University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U. S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-system public higher education plan, which includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System; the University of California was founded on March 23, 1868, operated temporarily in Oakland before moving to its new campus in Berkeley in 1873. In March 1951, the University of California began to reorganize itself into something distinct from its first campus at Berkeley, with Robert Gordon Sproul remaining in place as the first systemwide President and Clark Kerr becoming the first Chancellor of UC Berkeley. However, the 1951 reorganization was stalled by resistance from Sproul and his allies, it was not until Kerr succeeded Sproul as President that UC was able to evolve into a true university system from 1957 to 1960. In the 21st century, the University of California has 10 campuses, a combined student body of 251,700 students, 21,200 faculty members, 144,000 staff members and over 1.86 million living alumni, as governed by a semi-autonomous Board of Regents.
Its tenth and newest campus in Merced opened in fall 2005. Nine campuses enroll graduate students. In addition, the UC Hastings College of Law, located in San Francisco, is affiliated with UC, but other than sharing its name is autonomous from the rest of the system; the University of California manages or co-manages three national laboratories for the U. S. Department of Energy: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Collectively, the colleges and alumni of the University of California make it the most comprehensive and advanced postsecondary educational system in the world, responsible for nearly $50 billion per year of economic impact. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won at least 62 Nobel Prizes as of 2017. In 1849, the state of California ratified its first constitution, which contained the express objective of creating a complete educational system including a state university.
Taking advantage of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, the California Legislature established an Agricultural and Mechanical Arts College in 1866. However, it existed only as a placeholder to secure federal land-grant funds. Meanwhile, Congregational minister Henry Durant, an alumnus of Yale, had established the private Contra Costa Academy, on June 20, 1853, in Oakland, California; the initial site was bounded by Twelfth and Fourteenth Streets and Harrison and Franklin Streets in downtown Oakland. In turn, the Academy's trustees were granted a charter in 1855 for a College of California, though the College continued to operate as a college preparatory school until it added college-level courses in 1860; the College's trustees and supporters believed in the importance of a liberal arts education, but ran into a lack of interest in liberal arts colleges on the American frontier. In November 1857, the College's trustees began to acquire various parcels of land facing the Golden Gate in what is now Berkeley for a future planned campus outside of Oakland.
But first, they needed to secure the College's water rights by buying a large farm to the east. In 1864, they organized the College Homestead Association, which borrowed $35,000 to purchase the land, plus another $33,000 to purchase 160 acres of land to the south of the future campus; the Association subdivided the latter parcel and started selling lots with the hope it could raise enough money to repay its lenders and create a new college town. But sales of new homesteads fell short. Governor Frederick Low favored the establishment of a state university based upon the University of Michigan plan, thus in one sense may be regarded as the founder of the University of California. At the College of California's 1867 commencement exercises, where Low was present, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. criticized Californians for creating a state polytechnic school instead of a real university. That same day, Low first suggested a merger of the already-functional College of California with the nonfunctional state college, went on to participate in the ensuing negotiations.
On October 9, 1867, the College's trustees reluctantly agreed to join forces with the state college to their mutual advantage, but under one condition—that there not be an "Agricultural and Mechanical Arts College", but a complete university, within which the assets of the College of California would be used to create a College of Letters. Accordingly, the Organic Act, establishing the University of California, was introduced as a bill by Assemblyman John W. Dwinelle on March 5, 1868, after it was duly passed by both houses of the state legislature, it was signed into state law by Governor Henry H. Haight on March 23, 1868. However, as constituted, the new University was not an actual merger of the two colleges, but was an new institution which inherited certain objectives and assets from each of them; the University
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was an Italian American film director and writer who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified."Capra became one of America's most influential directors during the 1930s, winning three Academy Awards for Best Director from six nominations, along with three other Oscar wins from nine nominations in other categories. Among his leading films were It Happened One Night, You Can't Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. During World War II, Capra served in the U. S. Army Signal produced propaganda films, such as the Why We Fight series. After World War II, Capra's career declined as his films, such as It's a Wonderful Life, performed poorly when they were first released. In ensuing decades, however, It's a Wonderful Life and other Capra films were revisited favorably by critics.
Outside of directing, Capra was active in the film industry, engaging in various political and social issues. He served as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, worked alongside the Writers Guild of America, was head of the Directors Guild of America. Capra was born Francesco Rosario Capra in a village near Palermo, Sicily, he was the youngest of seven children of Salvatore Capra, a fruit grower, the former Rosaria "Serah" Nicolosi. Capra's family was Roman Catholic; the name "Capra", notes Capra's biographer Joseph McBride, represents his family's closeness to the land, means "goat". He notes that the English word "capricious" derives from it, "evoking the animal's skittish temperament", adding that "the name neatly expresses two aspects of Frank Capra's personality: emotionalism and obstinacy."In 1903, when he was five, Capra emigrated to the United States with his family, who traveled in one of the steerage compartments of the steamship, the cheapest way to book passage.
For Capra, the journey, which took 13 days, remained in his mind for the rest of his life as one of his worst experiences: You're all together—you have no privacy. You have a cot. Few people have trunks or anything that takes up space, they have just what they can carry in a bag. Nobody takes their clothes off. There's no ventilation, it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you could be. Capra remembers the ship's arrival in New York Harbor, where he saw "a statue of a great lady, taller than a church steeple, holding a torch above the land we were about to enter", he recalls his father's exclamation at the sight: Ciccio, look! Look at that! That's the greatest light since the star of Bethlehem! That's the light of freedom! Remember that The family settled in Los Angeles's East Side, which Capra described in his autobiography as an Italian "ghetto". Capra's father worked as a fruit picker and young Capra sold newspapers after school for 10 years, until he graduated from high school.
Instead of working after graduating, as his parents wanted, he enrolled in college. He worked through college at the California Institute of Technology, playing banjo at nightclubs and taking odd jobs, which included working at the campus laundry facility, waiting tables, cleaning engines at a local power plant, he studied chemical engineering and graduated in the spring of 1918. Capra wrote that his college education had "changed his whole viewpoint on life from the viewpoint of an alley rat to the viewpoint of a cultured person". Soon after graduating college, Capra was commissioned in the United States Army as a second lieutenant, having completed campus ROTC. In the Army, he taught mathematics to artillerymen at San Francisco, his father died during the war in an accident. In the Army, Capra contracted Spanish flu and was medically discharged to return home to live with his mother, he became a naturalized U. S. citizen in 1920, taking the name Frank Russell Capra. Living at home with his siblings and mother, Capra was the only family member with a college education, yet he was the only one who remained chronically unemployed.
After a year without work, seeing how his siblings had steady jobs, he felt he was a failure, which led to bouts of depression and abdominal pains discovered to have been an undiagnosed burst appendix. After recovering at home, Capra moved out and spent the next few years living in flophouses in San Francisco and hopping freight trains, wandering the Western United States. To support himself, he took odd jobs on farms, as a movie extra, playing poker, selling local oil well stocks. In his early twenties, Capra had to undergo a circumcision due to recurring bouts of STIs, which caused severe damage to his sex life, an affliction that lasted until his twilight years, it was during this time that the 24-year-old Capra directed a 32-minute documentary film titled La Visita Dell'Incrociatore Italiano Libya a San Francisco. Not only did it document the visit of the Italian naval vessel Libya to San Francisco, but the reception given to the crew of the ship by San Francisco's L'Italia Virtus Club, now known as the San Francisco Italian Athletic Club.
At 25, Capra took a job selling books published by American philosopher, Elbert Hubbard. Capra recalled that he "hated being a peasant, being a scrounging new kid trapped in the Sicilian
Louise Nevelson
Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century. Nevelson learned English at school. By the early 1930s she was attending art classes at the Art Students League of New York, in 1941 she had her first solo exhibition. A student of Hans Hofmann and Chaim Gross, Nevelson experimented with early conceptual art using found objects, dabbled in painting and printing before dedicating her lifework to sculpture. Created out of wood, her sculptures appear puzzle-like, with multiple intricately cut pieces placed into wall sculptures or independently standing pieces 3-D. One unique feature of her work is that her figures are painted in monochromatic black or white. A figure in the international art scene, Nevelson was showcased at the 31st Venice Biennale, her work is seen in major collections in corporations. Nevelson remains one of the most important figures in 20th-century American sculpture.
Louise Nevelson was born Leah Berliawsky in 1899 in Perislav, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire, to Minna Sadie and Isaac Berliawsky, a contractor and lumber merchant. Though the family lived comfortably, Nevelson's relatives had begun to leave the Russian Empire for America in the 1880s; the Berliawskys had to stay behind, as the youngest brother, had to care for his parents. While still in Europe, Minna gave birth to two of Nevelson's siblings: Anita. On his mother's death, Isaac moved to the United States in 1902. After he left and the children moved to the Kiev area. According to family lore, young Nevelson was so forlorn about her father's departure that she became mute for six months. In 1905, Minna and the children emigrated to the United States, where they joined Isaac in Rockland, Maine. Isaac struggled to establish himself there, suffering from depression while the family settled into their new home, he worked as a woodcutter before opening a junkyard. His work as a lumberjack made wood a consistent presence in the family household, a material that would figure prominently in Nevelson's work.
He became a successful lumberyard owner and realtor. The family had another child, Lillian, in 1906. Nevelson was close to her mother, who suffered from depression, a condition believed to be brought on by the family's migration from Russia and their minority status as a Jewish family living in Maine. Minna overly compensated for this, dressing herself and the children up in clothing "regarded as sophisticated in the Old Country", her mother wore flamboyant outfits with heavy make-up. Nevelson's first experience of art was at the age of nine at the Rockland Public Library, where she saw a plaster cast of Joan of Arc. Shortly thereafter she decided to study art, taking drawing in high school, where she served as basketball captain, she painted watercolor interiors, in which furniture appeared molecular in structure, rather like her professional work. Female figures made frequent appearances. In school, she practiced her second language, as Yiddish was spoken at home. Unhappy with her family's economic status, language differences, the religious discrimination of the community, her school, Nevelson set her sights on moving to high school in New York.
She graduated from high school in 1918, began working as a stenographer at a local law office. There she met Bernard Nevelson, co-owner with his brother Charles of the Nevelson Brothers Company, a shipping business. Bernard introduced her to his brother, Charles and Louise Nevelson were married in June 1920 in a Jewish wedding at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. Having satisfied her parent's hope that she would marry into a wealthy family and her new husband moved to New York City, where she began to study painting, singing and dancing, she became pregnant, in 1922 she gave birth to her son Myron, who grew up to be a sculptor. Nevelson studied art, despite the disapproval of her parents-in-law, she commented: "My husband's family was refined. Within that circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven."In 1924 the family moved to Mount Vernon, New York, a popular Jewish area of Westchester County. Nevelson was upset with the move, which removed her from her artistic environment.
During the winter of 1932–1933 she separated from Charles, unwilling to becoming the socialite wife he expected her to be. She never sought financial support from Charles, in 1941 the couple divorced. Starting in 1929, Nevelson studied art full-time under Kenneth Hayes Miller and Kimon Nicolaides at the Art Students League. Nevelson credited an exhibition of Noh kimonos at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a catalyst for her to study art further. In 1931 she sent her son Mike to live with family and went to Europe, paying for the trip by selling a diamond bracelet that her now ex-husband had given her on the occasion of Mike's birth. In Munich she studied with Hans Hofmann before visiting France. Returning to New York in 1932 she once again studied under Hofmann, serving as a guest instructor at the Art Students League, she met Diego Rivera in 1933 and worked as his assistant on his mural Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Plaza. The two had an affair which caused a rift between Nevelson and Rivera's wife, Frida Kahlo, an artist Nevelson admired.
Shortly thereafter, Nevelso
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university in Los Angeles. It became the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the third-oldest undergraduate campus of the 10-campus University of California system, it offers 337 graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. UCLA enrolls about 31,000 undergraduate and 13,000 graduate students and had 119,000 applicants for Fall 2016, including transfer applicants, making the school the most applied-to of any American university; the university is organized into six undergraduate colleges, seven professional schools, four professional health science schools. The undergraduate colleges are the College of Science; as of 2017, 24 Nobel laureates, three Fields Medalists, five Turing Award winners, two Chief Scientists of the U. S. Air Force have been affiliated with UCLA as researchers, or alumni. Among the current faculty members, 55 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 28 to the National Academy of Engineering, 39 to the Institute of Medicine, 124 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The university was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1974. UCLA is considered one of the country's Public Ivies, meaning that it is a public university thought to provide a quality of education comparable with that of the Ivy League. In 2018, US News & World Report named UCLA the best public university in the United States. UCLA student-athletes compete as the Bruins in the Pac-12 Conference; the Bruins have won 126 national championships, including 116 NCAA team championships, more than any other university except Stanford, who has won 117. UCLA student-athletes and staff won 251 Olympic medals: 126 gold, 65 silver, 60 bronze. UCLA student-athletes competed in every Olympics since 1920 with one exception and won a gold medal in every Olympics the U. S. participated in since 1932. In March 1881, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the California State Normal School in downtown Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California.
The Los Angeles branch of the California State Normal School opened on August 29, 1882, on what is now the site of the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library system. The facility included an elementary school where teachers-in-training could practice their technique with children; that elementary school is related to the present day UCLA Lab School. In 1887, the branch campus became independent and changed its name to Los Angeles State Normal School. In 1914, the school moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood. In 1917, UC Regent Edward Augustus Dickson, the only regent representing the Southland at the time, Ernest Carroll Moore, Director of the Normal School, began to lobby the State Legislature to enable the school to become the second University of California campus, after UC Berkeley, they met resistance from UC Berkeley alumni, Northern California members of the state legislature, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California from 1899 to 1919, who were all vigorously opposed to the idea of a southern campus.
However, David Prescott Barrows, the new President of the University of California, did not share Wheeler's objections. On May 23, 1919, the Southern Californians' efforts were rewarded when Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law, which transformed the Los Angeles Normal School into the Southern Branch of the University of California; the same legislation added the College of Letters and Science. The Southern Branch campus opened on September 15 of that year, offering two-year undergraduate programs to 250 Letters and Science students and 1,250 students in the Teachers College, under Moore's continued direction. Under University of California President William Wallace Campbell, enrollment at the Southern Branch expanded so that by the mid-1920s the institution was outgrowing the 25 acre Vermont Avenue location; the Regents searched for a new location and announced their selection of the so-called "Beverly Site"—just west of Beverly Hills—on March 21, 1925 edging out the panoramic hills of the still-empty Palos Verdes Peninsula.
After the athletic teams entered the Pacific Coast conference in 1926, the Southern Branch student council adopted the nickname "Bruins", a name offered by the student council at UC Berkeley. In 1927, the Regents renamed the Southern Branch the University of California at Los Angeles. In the same year, the state broke ground in Westwood on land sold for $1 million, less than one-third its value, by real estate developers Edwin and Harold Janss, for whom the Janss Steps are named; the campus in Westwood opened to students in 1929. The original four buildings were the College Library, Royce Hall, the Physics-Biology Building, the Chemistry Building, arrayed around a quadrangular courtyard on the 400 acre campus; the first undergraduate classes on the new campus were held in 1929 with 5,500 students. After lobbying by alumni, faculty and community leaders, UCLA was permitted to award the master's degree in 1933, the doctorate in 1936, against continued resistance from UC Berkeley. A timeline of the history can be found on its website, as well
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson was an American singer, one of the most celebrated of the twentieth century. Music critic Alan Blyth said: "Her voice was a rich, vibrant contralto of intrinsic beauty." She performed in concert and recital in major music venues and with famous orchestras throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965. Although offered roles with many important European opera companies, Anderson declined, as she had no training in acting, she preferred to perform in recital only. She did, perform opera arias within her concerts and recitals, she made many recordings that reflected her broad performance repertoire, which ranged from concert literature to lieder to opera to traditional American songs and spirituals. Between 1940 and 1965 the German-American pianist Franz Rupp was her permanent accompanist. Anderson became an important figure in the struggle for black artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, DC.
The incident placed Anderson into the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the capital, she sang before an integrated crowd of a radio audience in the millions. Anderson continued to break barriers for black artists in the United States, becoming the first black person, American or otherwise, to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 7, 1955, her performance as Ulrica in Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera at the Met was the only time she sang an opera role on stage. Anderson worked for several years as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and as a "goodwill ambassadress" for the United States Department of State, giving concerts all over the world, she participated in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, singing at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Anderson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963, the Congressional Gold Medal in 1977, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, the National Medal of Arts in 1986, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991. Marian Anderson was born on February 27, 1897, in Philadelphia, to John Berkley Anderson and the former Annie Delilah Rucker, her father sold ice and coal at the Reading Terminal in downtown Philadelphia and opened a small liquor business as well. Prior to her marriage, Anderson's mother had attended the Virginia Seminary and College in Lynchburg and had worked as a schoolteacher in Virginia; as she did not obtain a degree, Annie Anderson was unable to teach in Philadelphia under a law, applied only to black teachers and not white ones. She therefore earned an income caring for small children. Marian was the eldest of the three Anderson children, her two sisters and Ethel became singers. Ethel married James DePreist and their late son, James Anderson DePreist was a noted conductor.
Anderson's parents were both devout Christians and the whole family was active in the Union Baptist Church in South Philadelphia. Marian's aunt Mary, her father's sister, was active in the church's musical life and, noticing her niece's talent, convinced her to join the junior church choir at the age of six. In that role she got to perform solos and duets with her aunt Mary. Marian was taken by her aunt to concerts at local churches, the YMCA, benefit concerts, other community music events throughout the city. Anderson credited her aunt's influence as the reason. Beginning as young as six, her aunt arranged for Marian to sing for local functions where she was paid 25 or 50 cents for singing a few songs; as she got into her early teens, Marian began to make as much as five dollars for singing. At the age of 10, Marian joined the People's Chorus under the direction of singer Emma Azalia Hackley, where she was given solos. On March 21, 1919, during a March Festival of Music, she was a lead singer in a concert by the Robert Curtis Ogden Band and Choral Society at Egyptian Hall in Philadelphia's John Wanamaker department store.
When Anderson was 12, her father was accidentally struck on the head while at work at the Reading Terminal, just a few weeks before Christmas of 1909. He died of heart failure a month at age 34. Marian and her family moved into the home of her father's parents, Grandpa Benjamin and Grandma Isabella Anderson, her grandfather had experienced emancipation in the 1860s. He was the first of the Anderson family to settle in South Philadelphia, when Anderson moved into his home the two became close, he died just a year. Anderson attended Stanton Grammar School, graduating in the summer of 1912, her family, could not afford to send her to high school, nor could they pay for any music lessons. Still, Anderson continued to perform wherever she could and learn from anyone, willing to teach her. Throughout her teenage years, she remained active in her church's musical activities, now involved in the adult choir, she joined the Baptists' Young People's Union and the Camp Fire Girls which provided her with some limited musical opportunities.
The directors of the People's Chorus and the pastor of her church, Reverend Wesl
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, radio and film actor, violinist. Recognized as a leading 20th-century American entertainer, Benny portrayed his character as a miser, playing his violin badly, claiming to be 39 years of age, regardless of his actual age. Benny was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!" His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny was born in Chicago and grew up in nearby Waukegan, Illinois, he was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky and Emma Sachs Kubelsky, sometimes called "Naomi." Meyer was a saloon owner and a haberdasher who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. Benny began studying violin, an instrument that became his trademark, at the age of 6, his parents hoping for him to become a professional violinist, he loved the instrument, but hated practice.
His music teacher was father of Otto Graham of NFL fame. At 14, Benny was playing in his high school orchestra, he was a dreamer and poor at his studies, was expelled from high school. He did poorly in business school and at attempts to join his father's business. In 1911, he began playing the violin in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week. He was joined on the circuit by a young composer and singer; that same year, Benny was playing in the same theater as the young Marx Brothers. Minnie, their mother, enjoyed Benny's violin playing and invited him to accompany her boys in their act. Benny's parents refused to let their son go on the road at 17, but it was the beginning of his long friendship with the Marx Brothers Zeppo Marx; the next year, Benny formed a vaudeville musical duo with pianist Cora Folsom Salisbury, a buxom 45-year-old divorcée who needed a partner for her act. This angered famous violinist Jan Kubelik, who feared that the young vaudevillian with a similar name would damage his reputation.
Under legal pressure, Benjamin Kubelsky agreed to change his name to Ben K. Benny, sometimes spelled Bennie; when Salisbury left the act, Benny found a new pianist, Lyman Woods, renamed the act "From Grand Opera to Ragtime." They worked together for five years and integrated comedy elements into the show. They reached the "Mecca of Vaudeville," and did not do well. Benny left show business in 1917 to join the United States Navy during World War I, entertained the sailors with his violin playing. One evening, his violin performance was booed by the sailors, so with prompting from fellow sailor and actor Pat O'Brien, he ad-libbed his way out of the jam and left them laughing, he received more comedy spots in the revues and did well, earning a reputation as a comedian and musician. Shortly after the war, Benny developed a one-man act, "Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology", he received legal pressure from Ben Bernie, a "patter-and-fiddle" performer, regarding his name, so he adopted the sailor's nickname of Jack.
By 1921, the fiddle was more of a prop, the low-key comedy took over. Benny had some romantic encounters, including one with dancer Mary Kelly, whose devoutly Catholic family forced her to turn down his proposal because he was Jewish. Benny was introduced to Kelly by Gracie Allen; some years after their split, Kelly resurfaced as a dowdy fat girl and Jack gave her a part in an act of three girls: one homely, one fat, one who couldn't sing. In 1921, Benny accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover seder in Vancouver at the residence where he met 14-year-old Sadie Marks, their first meeting did not go well. They met again in 1926. Jack had not remembered their earlier meeting and fell for her, they married the following year. She was working in the hosiery section of the Hollywood Boulevard branch of the May Company, where Benny courted her. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in a Benny routine, Sadie proved to be a natural comedienne. Adopting the stage name Mary Livingstone, Sadie collaborated with Benny throughout most of his career.
They adopted a daughter, Joan. In 1929 Benny's agent, Sam Lyons, convinced Irving Thalberg, American film producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to watch Benny at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny signed a five-year contract with MGM, where his first role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929; the next movie, Chasing Rainbows, did not do well, after several months Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, Benny grew eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say,'Who cares?'..." Benny had been a minor vaudeville performer before becoming a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was among the most rated programs during its run. Benny's long radio career began on April 6, 1932, when the NBC Commercial Program Department auditioned him for the N. W. Ayer & Son agency and their client, Canada Dry, after which Bertha Brainard, head of the division, said, "We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio and, while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program."
Recalling the experience in 1956, Benny said Ed Sullivan had invited him to guest o
Occidental College
Occidental College is a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887 by clergy and members of the Presbyterian Church, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges on the West Coast. Occidental College is referred to as "Oxy" for short. Occidental College was founded on April 20, 1887, by a group of Presbyterian clergy and laymen, including James George Bell, Lyman Stewart, Thomas Bard; the cornerstone of the school's first building was laid in September 1887 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The college's first term began a year with 27 male and 13 female students, tuition of $50 a year. In 1896, the Boyle Heights building was destroyed by fire; the college temporarily relocated to the old St. Vincent's College campus on Hill Street before a new site was selected in Highland Park in 1898; the college erected three main buildings: the Academy Building, the Stimson Library, the Hall of Arts and Letters. The Highland Park site was bisected by the tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad, was the site of two presidential visits, first by William Howard Taft in 1909 and subsequently by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1911.
In 1909, the Pomona College Board of Trustees suggested a merger between Pomona and Occidental, but the proposal came to nothing. The following year, the college severed formal ties with the Presbyterian Church and became a non-sectarian, non-denominational institution; the small size of the 15-acre campus and the disruption caused by frequent freight trains pushed the college's trustees to find a new location. In 1912, the school began construction of a new campus located in Los Angeles' Eagle Rock neighborhood; the Eagle Rock campus was designed by noted California architect Myron Hunt known as the planner of the California Institute of Technology campus and as designer of the Huntington Library and Art Gallery and the Rose Bowl. That same year, Occidental President John Willis Baer announced the trustees' decision to convert Occidental College into an all-men's institution; however and faculty protested, the idea was abandoned. In 1913, the Occidental College Board of Trustees announced plans to convert the college to a men's school.
The plans were met with widespread backlash from students and faculty. The community outcry garnered national headlines and the board dropped the proposal. Two weeks after Booker T. Washington came to visit Occidental, on March 27, 1914, Swan and Johnson Halls were dedicated at its new Eagle Rock campus. Patterson Field, today one of the oldest collegiate sports stadiums in Los Angeles, was opened in 1916. In April 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I, the college formed a Students Army Training Corps to aid the war effort. Under Occidental President Remsen Bird, the school opened a series of new Hunt-designed buildings, including Clapp Library, Hillside Theatre and a women's dormitory in 1925, Alumni Gymnasium, the Freeman Student Union and a music and speech building; the Delta of California Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was established at Occidental in 1926, at a time when the only other chapters in California were at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Pomona. English novelist Aldous Huxley, who spoke at Occidental's convocation ceremony in the then-new Thorne Hall in 1938, lampooned President Remsen Bird as Dr. Herbert Mulge of Tarzana College in his 1939 novel, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.
Huxley was never again invited back to campus. During World War II, many students left Occidental to fight in the war. In July 1943, the U. S. Navy established a Navy V-12 officer training program on campus that produced hundreds of graduates before it was disbanded at the end of the war in 1945. Occidental President Remsen Bird worked behind the scenes to help Oxy students of Japanese descent continue their education despite mandatory evacuation orders. After having its first Rhodes Scholar, Clarence Spaulding, named in 1908, Oxy seniors John Paden and Aaron Segal were awarded Rhodes Scholarships in 1958. Rhodes scholars Aaron Segal and John Paden were among the 10 Occidental students who participated in Crossroads Africa that year, a forerunner to the Peace Corps that became a national program. In 1969, 42 students were suspended for peacefully protesting military recruiting on campus. One year faculty voted to suspend classes in the wake of the Kent State shootings and America's invasion of Cambodia.
Subsequently, Oxy students wrote 7,000 letters to Washington D. C. protesting U. S. involvement in the war in Southeast Asia. Occidental launched one of the country's first Upward Bound programs in 1966, aimed at increasing the number of low-income, underrepresented high school students who become the first in their family to go to college. In 1969, the school opened its first two co-ed dormitories, two more followed a year later. In 1988, John Brooks Slaughter became Occidental's first black president. Building on faculty and student advocacy and a series of grants the college had received to increase the diversity of the Occidental student body, Slaughter led the process of creating a new mission statement, still used today. Slaughter led the college's community outreach expansion with the creation of the Center for Volunteerism and Community Service, the predecessor for the current Center for Community Based Learning. In November 1990, the college established as a Presbyterian institution but is no longer religiously affili
