and natural data.

Proenneke’s father, William Christian Proenneke, served in World War I and later made his living as a well driller. His mother, Laura was a homemaker. His parents married in late 1909, or early 1910, and had three daughters and three sons: Robert, Helen, Lorene, Richard (Dick), Florence, and Raymond (Jake). The year of Richard’s birth is often given as 1917, but social security and census records have him born in Primrose, Harrison Township, Lee County, Iowa, on May 4, 1916.

Proenneke enlisted in the United States Navy the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor and served as a carpenter. He spent close to two years at Pearl Harbor and was later stationed in San Francisco waiting to join a new ship assignment. After hiking a mountain near San Francisco he contracted rheumatic fever and was hospitalized at Norco Naval Hospital for six months. During his convalescence the war ended and he was given a medical discharge from the Navy in 1945. According to friend and writer Sam Keith, the illness was very revealing for Proenneke, who decided to devote the rest of his life to the strength and health of his body.

Following his discharge from the Navy, Proenneke went to school to become a diesel mechanic. The combination of his high intelligence, adaptability, and strong work ethic turned him into a very skilled mechanic. Though quite adept at his trade, Proenneke yielded to his love of nature and moved to Oregon to work at a sheep ranch. He moved to Shuyak Island, Alaska, in 1950.

For several years, he worked as a heavy equipment operator and repairman on the Naval Air Station at Kodiak. Proenneke spent the next several years working throughout Alaska as both a salmon fisherman and diesel mechanic. He worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service at King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula. His skills as a mechanic were well-known and extremely sought after, and he was able to put away a modest nest egg for retirement.

On May 21, 1968, Proenneke arrived at his new place of retirement at Twin Lakes. Beforehand, he made arrangements to use a cabin on the upper lake of Twin Lakes owned by retired Navy captain Spike Carrithers and his wife Hope of Kodiak (in whose care he had left his camper). This cabin was well situated on the lake and close to the site which Proenneke chose for the construction of his own cabin.

Proenneke’s cabin is hand-made and is notable for its remarkable craftsmanship due to his skill as a carpenter and wood worker, and because of the films he made of the complete construction procedure. Most of the structure and the furnishings are made from materials in and about the site, from the gravel taken from the lake bed to create the cabin’s base, to the trees he selected, cut down, and then hand-cut with interlocking joints to create the walls and roof rafter framing. The window openings were planned and cut to suit. The fireplace and flue were made from stones he dug from around the site and meticulously mortared in place to create the chimney and hearth. He used metal containers for food storage—one-gallon cans were cut into basin shapes and buried below the frost line. This ensured that fruits and perishables could be stored for prolonged periods in the cool earth yet still be accessible when the winter months froze the ground above them. Proenneke’s friend, bush pilot and missionary Leon Reid “Babe” Alsworth, returned periodically to bring food and orders that Proenneke placed through him to Sears.

Proenneke remained at Twin Lakes for the next sixteen months when he left to go home for a time to visit relatives and secure more supplies. He returned to the lakes in the following spring and remained there for most of the next thirty years, going to the contiguous United States only occasionally to be with his family. He made a film record of his solitary life which was later recut and made into the documentary Alone in the Wilderness. It has aired on PBS numerous times. With a score of 9 out of 10 from the aggregation of nearly 2000 votes at the Internet Movie Database, the documentary is one of the highest rated of all time. In 2011 a sequel was produced after it was discovered that Proenneke had shot enough footage for at least two more programs. Alone in the Wilderness: Part 2 premiered on December 2, 2011. A premiere date for Part 3 has yet to be announced.

In 2007 Proenneke’s cabin was included in the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1999, at age 82, Proenneke returned to civilization and lived the remainder of his life with his brother Raymond “Jake” Proenneke in Hemet, California. He died of a stroke on April 20, 2003, at the age of 86. He left his cabin to the National Park Service, and it remains a popular visitor attraction in the still-remote Twin Lakes region of Lake Clark National Park.

Sam Keith, who got to know Proenneke at the Kodiak Naval Station and went on numerous hunting and fishing trips with him, suggested that Proenneke’s journals might be the basis for a good book. Proenneke agreed to whatever changes Keith wanted to make. In 1973, Keith published the book One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, based on Proenneke’s journals and photography. After years in print it was re-issued in a new format in 1999, winning that year’s National Outdoor Book Award (NOBA). A hardcover “commemorative edition”, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the publication of One Man’s Wilderness, was published by Alaska Northwest Books in 2013. In 2003, some of the copyrighted text from the book and some of Proenneke’s film were used with permission in the documentary Alone in the Wilderness, which began appearing on U.S. Public Television. It follows Proenneke’s life as he builds a cabin from the surrounding natural resources and includes his film footage and narration of wildlife, weather, and the natural scenery while he goes about his daily routine over the course of the winter months.

In 2005, the National Park Service and the Alaska Natural History Association published More Readings From One Man’s Wilderness, another volume of Proenneke’s journal entries. The book, edited by John Branson, a longtime Lake Clark National Park employee and friend of Proenneke, covers the years when the park was established. Dick had a very close relationship with the Park Service, assisting them in filming sensitive areas and notifying them if poachers were in the area.

Source: Proenneke’s Cabin – Lake Clark National Park & Preserve (U.S. National Park Service)

Source: Richard Proenneke – Wikipedia

Source: Alone in the Wilderness, the story of Dick Proenneke, by Bob Swerer Productions

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Today is the 135th birthday of the man who is widely recognized as the co-founder of Cubism: Georges Braque. While his counterpart’s name is much more recognizable, his works in the genre are equal to Picasso’s and breathtakingly beautiful. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Georges Braque
OCCUPATION: Painter
BIRTH DATE: May 13, 1882
DEATH DATE: August 31, 1963
EDUCATION: École des Beaux-Arts
PLACE OF BIRTH: Argentuil, France
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France
FRENCH LEGION OF HONOR AWARDEE

BEST KNOWN FOR: Georges Braque was a 20th century French painter best known for inventing Cubism with Pablo Picasso.

Georges Braque was a French painter born on May 13, 1882, in Argenteuil, France. He spent his childhood in Le Havre and planned to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather by becoming a house painter. From about 1897 to 1899, Braque studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in the evenings. Wanting to pursue artistic painting further, he moved to Paris and apprenticed with a master decorator before painting at the Académie Humbert from 1902 to 1904.

Braque started his art career using an Impressionistic painting style. Circa 1905, he transitioned into a Fauvist style after viewing works exhibited by the Fauves, a group that included such notable artists as Henri Matisse and André Derain. The Fauves’ style incorporated bold colors and loose-form structures to emulate deep emotions.

Braque’s first solo show took place in 1908 at Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler‘s gallery. From 1909 to 1914, Braque and fellow artist Pablo Picasso collaborated to develop Cubism as well as to incorporate collage elements and papier collé (pasted paper) into their pieces.

Braque’s style changed after World War I, when his art became less structured and planned. A successful exhibition in 1922 at the Salon d’Automne in Paris garnered him much acclaim. A few years later, renowned dancer and choreographer Sergei Diaghilev asked Braque to design decor for two of his ballets at the Ballets Russes. The end of the 1920s saw another style change as Braque began painting more realistic interpretations of nature, though he never strayed far from Cubism, as there were always aspects of it in his works.

Braque started to engrave plaster in 1931, and his first significant show took place two years later at the Kunsthalle Basel. He gained international fame, winning first prize in 1937 at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh.

The advent of World War II influenced Braque to paint more somber scenes. After the war, he painted lighter subjects of birds, landscapes and the sea. Braque also created lithographs, sculptures and stained-glass windows.

In 1910 Braque met Marcelle Lapré, a model introduced to him by Pablo Picasso. They married in 1912 and lived in the small town of Sorgues in southeastern France. During World War I, Braque served in the French army and sustained wounds in 1915. It took him two years to fully recover.

In his elder years, his failing health prevented him from taking on large-scale commissioned projects. Braque died on August 31, 1963, in Paris.

Is the subject of books:
G. Braque, 1959, BY: John Russell
Braque, 1961, BY: Jean Leymarie
The Art of Georges Braque, 1968, BY: Edwin Mullins
Georges Braque: Life and Work, 1988, BY: Bernard Zurcher

Source: Georges Braque – Painter – Biography.com

Source: Georges Braque – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Georges Braque Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story

Source: Georges Braque

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Today is the 109th birthday of Jimmy Stewart.  Chances are that one of your favorite classic movies also happens to be one of his.  Some of my favorites of his are:  After The Thin Man, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, The Philadelphia Story, Rear Window and  The Man Who Knew Too Much.  I could have gone on naming more, I could have just copied his IMDB listings and it would have been accurate.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME:  Jimmy Stewart
OCCUPATION:  Film Actor, Theater Actor
BIRTH DATE:  May 20, 1908
DEATH DATE:  July 2, 1997
EDUCATION:  Princeton University
PLACE OF BIRTH:  Indiana, Pennsylvania
PLACE OF DEATH:  Beverly Hills, California
GOLDEN GLOBE: 1974 for Hawkins
HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME: 1708 Vine St.
KENNEDY CENTER HONOR: 1983
PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDM: 1985
OSCAR: for Best Actor 1941 for The Philadelphia Story

BEST KNOWN FOR: Jimmy Stewart was a major motion-picture star known for his portrayals of diffident but morally resolute characters in films such as It’s a Wonderful Life.

One of film’s most beloved actors, Jimmy Stewart made more than 80 films in his lifetime. He was known for his everyman quality, which made him both appealing and accessible to audiences. Stewart grew up in the small town of Indiana, Pennsylvania, where his father operated a hardware store.

Stewart got his first taste of performing during his time as a young man. At Princeton University, he acted in shows as a member of the Triangle Club, which put on shows. Stewart earned a degree in architecture in 1932, but he never practiced the trade. Instead he joined the University Players in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the summer after he graduated. There Stewart met fellow actor Henry Fonda, who became a lifelong friend.

That same year, Stewart made his Broadway debut in Carrie Nation. The show didn’t fare well, but he soon found more stage roles. In 1935, Stewart landed a movie contract with MGM and headed out west.

In his early Hollywood days, Stewart shared an apartment with Henry Fonda. The tall, lanky actor worked a number of films before co-starring with Eleanor Powell in the 1936 popular musical comedy Born to Dance. The movie featured the Cole Porter hit “Easy to Love.” Another career breakthrough came with Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It With You (1938). This comedy won an Academy Award for Best Picture, and made Stewart a star.

Stewart also played the lead in Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). In this film, he portrayed a young, idealistic politician who takes on corruption. Stewart received his first Academy Award nomination for this film. The following year, he took home Oscar gold for The Philadelphia Story. Stewart co-starred with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, two other major movie stars, in the romantic comedy.

From 1941 to 1946, Stewart took a break from his acting career to serve in World War II. He joined the U.S. Air Force and rose up through the ranks to become a colonel by war’s end. In 1946, Stewart returned to the big screen with It’s a Wonderful Life directed by Frank Capra. This film tells the story about a man brought back from the verge of suicide by a guardian angel and visions of the world without him. It was a disappointment at the box office, but it became a holiday favorite over the years. Stewart reportedly considered it to be one of his favorite films.

Stewart soon starred in Harvey (1950), a humorous movie about a man with an imaginary rabbit for a friend. But he seemed to be less interested in doing this type of lighthearted film in his later career. Stewart sought out grittier fare after the war, appearing in Anthony Mann’s westerns Winchester ’73 (1950) and Broken Arrow (1950). He also became a favorite of director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast in several thrillers. They first worked together on Rope (1948). Vertigo (1958) is considered by many to be Hitchcock’s masterpiece and one of Stewart’s best performances. The following year, Stewart also won rave reviews for his work in Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder.

In the 1970s, Stewart made two attempts at series television. He starred on The Jimmy Stewart Show, a sitcom, which ran from 1971 to 1972. The following year, he switched to drama with Hawkins. Stewart played a small-town lawyer on the show, which proved to be short-lived. Around this time, he also made a few film appearances. Stewart worked opposite John Wayne, Lauren Bacall and Ron Howard in the 1976 western The Shootist.

Stewart became the recipient of numerous tributes during the 1980s for his substantial career. In 1984, Steward picked up an honorary Academy Award “for his high ideals both on and off the screen.” By the 1990s, Stewart had largely stepped out of the public eye. He was deeply affected by the death of his wife Gloria in 1994. The couple had been married since 1949 and had twin daughters together. He also became a father to her two sons from a previous marriage. Jimmy and Gloria Stewart were one of Hollywood’s most enduring couples, and his apparent love and commitment to her added to his reputation as an upstanding and honorable person.

Poor health plagued Stewart in his final years. He died on July 2, 1997, in Beverly Hills, California. While he may be gone, his movies have lived on and inspired countless other performers. Stewart’s warmth, good humor and easy charm have left a lasting impression on American pop culture.

TELEVISION
Hawkins Billy Jim Hawkins (1973-74)
The Jimmy Stewart Show Jim Howard (professor, 1971-72)

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (21-Nov-1991) · Wylie Burp [VOICE]
North and South II (4-May-1986)
Right of Way (21-Nov-1983)
The Green Horizon (19-Jul-1980)
The Magic of Lassie (2-Aug-1978)
The Big Sleep (13-Mar-1978)
Airport ’77 (11-Mar-1977) · Philip Stevens
The Shootist (11-Aug-1976)
That’s Entertainment! (23-May-1974) · Himself
Fools’ Parade (18-Aug-1971)
The Cheyenne Social Club (12-Jun-1970)
Bandolero! (1-Jun-1968)
Firecreek (24-Jan-1968) · Johnny Cobb
The Rare Breed (2-Feb-1966) · Burnett
The Flight of the Phoenix (15-Dec-1965) · Frank Towns
Shenandoah (3-Jun-1965)
Dear Brigitte (8-Jan-1965)
Cheyenne Autumn (3-Oct-1964) · Wyatt Earp
Take Her, She’s Mine (13-Nov-1963) · Frank Michaelson
How the West Was Won (1-Nov-1962) · Linus Rawlings
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (15-Jun-1962) · Mr. Hobbs
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (22-Apr-1962) · Ransom Stoddard
X-15 (22-Dec-1961) · Narrator [VOICE]
Two Rode Together (26-Jul-1961) · Sheriff Guthrie McCabe
The Mountain Road (Jun-1960)
The FBI Story (25-Jan-1960) · Chip Hardesty
Anatomy of a Murder (1-Jul-1959) · Paul Biegler
Bell Book and Candle (19-Dec-1958) · Shepherd Henderson
Vertigo (9-May-1958) · John “Scottie” Ferguson
Night Passage (24-Jul-1957)
The Spirit of St. Louis (20-Apr-1957) · Charles Lindbergh
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1-Jun-1956)
The Man from Laramie (31-Aug-1955) · Will Lockhart
Strategic Air Command (25-Mar-1955) · Lt. Col. Robert Holland
The Far Country (4-Oct-1954) · Jeff
Rear Window (1-Aug-1954) · L. B. Jeffries
The Glenn Miller Story (10-Dec-1953) · Glenn Miller
The Naked Spur (3-Aug-1953) · Howard Kemp
Thunder Bay (21-May-1953)
Carbine Williams (May-1952)
Bend of the River (23-Jan-1952)
The Greatest Show on Earth (10-Jan-1952)
No Highway in the Sky (21-Sep-1951) · Theodore Honey
The Jackpot (1-Nov-1950) · Bill Lawrence
Harvey (13-Oct-1950) · Elwood P. Dowd
Broken Arrow (21-Jul-1950) · Tom Jeffords
Winchester ’73 (12-Jul-1950) · Lin McAdam
Malaya (27-Dec-1949) · John Royer
The Stratton Story (12-May-1949)
You Gotta Stay Happy (28-Oct-1948)
Rope (28-Aug-1948) · Rupert Cadell
On Our Merry Way (3-Feb-1948) · Slim
Call Northside 777 (1-Feb-1948) · P .J. McNeal
Magic Town (7-Oct-1947) · Rip Smith
It’s a Wonderful Life (20-Dec-1946) · George Bailey
Ziegfeld Girl (25-Apr-1941) · Gilbert Young
Pot o’ Gold (3-Apr-1941) · Jimmy Haskell
Come Live With Me (29-Jan-1941) · Bill Smith
The Philadelphia Story (1-Dec-1940) · Macaulay Connor
No Time for Comedy (7-Sep-1940)
The Mortal Storm (14-Jun-1940) · Martin Breitner
The Shop Around the Corner (12-Jan-1940) · Alfred Kralik
Destry Rides Again (29-Dec-1939) · Tom Destry, Jr.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (17-Oct-1939) · Jefferson Smith
It’s a Wonderful World (19-May-1939) · Guy Johnson
The Ice Follies of 1939 (10-Mar-1939) · Larry Hall
Made for Each Other (10-Feb-1939) · Johnny Mason
You Can’t Take It with You (23-Aug-1938) · Tony Kirby
The Shopworn Angel (15-Jul-1938) · Bill Pettigrew
Vivacious Lady (13-May-1938) · Peter
Of Human Hearts (5-Feb-1938) · Jason Wilkins
Navy Blue and Gold (19-Nov-1937)
The Last Gangster (12-Nov-1937) · Paul North
Seventh Heaven (25-Mar-1937)
After the Thin Man (25-Dec-1936) · David
Born to Dance (27-Nov-1936) · Ted Barker
The Gorgeous Hussy (28-Aug-1936) · “Rowdy” Dow
Speed (8-May-1936) · Terry Martin
Small Town Girl (10-Apr-1936)
Wife vs. Secretary (28-Feb-1936) · Dave
Next Time We Love (30-Jan-1936)
Rose-Marie (28-Jan-1936) · John Flower
The Murder Man (12-Jul-1935)

Source: James Stewart – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: James Stewart – Biography – IMDb

Source: Jimmy Stewart – Film Actor, Theater Actor – Biography.com

Source: Jimmy Stewart

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Today is the 111th birthday of the one and only Josephine Baker.  Her iconic everything has cemented her in a time and place forever:  Paris between the wars.  The first song of hers that I ever heard was J’ai Deaux Amors and I remember really listening to it and seeking out more of her music.  Her story is tremendous and her trajectory is that of no other.  She started life in St. Louis and by the time of her death, the entire world was in love with her.  Parisians named a swimming pool in her honor.  The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

NAME: Josephine Baker
OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist, Dancer, Singer
BIRTH DATE: June 3, 1906
DEATH DATE: April 12, 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH: St. Louis, Missouri
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: Josephine Baker was a dancer and singer who became wildly popular in France during the 1920s. She also devoted much of her life to fighting racism.

Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Carrie McDonald, was a washerwoman who had given up her dreams of becoming a music-hall dancer. Her father, Eddie Carson, was a vaudeville drummer. He abandoned Carrie and Josephine shortly after her birth. Carrie remarried soon thereafter and would have several more children in the coming years.

To help support her growing family, at age 8 Josephine cleaned houses and babysat for wealthy white families, often being poorly treated. She briefly returned to school two years later before running away from home at age 13 and finding work as a waitress at a club. While working there, she married a man named Willie Wells, from whom she divorced only weeks later.

It was also around this time that Josephine first took up dancing, honing her skills both in clubs and in street performances, and by 1919 she was touring the United States with the Jones Family Band and the Dixie Steppers performing comedic skits. In 1921, Josephine married a man named Willie Baker, whose name she would keep for the rest of her life despite their divorce years later. In 1923, Baker landed a role in the musical Shuffle Along as a member of the chorus, and the comic touch that she brought to the part made her popular with audiences. Looking to parlay these early successes, Baker moved to New York City and was soon performing in Chocolate Dandies and, along with Ethel Waters, in the floor show of the Plantation Club, where again she quickly became a crowd favorite.

In 1925, at the peak of France’s obsession with American jazz and all things exotic, Baker traveled to Paris to perform in La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. She made an immediate impression on French audiences when, with dance partner Joe Alex, she performed the Danse Sauvage, in which she wore only a feather skirt.

However, it was the following year, at the Folies Bergère music hall, one of the most popular of the era, that Baker’s career would reach a major turning point. In a performance called La Folie du Jour, Baker danced wearing little more than a skirt made of 16 bananas. The show was wildly popular with Parisian audiences and Baker was soon among the most popular and highest-paid performers in Europe, having the admiration of cultural figures like Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and E. E. Cummings and earning herself nicknames like “Black Venus” and “Black Pearl.” She also received more than 1,000 marriage proposals.

Capitalizing on this success, Baker sang professionally for the first time in 1930, and several years later landed film roles as a singer in Zou-Zou and Princesse Tam-Tam. The money she earned from her performances soon allowed her to purchase an estate in Castelnaud-Fayrac, in the southwest of France. She named the estate Les Milandes, and soon paid to move her family there from St. Louis.

In 1936, riding the wave of popularity she was enjoying in France, Baker returned to the United States to perform in the Ziegfield Follies, hoping to establish herself as a performer in her home country as well. However, she was met with a generally hostile, racist reaction and quickly returned to France, crestfallen at her mistreatment. Upon her return, Baker married French industrialist Jean Lion and obtained citizenship from the country that had embraced her as one of its own.

When World War II erupted later that year, Baker worked for the Red Cross during the occupation of France. As a member of the Free French forces she also entertained troops in both Africa and the Middle East. Perhaps most importantly, however, Baker did work for the French Resistance, at times smuggling messages hidden in her sheet music and even in her underwear. For these efforts, at the war’s end, Baker was awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour with the rosette of the Resistance, two of France’s highest military honors.

Following the war, Baker spent most of her time at Les Milandes with her family. In 1947, she married French orchestra leader Jo Bouillon, and beginning in 1950 began to adopt babies from around the world. She adopted 12 children in all, creating what she referred to as her “rainbow tribe” and her “experiment in brotherhood.” She often invited people to the estate to see these children, to demonstrate that people of different races could in fact live together harmoniously.

During the 1950s, Baker frequently returned to the United States to lend her support to the Civil Rights Movement, participating in demonstrations and boycotting segregated clubs and concert venues. In 1963, Baker participated, alongside Martin Luther King Jr., in the March on Washington, and was among the many notable speakers that day. In honor of her efforts, the NAACP eventually named May 20th “Josephine Baker Day.”

After decades of rejection by her countrymen and a lifetime spent dealing with racism, in 1973 Baker performed at Carnegie Hall in New York and was greeted with a standing ovation. She was so moved by her reception that she wept openly before her audience. The show was a huge success and marked Baker’s comeback to the stage.

In April 1975, Josephine Baker performed at the Bobino Theater in Paris, in the first of a series of performances celebrating the 50th anniversary of her Paris debut. Numerous celebrities were in attendance, including Sophia Loren and Princess Grace of Monaco, who had been a dear friend to Baker for years. Just days later, on April 12, 1975, Baker died in her sleep of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 69.

On the day of her funeral, more than 20,000 people lined the streets of Paris to witness the procession, and the French government honored her with a 21-gun salute, making Baker the first American woman in history to be buried in France with military honors.

Source: Josephine Baker – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Josephine Baker – Civil Rights Activist, Dancer, Singer – Biography.com

Source: Josephine Baker | French entertainer | Britannica.com

Source: Josephine Baker

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Today is the 84th birthday of the photographer Brian Duffy. His famous images are immediately recognizable as should his name be. I went a bit different and used a chronological description from his website as a biography. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Brian Duffy
BIRTHDATE: 15 June 1933
DATE OF DEATH: 31 May 2010 (aged 76)
OCCUPATION: Photographer, film producer

BEST KNOWN FOR: English photographer and film producer, best remembered for his fashion and portrait photography of the 1960s and 1970s.

1933 Conceived in Dublin, Born in London.

1950 Attended St.Martins school of art to study painting but switched to dress design.

53-54 Finished dress design and worked as assistant designer at Susan Small Dresses and then at Victor Steibel (Princess Margaret’s dress designer).

1954 Later that year went to Paris and was offered a job with Balenciaga but turned it down.

1955 Freelanced as a fashion artist including work for Harpers Bazaar. During this time Duffy saw some photographic contact sheets on the art directors desk. This appealed to Duffy and inspired him to think about photography and find a job as a photographic assistant.

Applied for job with John French but was unsuccessful. However got a job as an assistant at Carlton Studios but soon left for a better job at Cosmopolitan Artists who represented David Hurne, Ivor Sharpe and Ken Russell. Left Cosmopolitan Artists and took a job as an assistant to photographer Adrian Flowers.

While working for Adrian, Duffy shot his first photographic commission for The Sunday Times for Fashion Editor Ernestine Carter.

57-63 Hired by British Vogue under Art Director John Parsons and worked closely with models Jean Shrimpton, Joy Weston, Jennifer Hocking & Pauline Stone.

1961 Went to New York and was hired by art director Miki Denhof to shoot for Glamour Magazine

62-63 In Paris shooting Fashion for Elle Magazine and also photographed William Burroughs & Gregory Corsa amongst others.

1962 Brian Duffy, David Bailey & Terence Donovan dubbed the, “Terrible Trio,”by The Sunday Times and “The Black Trinity” by Norman Parkinson.

1963 Set up his own Studio in Swiss Cottage, North London.

1965 Commissioned to shoot his first Pirelli Calendar, shot on location in the South of France.

63-66 French Elle – Became regular contributor under art director Peter Knapp.

67-71 Set up film production company DEIGHTON DUFFY with Len Deighton at 142 Piccadilly, London.

67-68 Produced “Only When I Larf” starring David Hemmings. 68-69 Produced the musical film “Oh What a Lovely War” with Len Deighton.

1972 Commissioned to work on a second (1973) Pirelli Calendar with British pop artist Allen Jones and air brush specialist Philip Castle.

1973 Designed, shot and named David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album cover (one of three album covers shot for Bowie – including Scary Monsters & The Lodger) which went on to become a cultural icon.

73-78 Regular contributor to The Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph Magazine The Observer and Harpers & Queen.

74-79 French Elle (second period). 1977 Commissioned by top London advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce to shoot the ground breaking, surreal, Benson & Hedges advertisements.

1978 Award winning Smirnoff stills campaigns for Young & Rubican Agency.

1979 Decided to call it a day and attempted to burn his archive but was stopped by a local council employee.

1980 Shot one last album cover for David Bowie – Scary Monsters

2009 First exhibition at Chris Beetles Gallery Mayfair, London (now Beetles & Huxley)* See Exhibits page for full list of exhibition since 2009

2009 BBC Documentary “The Man Who Shot The Sixties” One hour documentary on Duffy’s life and work.

2011 Publication of first monograph “Duffy Photographer” Published by ACC Editions

2013 Named as one of one hundred ‘most influential photographers of all time’ by the British Journal of Photography.

2014 Publication of Duffy / Bowie – “Five Sessions” Published by ACC Editions

2014 Publication of French Elle – “In The Eyes of Brian Duffy” – Published in French by Glenat

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Today is the 121st birthday of Wallis Simpson.  The king gave up the throne for her.  Her style remained impeccable for her entire life.  Have you seen W.E.?  Brilliant.  The world was a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

NAME: Wallis Simpson
OCCUPATION: Duchess
BIRTH DATE: June 19, 1896
DEATH DATE: April 24, 1986
PLACE OF BIRTH: Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France
AKA: Wallis Warfield Simpson
Originally: Bessie Wallis Warfield
AKA: Wallis Simpson
Full Name: Wallis, Duchess of Windsor
AKA: Wallis Spencer

Best Known For:  American socialite Wallis Simpson became the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. Edward abdicated the throne to marry her, a period known as the Abdication Crisis.

Wallis Simpson was born Bessie Wallis Warfield on June 19, 1896, in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. The daughter of Baltimoreans Teackle Wallis Warfield and Alice Montague, Wallis dropped her first name during her youth. Her father died of tuberculosis when she was a baby, and Wallis and her mother became dependent on the charity of Wallis’s Uncle Warfield. Wallis became the poor relation, which led to an insecurity that followed her into adulthood. Uncle Warfield paid for Wallis to attend Oldfields School, the most expensive girls’ school in Maryland, where she was at the top of her class and was known for always being immaculately dressed.

In 1916, Wallis met Earl Winfield Spencer Jr., a U.S. Navy aviator. The couple married six months later. Win, as her husband was known, was an alcoholic, and in the course of their marriage was stationed in San Diego, Washington, D.C., and China. He and Wallis would be separated for months at a time. When their marriage began to break down, Wallis spent what she called her “lotus year” in China, traveling alone. Win and Wallis divorced in 1927. Wallis then married Ernest Aldrich Simpson, an English-American shipping executive. They wed in London and moved into a large flat with several servants.

Around this same time, Wallis met Lady Furness, then the mistress of Edward, Duke of Windsor (then known as the Prince of Wales), and on January 10, 1931, Wallis was introduced to the Prince of Wales at an event at Burrough Court. The prince later remembered that Wallis had a cold that night and was not at her best.

In January 1934, Wallis became Prince Edward’s mistress. He denied this to his family, who were outraged at his behavior, but by 1935 she had been presented at court and the couple had vacationed in Europe multiple times together.

On January 20, 1936, George V died, and Edward ascended the throne. It had become clear that Edward planned to marry Wallis as soon as she divorced Simpson. This caused a scandal in Britain that is now known as the “abdication crisis.” The consensus from the Church of England and the conservative British establishment was that Edward could not marry a divorced woman who still had two living ex-husbands. The king’s ministers also disapproved, finding Wallis’s behavior unacceptable. Britons were reluctant to accept an American as queen. During this time, Wallis fled to France to avoid the heavy press coverage.

On December 5, 1936, after Edward was told that could not keep the throne and marry Wallis, he decided to abdicate.

On December 11, 1936, Edward made a BBC broadcast, saying he could not do his job as king without the support of “the woman I love.” In May of the following year, Wallis’s divorce was made final, and on June 3, 1937, she became the Duchess of Windsor.

Wallis and Edward referred to themselves as “W.E.”—their initials, but also a dig at the royal “we,” which refers to a person in high office using a plural pronoun rather than a singular one to refer to him- or herself. Subversive and playful, their nickname reflects their relationship. Wallis had charisma and sex appeal. She was famous for her wit and her style. Though seemingly unimportant, Wallis played a cataclysmic role in the future of the British monarchy.

Source: Wallis Simpson – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Wallis Simpson – Duchess – Biography.com

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Today is the 133rdd birthday of the first movie mogul, Louis B. Mayer.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Louis B. Mayer
OCCUPATION: Business Leader, Producer
BIRTH DATE: c. July 12, 1884
DEATH DATE: October 29, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH: Minsk, Russia
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California
Full Name: Louis Burt Mayer
AKA: Louis Mayer
Originally: Eliezer Mayer

Best Known For:  Louis B. Mayer was a film mogul and the most influential person in Hollywood from the mid-1920s to the late-1940s.

Film producer and executive Louis Burt Mayer was born to an Eastern European Jewish family in Minsk, Russia. Though he was reportedly born on July 12, 1884, Mayer would claim throughout his life that he was born on the Fourth of July; he was similarly unclear about the exact location of his birth. The future mogul was the middle child of five siblings, with two sisters and two brothers, all of whom grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.

At the age of 12, Mayer quit school to help his father run the family scrap metal business. When he was 19, he moved to Boston, expanding the father-son scrap enterprise into the United States. Soon after he arrived, Mayer met and married a butcher’s daughter, Margaret Shenberg. The couple had two daughters, Edith Mayer (1905-1987) and Irene Mayer (1907-1990), who would both go on to marry movie executives.

It wasn’t long before Mayer grew tired of the family business and began to look for a less gritty line of work. Luckily, a friend in the know tipped him off to a burlesque theater for sale in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a joint known derisively as the “Garlic Box.” It was a rundown theater with a bad reputation, but the enterprising young Mayer smartly chose to premiere a religious film at the establishment’s opening, immediately currying favor with community skeptics.

The budding businessman soon got a taste for success and began to acquire more and more old theaters in the area, rebuilding their reputations and facades in equal measure. After taking over all five of Haverhill’s theaters, he partnered with Nathan Gordon to gain control of a large theater chain in New England.

In 1914, Mayer made his first foray into film distribution when he bought exclusive rights to the landmark picture The Birth of a Nation with the money he earned pawning his wife’s wedding ring. He would also start a distribution agency in Boston and a talent-booking agency in New York. However, the siren song of Hollywood couldn’t be ignored for long; in 1918, Mayer moved to Los Angeles to form Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation.

By then the producer had gained a reputation for his hunger, audacity and ability to spot talent. Far from a hands-off studio honcho, Mayer cultivated a specialty for acquiring talent and roaming the back lots looking for his next glamorous lead. Some of Mayer’s landmark discoveries included Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable and Fred Astaire.

The producer’s watershed moment would come when Marcus Loew came knocking on his door. Recently having merged his company with Samuel Goldwyn’s studios to give birth to Metro-Goldwyn, Loew found himself without a head executive for the company. Soon Metro-Goldwyn became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the iconic MGM Studios was born. Over the next 25 years, Mayer built the studio’s reputation on a string of glamorous and mostly uncontroversial films. Some of the biggest hits of Mayer’s era were Ben-Hur (1925), Grand Hotel (1932),  Dinner at Eight (1933) and The Good Earth (1937).

At its height MGM, was Hollywood’s kingmaker (and queenmaker), churning out more films and stars than any other studio. The MGM lot itself was legendary—over 150 acres and as self-sufficient as a town, complete with its own opium den, barbershop and 24-hour dining establishment. Also housed on the property was none other than the iconic MGM lion, whose digs amounted to an onsite zoo.

Louis B. Mayer himself had gained a reputation of leonine proportions not long after his arrival in Hollywood. Characterized by his strong will and tell-it-straight relationships, Mayer once told Robert Young, “Put on a little weight and get more sex, we have a whole stable of girls here.” Clearly, the approach worked; MGM was the most successful studio in Hollywood, even managing to stay profitable through the Great Depression. For almost a decade Mayer held the rank of highest paid man in America, a far cry from his days diving in the Bay of Fundy for scrap metal.

By 1948, the heyday of the Hollywood studio era had begun to fade. MGM had gone years without an Oscar and relations between Mayer and other executives began to fray as profit margins thinned. In 1951, Mayer left MGM after 27 years at the helm. Six years later, on October 29, 1957, the legendary producer and executive died of leukemia.

One of Hollywood’s first true moguls, there is no denying his influence on the early years of the film industry’s boom, but as Mayer himself once said, “The sign of a clever auteur is to achieve the illusion that there is a sole individual responsible for magnificent creations that require thousands of people to accomplish.”

Source: Louis B. Mayer

Source: Louis B. Mayer – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Louis B. Mayer – Business Leader, Producer – Biography.com

Source: Louis B Mayer

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Today is the 113th birthday of the poet Pablo Neruda.  His Sonet XVII (below) is one of my very favorite poems of all time.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Pablo Neruda
OCCUPATION: Poet
BIRTH DATE: July 12, 1904
DEATH DATE: September 23, 1973
EDUCATION: Temuco Boys’ School
PLACE OF BIRTH: Parral, Chile
PLACE OF DEATH: Santiago, Chile
Chilean Ambassador to France
Nobel Prize for Literature 1971
Lenin Peace Prize 1953

BEST KNOWN FOR:  Pablo Neruda was a Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet who was active in world politics through his role as a diplomat.

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems such as the ones in his 1924 collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal color of hope.

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes. During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda’s arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d’état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. Already a legend in life, Neruda’s death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda’s funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets.

Sonnet XVII

Author of books:
Crepusculario (1923, poetry)
Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (1924, poetry)
Tentativa del Hombre Infinito (1926, poetry)
Anillos (1926, poetry, with Tomás Lago)
El Hondero Entusiasta (1933, poetry)
Residencia en la Tierra, 1925–1931 (1933, poetry)
Residencia en la Tierra, 1925–35 (1935, poetry, 2 vols.)
España en el Corazón (1937, poetry)
Canto General (1950, poetry)
Alturas de Macchu Picchu (1943, poetry)
Tercera Residencia, 1935–45 (1947, poetry)
Odas Elementales (1954, poetry)
Confieso que he Vivido (1974, memoir)

Source: Pablo Neruda – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Pablo Neruda – Diplomat, Poet – Biography.com

Source: Pablo Neruda – Biographical

Source: Pablo Neruda

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Today is the 112th birthday of the original It Girl:  Clara Bow.  She is still seen as and and example of empowerment and strength for women and appreciated by all.  The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

NAME: Clara Bow
OCCUPATION: Film Actor/Film Actress
BIRTH DATE: July 29, 1905
DEATH DATE: September 27, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH: Brooklyn, New York
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California
REMAINS: Buried, Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, CA
HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME: 1500 Vine St.

BEST KNOWN FOR: American motion-picture actress Clare Bow was a major box-office draw during the silent-film era, having starred in dozens of projects.

Clara Bow was born on July 29, 1905 in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn, NY. She was the youngest of three siblings and the only one to survive past childhood. Her father was sexually abusive and left the home for long periods of time while her mother suffered from severe mental disorders, later threatening her adolescent daughter’s life.

Bow took to watching movies as an escape from the horrors of home and dropped out of school. At 16, she entered a magazine’s beauty contest and won a small part in the film Beyond the Rainbow (1922), though her scenes were initially cut. Even while facing resistance, Bow persevered in continuing to audition at New York studios and eventually received a part in Down to the Sea in Ships (1922). The new actress also contended with the institutionalization and death of her mother.

Bow made her way to Hollywood and signed with Preferred Pictures under honcho B.P. Schulberg, with the actress also working with other studios. She starred in an array of silent films such as Grit (1924), The Plastic Age (1925) and Dancing Mothers (1926); the latter was filmed by Paramount Studios, which Schulberg joined after Preferred’s bankruptcy.

Bow became wildly popular after 1927’s It, a film adapted from a Elinor Glyn novella. The project proved to be a tremendous box office success and lent the actress the nickname the “It” Girl. Bow’s imagery and electric, sexy performances spoke to the flapper persona of the times. She was a style icon as well, with her particular look taken on by women across the country.

The actress made cinematic history with her 1927 co-starring role in Wings, which went on to receive the first Best Picture Oscar. She later made the transition to talking movies with 1929’s The Wild Party. Bow ultimately starred in dozens of films over the course of her career, though rigorous shooting demands and industry exploitation took its toll.

Known for having a fun and affable personality with a winning Brooklyn accent, Bow nonetheless still suffered from an overloaded work schedule, celebrity scrutiny and the lingering traumas of her upbringing. She had been associated with a number of men off-screen and her romantic life became the object of much hurtful speculation and gossip, including a pamphlet put forth by an assistant with stories of Bow’s relationships. In 1931 she had a breakdown and entered a sanitarium.

While recovering, Bow met fellow actor and future politician Rex Bell, and the two married in 1931, going on to have two children. Bow starred in a couple of other films with Fox Studios before retiring from acting in 1933. Over time she still struggled deeply with her emotional and mental health, attempting suicide in the mid-1940s and undergoing a score of examinations.

A widower after her husband’s death in 1962, Clara Bow died at the age of 60 on September 27, 1965 in Los Angeles, California from a heart attack. Decades later, her trailblazing role in shaping film and general culture has continued to be explored. A biography was published in 1988, Clara Bow Runnin’ Wild by David Stenn, while 1999 saw the release of a documentary, Clara Bow: Discovering the It Girl, directed by Hugh M. Neely and narrated by Courtney Love.

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Call Her Savage (24-Nov-1932)
Her Wedding Night (28-Sep-1930)
Love Among the Millionaires (Jul-1930)
Paramount on Parade (22-Apr-1930) · Herself
The Saturday Night Kid (25-Oct-1929) · Mayme
Dangerous Curves (13-Jul-1929)
The Wild Party (6-Apr-1929) · Stella Ames
Wings (12-Aug-1927) · Mary Preston
It (15-Feb-1927) · Betty Lou
Mantrap (24-Jul-1926)
Dancing Mothers (1-Mar-1926)
The Plastic Age (15-Dec-1925) · Cynthia Day
My Lady of Whims (Dec-1925)
Kiss Me Again (1-Aug-1925)

Source: Clara Bow – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Clara Bow – Film Actress – Biography.com

Source: Clara Bow

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Today is the 81st birthday of Yves Saint Laurent. His style and innovation are current and iconic. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Yves Saint Laurent
OCCUPATION: Fashion Designer
BIRTH DATE: August 1, 1936
DEATH DATE: June 1, 2008
PLACE OF BIRTH: Oran, Algeria
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France
FULL NAME:  Yves Henri-Donat-Mathieu Saint Laurent

REMAINS: Cremated (ashes scattered)
MILITARY SERVICE: French Army (drafted, 1960)

BEST KNOWN FOR: Yves Saint Laurent was best known as an influential European fashion designer who impacted fashion in the 1960s to the present day.

Yves Henri Donat Matthieu Saint Laurent was born on August 1, 1936, in Oran, Algeria, to Charles and Lucienne Andrée Mathieu-Saint-Laurent. He grew up in a villa by the Mediterranean with his two younger sisters, Michelle and Brigitte. While his family was relatively well off—his father was a lawyer and insurance broker who owned a chain of cinemas—childhood for the future fashion icon was not easy. Saint Laurent was not popular in school, and was often bullied by schoolmates for appearing to be homosexual. As a consequence, Saint Laurent was a nervous child, and sick nearly every day.

He found solace, however, in the world of fashion. He liked to create intricate paper dolls, and by his early teen years he was designing dresses for his mother and sisters. At the age of 17, a whole new world opened up to Saint Laurent when his mother took him to Paris for a meeting she’d arranged with Michael de Brunhoff, the editor of French Vogue.

A year later, Saint Laurent, who had impressed de Brunhoff with his drawings, moved to Paris and enrolled at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, where his designs quickly gained notice. De Brunhoff also introduced Saint Laurent to designer Christian Dior, a giant in the fashion world. “Dior fascinated me,” Saint Laurent later recalled. “I couldn’t speak in front of him. He taught me the basis of my art. Whatever was to happen next, I never forgot the years I spent at his side.” Under Dior’s tutelage, Saint Laurent’s style continued to mature and gain still more notice.

In 1960 Saint Laurent was called back to his home country of Algeria to fight for its independence. He managed to secure an exemption based on health grounds, but when he returned to Paris, Saint Laurent found that his job with Dior had disappeared. The news, at first, was traumatic for the young, fragile designer. Then it became ugly, with Saint Laurent successfully suing his former mentor for breach of contract, and collecting £48,000.

The money and the freedom soon presented Saint Laurent with a unique opportunity. In cooperation with his partner and lover, Pierre Berge, the designer resolved to open his own fashion house. With the rise of pop culture and a general yearning for original, fresh designs, Saint Laurent’s timing couldn’t have been better.

Over the next two decades, Saint Laurent’s designs sat atop the fashion world. Models and actresses gushed over his creations. He outfitted women in blazers and smoking jackets, and introduced attire like the pea coat to the runway. His signature pieces also included the sheer blouse and the jumpsuit.

By the 1980s, Yves Saint Laurent was a true icon. He became the first designer to have a retrospective on his work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Under the direction of Berge, who continued to manage Saint Laurent’s firm even though the two had broken up in 1986, the fashion house flourished as a money making venture.

But Saint Laurent struggled. He became reclusive, and fought addictions to alcohol and cocaine. Some in the fashion world complained that the designer’s work had grown stale.

In the early 1990s, Saint Laurent found firmer footing. His designs were rediscovered by a fashion elite that had grown tired of the grunge movement that dominated the runways. Saint Laurent, too, seemed to have conquered his demons. By the end of the decade, with Saint Laurent slowing down his work pace, he and Berge had sold the company they’d started, netting the two men a fortune.

In January 2002, Saint Laurent participated in his final show and then retired for good in Marrakech. Five years later, Saint Laurent’s imprint and importance on French culture was cemented when he was appointed Grand Officer of the Legion d’honnerur by French President, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Yves Saint Laurent passed away in Paris on June 1, 2008 after a brief illness.

Source: Yves Saint Laurent (designer) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Yves Saint Laurent – Fashion Designer – Biography.com

Source: Yves Saint Laurent

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Today is the 118th birthday of Alfred Hitchcock.

My mother first introduced my sister and me to Alfred Hitchcock via the movies Psycho and Rear Window (we watched them after school quite often), she taught us to look for his cameos at the beginning of the films. I am not exactly sure what age, I feel like I have always known him and I went on to read a Hardy Boys type of mysteries called “Three Investigators” that Hitchcock wrote the introductions to and even loved the old reruns of Alfred Hitchcock Presents on TV. I have gone on to love both of those movies and have added The Trouble with Harry, Lifeboat, North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, The Birds, Strangers on a Train, and The Man Who Knew Too Much to my list of favorite Hitchcock films. How can you not fall in love with North by Northwest? The color of the film, the cut of the clothes, the architecture, train travel. The Trouble with Harry is so absurdly clever and Shirley MacLaine is absolute perfection.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock
OCCUPATION: Director, Producer, Television Personality, Screenwriter
BIRTH DATE: August 13, 1899
DEATH DATE: April 29, 1980
EDUCATION: St. Ignatius College, University of London
PLACE OF BIRTH: London, United Kingdom
PLACE OF DEATH: Bel Air, California
EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARD: Grand Master (1973)
EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARD: Raven Award (1960)
OSCAR: (honorary) 1968 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award
GOLDEN GLOBE: 1958 for Alfred Hitchcock Presents
AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: 1979
HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME: 7013 Hollywood Blvd. (television)
HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME: 6506 Hollywood Blvd. (motion pictures)
KNIGHTHOOD: 1980

BEST KNOWN FOR: Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director known for his work in the suspense genre. He made over 60 films, nearly all commercial and critical successes.

Television has brought back murder into the home – where it belongs.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. In 1956 he became an American citizen, whilst remaining a British subject.

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person’s gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing. His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside “icy blonde” female characters. Many of Hitchcock’s films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or “MacGuffins” meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock’s films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon.

Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. Often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker, he came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, which said: “Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else.” The magazine MovieMaker has described him as the most influential filmmaker of all-time, and he is widely regarded as one of cinema’s most significant artists.

FILMOGRAPHY AS DIRECTOR
Family Plot (9-Apr-1976)
Frenzy (21-Jun-1972)
Topaz (17-Dec-1969)
Torn Curtain (14-Jul-1966)
Marnie (22-Jul-1964)
The Birds (28-Mar-1963)
Psycho (16-Jun-1960)
North by Northwest (17-Jul-1959)
Vertigo (9-May-1958)
The Wrong Man (22-Dec-1956)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1-Jun-1956)
The Trouble with Harry (3-Oct-1955)
To Catch a Thief (5-Aug-1955)
Rear Window (1-Aug-1954)
Dial M for Murder (29-May-1954)
I Confess (22-Mar-1953)
Strangers on a Train (30-Jun-1951)
Stage Fright (23-Feb-1950)
Under Capricorn (8-Sep-1949)
Rope (28-Aug-1948)
The Paradine Case (31-Dec-1947)
Notorious (15-Aug-1946)
Spellbound (31-Oct-1945)
Lifeboat (11-Jan-1944)
Bon Voyage (1944)
Aventure malgache (1944)
Shadow of a Doubt (12-Jan-1943)
Saboteur (22-Apr-1942)
Suspicion (14-Nov-1941)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (31-Jan-1941)
Foreign Correspondent (16-Aug-1940)
Rebecca (27-Mar-1940)
Jamaica Inn (15-May-1939)
The Lady Vanishes (1-Nov-1938)
Young and Innocent (Nov-1937)
Sabotage (2-Dec-1936)
Secret Agent (May-1936)
The 39 Steps (Jun-1935)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Dec-1934)
Waltzes from Vienna (Mar-1934)
Number Seventeen (1932)
Rich and Strange (10-Dec-1931)
The Skin Game (26-Feb-1931)
Murder! (2-Aug-1930)
Juno and the Paycock (29-Jun-1930)
Elstree Calling (1930)
The Manxman (6-Dec-1929)
Blackmail (30-Jun-1929)
Champagne (20-Aug-1928)
Easy Virtue (5-Mar-1928)
The Farmer’s Wife (2-Mar-1928)
Downhill (24-Oct-1927)
The Ring (1-Oct-1927)
The Lodger (14-Feb-1927)
The Pleasure Garden (3-Nov-1925)

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (8-Nov-2007) · Himself

Source: Alfred Hitchcock

Source: Alfred Hitchcock – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Alfred Hitchcock – Screenwriter, Director, Producer, Television Personality – Biography.com

Source: The Book That Gets Inside Alfred Hitchcock’s Mind – The New Yorker

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Today is the 107th birthday of the French photographer Willy Ronis.  His photographs of mid-century Paris are some of my all time favorites.  The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Willy Ronis
DATE OF BIRTH: August 14, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH: Paris, France
DATE OF DEATH: September 12, 2009
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: Willy Ronis was a French photographer. His best-known work shows life in post-war Paris and Provence.

Willy Ronis was born in Paris in 1910. He became a full-time photographer in 1945. He joined Doisneau, Brassaï and others at the Rapho Agency. He was the first French photographer to work for LIFE Magazine, and Edward Steichen exhibited him at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953 in a show called Four French Photographers. He was also part of the Family of Man exhibit. The Afterimage Gallery gave him what was perhaps his first American art gallery show in 1985.

The work of photographers, Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams inspired Ronis to begin exploring photography. After his father’s death, in 1949, Ronis closed the studio and joined the photo agency, Rapho, with Ergy Landau, Brassaï, and Robert Doisneau.

Ronis became the first French photographer to work for LIFE Magazine. In 1953, Edward Steichen included Ronis, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Izis, and Brassaï in an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art entitled Five French Photographers. In 1955, Ronis was included in the The Family of Man exhibit. The Venice Biennale awarded Ronis the Gold Medal in 1957. Ronis began teaching in the 1950s, and taught at the School of Fine Arts in Avignon, Aix-en-Provence and Saint Charles, Marseilles. In 1979 he was awarded the Grand Prix des Arts et Lettres for Photography by the Minister for Culture. Ronis won the Prix Nadar in 1981 for his photobook, Le fil du hasard.

Ronis’ wife, Anne Marie was the subject of his well-known, [1949] photo,Provencal Nude. The photo, showing Anne Marie washing at a basin with a water pitcher on the floor and an open window through which the viewer can see a garden, is noted for its ability to convey an easy feeling of provencal life. Late in her life, Ronis photographed Anne Marie suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, sitting alone in a hospital yard. Anne Marie died in 1991.

Ronis continues to live and work in Paris, although he stopped photography in 2001, since he required a cane to walk and could not move around with his camera, and now works on books for the Taschen publishing company.

Source: Willy Ronis – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Willy Ronis – TASCHEN Books

Source: Willy Ronis | Photography Artist | Jackson Fine Art

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Today is the 81st birthday of the film legend Robert Redford. His version of Jay Gatsby is the best, by far. The world is a better place because he is in it.

NAME: Robert Redford
OCCUPATION: Film Actor, Environmental Activist, Television Actor, Director, Producer, Theater Actor
BIRTH DATE: August 18, 1936
EDUCATION: American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Van Nuys High School, Pratt Institute, University of Colorado
PLACE OF BIRTH: Santa Monica, California
HEIGHT: 5′ 10″

BEST KNOWN FOR: Actor Robert Redford is a Hollywood legend, known for his roles in acclaimed films like ‘The Sting‘ and ‘The Way We Were.’ He is also an accomplished director, producer and entrepreneur, having started the Sundance Institute in the early ’80s.

Born Charles Robert Redford Jr. on August 18, 1936, in a multicultural neighborhood in Santa Monica, California, actor and director Robert Redford has proven to be one of the great talents in American film. He is equally at home behind the scenes as he is in front of the cameras. In addition to his own career, Redford has helped advance others in his field through the Sundance Institute and its related film festival.

Redford’s father was a milk man who later worked as an oil company accountant, while his outgoing mother had a passion for literature and films. Taking after his uncle, Redford excelled at sports during his youth, running track and playing tennis and football while also having a robust romantic life. In other arenas, however, Redford said he floundered.

“Actually, I was a failure at everything I tried. I worked as a box boy at a supermarket and got fired. Then my dad got me a job at Standard Oil—fired again,” he explained to Success magazine in 1980. Redford said he also had a few run-ins with the law for purloining hubcaps and sneaking onto other people’s property to use their pools.

In 1954, Redford graduated from Van Nuys High School. But his mother died in 1955 from septicemia, and a deeply grieving Redford felt lost emotionally.

Redford won a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado, but he did not distinguish himself as an athlete there. Instead, “I became the campus drunk and blew out before I could ever get going,” he told People magazine in a 1998 interview. Some reports say he dropped out, while others say that Redford was expelled from the university. In either case, he soon decided to move to Europe and become an artist.

His time overseas was an eye-opening experience for the young Redford, who lived the life of a bohemian and learned about art, culture and international affairs. Redford’s interactions with students in Paris proved to be very significant. “We all lived in a kind of communal way and I was challenged politically. I didn’t have a clue,” he said in a 2007 New Statesman article. “They would ask me questions—the Algerian War was going on, it was very big in France at the time, this was the late 1950s—I was humiliated. I was ashamed that I didn’t know much about my country’s politics. When I returned to America a year and a half later, I was much more focused on my country culturally and politically.”

After returning to the United States, Redford met Lola Van Wagenan in Los Angeles. The couple married in 1958 and lived in New York City, soon welcoming their first child. Redford studied first at the Pratt Institute and then the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, switching from design to acting. Then in 1959, he and his wife experienced a terrible loss when the couple’s five-month-old son Scott died of sudden infant death syndrome.

A devastated Redford, who had not been raised to openly express emotional trauma, poured himself into his acting and started out his career in the theater. He first appeared on Broadway in the 1959 comedy Tall Story, followed by The Highest Tree later that year. He landed a substantial part in the 1960 drama Little Moon of Alban with Julie Harris, and then co-starred with Conrad Janis in another humorous outing, 1961’s Sunday in the Park. But perhaps his biggest breakthrough came in 1963 with a leading role in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, directed by Mike Nichols. In the romantic comedy, Redford played Paul Bratter, a newlywed lawyer who establishes a Greenwich Village home with his wife Corie (Elizabeth Ashley).

Redford did a good amount of TV work for a time and made his big-screen debut in 1962’s War Hunt. Still, the actor’s film career didn’t really take off until 1967 when he reprised his stage role as Paul in the film adaptation of Barefoot in the Park, opposite Jane Fonda. Redford then gave an iconic, star-making turn in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In the film, he played the outlaw known as the Sundance Kid while co-star Paul Newman portrayed Butch Cassidy. The two proved to be a dynamic duo onscreen and forged a lasting friendship, with the movie enjoying both critical and commercial success.

Not one to be typecast as a “pretty boy” and quite particular about the tone of his projects, Redford sought out more challenging fare and avoided trading on his sex appeal. He tackled the sports drama Downhill Racer and the western Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, both released in 1969. Another important film for Redford was the 1972 political drama The Candidate, a dark, satirical look at campaigning.

As his career thrived, Redford sought refuge from the Hollywood scene. He had bought land in Utah in the 1960s, and he continued to add to his holdings there over the years. His love of land encouraged him to become active in environmental causes. In the 1970s, Redford even received death threats for his efforts to stop certain developments in Utah.

Redford had a banner year in 1973 with two major hit films—The Way We Were and The Sting. In Sydney Pollack’s Way We Were, Redford starred opposite Barbra Streisand in a drama that charts the ups and downs of one couple’s relationship. For The Sting, Redford again joined forces with Newman to play con artists in 1930s Chicago. Redford received his first Academy Award nomination for the film.

The middle of the decade saw the actor starring with Mia Farrow in the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby and then teaming up with Faye Dunaway in the 1975 CIA thriller Three Days of the Condor, also directed by Pollack. Redford returned to political fare and scored another success with 1976’s All the President’s Men. He and Dustin Hoffman played reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in an acclaimed drama about the Watergate scandal.

With 1980’s Ordinary People, Redford showed that he was more than a movie idol, providing a heartbreaking look at a family torn apart by loss and grief. The film served as his directorial debut and starred Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton. The drama brought Redford his first Academy Award—one for best director. Around this time, Redford helped establish the Sundance Institute, created to help and support independent filmmakers through workshops and other means. The Sundance Film Festival (previously established under a different moniker) then became a related platform for indie works to be viewed and promoted, hence positioned as an industry cornerstone for decades.

During the 1980s, Redford chose only a few acting roles. He starred in the baseball drama The Natural (1984) with Robert Duvall and Glenn Close as well as the romance Out of Africa (1985), opposite Meryl Streep. Again working behind the camera, Redford directed The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), starring Ruben Blades and Sonia Braga. The film showcases a group of local farmers struggling against a major development project in their area.

Redford earned great accolades for his rural family drama A River Runs Through It (1992), which starred Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt. Two years later, he explored the real-life corruption of 1950s game shows in Quiz Show, again earning strong praise for his work and two more Oscar nominations in the categories of directing and best picture. Redford later became a triple threat in 1998’s The Horse Whisperer, working as director, producer and star of the project. He’d also made a couple of high-profile acting appearances in the sexually charged Indecent Proposal (1993), a major hit, and the journalism drama Up Close & Personal (1996), with the latter co-starring Michelle Pfeiffer.

In more recent years, Redford has been selective about his film work. After 2000’s The Legend of Bagger Vance, he directed and starred in 2007’s political drama Lions for Lambs with Tom Cruise and Streep, which proved to be a commercial and critical disappointment. His next directorial effort, The Conspirator, was released in 2011 and looks at the trial of Mary Surratt, the only woman charged in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. The following year, Redford directed and starred in The Company You Keep, co-starring Shia LaBeouf and Julie Christie. The thriller tells the story of a 1960s radical who has been living underground and is discovered by a reporter.

Redford gave an impressive performance on the big screen in 2013’s All Is Lost, playing a sailor caught in dire, life-threatening circumstances. After co-starring in the 2014 Marvel Comics outing Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he took on another kind of adventure in the adaptation of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. The following year, Redford portrayed real-world journalist Dan Rather in Truth, a film that explores 60 Minutes’ controversial coverage of George W. Bush’s military service.

Redford has received numerous awards and honors. He has earned his place in film history not only for his own artistic endeavors, but for the opportunities he has provided others to advance their work. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his contributions to the medium in 2001 with an honorary award for serving as an “inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere.”

In 2016, Redford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Redford is currently married to Sibylle Szaggars, a German painter. The couple wed in 2009 in Hamburg after being together since the mid-1990s. His first marriage to wife Lola ended in 1985, and they had four children together—daughters Shauna and Amy and sons Scott and Jamie.

FILMOGRAPHY AS DIRECTOR
The Company You Keep (6-Sep-2012)
The Conspirator (11-Sep-2010)
Lions for Lambs (22-Oct-2007)
The Legend of Bagger Vance (29-Oct-2000)
The Horse Whisperer (15-May-1998)
Quiz Show (14-Sep-1994)
A River Runs Through It (13-Sep-1992)
The Milagro Beanfield War (18-Mar-1988)
Ordinary People (19-Sep-1980)

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Pete’s Dragon (31-Jul-2016)
Truth (12-Sep-2015)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (13-Mar-2014)
Birth of the Living Dead (18-Oct-2013) · Himself
All Is Lost (22-May-2013)
The Company You Keep (6-Sep-2012)
A Fierce Green Fire (23-Jan-2012) · Narrator
Buck (16-Jun-2011) · Himself
Smash His Camera (Jan-2010) · Himself
Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk (12-Mar-2008) · Narrator
Lions for Lambs (22-Oct-2007) · Prof. Stephen Malley
Charlotte’s Web (7-Dec-2006) · Ike the Horse [VOICE]
An Unfinished Life (19-Aug-2005) · Einar Gilkyson
Trudell (20-Jan-2005) · Himself
Tanner on Tanner (5-Oct-2004) · Himself
Sacred Planet (12-Apr-2004) · Narrator [VOICE]
The Clearing (Jan-2004) · Wayne Hayes
Spy Game (19-Nov-2001)
The Last Castle (19-Oct-2001)
The Horse Whisperer (15-May-1998) · Tom Booker
Up Close & Personal (1-Mar-1996) · Warren Justice
Indecent Proposal (7-Apr-1993) · John Gage
Sneakers (9-Sep-1992) · Bishop
Incident at Oglala (8-May-1992) · Narrator [VOICE]
Here’s Looking at You, Warner Bros. (1991) · Himself
Havana (12-Dec-1990) · Jack Weil
Legal Eagles (18-Jun-1986) · Tom Logan
Out of Africa (10-Dec-1985) · Denys
The Natural (11-May-1984) · Roy Hobbs
Brubaker (20-Jun-1980) · Brubaker
The Electric Horseman (21-Dec-1979) · Sonny
A Bridge Too Far (15-Jun-1977)
All the President’s Men (7-Apr-1976) · Bob Woodward
Three Days of the Condor (24-Sep-1975) · Turner
The Great Waldo Pepper (13-Mar-1975) · Waldo Pepper
The Great Gatsby (26-Mar-1974) · Jay Gatsby
The Sting (25-Dec-1973) · Johnny Hooker
The Way We Were (17-Oct-1973) · Hubbell
Jeremiah Johnson (10-Sep-1972)
The Candidate (29-Jun-1972)
The Hot Rock (21-Apr-1972) · Dortmunder
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (21-Oct-1970)
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (18-Dec-1969) · Cooper
Downhill Racer (6-Nov-1969)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (23-Sep-1969) · The Sundance Kid
Barefoot in the Park (25-May-1967) · Paul Bratter
This Property Is Condemned (3-Aug-1966)
The Chase (19-Feb-1966)
Inside Daisy Clover (17-Feb-1966) · Wade Lewis
Situation Hopeless… But Not Serious (13-Oct-1965)
War Hunt (1962) · Pvt. Roy Loomis
The Iceman Cometh (14-Nov-1960)

Source: Robert Redford

Source: Robert Redford – Film Actor, Environmental Activist, Television Actor, Director, Actor, Producer, Theater Actor – Biography.com

Source: Robert Redford – Wikipedia

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Today is the 127th birthday of the photographer Man Ray. You recognize his images, they are iconic. I think what I most love about them is their timelessness, a lot of his contemporaries have great photographs, but you can pinpoint them to a specific decade. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.

NAME: Man Ray
OCCUPATION: Painter, Photographer, Filmmaker
BIRTH DATE: August 27, 1890
DEATH DATE: November 18, 1976
PLACE OF BIRTH: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France
FULL NAME: Man Ray
ORIGINALLY: Emmanuel Radnitzky
REMAINS: Buried, Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: Man Ray was primarily known for his photography, which spanned both the Dada and Surrealism movements.

Born Emmanuel Rudnitzky, visionary artist Man Ray was the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father worked as a tailor. The family moved to Brooklyn when Ray was a young child. From an early year, Ray showed great artistic ability. After finishing high school in 1908, he followed his passion for art; he studied drawing with Robert Henri at the Ferrer Center, and frequented Alfred Stieglitz‘s gallery 291. It later became apparent that Ray had been influenced by Stieglitz’s photographs. He utilized a similar style, snapping images that provided an unvarnished look at the subject.

Ray also found inspiration at the Armory Show of 1913, which featured the works of Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and Marcel Duchamp. That same year, he moved to a burgeoning art colony in Ridgefield, New Jersey. His work was also evolving. After experimenting with a Cubist style of painting, he moved toward abstraction.

In 1914, Ray married Belgian poet Adon Lacroix, but their union fell apart after a few years. He made a more lasting friendship around this time, becoming close to fellow artist Marcel Duchamp.

Along with Duchamp and Francis Picabia, Ray became a leading figure in the Dada movement in New York. Dadaism, which takes its name from the French nickname for a rocking horse, challenged existing notions of art and literature, and encouraged spontaneity. One of Ray’s famous works from this time was “The Gift,” a sculpture that incorporated two found objects. He glued tacks to the work surface of an iron to create the piece.

In 1921, Ray moved to Paris. There, he continued to be a part of the artistic avant garde, rubbing elbows with such famous figures as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. Ray became famous for his portraits of his artistic and literary associates. He also developed a thriving career as a fashion photographer, taking pictures for such magazines as Vogue. These commercial endeavors supported his fine art efforts. A photographic innovator, Ray discovered a new way to create interesting images by accident in his darkroom. Called “Rayographs,” these photos were made by placing and manipulating objects on pieces of photosensitive paper.

One of Ray’s other famous works from this time period was 1924’s “Violin d’Ingres.” This modified photograph features the bare back of his lover, a performer named Kiki, styled after a painting by neoclassical French artist Jean August Dominique Ingres. In a humorous twist, Ray added to two black shapes to make her back look like a musical instrument. He also explored the artistic possibilities of film, creating such now classic Surrealistic works as L’Etoile de Mer (1928). Around this time, Ray also experimented with a technique called the Sabatier effect, or solarization, which adds a silvery, ghostly quality to the image.

Ray soon found another muse, Lee Miller, and featured her in his work. A cut-out of her eye is featured on the 1932 found-object sculpture “Object to Be Destroyed,” and her lips fill the sky of “Observatory Time” (1936). In 1940, Ray fled the war in Europe and moved to California. He married model and dancer Juliet Browner the following year, in a unique double ceremony with artist Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning.

Returning to Paris in 1951, Ray continued to explore different artistic media. He focused much of his energy on painting and sculpture. Branching out in a new direction, Ray began writing his memoir. The project took more than a decade to complete, and his autobiography, Self Portrait, was finally published in 1965.

In his final years, Man Ray continued to exhibit his art, with shows in New York, London, Paris and other cities in the years before his death. He passed away on November 18, 1976, in his beloved Paris. He was 86 years old. His innovative works can be found on display in museums around the world, and he is remembered for his artistic wit and originality. As friend Marcel Duchamp once said, “It was his achievement to treat the camera as he treated the paint brush, as a mere instrument at the service of the mind.”

FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Entr’acte (1924)

Source: Man Ray – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Source: Man Ray Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story

Source: Man Ray (Getty Museum)

Source: Man Ray – Painter, Filmmaker, Photographer – Biography.com

Source: Man Ray

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Today is the  127th birthday of Elsa Schiaparelli.  He designs are still considered cutting edge today, 80 years later.  The world is a better place because she was in it and still feels the loss that she has left.

NAME: Elsa Schiaparelli
BIRTH DATE: September 10, 1890
DEATH DATE: November 13, 1973
EDUCATION: University of Rome
PLACE OF BIRTH: Rome, Italy
PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France

BEST KNOWN FOR: Elsa Schiaparelli was one of the world’s leading fashion designers in the 1920s and ’30s.

A pioneering Parisian fashion designer, Elsa Schiaparelli was born on September 10, 1890, in Rome, Italy. She was the great niece of Giovanni Schiaparelli, who discovered canals on the planet Mars.

Hailing from upscale stock, Schiaparelli, at a young age, seemed to be driven to upset her aristocratic mother and scholarly father. After high school, she enrolled at the University of Rome, where she studied philosophy, and soon published a book of poetry that was deemed so sensual by her parents that they directed her to a convent. To expedite her release from the convent, Schiaparelli went on a hunger strike; once released, she dashed off to London for a job as a nanny.

In London, Schiaparelli met and eventually married her former teacher, Count William de Wendt de Kerlor, who was a theosophist. The couple soon relocated to New York, where they had a daughter, Maria Luisa Yvonne Radha de Wendt de Kerlor.

New York proved to be an enlightening experience for Schiaparelli. There, she began working at a boutique specializing in French fashions, and soon cultivated her own taste in clothes and accessories. After her marriage failed, Schiaparelli returned to Paris, where she continued her work in the fashion industry. She soon began designing clothes of her own, and in 1927, opened her own business.

Schiaparelli’s debut collection, a series of sweaters featuring Surrealist “trompe l’oeil” images—which would come to serve as her trademark—caught the attention of the fashion world, including French Vogue. She followed her initial success with another well-received collection of bathing suits and ski-wear, as well as the “divided skirt”—an early form of women’s shorts. In 1931, Schiaparelli’s divided skirts were worn by tennis champion Lily d’Alvarez. That same year, “Shiap,” as she was known, expanded her work into evening-wear.

For Schiaparelli, fashion was as much about making art as it was about making clothes. In 1932, Janet Flanner of The New Yorker wrote: “A frock from Schiaparelli ranks like a modern canvas.” Not surprisingly, Schiaparelli connected with popular artists of the era; one of her friends was painter Salvador Dali, whom she hired to design fabric for her fashion house.

As her fame continued to grow, Schiaparelli traveled increasingly in famous circles. She was worshipped by some of the world’s best-dressed women, including Daisy Flowers, Lady Mendl and Millicent Rogers.

Schiaparelli also designed clothes for film and the theater. Her work appeared in more than 30 movies over the course of her career, most notably in Every Day’s a Holiday, starring Mae West, Moulin Rouge and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Schiaparelli discontinued her couture business in 1951 and closed her design house three years later, but continued to work in fashion, designing accessories and, later, wigs. In 1954, she released an autobiography, Shocking Life.

Schiaparelli died on November 13, 1973, in Paris, France. In the decades since her death, Schiaparelli has continued to be regarded as a giant in the fashion world. In 2012, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art featured her work, along with that of Italian designer Miuccia Prada, in a major exhibition.

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