1.
Culture of the United States
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The culture of the United States of America is primarily a mix of various European, Native American, African, Asian, and Polynesian cultures. It also has its own social and cultural characteristics, such as dialect, music, arts, social habits, cuisine, the United States of America is an ethnically and racially diverse country as a result of large-scale migration from many countries throughout its history. Its chief early European influences came from English settlers of colonial America during British rule, due to colonial ties with Britain that spread the English language, British culture, legal system and other cultural inheritances, had a formative influence. Other important influences came from parts of Europe, especially Germany. Original elements also play a role, such as Jeffersonian democracy. American culture includes both conservative and liberal elements, scientific and religious competitiveness, political structures, risk taking and free expression, materialist, despite certain consistent ideological principles, American culture has a variety of expressions due to its geographical scale and demographic diversity. The flexibility of U. S. culture and its symbolic nature lead some researchers to categorize American culture as a mythic identity. Many American cultural elements, especially from popular culture, have spread across the globe through modern mass media, the United States has traditionally been thought of as a melting pot. However, beginning in the 1960s and continuing on in the present day, the trends towards cultural diversity, pluralism. Due to the extent of American culture, there are many integrated, the percentage of non-religious people is the highest in the northeastern state of Vermont at 34%, compared to the Bible Belt state of Alabama, where it is 6%. Strong cultural differences have a history in the U. S. with the southern slave society in the antebellum period serving as a prime example. David Hackett Fischer theorizes that the United States is made up today of four regional cultures. According to Fischer, the foundation of American culture was formed from four mass migrations from four different regions of the British Isles by four distinct socio-religious groups. New Englands earliest settlement period occurred between 1629 and 1640 when Puritans, mostly from East Anglia in England, settled there, the next mass migration was of southern English cavaliers and their working class English domestic servants to the Chesapeake Bay region between 1640 and 1675. This facilitated the development of the Southern American culture, then, thousands of English and Welsh Quakers, led by William Penn, settled in the Delaware Valley followed by large numbers of German Lutherans. S. From the mid-Atlantic states to the Pacific Coast, finally, Scotch-Irish, English and Scottish settlers from the borderlands of Britain and Ireland migrated to Appalachia between 1717 and 1775. They formed the culture of the Upland South, which has since spread west to such areas as West Texas. Fischer suggests that the U. S. today is not a country with one General American culture and he asserts that the country is composed of just regional cultures, and that understanding that helps one to understand many things about modern American life
2.
Performing arts
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Performing arts are a form of art in which artists use their voices and/or their bodies, often in relation to other objects, to convey artistic expression. It is different from visual arts, which is when artists use paint/canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects, performing arts include several disciplines, each performed in front of a live audience. Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers, examples of these include actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, circus artists, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting, choreography. A performer who excels in acting, singing, and dancing is commonly referred to as a triple threat, well-known examples of historical triple threat artists include Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Judy Garland. Performers often adapt their appearance, such as costumes and stage makeup, stage lighting. Performing arts may include dance, music, opera, theatre and musical theatre, magic, illusion, mime, spoken word, puppetry, circus arts, performance art, recitation and public speaking. There is also a form of fine art, in which the artists perform their work live to an audience. Most performance art also involves some form of art, perhaps in the creation of props. Dance was often referred to as an art during the Modern dance era. Theatre is the branch of performing arts, concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience, using a combination of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound, any one or more of these elements is performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative style of plays. In the context of performing arts, dance generally refers to movement, typically rhythmic and to music. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement to codified, in dance, the connection between the two concepts is stronger than in some other arts, and neither can exist without the other. Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who practices this art is called a choreographer, music is an art form which combines pitch, rhythm, and dynamic in order to create sound. It can be performed using a variety of instruments and styles and is divided into genres, as an art form, music can occur in live or recorded formats, and can be planned or improvised. Starting in the 6th century BC, the Classical period of performing art began in Greece and these poets wrote plays which, in some cases, incorporated dance. The Hellenistic period began the use of comedy
3.
Board of Trustees of the Kennedy Center
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The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D. C. The Center, which opened September 8,1971, is a multi-dimensional facility, both an enduring memorial to John F. Now in its 45th season, the Center presents the greatest examples of music, dance and theater, supports artists in the creation of new work and it is both the nations public memorial to President John F. Kennedy and the national center for the performing arts. Its activities include educational and outreach initiatives, almost entirely funded through sales and gifts from individuals, corporations. The building, designed by architect Edward Durell Stone, was constructed by Philadelphia contractor John McShain and it receives annual federal funding to pay for its maintenance and operation. The Library of Congress added an auditorium, but it had restrictions on its use. A congressional resolution in 1938 called for construction of a building which shall be known as the National Cultural Center near Judiciary Square. In 1950, the idea for a national theater resurfaced when U. S, representative Arthur George Klein of New York introduced a bill to authorize funds to plan and build a cultural center. The bill included provisions that the center would prohibit any discrimination of cast or audience, in 1955, the Stanford Research Institute was commissioned to select a site and provide design suggestions for the center. From 1955 to 1958, Congress debated the idea amid much controversy and this was the first time in history that the federal government helped finance a structure dedicated to the performing arts. The legislation required a portion of the costs, estimated at $10–25 million, Edward Durell Stone was selected as architect for the project in June 1959. He presented preliminary designs to the Presidents Music Committee in October 1959, along with estimated costs of $50 million, by November 1959, estimated costs had escalated to $61 million. The National Cultural Center was renamed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964, the National Cultural Center Board of Trustees, a group Eisenhower established January 29,1959, led fundraising. Fundraising efforts were not successful, with only $13,425 raised in the first three years, President John F. Kennedy was interested in bringing culture to the nations capital, and provided leadership and support for the project. In 1961, President Kennedy asked Roger L. Stevens to help develop the National Cultural Center, Stevens recruited First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as Honorary Chairman of the Center, and former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower as co-chairman. The total cost of construction was $70 million, Congress allocated $43 million for construction costs, including $23 million as an outright grant and the other $20 million in bonds. Donations also comprised a significant portion of funding, including $5 million from the Ford Foundation, other major donors included J. Willard Marriott, Marjorie Merriweather Post, John D. Rockefeller III, and Robert W. Woodruff, as well as many corporate donors. Foreign countries provided gifts to the Kennedy Center, including a gift of 3,700 tons of Carrara marble from Italy from the Italian government, President Lyndon B. Johnson dug the ceremonial first-shovel of earth at the groundbreaking for the Kennedy Center December 2,1964
4.
George W. Bush
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George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was also the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000 and he is the eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election and he is the second president to assume the nations highest office after his father, following the lead of John Quincy Adams. He is also a brother of Jeb Bush, a former Governor of Florida who was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 presidential election, the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bushs first term as president. Bush responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine, launching a War on Terror, a military campaign that included the war in Afghanistan in 2001. He also promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, Social Security reform and his tenure included national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, and torture. In the 2004 Presidential race, Bush defeated Democratic Senator John Kerry in another close election. After his re-election, Bush received increasingly heated criticism from across the spectrum for his handling of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina. Amid this criticism, the Democratic Party regained control of Congress in the 2006 elections, Bush left office in 2009, returning to Texas where he purchased a home in Crawford. He wrote a memoir, Decision Points and his presidential library was opened in 2013. His presidency has been ranked among the worst in historians polls published in the late 2000s and 2010s. George Walker Bush was born on July 6,1946, at Grace-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, as the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife, the former Barbara Pierce. He was raised in Midland and Houston, Texas, with four siblings, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, another younger sister, Robin, died from leukemia at the age of three in 1953. His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U. S and his father, George H. W. Bush, was Ronald Reagans Vice President from 1981 to 1989 and the 41st U. S. President from 1989 to 1993. Bush has English and some German ancestry, along with more distant Dutch, Welsh, Irish, French, Bush attended public schools in Midland, Texas, until the family moved to Houston after he had completed seventh grade. He then spent two years at The Kinkaid School, a school in Houston. Bush attended high school at Phillips Academy, a school in Andover, Massachusetts
5.
Laura Bush
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Laura Lane Welch Bush is the wife of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, and was the First Lady from 2001 to 2009. Bush graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1968 with a degree in education. After attaining her masters degree in science at the University of Texas at Austin. Bush met her husband, George W. Bush, in 1977. The couple had twin daughters in 1981, Bushs political involvement began during her marriage. She campaigned with her husband during his unsuccessful 1978 run for the United States Congress, as First Lady of Texas, Bush implemented many initiatives focused on health, education, and literacy. She became First Lady after her husband was inaugurated as president on January 20,2001, polled by The Gallup Organization as one of the most popular First Ladies, Bush was involved in national and global concerns during her tenure. She continued to advance her trademark interests of education and literacy by establishing the semi-annual National Book Festival in 2001 and she also advanced womens causes through The Heart Truth and Susan G. Komen for the Cure organizations. She represented the United States during her trips, which tended to focus on HIV/AIDS. Laura Lane Welch was born on November 4,1946 in Midland, Texas, Bush is of English, French, and Swiss ancestry. Her father was a builder and later successful real estate developer. Early on, her parents encouraged her to read, leading to what would become her love of reading and she said, I learned at home from my mother. When I was a girl, my mother would read stories to me. I have loved books and going to the library ever since, in the summer, I liked to spend afternoons reading in the library. I enjoyed the Little House on the Prairie and Little Women books, reading gives you enjoyment throughout your life. Bush has also credited her second grade teacher, Charlene Gnagy, on the night of November 6,1963, Laura Welch ran a stop sign and struck another car, resulting in the death of its driver. The victim was her friend and classmate Michael Dutton Douglas. By some accounts, Douglas had been Bushs boyfriend at one time, Bush and her passenger, both 17, were treated for minor injuries
6.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
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Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway and he has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. In 2001 the New York Times referred to him as the most commercially successful composer in history, ranked the fifth most powerful person in British culture by The Telegraph in 2008, the lyricist Don Black stated Andrew more or less single-handedly reinvented the musical. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is an inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and his company, the Really Useful Group, is one of the largest theatre operators in London. Producers in several parts of the UK have staged productions, including national tours, Lloyd Webber is also the president of the Arts Educational Schools London, a performing arts school located in Chiswick, West London. He is involved in a number of activities, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Nordoff Robbins, Prostate Cancer UK. His younger brother, Julian Lloyd Webber, is a solo cellist. Lloyd Webber started writing his own music at a young age and he also put on productions with Julian and his Aunt Viola in his toy theatre. Later, he would be the owner of a number of West End theatres and his aunt Viola, an actress, took him to see many of her shows and through the stage door into the world of the theatre. He also had set music to Old Possums Book of Practical Cats at the age of 15. Lloyd Webbers first collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice was The Likes of Us, although composed in 1965, it was not publicly performed until 2005, when a production was staged at Lloyd Webbers Sydmonton Festival. In 2008, amateur rights were released by the National Operatic and Dramatic Association in association with the Really Useful Group, the first amateur performance was by a childrens theatre group in Cornwall called Kidz R Us. In this respect, it is different from the composers later work, which tends to be either predominantly or wholly through-composed. Joseph began life as a cantata that gained some recognition on its second staging with a favourable review in The Times. For its subsequent performances, Rice and Lloyd Webber revised the show and this culminated in a two-hour-long production being staged in the West End on the back of the success of Jesus Christ Superstar. In 1969 Rice and Lloyd Webber wrote a song for the Eurovision Song Contest called Try It and See, with rewritten lyrics it became King Herods Song in their third musical, Jesus Christ Superstar. The planned follow-up to Jesus Christ Superstar was a comedy based on the Jeeves. Tim Rice was uncertain about this venture, partly because of his concern that he not be able to do justice to the novels that he
7.
Steven Spielberg
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Steven Allan Spielberg, KBE, OMRI is an American director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the pioneers of the New Hollywood era. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks Studios, in a career spanning more than four decades, Spielbergs films have spanned many themes and genres. His other films include Jurassic Park, A. I, artificial Intelligence, and War of the Worlds. Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan, three of Spielbergs films—Jaws, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park—achieved box office records, originated and came to epitomize the blockbuster film. The unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $9 billion worldwide and his personal net worth is estimated to be more than $3 billion. Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to an Orthodox Jewish family and his mother, Leah Posner, was a restaurateur and concert pianist, and his father, Arnold Spielberg, was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His paternal grandparents were immigrants from Ukraine who settled in Cincinnati in the first decade of the 1900s, in 1950, his family moved to Haddon Township, New Jersey when his father took a job with RCA. Three years later, the moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg attended Hebrew school from 1953 to 1957, in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis, as a child, Spielberg faced difficulty reconciling being an Orthodox Jew with the perception of him by other children he played with. It isnt something I enjoy admitting, he said, but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me. I was embarrassed by the perception of my parents Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times, Spielberg also said he suffered from acts of anti-Semitic prejudice and bullying, In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. His first home movie was of a wreck involving his toy Lionel trains. Throughout his early teens, and after entering school, Spielberg continued to make amateur 8 mm adventure films. In 1958, he became a Boy Scout and fulfilled a requirement for the merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mm film entitled The Last Gunfight. Years later, Spielberg recalled to an interviewer, My dads still-camera was broken. He said yes, and I got an idea to do a Western, I made it and got my merit badge
8.
Dolly Parton
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After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Dolly Parton made her album debut in 1967, with her album Hello, Im Dolly. However, in the new millennium, Parton achieved commercial success again and has released albums on independent labels since 2000, including albums on her own label, Parton is the most honored female country performer of all time. Achieving 25 RIAA certified Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum awards, she has had 25 songs reach No.1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist. She has 41 career top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, all-inclusive sales of singles, albums, hits collections, and digital downloads during her career have topped 100 million worldwide. Parton has received 46 Grammy nominations, in 1999, Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She has composed over 3,000 songs, notably I Will Always Love You, Jolene, Coat of Many Colors and she is also one of the few to have received at least one nomination from the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards. As an actress, she starred in such as 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone. Parton was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children of Robert Lee Parton, a farmer and construction worker, Partons middle name comes from her maternal great-great grandmother, Rebecca Whitted. She has described her family as being dirt poor, Partons father paid the doctor who helped deliver her with a bag of oatmeal. She outlined her familys poverty in her early songs Coat of Many Colors and they lived in a rustic, one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, just north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains, a predominantly Pentecostal area. Music played an important role in her early life and she was brought up in the Church of God, the church her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six, at seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight years old, her uncle bought her first real guitar, Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, the day after she graduated from high school in 1964, she moved to Nashville. Her songs were recorded by other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells. She signed with Monument Records in 1965, at 19, where she was pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the one that charted, Happy, Happy Birthday Baby. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, after her composition, Put It Off Until Tomorrow, as recorded by Bill Phillips, went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country
9.
Zubin Mehta
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Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of Western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Mehta is also the chief conductor of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival. Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay, India, while in school, Mehta was taught to play the piano by Joseph de Lima, who was his first piano teacher. Mehta initially intended to study medicine, but eventually became a student in Vienna at the age of 18. Also at the academy along with Mehta were conductor Claudio Abbado. Mehtas first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958 and they have a son, Mervon, and a daughter, Zarina. Two years after the divorce, Carmen married Mehtas brother, Zarin Mehta, in July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, an American former film and television actress. Mehta, a permanent resident of the United States, retains his Indian citizenship, in 1958, Mehta made his conducting debut in Vienna. The same year he won the International Conducting Competition in Liverpool and was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Mehta soon rose to the rank of chief conductor when he was made Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960, a post he held until 1967. In 1978 Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra appointed Mehta its Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and made him its Music Director for Life in 1981. Since 1985, Mehta has been conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. Additionally, from 1998 until 2006, Mehta was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Munich Philharmonic named him its Honorary Conductor. Since 2005, Mehta has been the conductor of the Palau de les Arts. Mehta conducted the Vienna New Years Concert in 1990,1995,1998,2007 and 2015 and he has also made a recording of Indian instrumentalist Ravi Shankars Sitar Concerto No. 2, with Shankar and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, in between those appearances he conducted the historic 1992 production of Tosca in which each act took place in the actual setting and at the actual time specified in the score. This production starred Catherine Malfitano in the role, Plácido Domingo as Cavaradossi. On 29 August 1999, he conducted Mahler Symphony No,2, at the vicinity of Buchenwald concentration camp in the German city of Weimar, with both the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, sitting alongside each other. The making of this production was chronicled in a documentary called The Turandot Project which Mehta narrated, on 26 December 2005, the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra performed for the first time in Chennai at the Madras Music Academy
10.
Smokey Robinson
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William Smokey Robinson, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson was the founder and front man of the Motown vocal group the Miracles, Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as the Five Chimes until 1972 when he announced a retirement from the group to focus on his role as Motowns vice president. However, Robinson returned to the industry as a solo artist the following year. Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left the company in 1990 and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Robinson was awarded the 2016 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for his contributions to popular music. Smokey Robinson was born to an African-American father and a mother of African-American and his uncle Claude gave him the nickname Smokey Joe when he was a child. He attended Northern High School, where he was above average academically, at one point, he and Diana Ross lived several houses from each other on Belmont, he once said he has known Ross since she was about eight. Robinson said his interest in music started after hearing the groups Nolan Strong & the Diablos and Billy Ward, Robinson later listed Barrett Strong, a Detroit native, as a strong vocal influence. In 1955, he formed the first lineup of the Five Chimes with childhood friend Ronald White and classmate Pete Moore, two years later, in 1957, they were renamed the Matadors and included Bobby Rogers. Another member, Emerson Rogers, was replaced by Bobbys cousin Claudette Rogers, the groups guitarist, Marv Tarplin, joined them sometime in 1958. The Matadors began touring Detroit venues around this time and they later changed their name to the Miracles. In August 1957, Robinson and the Miracles met songwriter Berry Gordy after an audition for Brunswick Records. At that time during the audition, Robinson had brought along with him a Big 10 notebook with 100 songs he wrote while in high school, Gordy was impressed with Robinsons vocals and even more impressed with Robinsons ambitious songwriting. With his help, the Miracles released their first single, Got a Job and it was the beginning of a long and successful collaboration. During this time, Robinson attended college and started classes in January 1959, Robinson dropped out after only two months following the Miracles release of their first record. Gordy formed Tamla Records which was reincorporated as Motown. The Miracles became one of the first acts signed to the label, in point of fact, they had actually been with Gordy since before the formation of Motown Records. In late 1960, the recorded their first hit single, Shop Around
11.
Dick Cheney
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Richard Bruce Dick Cheney is an American politician and businessman who was the 46th Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009, under President George W. Bush. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cheney was primarily raised in Sumner, Nebraska and he attended Yale and then the University of Wyoming, at the latter of which he earned a BA and an MA in Political Science. Cheney was selected to be the Secretary of Defense during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, during his time in the Department of Defense, Cheney oversaw the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, among other actions. Out of office during the Clinton administration, Cheney was the Chairman, in July 2000, Cheney was chosen by presumptive Republican Presidential nominee George W. Bush as his running mate in the 2000 Presidential election. They defeated their Democratic opponents, incumbent Vice President Al Gore, in 2004 Cheney was reelected to his second term as Vice President, defeating Senator John Kerrys running mate, Senator John Edwards. He was a proponent of Operation Iraqi Freedom and defender of the Administrations anti-terrorism record. He became at odds with President Bushs position against same-sex marriage in 2004 and he has been cited as the most powerful Vice President in American history. At the same time he has been among the least favored politicians in the history of the United States, Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the son of Marjorie Lorraine and Richard Herbert Cheney. He is of predominantly English, as well as Welsh, Irish, although not a direct descendant, he is collaterally related to Benjamin Pierce Cheney, the early American expressman. His father was a soil conservation agent for the U. S. Department of Agriculture and his mother was a star in the 1930s. He attended Calvert Elementary School before his family moved to Casper, Wyoming and he attended Yale University, but by his own account had problems adjusting to the college, and failed out twice. Among the influential teachers from his days in New Haven was Professor H. Bradford Westerfield and he later attended the University of Wyoming, where he earned both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts in political science. He subsequently started, but did not finish, doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in November 1962, at the age of 21, Cheney was convicted of driving while intoxicated. He was arrested for DWI again the following year, Cheney said that the arrests made him think about where I was and where I was headed. I was headed down a bad road if I continued on that course, in 1964, he married Lynne Vincent, his high school sweetheart, whom he had met at age 14. When Cheney became eligible for the draft, during the Vietnam War, he applied for, initially, Cheney was not drafted due to his marriage to Lynne Cheney. When the draft was expanded to include married men without children and he applied for his fifth exemption on January 19,1966, when his wife was about 10 weeks pregnant. He was granted 3-A status, the exemption, which excluded men with children or dependent parents
12.
Lynne Cheney
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Lynne Ann Cheney is an American author, scholar, and former talk-show host. She is the wife of the 46th Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, Lynne Ann Vincent was born on August 14,1941 in Casper, Wyoming. Her mother, Edna Lolita, became a deputy sheriff, and her father, a descendant of Mormon pioneers, and with roots in Denmark, Sweden, England, Ireland, and Wales, she was raised Presbyterian and became Methodist upon her marriage to Dick Cheney. Cheney received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature with highest honors from Colorado College and she continued her education with a Master of Arts degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and a PhD in 19th century British literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Cheney served as the sixth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993, in 1995, she founded American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a think tank devoted to reforming higher education. She is a fellow in education and culture at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. She also serves as a director of Readers Digest Association, Inc, from 1995 to 1998, Cheney served as the co-host of the Sunday edition of CNNs Crossfire, replacing Tony Snow. Cheney served on Lockheed Corporations board of directors from 1994 to 2001 and she gave up the $120, 000-a-year position shortly before her husbands inauguration. She had served on the Lockheed boards Finance, and Nominating, in 2000, she was mentioned as a possible conservative female pick for Republican Vice Presidential nominee on the George W. Bush ticket. The appointed head of the committee was her husband, Dick Cheney, then the CEO of Halliburton. She also criticized video game developers for similar content, on an October 10,2007, episode of The Daily Show, Cheney stated her opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Her daughter Mary is openly lesbian and Lynne Cheney, like her husband Dick, Cheney has one brother, Mark Vincent, who lives in Wyoming with his wife, Linda. She has been married to Richard Dick Cheney since 1964 and they have two daughters and seven grandchildren. Their daughters are Elizabeth Cheney and Mary Cheney, Elizabeth, also known as Liz, was born July 28,1966, and is married to Philip Perry, the former general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security. She graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1996 and has worked as an international law attorney, consultant, Mary was born March 14,1969. Openly lesbian, she lives with her partner, Heather Roan Poe, in Great Falls, Mary Cheney married Poe on June 22,2012, in Washington, D. C. She gave birth to their first child, Samuel David Cheney, in May 2007 and she is one of her fathers top campaign aides and closest confidantes. In July 2003, Mary became the director of vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential re-election campaign and she was a vital part of the campaign
13.
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
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The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D. C. The Center, which opened September 8,1971, is a multi-dimensional facility, both an enduring memorial to John F. Now in its 45th season, the Center presents the greatest examples of music, dance and theater, supports artists in the creation of new work and it is both the nations public memorial to President John F. Kennedy and the national center for the performing arts. Its activities include educational and outreach initiatives, almost entirely funded through sales and gifts from individuals, corporations. The building, designed by architect Edward Durell Stone, was constructed by Philadelphia contractor John McShain and it receives annual federal funding to pay for its maintenance and operation. The Library of Congress added an auditorium, but it had restrictions on its use. A congressional resolution in 1938 called for construction of a building which shall be known as the National Cultural Center near Judiciary Square. In 1950, the idea for a national theater resurfaced when U. S, representative Arthur George Klein of New York introduced a bill to authorize funds to plan and build a cultural center. The bill included provisions that the center would prohibit any discrimination of cast or audience, in 1955, the Stanford Research Institute was commissioned to select a site and provide design suggestions for the center. From 1955 to 1958, Congress debated the idea amid much controversy and this was the first time in history that the federal government helped finance a structure dedicated to the performing arts. The legislation required a portion of the costs, estimated at $10–25 million, Edward Durell Stone was selected as architect for the project in June 1959. He presented preliminary designs to the Presidents Music Committee in October 1959, along with estimated costs of $50 million, by November 1959, estimated costs had escalated to $61 million. The National Cultural Center was renamed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964, the National Cultural Center Board of Trustees, a group Eisenhower established January 29,1959, led fundraising. Fundraising efforts were not successful, with only $13,425 raised in the first three years, President John F. Kennedy was interested in bringing culture to the nations capital, and provided leadership and support for the project. In 1961, President Kennedy asked Roger L. Stevens to help develop the National Cultural Center, Stevens recruited First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as Honorary Chairman of the Center, and former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower as co-chairman. The total cost of construction was $70 million, Congress allocated $43 million for construction costs, including $23 million as an outright grant and the other $20 million in bonds. Donations also comprised a significant portion of funding, including $5 million from the Ford Foundation, other major donors included J. Willard Marriott, Marjorie Merriweather Post, John D. Rockefeller III, and Robert W. Woodruff, as well as many corporate donors. Foreign countries provided gifts to the Kennedy Center, including a gift of 3,700 tons of Carrara marble from Italy from the Italian government, President Lyndon B. Johnson dug the ceremonial first-shovel of earth at the groundbreaking for the Kennedy Center December 2,1964
14.
American Film Institute
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The American Film Institute is an American film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the moving picture arts in America. AFI is supported by funding and public membership. The institute is composed of leaders from the film, entertainment, business, a board of trustees chaired by Sir Howard Stringer and a board of directors chaired by Robert A. Daly guide the organization, which is led by President and CEO Bob Gazzale. Prior leaders were founding director George Stevens, Jr. and Jean Picker Firstenberg. <ref>AFI Board of Trustees etc. American Film Institute. October 2014. Retrieved December 24,2014. </ref>Two years later, in 1967, AFI was established, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Ford Foundation. The institute established a program for filmmakers known then as the Center for Advanced Film Studies. The institute moved to its current eight-acre Hollywood campus in 1981, the film training program grew into the AFI Conservatory, an accredited graduate school. AFI educates audiences and recognizes excellence through its awards programs and 10 Top 10 Lists. In 1969, the established the AFI Conservatory for Advanced Film Studies at Greystone. The first class included filmmakers Terrence Malick, Caleb Deschanel and Paul Schrader, mirroring a professional production environment, Fellows collaborate to make more films than any other graduate level program. Admission to AFI Conservatory is highly selective, with a maximum of 140 graduates per year, in 2013, Emmy and Oscar-winning director, producer and screenwriter James L. Brooks joined AFI as Artistic Director of the AFI Conservatory where he provides leadership for the film program. Brooks artistic role at the AFI Conservatory has a legacy that includes Daniel Petrie, Jr. Robert Wise. Award-winning director Bob Mandel served as Dean of the AFI Conservatory for nine years, jan Schuette took over as Dean in 2014. AFI Conservatorys alumni have careers in film, television and on the web and they have been recognized with all of the major industry awards – Academy Award, Emmy Award, guild awards, and the Tony Award. The AFI Catalog, started in 1968, is a web-based filmographic database, early print copies of this catalog may also be found at your local library. Each year the AFI Awards honor the ten outstanding films and ten outstanding television programs, the awards are a non-competitive acknowledgement of excellence. The Awards are announced in December and a luncheon for award honorees takes place the following January. The juries consisted of over 1,500 artists, scholars, critics and historians, with movies selected based on the films popularity over time, historical significance, citizen Kane was voted the greatest American film twice. AFI operates two film festivals, AFI Fest in Los Angeles, and AFI Docs in Silver Spring, Maryland, AFI Fest is the American Film Institutes annual celebration of artistic excellence
15.
Roger L. Stevens
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Roger Lacey Stevens was an American theatrical producer, arts administrator, and a real estate executive. He was the founding Chairman of both the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and National Endowment for the Arts, born in Detroit, Michigan, Stevens was educated at The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. He was about to enter Harvard University but his fathers financial difficulties ended his plan and he attended the University of Michigan for a year before dropping out. He then worked on a Ford assembly line and at a gas station during the Depression, in 1934, he joined a Detroit real estate firm. By 1937, before he was 30, his real work had made him a small fortune of about $50,000. He led a syndicate bought the Empire State Building in 1951 for $51 million, then a titanic sum. In politics, he made a mark as chairman of the Democratic Partys finance committee in 1956 and he produced more than 100 plays and musicals over his career, including West Side Story, Bus Stop, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1971, he received Special Tony Award for his body of work and he became known for introducing plays by such adventurous writers as Harold Pinter, Arthur Kopit and Tom Stoppard. In 1965, he received an appointment from President Lyndon Johnson as first Chairman of the National Council on the Arts later named the National Endowment for the Arts, in 1986, Stevens was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. On January 13,1988, Stevens was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan, in 1988, he was also awarded the National Medal of Arts. Stevens was married to Christine Gesell Stevens, founder of the Animal Welfare Institute in 1951 and he served as the organizations treasurer until his death in 1998. He had his first heart attack in 1970, in 1993, he suffered strokes that left him partly paralyzed and deprived him of much of his speech. Roger Stevens died of pneumonia on February 2,1998 at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, new Drama Group Has Million Stock. The National Endowment for the Arts 1965-2000, A Brief Chronology of Federal Support for the Arts, Washington, DC, National Endowment for the Arts. Roger L. Stevens, Real Estate Magnate, Producer and Fund-Raiser, Is Dead at 87
16.
CBS
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CBS is an American commercial broadcast television network that is a flagship property of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major facilities and operations in New York City. CBS is sometimes referred to as the Eye Network, in reference to the iconic logo. It has also called the Tiffany Network, alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of William S. Paley. It can also refer to some of CBSs first demonstrations of color television, the network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc. a collection of 16 radio stations that was purchased by Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System. Under Paleys guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States, in 1974, CBS dropped its former full name and became known simply as CBS, Inc. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which was formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971, CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which also controls the current Viacom. The television network has more than 240 owned-and-operated and affiliated stations throughout the United States. The origins of CBS date back to January 27,1927, Columbia Phonographic went on the air on September 18,1927, with a presentation by the Howard Barlow Orchestra from flagship station WOR in Newark, New Jersey, and fifteen affiliates. Operational costs were steep, particularly the payments to AT&T for use of its land lines, in early 1928 Judson sold the network to brothers Isaac and Leon Levy, owners of the networks Philadelphia affiliate WCAU, and their partner Jerome Louchenheim. With the record out of the picture, Paley quickly streamlined the corporate name to Columbia Broadcasting System. He believed in the power of advertising since his familys La Palina cigars had doubled their sales after young William convinced his elders to advertise on radio. By September 1928, Paley bought out the Louchenheim share of CBS, during Louchenheims brief regime, Columbia paid $410,000 to A. H. Grebes Atlantic Broadcasting Company for a small Brooklyn station, WABC, which would become the networks flagship station. WABC was quickly upgraded, and the relocated to 860 kHz. The physical plant was relocated also – to Steinway Hall on West 57th Street in Manhattan, by the turn of 1929, the network could boast to sponsors of having 47 affiliates. Paley moved right away to put his network on a financial footing. In the fall of 1928, he entered talks with Adolph Zukor of Paramount Pictures. The deal came to fruition in September 1929, Paramount acquired 49% of CBS in return for a block of its stock worth $3.8 million at the time
17.
Leonard Bernstein
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Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim, according to music critic Donal Henahan, he was one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history. Bernstein was the first conductor to give a series of lectures on classical music, starting in 1954. He was a skilled pianist, often conducting piano concertos from the keyboard, as a composer he wrote in many styles encompassing symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and pieces for the piano. Many of his works are performed around the world, although none has matched the tremendous popular. He was born Louis Bernstein in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Ukrainian-Jewish parents Jennie and Samuel Joseph Bernstein and he was not related to film composer Elmer Bernstein, but the two men were friends, and even shared a certain physical similarity. Within the world of music, they were distinguished from each other by the use of the nicknames Bernstein West. His family spent their summers at their home in Sharon. His grandmother insisted that his first name be Louis, but his parents called him Leonard. He officially changed his name to Leonard when he was fifteen, to his friends and many others he was simply known as Lenny. His father, Sam Bernstein, was a businessman and owner of a hair product store in downtown Lawrence, it is no longer standing on the corners of Amesbury, Sam initially opposed young Leonards interest in music. Despite this, the elder Bernstein took him to concerts in his teenage years. As a child, Bernstein attended the Garrison Grammar School and Boston Latin School, as a child he was very close to his younger sister Shirley, and would often play entire operas or Beethoven symphonies with her at the piano. He had a variety of teachers in his youth, including Helen Coates. After graduation from Boston Latin School in 1935, Bernstein attended Harvard University, one of his friends at Harvard was philosopher Donald Davidson, with whom he played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the score for the production Davidson mounted of Aristophanes play The Birds in the original Greek. Bernstein reused some of this music in the ballet Fancy Free, during his time at Harvard he was briefly an accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club. Bernstein also mounted a student production of The Cradle Will Rock, Blitzstein, who heard about the production, subsequently became a friend and influence on Bernstein
18.
Eric Sevareid
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Arnold Eric Sevareid was a CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977. He was one of a group of war correspondents hired by pioneering CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. He was the first to report the fall of Paris when it was captured by the Germans during World War II. Traveling into Burma during World War II, his aircraft was shot down and he was rescued from enemy lines by a search. He was the final journalist to interview Adlai Stevenson before his death, after a long and distinguished career, he followed in Murrows footsteps as a commentator on the CBS Evening News for 12 years for which he was recognized with Emmy and Peabody Awards. Sevareid was a child of the northern Great Plains, born in Velva, North Dakota, to Alfred E. following the failure of the bank in Velva in 1925, his family moved to Minot, and then to Minneapolis, Minnesota, settling on 30th Avenue North. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1935, of Norwegian ancestry, he preserved a strong bond with Norway throughout his life. Sevareid was adventurous from a young age, several days after he graduated from high school, he and his friend Walter Port embarked on an expedition sponsored by the Minneapolis Star, from Minneapolis to York Factory on Hudson Bay. Sevareids book, Canoeing with the Cree, was the result of this canoe trip, the book is still in print. At the age of 18, Sevareid entered journalism as a reporter for the Minneapolis Journal while he was a student at the University of Minnesota in political science. He continued his studies abroad, first in London and later in Paris at the Sorbonne and he then became city editor of the Paris Herald Tribune. He left that post to join CBS as a foreign correspondent and he broadcast the fall of Paris and followed the French government from there to Bordeaux and then Vichy before he left France for London and finally Washington. He was appointed CBSs Washington bureau chief in July 1942, Sevareids work during World War II, with Edward R. Murrow as one of the original Murrows Boys, was at the forefront of broadcasting. He was the first to report on the fall of France, shortly afterward, he joined Murrow to report on the Battle of Britain. Later, Sevareid would refer fondly to the years working with Murrow. In his final broadcast with CBS, in 1977, he would call Murrow the man who invented me, on August 2,1943, Sevareid was on board a Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando that developed engine trouble over Burma while on a Hump airlift mission. He grabbed a bottle of Carews gin before parachuting out of the plane, the US Army Air Force formed a search and rescue team to bring the group out from behind enemy lines. The operatives parachuted in, located the party, and evacuated them safely, Sevareid later reported on Titos Yugoslav Partisans while he was in Yugoslavia
19.
Beverly Sills
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Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was known for her performances in soprano roles in live opera. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles, after retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the chairwoman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects. Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York City, to Shirley Bahn, a musician, and Morris Silverman and her parents were Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine and Bucharest, Romania. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as a child, she spoke Yiddish, Russian, Romanian, French and English. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, as well as Manhattans Professional Childrens School, at the age of three, Sills won a Miss Beautiful Baby contest, in which she sang The Wedding of Jack and Jill. Beginning at age four, she performed professionally on the Saturday morning radio program, Rainbow House, as Bubbles Silverman. Sills began taking singing lessons with Estelle Liebling at the age of seven, Liebling encouraged her to audition for CBS Radios Major Bowes Amateur Hour, and on October 26,1939 at the age of 10, Sills was the winner of that weeks program. Bowes then asked her to appear on his Capitol Family Hour and her first appearance was on November 19,1939, the 17th anniversary of the show, and she appeared frequently on the program thereafter. I played her as a dumb Dora all the way through and my Patience grew clumsier and clumsier with each performance, and audiences seemed to like her. I found that I had a gift for humor. Sills sang in operas for several more years. On July 9,1946, Sills appeared as a contestant on the radio show Arthur Godfreys Talent Scouts and she sang under the pseudonym of Vicki Lynn, as she was under contract to Shubert. Shubert did not want Godfrey to be able to say he had discovered Beverly Sills if she won the contest, Sills sang Romany Life from Victor Herberts The Fortune Teller. In 1947, she made her stage debut as the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizets Carmen with the Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company. She toured North America with the Charles Wagner Opera Company, in the fall of 1951 singing Violetta in La traviata and, in the fall of 1952, singing Micaëla in Carmen. On September 15,1953, she made her debut with the San Francisco Opera as Helen of Troy in Boitos Mefistofele and also sang Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni the same season
20.
Walter Cronkite
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Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years. During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King, Jr. and Beatles musician John Lennon. He was also known for his coverage of the U. S. space program. He was the only recipient of a Moon-rock award. Cronkite is well known for his departing catchphrase And thats the way it is, Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was born on November 4,1916, in Saint Joseph, Missouri, the son of Helen Lena, and Dr. Walter Leland Cronkite, a dentist. He had remote Dutch ancestry on his fathers side, the family surname originally being Krankheyt, Cronkite lived in Kansas City, Missouri, until he was ten, when his family moved to Houston, Texas. He was a member of the Boy Scouts and he attended college at the University of Texas at Austin, entering in the Fall term of 1933, where he worked on the Daily Texan and became a member of the Nu chapter of the Chi Phi Fraternity. He also was a member of the Houston chapter of DeMolay, while attending UT, Cronkite had his first taste of performance, appearing in a play with fellow student Eli Wallach. He dropped out in 1935, not returning for the Fall term and he dropped out of college in his junior year, in the fall term of 1935, after starting a series of newspaper reporting jobs covering news and sports. He entered broadcasting as an announcer for WKY in Oklahoma City. In 1936, he met his wife, Mary Elizabeth Maxwell, while working as the sports announcer for KCMO in Kansas City. His broadcast name was Walter Wilcox and he would explain later that radio stations at the time did not want people to use their real names for fear of taking their listeners with them if they left. In Kansas City, he joined the United Press in 1937 and he became one of the top American reporters in World War II, covering battles in North Africa and Europe. With his name now established, he received a job offer from Edward R. Murrow at CBS News to join the Murrow Boys team of war correspondents, CBS offered Cronkite $125 a week along with commercial fees amounting to $25 for almost every time Cronkite reported on air. Up to that point, he had been making $57.50 per week at UP, when he informed his boss Harrison Salisbury, UP countered with a raise of $17.50 per week, Hugh Baillie also offered him an extra $20 per week to stay. Cronkite ultimately accepted the UP offer, a move which angered Murrow and he also landed in a glider with the 101st Airborne in Operation Market Garden and covered the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he covered the Nuremberg trials and served as the United Press main reporter in Moscow from 1946 to 1948, in 1950, Cronkite joined CBS News in its young and growing television division, again recruited by Murrow. Cronkite began working at WTOP-TV, the CBS affiliate in Washington and he originally served as anchor of the networks 15-minute late-Sunday-evening newscast Up To the Minute, which followed Whats My Line. at 11,00 pm ET from 1951 through 1962
21.
Caroline Kennedy
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Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is an American author, attorney, and diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017. She is a prominent member of the Kennedy family and the surviving child of President John F. Kennedy. The following year, Caroline, her mother, and brother settled on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Kennedy graduated from Radcliffe College and worked at Manhattans Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. She went on to receive a J. D. degree from Columbia Law School, most of Kennedys professional life has spanned law and politics, as well as education reform and charitable work. She has also acted as a spokesperson for her familys legacy, congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand ultimately replaced Clinton as the junior New York Senator. In 2013, President Obama appointed her as ambassador to Japan, Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born on November 27,1957, at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan to John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy. A year before Carolines birth, her parents had a daughter named Arabella. Caroline had two brothers, John Jr. who was born just before her third birthday, and Patrick. Caroline lived with her parents in Georgetown, Washington, D. C. during the first three years of her life, when Caroline was three years old, the family moved to the White House when her father was sworn in as President of the United States. Caroline frequently attended kindergarten in classes that were organized by her mother, one such photo in a news article inspired singer-songwriter Neil Diamond to write his Top Ten hit song, Sweet Caroline—which he revealed when he performed it for her 50th birthday. As a small child, Caroline received numerous gifts from dignitaries, including a puppy from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, historians described Carolines childhood personality as a trifle remote and a bit shy at times yet remarkably unspoiled. Shes too young to realize all these luxuries, her grandmother, Rose Kennedy. She probably thinks its natural for children to go off in their own airplanes, but she is with her cousins, and some of them dance and swim better than she. They do not allow her to take special precedence and that evening, the children were brought back to the White House, and while Caroline was in her bed, Shaw broke the news to her. Shaw soon found out that Jacqueline had wanted to be the one to tell the children, on December 6, two weeks after the assassination, Jacqueline and the children moved out of the White House, back to Georgetown. Their new home became a popular tourist attraction and they moved from Washington to a penthouse apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan the following year. In 1967, Caroline christened the U. S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in a widely publicized ceremony in Newport News, Virginia. Over that summer, Jacqueline took the children on a sentimental journey to Ireland
22.
Glenn Close
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Glenn Close is an American actress, singer and film producer. With an acting career spanning over 40 years, she has been acclaimed for her versatility and is widely regarded as one of the finest actresses of her generation. She has won three Emmy Awards, three Tony Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and has received six Academy Award nominations and she would later receive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, and Albert Nobbs. She starred as Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 2003 TV film The Lion in Winter, in 2005, she starred in the drama series The Shield. Then from 2007 to 2012, she starred as Patty Hewes in the FX drama series Damages and she has voiced the character of Mona Simpson in the animated sitcom The Simpsons since 1995. She returned to Broadway in November 2014, in a revival of Edward Albees A Delicate Balance. Her other films include Jagged Edge, Hamlet, Reversal of Fortune,101 Dalmatians, Paradise Road, Air Force One, Cookies Fortune, Heights, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Girl With All The Gifts. Close is a six-time Academy Award nominee, tying the record for being the actress with the most nominations never to have won, as of 2016, Close has more Oscar nominations without a win than any other living actor. In addition, she has been nominated for four Tonys, fourteen Emmys, thirteen Golden Globes and she has also won an Obie award and has been nominated for three Grammy Awards and a BAFTA. Close has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and has been inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame and she has two sisters, Tina and Jessie, and two brothers, Alexander and Tambu Misoki, whom Closes parents adopted while living in Africa. Close is also a second cousin once-removed of actress Brooke Shields, during her childhood, Close lived with her parents in a stone cottage on her maternal grandfathers estate in Greenwich. Although Close came from an affluent background, she stated that her family not to participate in WASP society. She would also avoid mentioning her birthplace whenever asked because she did not want people to think she was a dilettante who didnt have to work. When she was seven years old, her parents joined a cult group, Close described MRA as a group that dictated every aspect of her life, from the clothes that had to be worn to what they were allowed to say. In an interview Close stated that her desire to become an actress allowed her to break away from the cult, stating and they had their reasons for doing what they did, and I understand them. It had terrible effects on their kids, but that’s the way it is and we all try to survive, right. And I think what actually saved me more than anything was my desire to be an actress and she spent time in Switzerland when studying at St. Georges School in Switzerland. Close traveled for years in the mid-to-late 1960s with an MRA singing group called Up With People
23.
Stephen Colbert
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Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American comedian, television host, and author. Colbert has hosted The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a television talk show on CBS. Colbert originally studied to be an actor, but became interested in improvisational theatre while attending Northwestern University. He wrote and performed on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show before collaborating with Sedaris and he gained considerable attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet. His work as a correspondent on Comedy Centrals news-parody series The Daily Show gained him wide recognition, in 2005, he left The Daily Show to host a spin-off series, The Colbert Report. The series became one of Comedy Centrals highest-rated series, earning Colbert an invitation to perform as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in 2006, Colbert has won nine Primetime Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and two Peabody Awards. Colbert was named one of Times 100 Most Influential People in 2006 and 2012 and his book, I Am America, was #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2007. Colbert was born in Washington, D. C. the youngest of 11 children in a Catholic family and he grew up on James Island, South Carolina. Colbert and his siblings, in descending order by age, are James, Edward, Mary, William, Margo, Thomas, Jay, Elizabeth, Paul, Peter, stephens mother, Lorna Elizabeth Colbert, was a homemaker. In interviews, Colbert has described his parents as people who also strongly valued intellectualism and taught their children that it was possible to question the church. The emphasis his family placed on intelligence and his observation of negative stereotypes of Southerners led Colbert to train himself to suppress his Southern accent while he was quite young. While Colbert sometimes comedically claims his surname is French, he is of 15/16ths Irish ancestry, many of his ancestors emigrated from Ireland to North America in the 19th century before and during the Great Famine. He offered his children the option to pronounce the name whichever way they preferred, Stephen started using /koʊlˈbɛər/ later in life when he transferred to Northwestern University, taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent himself in a new place where no one knew him. Ed responded /ˈkoʊlbərt/, to which Stephen jokingly replied, See you in Hell and they were en route to enroll the two boys at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. Lorna Colbert relocated the family downtown to the urban environment of East Bay Street in Charleston. Colbert found the transition difficult and did not easily make new friends in his new neighborhood, Colbert later described himself during this time as detached, lacking a sense of importance regarding the things with which other children concerned themselves. He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Colbert attended Charlestons Episcopal Porter-Gaud School, where he participated in several school plays and contributed to the school newspaper but was not highly motivated academically. During his adolescence, he briefly fronted A Shot in the Dark, when he was younger, he had hoped to study marine biology, but surgery intended to repair a severely perforated eardrum caused him inner ear damage
24.
Kennedy Center
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The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D. C. The Center, which opened September 8,1971, is a multi-dimensional facility, both an enduring memorial to John F. Now in its 45th season, the Center presents the greatest examples of music, dance and theater, supports artists in the creation of new work and it is both the nations public memorial to President John F. Kennedy and the national center for the performing arts. Its activities include educational and outreach initiatives, almost entirely funded through sales and gifts from individuals, corporations. The building, designed by architect Edward Durell Stone, was constructed by Philadelphia contractor John McShain and it receives annual federal funding to pay for its maintenance and operation. The Library of Congress added an auditorium, but it had restrictions on its use. A congressional resolution in 1938 called for construction of a building which shall be known as the National Cultural Center near Judiciary Square. In 1950, the idea for a national theater resurfaced when U. S, representative Arthur George Klein of New York introduced a bill to authorize funds to plan and build a cultural center. The bill included provisions that the center would prohibit any discrimination of cast or audience, in 1955, the Stanford Research Institute was commissioned to select a site and provide design suggestions for the center. From 1955 to 1958, Congress debated the idea amid much controversy and this was the first time in history that the federal government helped finance a structure dedicated to the performing arts. The legislation required a portion of the costs, estimated at $10–25 million, Edward Durell Stone was selected as architect for the project in June 1959. He presented preliminary designs to the Presidents Music Committee in October 1959, along with estimated costs of $50 million, by November 1959, estimated costs had escalated to $61 million. The National Cultural Center was renamed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1964, the National Cultural Center Board of Trustees, a group Eisenhower established January 29,1959, led fundraising. Fundraising efforts were not successful, with only $13,425 raised in the first three years, President John F. Kennedy was interested in bringing culture to the nations capital, and provided leadership and support for the project. In 1961, President Kennedy asked Roger L. Stevens to help develop the National Cultural Center, Stevens recruited First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as Honorary Chairman of the Center, and former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower as co-chairman. The total cost of construction was $70 million, Congress allocated $43 million for construction costs, including $23 million as an outright grant and the other $20 million in bonds. Donations also comprised a significant portion of funding, including $5 million from the Ford Foundation, other major donors included J. Willard Marriott, Marjorie Merriweather Post, John D. Rockefeller III, and Robert W. Woodruff, as well as many corporate donors. Foreign countries provided gifts to the Kennedy Center, including a gift of 3,700 tons of Carrara marble from Italy from the Italian government, President Lyndon B. Johnson dug the ceremonial first-shovel of earth at the groundbreaking for the Kennedy Center December 2,1964
25.
State Department
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The Department was created in 1789 and was the first executive department established. The Department is headquartered in the Harry S Truman Building located at 2201 C Street, NW, the Department operates the diplomatic missions of the United States abroad and is responsible for implementing the foreign policy of the United States and U. S. diplomacy efforts. The Department is also the depositary for more than 200 multilateral treaties, the Department is led by the Secretary of State, who is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate and is a member of the Cabinet. The current Secretary of State is Rex Tillerson, beginning 1 February 2017, the Secretary of State is the first Cabinet official in the order of precedence and in the presidential line of succession, after the President pro tempore of the Senate. This legislation remains the law of the Department of State. In September 1789, additional legislation changed the name of the agency to the Department of State and these responsibilities grew to include management of the United States Mint, keeper of the Great Seal of the United States, and the taking of the census. President George Washington signed the new legislation on September 15, most of these domestic duties of the Department of State were eventually turned over to various new Federal departments and agencies that were established during the 19th century. On September 29,1789, President Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, then Minister to France, from 1790 to 1800, the State Department had its headquarters in Philadelphia, the capital of the United States at the time. It occupied a building at Church and Fifth Streets, in 1800, it moved from Philadelphia to Washington, D. C. where it first occupied the Treasury Building and then the Seven Buildings at 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. It moved into the Six Buildings in September 1800, where it remained until May 1801 and it moved into the War Office Building due west of the White House in May 1801. It occupied the Treasury Building from September 1819 to November 1866 and it then occupied the Washington City Orphan Home from November 1866 to July 1875. It moved to the State, War, and Navy Building in 1875, since May 1947, it has occupied the Harry S. Truman Building in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, the State Department is therefore sometimes metonymically referred to as Foggy Bottom. Madeleine Albright became the first woman to become the United States Secretary of State, condoleezza Rice became the second female secretary of state in 2005. Hillary Rodham Clinton became the female secretary of state when she was appointed in 2009. In 2014, the State Department began expanding into the Navy Hill Complex across 23rd Street NW from the Truman Building, the Executive Branch and the U. S. Congress have constitutional responsibilities for U. S. foreign policy. Within the Executive Branch, the Department of State is the lead U. S, the Department advances U. S. objectives and interests in the world through its primary role in developing and implementing the Presidents foreign policy. It also provides an array of important services to U. S. citizens, the total Department of State budget, together with Other International Programs, costs about 45 cents a day for each resident of the United States. Keeping the public informed about U. S. foreign policy and relations with other countries, providing automobile registration for non-diplomatic staff vehicles and the vehicles of diplomats of foreign countries having diplomatic immunity in the United States
26.
United States Secretary of State
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Secretary of State is a Level I position in the Executive Schedule and thus earns the salary prescribed for that level. The current Secretary of State is former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and those that remain include storage and use of the Great Seal of the United States, performance of protocol functions for the White House, and the drafting of certain proclamations. The Secretary also negotiates with the individual States over the extradition of fugitives to foreign countries, under Federal Law, the resignation of a President or of a Vice President is only valid if declared in writing, in an instrument delivered to the office of the Secretary of State. Accordingly, the resignations of President Nixon and of Vice-President Spiro Agnew, domestic issues, were formalized in instruments delivered to the Secretary of State, six Secretaries of State have gone on to be elected President. Former Secretaries of State retain the right to add the title Secretary to their surnames, as the head of the United States Foreign Service, the Secretary of State is responsible for management of the diplomatic service of the United States. The foreign service employs about 12,000 people domestically and internationally, the U. S. Secretary of State has the power to remove any foreign diplomat from U. S. soil for any reason. The nature of the means that Secretaries of State engage in travel around the world. The record for most countries visited in a secretarys tenure is 112, second is Madeleine Albright with 96. The record for most air miles traveled in a secretarys tenure is 1.380 million miles, second is Condoleezza Rices 1.059 million miles and third is Clintons 956,733 miles. S
27.
Ivan Chermayeff
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Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv is a New York-based branding and graphic design firm. It was founded in 1957 by Yale graduates Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar, Ivan Chermayeff and Thomas Geismar were awarded the AIGA Medal in 1979. In 2006, designer Sagi Haviv became the partner at the firm. In 2013 Havivs name was added to the masthead and the became known as Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv. Designer Mackey Saturday joined the firm as a principal in 2016, in 2008, Haviv, Chermayeff and Geismar released a new identity for the Library of Congress, and in 2009 redesigned the logo of the fashion brand Armani Exchange. In 2008, the new Star-Spangled Banner exhibit designed by the firm opened at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D. C. In 2011 Sagi Haviv, Tom Geismar and Ivan Chermayeff co-authored the book Identify, the book was published by Print magazines book imprint. In October 2014 the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement was awarded to Tom Geismar and Ivan Chermayeff by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, list of AIGA medalists Serge Chermayeff Robert Brownjohn Peter Chermayeff LLC Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv official website Excerpt of Identify in Fast Co
28.
White House
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The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D. C. It has been the residence of every U. S. president since John Adams in 1800, the term White House is often used to refer to actions of the president and his advisers, as in The White House announced that. The residence was designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the Neoclassical style, construction took place between 1792 and 1800 using Aquia Creek sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he added low colonnades on each wing that concealed stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior, reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed Executive Residence in October 1817. Exterior construction continued with the addition of the semi-circular South portico in 1824, because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later in 1909, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office, in the main mansion, the third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as an area for social events. East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space, by 1948, the houses load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the rooms were completely dismantled. Once this work was completed, the rooms were rebuilt. The Executive Residence is made up of six stories—the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, the property is a National Heritage Site owned by the National Park Service and is part of the Presidents Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of Americas Favorite Architecture, in May 1790, New York began construction of Government House for his official residence, but he never occupied it. The national capital moved to Philadelphia in December 1790, the July 1790 Residence Act named Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the temporary national capital for a 10-year period while the Federal City was under construction. The City of Philadelphia rented Robert Morriss city house at 190 High Street for Washingtons presidential residence, the first president occupied the Market Street mansion from November 1790 to March 1797, and altered it in ways that may have influenced the design of the White House. As part of an effort to have Philadelphia named the permanent national capital, Pennsylvania built a much grander presidential mansion several blocks away. President John Adams also occupied the Market Street mansion from March 1797 to May 1800, on Saturday, November 1,1800, he became the first president to occupy the White House. The Presidents House in Philadelphia became a hotel and was demolished in 1832, the Presidents House was a major feature of Pierre Charles LEnfants plan for the newly established federal city, Washington, D. C
29.
Barack Obama
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Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president and he previously served in the U. S. Senate representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, and in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, two years after the territory was admitted to the Union as the 50th state and he grew up mostly in Hawaii, but also spent one year of his childhood in Washington State and four years in Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, in 1988 Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he became a civil rights attorney and professor, Obama represented the 13th District for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, when he ran for the U. S. Senate. In 2008, Obama was nominated for president, a year after his campaign began and he was elected over Republican John McCain, and was inaugurated on January 20,2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, during his first two years in office, Obama signed many landmark bills. Main reforms were the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, after a lengthy debate over the national debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control and the American Taxpayer Relief Acts. In foreign policy, Obama increased U. S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the U. S. -Russian New START treaty, and ended military involvement in the Iraq War. He ordered military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, after winning re-election over Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013. Obama also advocated gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning climate change and immigration. In foreign policy, Obama ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, Obama left office in January 2017 with a 60% approval rating. He currently resides in Washington, D. C and his presidential library will be built in Chicago. Obama was born on August 4,1961, at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu and he is the only President to have been born in Hawaii. He was born to a mother and a black father. His mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, of mostly English descent, with some German, Irish, Scottish, Swiss and his father, Barack Obama Sr. was a married Luo Kenyan man from Nyangoma Kogelo. Obamas parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the couple married in Wailuku, Hawaii on February 2,1961, six months before Obama was born. In late August 1961, Obamas mother moved him to the University of Washington in Seattle for a year
30.
Jimmy Carter
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James Earl Jimmy Carter Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Carter Center, Carter was a Democrat who was raised in rural Georgia. He was a farmer who served two terms as a Georgia State Senator from 1963 to 1967, and one as the Governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. He was elected President in 1976, defeating incumbent President Gerald Ford in a close election. On his second day in office, Carter pardoned all evaders of the Vietnam War drafts, during Carters term as President, two new cabinet-level departments, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, were established. He established an energy policy that included conservation, price control. In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. On the economic front he confronted persistent stagflation, a combination of inflation, high unemployment. The end of his tenure was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. In response to the Soviet move he ended détente, escalated the Cold War, Carter won the 1980 primary with 51. 13% of the vote but lost the general election in an electoral landslide to Republican nominee Ronald Reagan, who won 44 of 50 states. His presidency has drawn medium-low responses from historians, with many considering him to have accomplished more with his post-presidency work and he set up the Carter Center in 1982 as his base for advancing human rights. He has also traveled extensively to conduct negotiations, observe elections. Additionally, Carter is a key figure in the Habitat for Humanity project, since surpassing Herbert Hoover in September 2012, he has been the longest-retired president in American history. He is also the first president to mark the 40th anniversary of his election and inauguration, in reference to current political views, he has criticized some of Israels actions and policies in regards to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and has advocated for a two-state solution. James Earl Carter, Jr. was born on October 1,1924, at the Wise Sanitarium in Plains and he is a descendant of English immigrant Thomas Carter, who settled in Virginia in 1635. Numerous generations of Carters lived as farmers in Georgia. Carter is also a descendant of Thomas Cornell, an ancestor of Cornell Universitys founder and of Richard Nixon, Plains was a boomtown of 600 people at the time of Carters birth. His father, James Earl Carter, Sr. was a local businessman who ran a general store and had begun to invest in farmland
31.
George H.W. Bush
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George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who was the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993 and the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Republican Party, he was previously a congressman, ambassador, and he is the oldest living former President and Vice President. Prior to his sons presidency, he was referred to as George Bush or President Bush. Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Bush postponed his university studies, enlisted in the U. S. Navy on his 18th birthday and he served until the end of the war, then attended Yale University. Graduating in 1948, he moved his family to West Texas and entered the oil business, Bush became involved in politics soon after founding his own oil company, serving as a member of the House of Representatives and Director of Central Intelligence, among other positions. He failed to win the Republican nomination for President in 1980, but was chosen as a mate by party nominee Ronald Reagan. During his tenure, Bush headed administration task forces on deregulation, in 1988, Bush ran a successful campaign to succeed Reagan as President, defeating Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis. Foreign policy drove the Bush presidency, military operations were conducted in Panama and the Persian Gulf, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union dissolved two years later. Domestically, Bush reneged on a 1988 campaign promise and, after a struggle with Congress and his presidential library was dedicated in 1997, and he has been active—often alongside Bill Clinton—in various humanitarian activities. Besides being the 43rd president, his son George also served as the 46th Governor of Texas and is one of only two other being John Quincy Adams—to be the son of a former president. His second son, Jeb Bush, served as the 43rd Governor of Florida, George Herbert Walker Bush was born at 173 Adams Street in Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12,1924, to Prescott Sheldon Bush and Dorothy Bush. The Bush family moved from Milton to Greenwich, Connecticut, shortly after his birth, growing up, his nickname was Poppy. Bush began his education at the Greenwich Country Day School in Greenwich. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Bush decided to join the US, Navy, so after graduating from Phillips Academy in 1942, he became a naval aviator at the age of 18. He was assigned to Torpedo Squadron as the officer in September 1943. The following year, his squadron was based on USS San Jacinto as a member of Air Group 51, during this time, the task force was victorious in one of the largest air battles of World War II, the Battle of the Philippine Sea. After Bushs promotion to Lieutenant on August 1,1944, San Jacinto commenced operations against the Japanese in the Bonin Islands, Bush piloted one of four Grumman TBM Avenger aircraft from VT-51 that attacked the Japanese installations on Chichijima
32.
Bill Clinton
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William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the Presidency he was the 40th Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, before that, he served as Arkansas Attorney General from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideogically a New Democrat, Clinton is married to Hillary Clinton, who served as United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 and U. S. Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and served the Democratic nominee for President in 2016, Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham both earned degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the states education system, Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, defeating incumbent George H. W. Bush. At age 46, he was the third-youngest president and the first from the Baby Boomer generation, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history and signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. After failing to pass health care reform, the Democratic House was ousted when the Republican Party won control of the Congress in 1994. Two years later, in 1996, Clinton became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to a second term, Clinton passed welfare reform and the State Childrens Health Insurance Program, providing health coverage for millions of children. Clinton was acquitted by the U. S. Senate in 1999, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of Clintons presidency. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U. S. Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U. S. President since World War II, since then, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the William J. Clinton Foundation to address international causes, such as the prevention of AIDS, in 2004, Clinton published his autobiography, My Life. In 2009, Clinton was named the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, since leaving office, Clinton has been rated highly in public opinion polls of U. S. Presidents. Clinton was born on August 19,1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas and he was the son of William Jefferson Blythe Jr. a traveling salesman who had died in an automobile accident three months before his birth, and Virginia Dell Cassidy. His parents had married on September 4,1943, but this later proved to be bigamous. Soon after their son was born, his mother traveled to New Orleans to study nursing, leaving her son in Hope with her parents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store. At a time when the Southern United States was segregated racially, in 1950, Bills mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton Sr. who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his brother and Earl T. Ricks. The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950, although he immediately assumed use of his stepfathers surname, it was not until Clinton turned fifteen that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather. In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. Johns Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School—where he was a student leader, avid reader
33.
Julie Harris (American actress)
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Julia Ann Julie Harris was an American stage, screen, and television actress. A 10-time Tony Award nominee and five-time winner, she won for I Am a Camera, The Lark, Forty Carats, The Last of Mrs. Lincoln, and The Belle of Amherst. She also won three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 1952 film The Member of the Wedding. She was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979, received the National Medal of Arts in 1994, julia Ann Harris was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the daughter of Elsie L. a nurse, and William Pickett Harris, an investment banker. She graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, which merged with two others to form the University Liggett School. In New York City, she attended The Hewitt School, in 1952, Harris won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, the stage version of Christopher Isherwoods Goodbye to Berlin. Harris repeated her role in the film version of I Am a Camera. Of particular note is her Tony-winning performance in The Belle of Amherst and she received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for the audio recording of the play. She first performed the play in 1976 and subsequently appeared in solo shows. In 1983, Harris also became a member of The Mirror Theater Ltds Mirror Repertory Company. Julie Harris became a mentor to the company, having urged Founding Artistic Director Sabra Jones to create the company from 1976 forward, when Jones married John Strasberg. Harris and Jones met at a performance of The Belle of Amherst, along with Chita Rivera, Harris holds the record for the most individual Tony Award nominations, with 10 nominations. She held the record for most competitive Tony wins until Angela Lansbury tied her in 2009, audra McDonald has since passed them both, with six acting Tony Award wins. In 1966, Harris won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre, Harris played the ethereal Eleanor Lance in The Haunting, director Robert Wises screen adaptation of a novel by Shirley Jackson, a classic film of the horror genre. She reprised her Tony-winning role as Mary Todd Lincoln in The Last of Mrs. Lincoln in the film version, another noteworthy film appearance was the World War II drama The Hiding Place. She also appeared in films as East of Eden, with James Dean, Requiem for a Heavyweight, with Paul Newman in the private-detective film Harper. For her television work, Harris had won three Emmy Awards and had been nominated 11 times, one of her most famous television roles was as Queen Victoria, in the 1961 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Laurence Housmans Victoria Regina, for which she won an Emmy. Earlier, also for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, she starred as Nora Helmer opposite Christopher Plummer in A Dolls House, a 90-minute television adaptation of Ibsens play
34.
Robert Redford
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Charles Robert Redford Jr. is an American actor, director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, and philanthropist. Redford is the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, Redfords career began in 1960 as a guest star on numerous TV shows, including, The Untouchables, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zone, among others. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont and his greatest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of Elizabeth Ashley in Neil Simons Barefoot in the Park. Redford made his debut in War Hunt. His role in Inside Daisy Clover won him a Golden Globe for best new star and he starred in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which was a huge success and made him a major star. The popular and acclaimed All the Presidents Men was a film for Redford. The first film that Redford directed, Ordinary People, was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning four Oscars, and in the same year, he starred in Brubaker. He starred in Out of Africa, which was a critical and box office success. He released his film as a director, A River Runs Through It. Redford won the 1980 Academy Award for Best Director in 1981 for directing Ordinary People and he was previously nominated for Best Actor in 1974 for his performance in The Sting, and went on to receive Best Director and Best Picture nominations in 1995 for Quiz Show. He won a second Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2002, in 2010, he was made a chevalier of the Légion dHonneur. He has won BAFTA, Directors Guild of America, Golden Globe, in April 2014, Time Magazine included Redford in their annual TIME100 as one of the Most Influential People in the World, declaring him the Godfather of Indie Film. In 2016, President Barack Obama honored Redford with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, Redford was born on August 18,1936, in Santa Monica, California to Martha W. and Charles Robert Redford, Sr. a milkman-turned-accountant. He has a stepbrother, William, from his fathers remarriage, Redford is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Scots-Irish ancestry. Redfords family moved to Van Nuys, California, while his father worked in El Segundo and he attended Van Nuys High School, where he was classmates with baseball pitcher Don Drysdale. He has described himself as having been a bad student, finding inspiration outside the classroom and he hit tennis balls with Pancho Gonzales at the Los Angeles Tennis Club to warm him up. After graduating from school in 1954, he attended the University of Colorado in Boulder for a year and a half. While there, he worked at the restaurant/bar The Sink, a painting of his likeness is prominent in the bars murals, while at Colorado, Redford began drinking heavily, and as a result lost his half-scholarship and was kicked out of school
35.
Tina Turner
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Tina Turner, is an American-born Swiss recording artist, dancer, actress, and author, whose career has spanned more than half a century, earning her widespread recognition and numerous awards. Born and raised in the Southeastern United States, Turner obtained Swiss citizenship in 2013 and she began her musical career in the mid-1950s as a featured singer with Ike Turners Kings of Rhythm, first recording in 1958 under the name Little Ann. Her introduction to the public as Tina Turner began in 1960 as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Success followed with a string of notable hits credited to the duo, including A Fool in Love, River Deep – Mountain High, Proud Mary, and Nutbush City Limits, a song which she herself wrote. In her autobiography, I, Tina, she revealed several instances of domestic abuse against her by Ike Turner prior to their 1976 split. After her divorce from Ike Turner, she rebuilt her career through live performances, Whats Love Got to Do with It, the lead single won three Grammy Awards including Record of the Year. Whats Love Got to Do with It was later used as the title of a loosely based biographical film adapted from her autobiography, One of the worlds best-selling artists of all time, she has also been referred to as The Queen of Rock n Roll. Turner has been termed the most successful female Rock n Roll artist, receiving eleven Grammy Awards, including eight competitive awards, Turner has also sold more concert tickets than any other solo performer in history. Her combined album and single sales total approximately 180 million copies worldwide and she is noted for her energetic stage presence, powerful vocals, and career longevity. In 2008, Turner returned from semi-retirement to embark on her Tina, Turners tour became one of the highest selling ticketed shows of 2008–09. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Turner no.63 on their list of 100 greatest artists of all time, in 1991, Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Turner announced in December 2016 that she has been working on Tina, Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26,1939, in Nutbush, an unincorporated area in Haywood County, Tennessee. Her parents were Zelma Priscilla and Floyd Richard Bullock, Anna Mae was born at Poindexter Farm on Highway 180, where her father worked as an overseer of the sharecroppers. She is of African-American descent, with approximately 33% European and 1% Native American ancestry, Anna Mae had an older sister, Ruby Aillene. As young children, Anna Mae and Aillene were separated when their parents relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee, after the war, the sisters reunited with their parents and moved with them to Knoxville. Two years later, the returned to Nutbush to live in the Flagg Grove community. In 1889, her uncle had sold the land on which the school was built to the school trustees. As a youngster, Anna Mae sang in the choir at Nutbushs Spring Hill Baptist Church
36.
Suzanne Farrell
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Suzanne Farrell is an American ballerina and the founder of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C. Farrell began her ballet training at the age of eight. In 1960, she received a scholarship to the renowned School of American Ballet and her first leading roles in ballets came in the early 1960s. A muse of George Balanchine, she severed ties with him in the early 1970s, moving to Brussels and dancing with the Ballet of the XXth Century. In 1975, Farrell moved back to the United States, where she collaborated with Balanchine until his death in 1983, Farrell had an unusually long career as a ballet performer, and since her retirement in 1989 has acted as a teacher in numerous prestigious ballet schools. Farrell was born Roberta Sue Ficker in Cincinnati, Ohio, on August 16,1945 and she received her early training at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She took multiple forms of dance, preferring tap to ballet as she liked to hear her own movements and she was the tallest by far in her ballet classes and always played the male roles. She also never got to wear the lovely dresses, skirts, gowns and this led to her having animosity towards ballet at first. She started pointe late as her feet grew so long, it took a while for her to find shoes that fit and her left foot was crushed and permanently damaged as a child from being stomped on by a horse. In 1960 she was selected to study at George Balanchines School of American Ballet with a Ford Foundation scholarship, in 1961, she joined the New York City Ballet and became Balanchines muse for many of his choreographed dances. Farrell has danced in more than 2,000 performances and is the founder of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet Company at the Kennedy Center in Washington, initially part of the corps de ballet at NYCB, Farrell soon moved on to dancing featured roles. The first ballet choreographed for her was Passage, now Arcade, Balanchine first paired her with Jacques dAmboise to choreograph his Meditation, which debuted in Winter 1963. In 1968, he cast her as the lead in the Diamonds section of his three-act plotless ballet Jewels and she re-scaled many ballets and expanded them to a new level of technique. In 1965, she was promoted to principal dancer and her first role in her new title was Agon with Arthur Mitchell at the Paris Opera. George Balanchine quickly fell in love with his princess and created many roles for her. Balanchine was married to the former ballerina Tanaquil LeClercq, however. Though Balanchine divorced LeClerq to pursue Farrell, she married fellow dancer Paul Mejia. This caused the relationship of Farrell and Balanchine to be horribly severed, there was nothing but tension between them, and finally Farrell and husband Mejia left the company. She and her husband joined the European company Ballet of the XXth Century of the French choreographer Maurice Béjart
37.
Tony Bennett
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Anthony Dominick Benedetto, known professionally as Tony Bennett, is an American singer of traditional pop standards, big band, show tunes, and jazz. He is also a painter, having created works under the name Anthony Benedetto that are on permanent public display in several institutions and he is the founder of the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, New York. Born and raised in Astoria to an Italian-American family, Bennett began singing at an early age and he fought in the final stages of World War II as a U. S. Army infantryman in the European Theater. Afterward, he developed his technique, signed with Columbia Records and had his first number-one popular song with Because of You in 1951. Several top hits such as Rags to Riches followed in the early 1950s and he then refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached a peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco. His career and his personal life experienced a downturn during the height of the rock music era. Bennett staged a comeback in the late 1980s and 1990s, putting out gold record albums again and he has won 19 Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards, and was named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree. He has sold over 50 million records worldwide, Anthony Dominick Benedetto was born on August 3,1926, in Astoria, Queens, New York, to grocer John Benedetto and seamstress Anna Suraci. In 1906, John had emigrated from Podàrgoni, an eastern district of the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria. Anna had been born in the U. S. shortly after her parents emigrated from the Calabria region in 1899. Other relatives came over as well as part of the migration of Italians to America. Tony grew up with a sister, Mary, and an older brother. With a father who was ailing and unable to work, the children grew up in poverty, John Sr. instilled in his son a love of art and literature and a compassion for human suffering, but died when Tony was 10 years old. The experience of growing up in the Great Depression and a distaste for the effects of the Hoover Administration would make the child a lifelong Democrat. Young Tony grew up listening to Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Judy Garland, and Bing Crosby as well as artists such as Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden. His Uncle Dick was a tap dancer in vaudeville, giving him a window into show business
38.
Led Zeppelin
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Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The group consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, after changing their name from the New Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin signed a deal with Atlantic Records that afforded them considerable artistic freedom. Their fourth album, which features the track Stairway to Heaven, is among the most popular and influential works in rock music, Page wrote most of Led Zeppelins music, particularly early in their career, while Plant generally supplied the lyrics. Jones keyboard-based compositions later became central to the catalogue, which featured increasing experimentation. The latter half of their career saw a series of record-breaking tours that earned the group a reputation for excess, in the decades that followed, the surviving members sporadically collaborated and participated in one-off Led Zeppelin reunions. The most successful of these was the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, Led Zeppelin are widely considered one of the most successful, innovative, and influential rock groups in history. They are one of the music artists in the history of audio recording. With RIAA-certified sales of 111.5 million units, they are the band in the US. Each of their nine studio albums placed in the top 10 of the Billboard album chart and they achieved eight consecutive UK number-one albums. Rolling Stone magazine described them as the heaviest band of all time, the biggest band of the Seventies, and unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, in 1966, London-based session guitarist Jimmy Page joined the blues-influenced rock band the Yardbirds to replace bassist Paul Samwell-Smith. Page soon switched from bass to guitar, creating a dual lead guitar line-up with Jeff Beck. Following Becks departure in October 1966, the Yardbirds, tired from constant touring and recording, Page wanted to form a supergroup with him and Beck on guitars, and the Whos Keith Moon and John Entwistle on drums and bass, respectively. Vocalists Steve Winwood and Steve Marriott were also considered for the project, the group never formed, although Page, Beck, and Moon did record a song together in 1966, Becks Bolero, in a session that also included bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones. The Yardbirds played their final gig in July 1968 at Luton College of Technology in Bedfordshire, Page and Dreja began putting a new line-up together. Pages first choice for the singer was Terry Reid, but Reid declined the offer and suggested Robert Plant. Plant eventually accepted the position, recommending former Band of Joy drummer John Bonham, Jones inquired about the vacant position at the suggestion of his wife after Dreja dropped out of the project to become a photographer. Page had known Jones since they were both musicians and agreed to let him join as the final member
39.
Alan Jay Lerner
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Alan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, and later Burton Lane, he created some of the worlds most popular and he won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors. Born in New York City, he was the son of Edith Adelson Lerner and Joseph Jay Lerner, whose brother, Samuel Alexander Lerner, was founder and owner of the Lerner Stores, one of Lerners cousins was the radio comedian/television game show panelist Henry Morgan. Lerner was educated at Bedales School in England, The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut and he attended both Camp Androscoggin and Camp Greylock. At both Choate and Harvard, Lerner was a classmate of John F. Kennedy, at Choate they had worked together on the yearbook staff. Like Cole Porter at Yale and Richard Rodgers at Columbia, his career in theater began with his collegiate contributions. During the summers of 1936 and 1937, Lerner studied music composition at Juilliard, while attending Harvard, he lost his sight in his left eye due to an accident in the boxing ring. In 1957, Lerner and Leonard Bernstein, another of Lerners college classmates, collaborated on Lonely Men of Harvard, due to his injury, Lerner could not serve in World War II. Instead he wrote scripts, including Your Hit Parade, until he was introduced to Austrian composer Frederick Loewe. While at the Lambs, he also met Lorenz Hart, with whom he would also collaborate, Lerner and Loewes first collaboration was a musical adaptation of Barry Connerss farce The Patsy called Life of the Party for a Detroit stock company. The lyrics were written by Earle Crooker, but he had left the project. It enjoyed a run and encouraged the duo to join forces with Arthur Pierson for Whats Up. which opened on Broadway in 1943. It ran for 63 performances and was followed two years later by The Day Before Spring and their first hit was Brigadoon, a romantic fantasy set in a mystical Scottish village, directed by Robert Lewis. It was followed in 1951 by the Gold Rush story Paint Your Wagon, while the show ran for nearly a year and included songs that later became pop standards, it was less successful that Lerners previous work. He later said of Paint Your Wagon, it was a success, Lerner worked with Kurt Weill on the stage musical Love Life and Burton Lane on the movie musical Royal Wedding. In that same year Lerner also wrote the Oscar-winning original screenplay for An American in Paris and this was the same team who would later join with Lerner and Loewe to create Gigi. In 1956, Lerner and Loewe unveiled My Fair Lady, before finishing the musical, Lerner was eager to write while My Fair Lady was taking so long to complete. Burton Lane and Lerner were working on a musical about Lil Abner, gabriel Pascal owned the rights to Pygmalion, which had been unsuccessful with other composers who tried to adapt it into a musical
40.
Frederick Loewe
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Frederick Loewe, was an Austrian-American composer. He collaborated with lyricist Alan Jay Lerner on a series of Broadway musicals, including My Fair Lady and Camelot, Loewe was born in Berlin, Germany, to Viennese parents Edmond and Rosa Loewe. His father was a noted Jewish operetta star who performed throughout Europe and in North and South America, frederick Loewe grew up in Berlin and attended a Prussian cadet school from the age of five until he was thirteen. At an early age Loewe learned to play piano by ear and helped his father rehearse and he eventually attended a music conservatory in Berlin, one year behind virtuoso Claudio Arrau, and studied with Ferruccio Busoni and Eugene dAlbert. He won the coveted Hollander Medal awarded by the school and gave performances as a concert pianist while still in Germany, at 13, he was the youngest piano soloist ever to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1924, his father received an offer to appear in New York City and this proved to be difficult, and he took other odd jobs, including cattle punching, gold mining and prize fighting. He eventually found work playing piano in German clubs in Yorkville, Loewe began to visit the Lambs Club, a hangout for theater performers, producers, managers, and directors. He credited The Lambs for keeping him working until his career expanded and their first collaboration was a musical adaptation of Barry Connors farce The Patsy, called Life of the Party, after a Detroit stock company. It enjoyed a run and encouraged the duo to join forces with Arthur Pierson for Whats Up. which opened on Broadway in 1943. It ran for 63 performances and was followed two years later by The Day Before Spring and their first hit was Brigadoon, a romantic fantasy set in a mystical Scottish village, directed by Robert Lewis. It was followed in 1951 by the less successful Gold Rush story Paint Your Wagon, in 1956, Lerner and Loewes My Fair Lady first appeared. The partnership won the Tony Award for Best Musical, MGM took notice and commissioned them to write the film musical Gigi, which won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Their next Broadway production was Camelot, the production starred Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. The trio appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and sang a few numbers from the musical, along with an appearance by Lerner and Loewe. The following morning the box office was swamped with requests, the following year they collaborated on a musical film version of The Little Prince, based on the classic childrens tale by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. This film was a critical and box office failure, but the soundtrack recording, Loewe was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972. He remained in Palm Springs, California until his death, and had a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated to him in 1995 and he was buried in the Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California
41.
Hume Cronyn
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Hume Blake Cronyn, Jr. OC was a Canadian-American actor of stage and screen, who enjoyed a long career, often appearing professionally alongside Jessica Tandy, his wife of over fifty years. Cronyn, one of five children, was born in London, Ontario and his father, Hume Blake Cronyn, Sr. was a businessman and a Member of Parliament for London. His mother, Frances Amelia, was an heiress of the company of the same name. His great-uncle, Benjamin, Jr. Cronyn was also a cousin of Canadian-born theater producer, Robert Whitehead, Cronyn was the first Elmwood School boarder and boarded at Elmwood between 1917 and 1921. After leaving Elmwood, Cronyn went to Ridley College in St. Catharines, and McGill University in Montreal, early in life, Cronyn was an amateur featherweight boxer, having the skills to be nominated for Canadas 1932 Olympic Boxing team. In 1934, the year he joined The Lambs, he made his Broadway debut as a janitor in Hippers Holiday and became known for his versatility. He won a Drama Desk Special Award in 1986, in 1990, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. His first Hollywood film was Alfred Hitchcocks Shadow of a Doubt and he later appeared in Hitchcocks Lifeboat and worked on the screenplays of Rope and Under Capricorn. He was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his performance in The Seventh Cross, Cronyn bought the screenplay What Nancy Wanted from Norma Barzman, who was later blacklisted with her husband Ben Barzman, with the idea of producing the film and starring Tandy. However, he sold the screenplay to RKO which later filmed it as The Locket, Cronyn also made appearances in television, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode Kill With Kindness and Hawaii Five-O episodes Over Fifty, Steal and Odd Man In. In 1990 he won an Emmy award for his role in the TV Movie Age Old Friends, the show was scheduled to move from radio to television, with Cronyn producing as well as acting in the show. However, Tandy suffered a miscarriage and the debut was delayed a week. The series premiered in July 1954 to warm and enthusiastic reviews, the couple had a daughter, Tandy, and a son, Christopher. Cronyn and Tandy lived in the Bahamas, then at an estate in Pound Ridge, New York. Jessica Tandy died in 1994, aged 85, from ovarian cancer, after he was widowed, Cronyn married author/playwright Susan Cooper in July 1996. His 1991 autobiography was titled A Terrible Liar and he died on June 15,2003, one month before his 92nd birthday. In 1979, Cronyn was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, on July 11,1988 he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada, giving him the Post Nominal Letters OC for Life. Cronyn was inducted into Canadas Walk of Fame in 1999 and he also received the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal in 1992 and the Canadian version of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002
42.
Jessica Tandy
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Jessica Tandy was a British stage and film actress. She appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film, born in London to Jessie Helen Horspool and commercial traveller Harry Tandy, she was only 18 when she made her professional debut on the London stage in 1927. During the 1930s, she appeared in a number of plays in Londons West End, playing roles such as Ophelia. During this period, she worked in a couple of British films. Following the end of her marriage to the British actor Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York in 1940 and he became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen. She received the Tony Award for best performance by a Leading Actress in A Play for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, Tandy shared the prize with Katharine Cornell and Judith Anderson in a three-way tie for the award. Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a role in Alfred Hitchcocks horror film, The Birds. Along with Cronyn, she was a member of the acting company of the Guthrie Theater. In the mid-1980s she had a career revival and she appeared with Cronyn in the Broadway production of Foxfire in 1983 and its television adaptation four years later, winning both a Tony Award and an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Annie Nations. During these years, she appeared in such as Cocoon. At the height of her success, she was named as one of Peoples 50 Most Beautiful People and she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, and continued working until shortly before her death. The youngest of three siblings, Tandy was born in Geldeston Road in Hackney, London and her father, Harry Tandy, was a travelling salesman for a rope manufacturer. Her mother, Jessie Helen Horspool was the head of a school for handicapped children who was from a large fenland family in Wisbech. Her father died when Tandy was 12, and her mother subsequently taught evening courses to earn an income and her brother Edward was later a prisoner of war of the Japanese in the Far East. Tandy was educated at Dame Alice Owens School in Islington, Tandy began her career at the age of 18 in London, establishing herself with performances opposite such actors as Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. She entered films in Britain, but after her marriage to Jack Hawkins failed, during her time as a leading actress on the stage in London she often had to fight for roles over her two rivals, Peggy Ashcroft and Celia Johnson. In 1942, she married Hume Cronyn and over the years played supporting roles in several Hollywood films. Tandy became a citizen of the United States in 1952
43.
Betty Comden
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Betty Comden was born Basya Cohen in Brooklyn, New York, to Leo Cohen, a lawyer, and her mother, Rebecca, an English teacher, were both Russian immigrants, both observant Jews. Basya attended Erasmus Hall High School and studied drama at New York University, according to the New York Times. In 1938, mutual friends introduced her to Adolph Green, an aspiring actor, along with the young Judy Holliday and Leonard Bernstein, Comden and Green formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Due to the success, the Revuers appeared in the 1944 film Greenwich Village, but their roles were so small they were barely noticed. Comden and Green wrote the book and lyrics, which included parts for themselves. Their next musical, Billion Dollar Baby in 1945, with music by Morton Gould was not a success, Comden and Green headed to California and soon found work at MGM. The duo reunited with Gene Kelly for their most successful project, Comden and Green provided the story and screenplay, the songs were hits from the late 1920s and early 1930s by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. They followed this with another hit, The Band Wagon, in which the characters of Lester and Lily and they were Oscar-nominated twice, for their screenplays for The Band Wagon and Its Always Fair Weather. They earned three Screen Writers Guild Awards, for the two aforementioned movies as well as On the Town, the score, including the standards Just in Time, Long Before I Knew You, and The Partys Over, proved to be one of their richest. In 1958, they appeared on Broadway in A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green and it was a critical and commercial success, and they brought an updated version back to Broadway in 1977. Comden and Greens Broadway work in the 1960s included four collaborations with Jule Styne and they wrote the lyrics for Do Re Mi, and the book and lyrics for Subways Are For Sleeping, Fade Out – Fade In, and Hallelujah, Baby. Comden and Green wrote the libretto for the 1970 musical Applause, an adaptation of the film All About Eve, Comden also played Letitia Primrose in that musical when original star Imogene Coca left the show. Comden and Greens final musical hit was 1991s The Will Rogers Follies, in 1980, Comden was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And, in 1981, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, in the early 1980s, Comden acted in Wendy Wassersteins play Isnt It Romantic, portraying the lead characters mother. In 1984, filmmaker Sidney Lumet directed a film about Greta Garbo, Garbo Talks, starring Anne Bancroft, the producers of the film were sure that the real Garbo either could not be located or would flatly turn them down, to appear in a cameo. They did try however, with an associate of Garbo. The associate never responded, so Comden was asked to appear in the film for the brief, Comden and Green received Kennedy Center Honors in 1991. Comden and Green were a partnership, not a romantic couple
44.
Adolph Green
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Many people thought the pair were married, but in fact they were not a romantic couple at all. Nevertheless, they shared a unique comic genius and sophisticated wit that enabled them to forge a partnership that produced some of Hollywood. Green was born in the Bronx to Hungarian Jewish immigrants Helen, after high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street while he tried to make it as an actor. He met Comden through mutual friends in 1938 while she was studying drama at New York University and they formed a troupe called the Revuers, which performed at the Village Vanguard, a club in Greenwich Village. Comden and Green wrote the lyrics and book, which included parts for themselves. Their next two musicals, Billion Dollar Baby and Bonanza Bound were not successful, and once again headed to California. They reunited with Kelly for their most successful project, the classic Singin in the Rain and they were Oscar-nominated twice, for their screenplays for The Band Wagon and Its Always Fair Weather, both of which earned them a Screen Writers Guild Award, as did On the Town. The score, including the standards Just in Time, Long Before I Knew You, in 1958, they appeared on Broadway in A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a revue that included some of their early sketches. It was a critical and commercial success, and they brought an updated version back to Broadway in 1977 and their many collaborators included Garson Kanin, Cy Coleman, Jule Styne, and André Previn. The team was not without its failures, in 1980, Green was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. And, in 1981, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, in 1989 he appeared as Dr. Pangloss in Bernsteins Candide. Comden and Green received Kennedy Center Honors in 1991, greens third wife was actress Phyllis Newman, who had understudied Holliday in Bells Are Ringing. They had two children, Adam and Amanda, both of whom are songwriters and these shows are collated from the biography above. Pangloss / Martin Frasier as Walter The Substance of Fire as Mr
45.
Fayard Nicholas
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Fayard Antonio Nicholas was an American choreographer, dancer and actor. The Nicholas brothers also starred in the 20th Century-Fox musicals Down Argentine Way, Sun Valley Serenade, Nicholas was born in Alabama, but grew up primarily in Philadelphia. He learned to dance while watching vaudeville shows with his brother while their parents played in the orchestra. His father, Ulysses D. Nicholas, was a drummer and his mother, in 1932, when he was 18 and his brother was only 11, they became the featured act at Cotton Club in New York City. The brothers earned fame with a style of rhythm tap that blended masterful jazz steps with daredevil athletic moves. They appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway and in London they worked with jazz choreographer Buddy Bradley, the performances led them to a career in film. Nicholas appeared in over 60 films, including the 1943 musical Stormy Weather with their signature staircase dance and his career was interrupted from 1943 to 1944 when he served in the U. S. Army during World War II. Nicholas achieved the rank of Technician fifth grade while in WWII, after his dance career ended, Nicholas and his wife, Katheryn Hopkins Nicholas, embarked on a lecture tour discussing dance. In 2003, Nicholas served as Festival Legend at the third Soul to Sole Tap Festival in Austin, Fayard Nicholas was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C. V. Whitney Hall of Fame in 2001 and he remained friends with his first wife, Geraldine. His second wife was the late Barbara January and he married dancer Katherine Hopkins in 2000. He was a member of the Baháí Faith. Nicholas died of pneumonia at age 91, Nicholas Brothers official website Fayard Nicholas Biography
46.
Harold Nicholas
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Harold Lloyd Nicholas was an American dancer specializing in tap. He was the half of the tap-dancing pair the Nicholas Brothers. His older brother was Fayard Nicholas, Harold was married to actress Dorothy Dandridge from 1942 to 1951. Nicholas was born to drummer and orchestra leader Ulysses Domonick and pianist Viola Harden in Winston-Salem, by the age of three, his older brother Fayard enjoyed sitting in the audience of the black vaudeville theater where his parents performed, enraptured by the great performers on stage. Immersed in show business, when the Nicholases added a second son to the family, seven-year-old Fayard insisted that the child be named after his idol, Harold Lloyd, the silent-screen comedian. The two brothers soon began dancing, and they quickly gained acclaim for their elegant acrobatic moves, when Fayard was 16 and Harold nine, they made their first appearance at the legendary Cotton Club in New York City and were a popular success immediately. Their reputation grew rapidly, and Harold and Fayard became established superstars at Twentieth Century Fox with their dance numbers in the studios musicals features. The brothers began appearing in films with Eubie Blake. They performed in vaudeville, on Broadway, in nightclubs, on television, fred Astaire told the brothers that their dazzling footwork, leaps and splits in the Jumpin’ Jive dance in Stormy Weather produced the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen. In the number, the dance on a piano and leap over performing musicians. The Nicholas Brothers’ Hollywood career began after movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn spotted them in a nightclub, the two became big film stars despite racial restrictions at the time prohibiting speaking parts and scenes with white co-stars. Their last film together was 1948’s The Pirate, in which Gene Kelly danced with them, Harold went on to work as a solo artist, moving to France and touring as a singer and dancer. He appeared in the French film L’Empire De La Nuit, Harold Nicholas, like his brother, was married more than once. His first marriage, in 1942, was to the celebrated actress, together they had a daughter, Harolyn Suzanne, who was born with severe brain damage that prevented her from speaking or even acknowledging her parents. Their marriage lasted nine years, ending in 1951, Nicholas returned to America occasionally to do shows with his brother. Harold also appeared in the films Uptown Saturday Night, Tap, The Five Heartbeats, the leading character, a seasoned triple threat/hoofer, Dr Rhythm, was written for Nicholas and would be his farewell stage performance in a musical. Carnegie Hall sold out for a tribute to him and his brother in 1998, by that time he had been living on New Yorks Upper West Side, where he lived for approximately 20 years with his third wife Rigmor Alfredsson Newman, a producer. He died on July 3,2000, at the age of 79, Harold was inducted into the National Museum of Dance C. V
47.
Paul Newman
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Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor. Newmans other films include The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as Butch Cassidy, The Sting, and The Verdict. Despite being colorblind, Newman won several championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing. He was a co-founder of Newmans Own, a company from which he donated all post-tax profits. As of 2016, these donations have totaled over US$460 million and he was also a co-founder of Safe Water Network, a nonprofit that develops sustainable drinking water solutions for those in need. In 1988, Newman founded the SeriousFun Childrens Network, a family of summer camps. Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the son of Theresa and Arthur Sigmund Newman. Newmans father was Jewish, and was the son of Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, immigrants from Hungary, Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, saying its more of a challenge. Newmans mother worked in his fathers store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur. Newman showed an early interest in the theater, his first role was at the age of seven, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. At age 10, Newman performed at the Cleveland Play House in a production of Saint George and the Dragon, graduating from Shaker Heights High School in 1943, he briefly attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he was initiated into the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. Newman served in the United States Navy in World War II in the Pacific theater, initially, he enrolled in the Navy V-12 pilot training program at Yale University, but was dropped when his colorblindness was discovered. Boot camp followed, with training as a radioman and rear gunner, qualifying in torpedo bombers in 1944, Aviation Radioman Third Class Newman was sent to Barbers Point, Hawaii. He later flew as a gunner in an Avenger torpedo bomber. As a radioman-gunner, his unit was assigned to the USS Bunker Hill along with other replacements shortly before the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945, the pilot of his aircraft had an ear infection which kept their plane grounded. The rest of their squadron flew to the Bunker Hill, days later, a kamikaze attack on the vessel killed a number of service members, including the other members of his unit. After the war, Newman completed his Bachelor of Arts in drama and economics at Kenyon College in Gambier, shortly after earning his degree, he joined several summer stock companies, most notably the Belfry Players in Wisconsin and the Woodstock Players in Illinois. He toured with them for three months and developed his talents as a part of Woodstock Players and he later attended the Yale School of Drama for one year, before moving to New York City to study under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio
48.
Joanne Woodward
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Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American actress, producer, activist, and philanthropist. She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award-winning role in The Three Faces of Eve. Woodward was born on February 27,1930, in Thomasville, Georgia, daughter of Elinor and Wade Woodward and her middle names, Gignilliat Trimmier, are of Huguenot origin. She was influenced to become an actress by her mothers love of movies and her mother named her after Joan Crawford, using the Southern pronunciation of the name – Joanne. She eventually worked with Olivier in 1977, in a production of Come Back. During rehearsals, she mentioned this incident to him, and he told her that he remembered her doing it, Woodward lived in Thomasville until she was in the second grade, when her family relocated to Marietta, Georgia, where she attended Marietta High School. She remains a booster of Marietta High and of that citys Strand Theater and they moved once again when she was a junior in high school, after her parents divorced. She graduated from Greenville High School in Greenville, South Carolina in 1947, Woodward won many beauty contests as a teenager. She appeared in productions at Greenville High and in Greenvilles Little Theatre, playing Laura Wingfield in their staging of The Glass Menagerie. She returned to Greenville in 1976, to play Amanda Wingfield in another Little Theatre production of The Glass Menagerie and she had also returned in 1955 for the premiére of her debut movie, Count Three And Pray, at the Paris Theatre on North Main Street. Woodward majored in drama at Louisiana State University, where she was an initiate of Chi Omega sorority, woodwards first film was a post-Civil War Western, Count Three and Pray, in 1955. She continued to move between Hollywood and Broadway, eventually understudying in the New York production of Picnic, which featured her future husband Paul Newman, the two were married in 1958, after their work together in the film The Long, Hot Summer. By that time, Woodward had starred in The Three Faces of Eve and she appeared with husband Paul Newman in ten feature films, The Long, Hot Summer Rally Round the Flag, Boys. From the Terrace Paris Blues A New Kind of Love Winning WUSA The Drowning Pool Harry & Son — Mr. and she appeared in the television films Sybil, opposite Sally Field, and Crisis at Central High. She was the narrator for Martin Scorseses screen version of The Age of Innocence, Woodward was a co-producer and starred in a 1993 broadcast of the play Blind Spot, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress – Miniseries or a Movie. In 1995, Woodward directed off-broadway revivals of Clifford Odets Golden Boy, Woodward served as the artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse from 2001 to 2005. She recorded a reading of singer John Mellencamps song The Real Life for his box set On the Rural Route 7609, in 2011, she narrated the Scholastic/Weston Woods film All the World. Woodward was reported to have engaged to author Gore Vidal prior to marrying Paul Newman
