1.
Lower East Side
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The Lower East Side is roughly bounded by the Bowery to the west, East Houston Street to the north, the F. D. R. Drive to the east and Canal Street to the south, the western boundary below Grand Street veers east off of the Bowery to approximately Essex Street. The neighborhood is bordered in the south and west by Chinatown – which extends north to roughly Grand Street, in the west by Nolita and in the north by the East Village. Historically, the Lower East Side referred to the area alongside the East River from about the Manhattan Bridge and Canal Street up to 14th Street and it included areas known today as East Village, Alphabet City, Chinatown, Bowery, Little Italy, and NoLIta. Parts of the East Village are still known as Loisaida, a Latino pronunciation of Lower East Side, Avenue C is known directly as Loisaida and is home to the Loisaida Festival every summer. Their main trail took approximately the route of Broadway, one encampment in the Lower East Side area, near Corlears Hook was called Rechtauck or Naghtogack. Around these farms were a number of enclaves of free or half-free Africans, one of the largest of these was located along the modern Bowery between Prince Street and Astor Place. These black farmers were some of the earliest settlers of the area, gradually, during the 17th century, there was an overall consolidation of the boweries and farms into larger parcels, and much of the Lower East side was then part of the Delancy farm. James Delanceys pre-Revolutionary farm east of post road leading from the city survives in the names Delancey Street, on the modern map of Manhattan, the Delancey farm is represented in the grid of streets from Division Street north to Houston Street. In response to the pressures of a city, Delancey began to survey streets in the southern part of the West Farm in the 1760s. The point of land on the East River now called Corlears Hook was also called Corlaers Hook under Dutch and British rule, and briefly Crown Point during British occupation in the Revolution. It was named after the schoolmaster Jacobus van Corlaer, who settled on this plantation that in 1638 was called by a Europeanized version of its Lenape name, Nechtans or Nechtanc. Corlaer sold the plantation to Wilhelmus Hendrickse Beekman, founder of the Beekman family of New York, the projection into the East River that retained Corlaers name was an important landmark for navigators for 300 years. On older maps and documents it is usually spelled Corlaers Hook, in the course of the 19th century they came to be called hookers. In 1833, Corlears Hook was the location of some of the first tenements built in New York City, the original location of Corlears Hook is now obscured by shoreline landfill. It was near the east end of the present pedestrian bridge over the FDR Drive near Cherry Street, the name is preserved in Corlears Hook Park at the intersection of Jackson and Cherry Streets along the East River Drive. The bulk of immigrants who came to New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came to the Lower East Side, moving into crowded tenements there. By the 1840s, large numbers of German immigrants settled in the area, later, more radical artists such as the Beat poets and writers were drawn to the neighborhood – especially the parts which later became the East Village – by the inexpensive housing and cheap food
2.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
3.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
4.
Broadway theatre
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Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
5.
Academy Award for Best Actress
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The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of an actress who has delivered a performance in a leading role while working within the film industry. The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Janet Gaynor receiving the award for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise. Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the branch of AMPAS. In the first three years of the awards, actresses were nominated as the best in their categories, at that time, all of their work during the qualifying period was listed after the award. The following year, this unwieldy and confusing system was replaced by the current system in which an actress is nominated for a performance in a single film. Starting with the 9th ceremony held in 1937, the category was officially limited to five nominations per year, one actress has been nominated posthumously, Jeanne Eagels. Only three film characters have been nominated more than once in this category, elizabeth I of England, Leslie Crosbie in The Letter, and Esther Blodgett in A Star is Born. Six women on the list have received an Honorary Academy Award for their acting, they are Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Pickford, Deborah Kerr, Gena Rowlands, since its inception, the award has been given to 74 actresses. Katharine Hepburn has won the most awards in this category, with four Oscars, meryl Streep, who has a total of 20 Oscar nominations, has been nominated in this category on 16 occasions, resulting in two awards. As of the 2017 ceremony, Emma Stone is the most recent winner in category for her role as Mia Dolan in La La Land. In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of release in Los Angeles County. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31, for the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1,1932 to December 31,1933
6.
Yiddish
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Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized alphabet based on the Hebrew script, the earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז or טײַטש, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון, distinguishing it from לשון־קדש, the term Yiddish, short for Yiddish-Teitsch, did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was commonly called Jewish, especially in non-Jewish contexts. Modern Yiddish has two major forms, Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern, Mideastern, and Northeastern dialects, Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern, Midwestern, and Northwestern dialects, the term Yiddish is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with Jewish, to designate attributes of Ashkenazi culture. Prior to the Holocaust, there were over 10 million speakers of Yiddish, 85% of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, assimilation following World War II further decreased the use of Yiddish both among survivors and Yiddish-speakers from other countries. However, the number of speakers is increasing in global Hasidic communities, the established view is that, as with other Jewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. Exactly what German base lies behind the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed, both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in the mid-1950s. In Weinreichs view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, recent linguistic research has finessed, contested, or challenged the Weinreich model, providing alternative approaches to the origins of Yiddish. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base, the two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East, wexlers model has met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Alternative theories recognize the extent of Yiddishs Germanic vocabulary. Ashkenaz was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate, in what is now the westernmost part of Germany and its geographic extent did not coincide with the German principalities of the time, and it included northern France. Ashkenaz bordered on the inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardim or Spanish Jews
7.
Jewish National Fund
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The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a non-profit organization, by 2007, it owned 13% of the total land in Israel. Since its inception, the JNF says it has planted over 240 million trees in Israel and it has also built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres of land and established more than 1,000 parks. In 2002, the JNF was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement and special contribution to society, the JNF was founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901 with Theodor Herzls support based on the proposal of a German Jewish mathematician, Zvi Hermann Schapira. Early land purchases were completed in Judea and the Lower Galilee, in 1909, the JNF played a central role in the founding of Tel Aviv. The establishment of the “Olive Tree Fund” marked the beginning of Diaspora support of afforestation efforts, the Blue Box has been part of the JNF since its inception, symbolizing the partnership between Israel and the Diaspora. In the period between the two wars, about one million of these blue and white tin collection boxes could be found in Jewish homes throughout the world. From 1902 until the late 1940s, the JNF sold JNF stamps to raise money, for a brief period in May 1948, JNF stamps were used as postage stamps during the transition from Palestine to Israel. The first parcel of land,200 dunams east of Hadera, was received as a gift from the Russian Zionist leader Isaac Leib Goldberg of Vilnius, in 1904 and 1905, the JNF purchased land plots near the Sea of Galilee and at Ben Shemen. In 1921, JNF land holdings reached 25,000 acres, at the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres of land housing 108 Jewish communities. In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land, JNF holdings by the end of the British Mandate period amounted to 936 km². By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the held by Jews in the region. By the eve of statehood, the JNF had acquired a total of 936,000 dunums of land, most of the JNFs activities during the Mandatory period were closely associated with Yossef Weitz, the head of its settlement department. From the beginning, JNFs policy was to lease land long-term rather than sell it, after Israels establishment in 1948, the government began to sell absentee lands to the JNF. On January 27,1949,1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF for the price of I£11 million, another 1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF in October 1950. Over the years questions about the legitimacy of these transactions have been raised, in 1953, the JNF was dissolved and re-organized as an Israeli company under the name Keren Kayemet LeYisrael. In 1960, administration of the held by the JNF-KKL, apart from forested areas, was transferred to a newly formed government agency. The ILA was then responsible for managing some 93% of the land of Israel, all the land managed by the ILA was defined as Israeli lands, it included both land owned by the government and land owned by the JNF-KKL
8.
Sunnyside, Queens
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Sunnyside is a upper-middle-class neighborhood in the Western portion of the New York City borough of Queens. It shares borders with Hunters Point and Long Island City to the west, Astoria to the north, Woodside to the east, the neighborhood is part of Queens Community District 2, served by Queens Community Board 2. The name Sunnyside originates with the Bragraw family, French Huguenots who had purchased the land in 1713, Sunnyside was a rural hamlet mostly consisting of small farms and marshland. It was incorporated into Long Island City in 1870, and developed into a community after the Queensboro Bridge was completed in 1909. A large portion of the neighborhood is six-story apartment buildings constructed during the 1920s and 1930s, each private residence has a small front garden facing the street and a private garden in the rear. The rental units in the two- and three-family houses enjoy private terraces overlooking the gardens. There are two configurations, the condition and the mews condition, at the edges of the community some homes simply line the street. Homes in the courtyard blocks enclose a courtyard that was designated a common, landscaped. Each homeowner actually owned, and paid taxes on, the part of the common in the block and lot, the mews houses face a common front court and back on alleys, each mews house also has a private rear yard. This model allowed for denser development, while also providing ample open/green-space amenities. Clarence Stein and Henry Wright served as the architects and planners for this development. As an amenity for the residents, the City Housing Corporation reserved lots on the edge of the development abutting the railroad yards for a private park. This is one of two private parks in the city, the other being Gramercy Park. These well-planned garden homes are now listed as a historic district, the project grew out of discussions in the early 1920s about housing and planning, Lewis Mumford was a leading participant. In the early years of the Great Depression, nearly 60 percent of the residents lost their homes to foreclosure and those difficult years saw organized resistance by residents who forcefully resisted efforts by city marshals to evict families. Those covenants lapsed in the mid-1960s, and some rushed to claim their property. With that designation came rules protecting the inner courts and landscaping, and prohibiting driveways and curbcuts, rear sheds, the Sunnyside Gardens Historic District is a national historic district that includes 66 contributing buildings and 12 contributing sites. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, in 2003, a grassroots movement started to request designation as a New York City Historic District, in response to lack of protection for the historic character of the homes in the neighborhood
9.
Mercury Theatre
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The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures, the Mercury also released promptbooks and phonographic recordings of four Shakespeare works for use in schools. After a series of acclaimed Broadway productions, the Mercury Theatre progressed into its most popular incarnation as The Mercury Theatre on the Air. The radio series included one of the most notable and infamous radio broadcasts of all time, The War of the Worlds, the Mercury Theatre on the Air produced live radio dramas in 1938–1940 and again briefly in 1946. In addition to Welles, the Mercury players included Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, Martin Gabel, Norman Lloyd, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Stewart, Much of the troupe would later appear in Welless films at RKO, particularly Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. In 1935, John Houseman, director of the Negro Theatre Unit in New York, invited his recent collaborator, 20-year-old Orson Welles and their first production was an adaptation of William Shakespeares Macbeth with an entirely African-American cast. The play opened April 14,1936, at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem and was received rapturously and that production was followed by an adaption of the farce Horse Eats Hat and, in 1937, Marlowes Doctor Faustus and Marc Blitzsteins socialist musical The Cradle Will Rock. The latter received much publicity when on the eve of its preview the theatre was padlocked by the WPA, Welles invited the waiting audience to walk several blocks to a neighboring theatre where the show was performed without sets or costumes. Blitzstein played an upright piano while the cast, barred from taking the stage by their union, sat in the audience and rose from their seats to sing. Welles and Houseman broke with the Federal Theatre Project in August 1937 and founded their own repertory company, the name was inspired by the title of the iconoclastic magazine, The American Mercury. To be sure, this generated a bit of resentment among his collaborators. However, in a profound sense, that credit is, in fact. The concepts that animated each of them originated with him and, Welles and Houseman secured the Comedy Theatre, a 687-seat Broadway theatre at 110 West 41st Street in New York City, and reopened it as the Mercury Theatre. It was the venue for all their productions from November 1937 through November 1938. The Mercury Theatre began with a groundbreaking, critically acclaimed adaption of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar that evoked comparison to contemporary Fascist Italy and it premiered on Broadway on November 11,1937. The production moved from the Mercury Theatre to the larger National Theatre on January 24,1938 and it ran through May 28,1938, for a total of 157 performances. At the National Theatre, Polly Rowles took the role of Calpurnia, from January 20,1938, a roadshow version of Caesar with a different cast toured the United States. The company included Tom Powers as Brutus, and Edmond OBrien as Marc Antony, the Mercury Theatres second production was a staging of Thomas Dekkers Elizabethan comedy The Shoemakers Holiday, which attracted unanimous raves again
10.
Orson Welles
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George Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941. It reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was actually occurring, although some contemporary sources claim these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety. His first film was Citizen Kane, which he co-wrote, produced, directed, Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He has been praised as the ultimate auteur, Welles followed up Citizen Kane with critically acclaimed films including The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and Touch of Evil in 1958. Although these three are his most acclaimed films, critics have argued other works of his, such as The Lady from Shanghai and Chimes at Midnight, are underappreciated. Known for his voice, Welles was an actor in radio and film, a Shakespearean stage actor. George Orson Welles was born May 6,1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Head Welles and he was named after his paternal great-grandfather, influential Kenosha attorney Orson S. Head, and his brother George Head. Despite his familys affluence, Welles encountered hardship in childhood and his parents separated and moved to Chicago in 1919. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic. Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital May 10,1924, the Gordon String Quartet, which had made its first appearance at her home in 1921, played at Beatrices funeral. After his mothers death Welles ceased pursuing music and it was decided that he would spend the summer with the Watson family at a private art colony in Wyoming, New York, established by Lydia Avery Coonley Ward. There he played and became friends with the children of the Aga Khan, Welles briefly attended public school before his alcoholic father left business altogether and took him along on his travels to Jamaica and the Far East. When they returned they settled in a hotel in Grand Detour, Illinois, when the hotel burned down, Welles and his father took to the road again. During the three years that Orson lived with his father, some observers wondered who took care of whom, in some ways, he was never really a young boy, you know, said Roger Hill, who became Welless teacher and lifelong friend. Welles briefly attended school in Madison, Wisconsin, enrolled in the fourth grade. At Todd School, Welles came under the influence of Roger Hill, Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged theatrical experiments and productions there, Todd provided Welles with many valuable experiences, wrote critic Richard France
11.
John Houseman
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He is perhaps best known for his role as Professor Charles W. Kingsfield in the film The Paper Chase, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He reprised his role as Kingsfield in the subsequent television series adaptation of The Paper Chase, Houseman was also known for his commercials for the brokerage firm Smith Barney. He had a distinctive Mid-Atlantic English accent, in common with many actors of his generation, Houseman was born in Bucharest, Romania, on September 22,1902, the son of May and Georges Haussmann, who ran a grain business. His mother was British, from a Christian family of Welsh and Irish descent and his father was an Alsatian-born Jew. He became a United States citizen in 1943, Houseman died at age 86 of spinal cancer on October 31,1988 at his home in Malibu, California. He also directed Lute Song, The Country Girl, and Don Juan in Hell, Houseman himself worked as a speculator in the international grain markets, only turning to the theater following the 1929 stock market crash. He received his first opportunity of any note in 1933 when composer Virgil Thomson recruited him to direct Four Saints in Three Acts, Welles consented and, after preliminary conversations, agreed to leave the play he was in after a single night to take the lead in Housemans production. Panic opened at the Imperial Theatre on March 15,1935, among the cast was Housemans ex-wife, Zita Johann, who had co-starred with Boris Karloff three years earlier in Universals The Mummy. In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration put unemployed theatre performers, the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project was headed by Rose McClendon, a well-known black actress, and Houseman, a theatre producer. The incidental music was composed by Virgil Thomson, the play premiered at the Lafayette Theatre on April 14,1936, to enthusiastic reviews and remained sold out for each of its nightly performances. The play was regarded by critics and patrons as an enormous, if controversial, after 10 months with the Negro Theater Project, however, Houseman felt he was faced with the dilemma of risking his future. In 1936, the two were running a WPA unit in midtown Manhattan for classic productions called Project No.891 and their first production would be Christopher Marlowes Tragical History of Dr. Faustus which Welles directed, also playing the title role. In June 1937, Project No.891 would produce their most controversial work with The Cradle Will Rock, written by Marc Blitzstein the musical was about Larry Foreman, a worker in Steeltown, which is run by the boss, Mister Mister. The show was thought to have had left-wing and unionist sympathies, shortly before the show was to open, FTP officials in Washington announced that no productions would open until after July 1,1937, the beginning of the new fiscal year. In his memoir, Run-Through, Houseman wrote about the surrounding the opening night at the Maxine Elliott Theatre. All the performers had been enjoined not to perform on stage for the production when it opened on July 14,1937, the cast and crew left their government-owned theatre and walked 20 blocks to another theatre, with the audience following. No one knew what to expect, when they got there Blitzstein himself was at the piano, one of the non-professional performers, Olive Stanton, who played the part of Moll, the prostitute, stood up in the audience, and began singing her part. All the other performers, in turn, stood up for their parts, thus the oratorio version of the show was born
12.
Village Vanguard
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The Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at Seventh Avenue South in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22,1935, by Max Gordon, at first, it featured many forms of music, such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957. For years prior to 1935, the Vanguard’s proprietor, Max Gordon and his first attempt at a Village Vanguard opened in 1934 on Charles Street and Greenwich Avenue. Gordon intended for the Vanguard to be a forum for poets and artists as well as a site for musical performances. Yet, due to insufficient facilities, Gordon was refused a license from the police department and was unable to create the club that he originally envisioned. ”In 1934, Gordon moved his business and purchased the Golden Triangle. The Golden Triangle, first opened its doors in 1935, the Golden Triangles basement facility structure resembled that of an isosceles triangle. After purchasing the property, Gordon changed the name of the club to the Village Vanguard, like its prototype on Charles Street, the Vanguard was initially dedicated to poetry readings and folk music. Painters would go there to have discussions regarding the Spanish Civil War, political posters dotted the walls, enhancing the atmosphere of intensity and discourse. The club also had a rich history, with comedians like Phil Leeds performing there. Yet throughout the thirties and forties, amidst the neo-bohemian culture that flourished in the Village, “The biggest reason my pals and I went to the Vanguard, though, was because there were jazz jam sessions in the afternoons on Sundays. You could go hear Lester Young, Ben Webster, all the greatest jazz musicians for fifty cents at the door, or something like that. ”Even though jazz was not yet the main attraction at the club, the Vanguard was still a haven for the then established small group swing idiom. In the 1930s and 1940s, performers of the standing of Sidney Bechet, Una Mae Carlisle, Art Hodes, and Mary Lou Williams performed at the Vanguard. The wife of Max Gordon, Lorraine Gordon, has commented on the growth of jazz at the club, stating “in time, Max began to book acts, many proved to be high-caliber jazzmen. ”In 1940, Roy Eldridge performed at the Vanguard. His virtuosic performance coupled with his dedicated following presented the possibility that jazz sets could be at the top of the bill, as modern jazz developed in the 1940s, small group sets began to dominate the Vanguard scene. The maturation of jazz at the Vanguard can be attributed to the growing interest in and identification with the music among college students. In 1940, a resident trio was formed that included the pianist Eddie Heywood, along with Zutty Singleton, mirroring the culture in the Village, the jazz scene at the Vanguard was steadily growing. By 1957, one writes, “Gordon reversed his policy, putting jazz at the top of the bill. Thus the Vanguard booked Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, the story of Monk’s introduction to the Vanguard began with the first ever encounter between Max and Lorraine
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