1.
Pearl Bailey
Pearl Mae Bailey was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946 and she won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly. in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special, Cindy Eller and her rendition of Takes Two to Tango hit the top ten in 1952. She received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1976, Bailey was born in Southampton County in southeastern Virginia, to the Reverend Joseph James and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. She was raised in the Bloodfields neighborhood of Newport News and she made her stage-singing debut when she was 15 years old. Her brother Bill Bailey was beginning his own career as a tap dancer, Bailey won and was offered $35 a week to perform there for two weeks. However, the theatre closed during her engagement and she was not paid and she won a similar competition at Harlems famous Apollo Theater and decided to pursue a career in entertainment.
Bailey began by singing and dancing in Philadelphias black nightclubs in the 1930s, in 1941, during World War II, Bailey toured the country with the USO, performing for American troops. After the tour, she settled in New York and her solo successes as a nightclub performer were followed by acts with such entertainers as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. In 1946, Bailey made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman, for her performance, she won a Donaldson Award as the best Broadway newcomer. Bailey continued to tour and record albums in between her stage and screen performances, Baileys most important Broadway role was as Dolly Levi in the all-black version of Hello Dolly. Early in the medium, Bailey guest starred on CBSs Faye Emersons Wonderful Town. She hosted her own variety series on ABC, The Pearl Bailey Show and her support of female impersonator Lynne Carter led him to credit Bailey with launching his career. In 1967, Bailey and Cab Calloway headlined an all-black cast version of Hello, the touring version was so successful, producer David Merrick took it to Broadway where it played to sold-out houses and revitalized the long running musical.
Bailey was given a special Tony Award for her role and RCA Victor made an original cast album. That is the recording of the score to have an overture which was written especially for that recording. She sang the anthem prior to game 1 of the 1981 World Series between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers at Yankee Stadium. During the 1970s she had her own show, and she provided voices for animations such as Tubby the Tuba and Disneys The Fox
2.
Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis Branson Cocker is an English musician, singer-songwriter, voice actor, radio presenter and music video director. He initially found success as the frontman of the band Pulp, following Pulps hiatus, Cocker has led a successful solo career, and presents a BBC Radio 6 Music show called Jarvis Cockers Sunday Service. Cocker was born in Sheffield, growing up in the Intake area of the city and his father, Mac Cocker, a DJ and actor, left the family and moved to Sydney when Cocker was seven, and had no contact with Cocker or his sister, Saskia. Thereafter, both were brought up by their mother, who became a Conservative councillor. Cocker credits his upbringing, almost exclusively in female company, for his interest in how women think and what they have to say. He wrote a song about being abandoned by his father, working briefly as a butler, by the time of his sons visit, Mac Cocker had moved to a hippie commune in Darwin, Northern Territory. Cocker says he has forgiven his father for abandoning them, Cocker founded Arabacus Pulp at the age of 15 while he was still at The City School of Sheffield.
After numerous lineup changes, and shortening the name to Pulp, Cocker was Pulps frontman, and part of his trademark image was his glasses, which seemed to stay magically on his face no matter what antics he performed. This feat was achieved using a rubber band round the back of his glasses. Pulp released two albums to critical acclaim, though neither achieved the commercial success of Different Class. After releasing a greatest hits album, the band went on hiatus from 2003 to 2010, Cocker is renowned for his wit and observations of the cultural scene. He was a frequent guest on TV shows in the 1990s, in the series, he took a trip across the globe, meeting so-called outsider artists, people who create wacky and wonderful works of art, trying to understand what compelled them to do so. Cockers penchant for TV appearances was reflected in a parody of Common People which was featured on the comedy show Spitting Image in 1996. Cocker invaded the stage at the 1996 Brit Awards in a spur of the moment protest against Michael Jacksons performance, Jackson was performing his hit Earth Song while surrounded by children and a rabbi.
Cocker and his friend Peter Mansell performed a stage invasion in protest. Cocker was detained and interviewed by the police on suspicion of assault and he was accompanied by comedian Bob Mortimer, a former solicitor, who represented him in that capacity. He was subsequently released without charge, opinions from the press on Cockers actions were mixed. Melody Makers edition of 2 March 1996, for example, suggested Cocker should be knighted, regarding his actions, Cocker said, My actions were a form of protest at the way Michael Jackson sees himself as some kind of Christ-like figure with the power of healing
3.
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet and short story writer. Born in Boston, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and she was married to fellow poet Ted Hughes from 1956 until they separated in September 1962. They lived together in the United States and in England and had two children and Nicholas, Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, which was treated multiple times with electroconvulsive therapy. Plath is credited with advancing the genre of poetry and is best known for her two published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel. She wrote The Bell Jar, a novel published shortly before her death. In 1982, she won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems, Plath was born on October 27,1932, in Bostons Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, was a second-generation American of Austrian descent, Plaths father was an entomologist and a professor of biology at Boston University who authored a book about bumblebees.
On April 27,1935, Plaths brother Warren was born, Plaths mother, had grown up in Winthrop, and her maternal grandparents, the Schobers, had lived in a section of the town called Point Shirley, a location mentioned in Plaths poetry. While living in Winthrop, eight-year-old Plath published her first poem in the Boston Heralds childrens section, over the next few years, Plath published multiple poems in regional magazines and newspapers. At age 11, Plath began keeping a journal, in addition to writing, she showed early promise as an artist, winning an award for her paintings from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 1947. Even in her youth, Plath was ambitiously driven to succeed, Otto Plath died on November 5,1940, a week and a half after Plaths eighth birthday, of complications following the amputation of a foot due to untreated diabetes. He had become ill shortly after a friend died of lung cancer. Comparing the similarities between his friends symptoms and his own, Otto became convinced that he, had lung cancer, raised as a Unitarian Christian, Plath experienced a loss of faith after her fathers death and remained ambivalent about religion throughout her life.
Her father was buried in Winthrop Cemetery, Massachusetts, a visit to her fathers grave prompted Plath to write the poem Electra on Azalea Path. After Ottos death, Aurelia moved her children and her parents to 26 Elmwood Road, Massachusetts in 1942. In one of her last prose pieces, Plath commented that her first nine years sealed themselves off like a ship in a bottle—beautiful inaccessible, Plath attended Bradford Senior High School in Wellesley, graduating in 1950. Just after graduating high school, she had her first national publication in the Christian Science Monitor. In 1950, Plath attended Smith College and excelled academically and she wrote to her mother, The world is splitting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy watermelon
4.
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was an American singer and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts and her notable recordings include Dinah, Stormy Weather, Taking a Chance on Love, Heat Wave, Supper Time, Am I Blue. Cabin in the Sky, Im Coming Virginia, and her version of the spiritual His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Waters was the second African American, after Hattie McDaniel, to be nominated for an Academy Award. She was the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award and he played no role in raising Ethel. Soon after she was born, her mother married Norman Howard, Ethel used the surname Howard as a child, before reverting to her fathers name. She was raised in poverty by her grandmother, Sally Anderson, Waters never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. She said of her childhood, I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family, Waters grew tall, standing 5 9½ in her teens. According to the historian and archivist Rosetta Reitz, Waterss birth in the North.
Waters married at the age of 13, but her husband was abusive, on her 17th birthday, she attended a costume party at a nightclub on Juniper Street. She was persuaded to sing two songs and impressed the audience so much that she was offered work at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore. She recalled that she earned the rich sum of ten dollars a week, after her start in Baltimore, Waters toured on the black vaudeville circuit. As she described it later, I used to work from nine until unconscious, despite her early success, she fell on hard times and joined a carnival, traveling in freight cars along the carnival circuit and eventually reaching Chicago. She did not last long with them and soon headed south to Atlanta, Smith demanded that Waters not compete in singing blues opposite her. Waters conceded and sang ballads and popular songs, around 1919, Waters moved to Harlem and there became a celebrity performer in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Her first Harlem job was at Edmonds Cellar, a club with a black patronage and she acted in a blackface comedy, Hello 1919.
The jazz historian Rosetta Reitz pointed out that by the time Waters returned to Harlem in 1921, in 1921, Waters became the fifth black woman to make a record, for the tiny Cardinal Records. She joined Black Swan Records, where Fletcher Henderson was her accompanist, Waters commented that Henderson tended to perform in a more classical style than she preferred, often lacking the damn-it-to-hell bass
5.
Ali Smith
Ali Smith CBE FRSL is a Scottish author, playwright and journalist. Sebastian Barry has described her as Scotlands Nobel laureate-in-waiting, Smith was born in Inverness on 24 August 1962 to Ann and Donald Smith. Her parents were working-class and she was raised in a house in Inverness. From 1967 to 1974 she attended St. Josephs RC Primary school, went on to Inverness High School and she won the Universitys Bobby Aitken Memorial Prize for poetry in 1984. From 1985 to 1990 she attended Newham College, Cambridge studying for a PhD in American, during her time at Cambridge, she began writing plays and as a result did not complete her doctorate. Smith moved to Edinburgh from Cambridge in 1990 and worked as a lecturer of Scottish and she left the University in 1992 because she was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. She returned to Cambridge to recuperate, as a young woman, Smith held several part-time jobs including a waitress, lettuce-cleaner, tourist board assistant, receptionist at BBC Highland and advertising copywriter.
While studying for her PhD at Cambridge Smith wrote several plays which were staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Cambridge Footlights. In 1995 she published her first book, Free Love and Other Stories and she writes articles for The Guardian, The Scotsman, New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement. In 2009, she donated the short story Last to Oxfams Ox-Tales project and her story was published in the Fire collection. Free Love and Other Stories, awarded the Saltire First Book of the Year award, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The Accidental, shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, the Orange Prize for Fiction, girl Meets Boy, winner of Diva magazine readers’ choice Book of the Year, Sundial Scottish Arts Council Novel of the Year. There But For The, cited by the Guardian book review as one of the best novels of the year, shortlisted for the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize. How to Be Both, shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize, the 2015 Baileys Womens Prize for Fiction, and it was the winner of the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize and of the Novel Award in the 2014 Costa Book Awards.
Autumn Winter Shire, with images by Sarah Wood, short stories, the song was released on 5 March 2007, on the album Ballads of the Book. In 2008 Ali Smith produced The Book Lover a collection of her favourite writing including pieces from Sylvia Plath, Muriel Spark, Grace Paley and it includes work from lesser known writers like Joseph Roth and Clarice Lispector. In 2008 she contributed a short story Writ to an anthology supporting Save the Children, the anthology is entitled The Childrens Hours and was published by Arcadia Books. Foreign editions have been published in Portugal, China, much more than a work of literary criticism, it is a book about what art can do
6.
Delbert Mann
Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. was an American television and film director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty, from 1967 to 1971, he was president of the Directors Guild of America. In 2002, he received the DGAs honorary life member award, Mann was credited to have helped bring TV techniques to the film world. Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. was born on January 30,1920 in Lawrence, Kansas to Delbert Mann, Sr. and his father taught sociology at the University of Kansas from 1920 to 1926. In 1926, the Manns left Lawrence and moved to Pennsylvania, his father continued to teach sociology at the Scarritt College for Christian Workers. His mother was a schoolteacher, Mann was head of his high school drama club when he met Fred Coe, the future television producer and director, who was leading a church-sponsored acting society. Coe would figure prominently in Manns career as a director, Coe would serve as Manns mentor. Mann studied political science in Vanderbilt University and he graduated there in 1941 with a bachelors degree on political science.
During World War II, Mann served with the Army Air Corps as a B-24 bomber pilot, Mann attended the Yale School of Drama, where he earned a masters fine arts degree in directing. Mann went on to take a job at the Town Theatre. Mann was affiliated with the Town Theatre from 1947 to 1949, in 1949, at Coes invitation, Mann joined him in New York, where he became a stage manager and assistant director at NBC. Within months, he became a director of the anthology series. Between 1949 and 1955, Mann directed more than 100 live television dramas, but even after turning to films, he returned to television and directed productions for Playhouse 90, Ford Star Jubilee and other dramatic television anthology series. He directed more than two films for television from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, including Heidi, David Copperfield, Jane Eyre. Mann was married to Ann Caroline Gillespie from 1942 until her death by Alzheimers disease in 2001 and they had four children, David and Susan. Susan died in a car accident in 1976, on November 11,2007, Mann died of pneumonia at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
7.
Southern United States
The Southern United States, commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South, is a region of the United States of America. The South does not fully match the geographic south of the United States and New Mexico, which are geographically in the southern part of the country, are rarely considered part, while West Virginia, which separated from Virginia in 1863, commonly is. Some scholars have proposed definitions of the South that do not coincide neatly with state boundaries, while the states of Delaware and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia permitted slavery prior to the start of the Civil War, they remained with the Union. However, the United States Census Bureau puts them in the South, the South is defined as including the southeastern and south-central United States. The region is known for its culture and history, having developed its own customs, musical styles, and cuisines, the Southern ethnic heritage is diverse and includes strong European and some Native American components.
Since the late 1960s, black people have many offices in Southern states, especially in the coastal states of Virginia. Historically, the South relied heavily on agriculture, and was rural until after 1945. It has since become more industrialized and urban and has attracted national and international migrants, the American South is now among the fastest-growing areas in the United States. Houston is the largest city in the Southern United States, sociological research indicates that Southern collective identity stems from political and cultural distinctiveness from the rest of the United States. The region contains almost all of the Bible Belt, an area of high Protestant church attendance and predominantly conservative, studies have shown that Southerners are more conservative than non-Southerners in several areas, including religion, international relations and race relations. Apart from its climate, the experience in the South increasingly resembles the rest of the nation. The arrival of millions of Northerners and millions of Hispanics meant the introduction of cultural values, the process has worked both ways, with aspects of Southern culture spreading throughout a greater portion of the rest of the United States in a process termed Southernization.
The question of how to define the subregions in the South has been the focus of research for nearly a century, as defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Southern region of the United States includes sixteen states. As of 2010, an estimated 114,555,744 people, or thirty-seven percent of all U. S. residents, lived in the South, the nations most populous region. Other terms related to the South include, The Old South, the New South, usually including the South Atlantic States. The Solid South, region largely controlled by the Democratic Party from 1877 to 1964, before that, blacks were elected to national office and many to local office through the 1880s, Populist-Republican coalitions gained victories for Fusionist candidates for governors in the 1890s. Includes at least all the 11 former Confederate States, Southeastern United States, usually including the Carolinas, the Virginias, Kentucky, Alabama and Florida. The Deep South, various definitions, usually including Louisiana, Mississippi, occasionally, parts of adjoining states are included
8.
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, the legal system within Scotland has remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law.
Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages.
Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
9.
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is an American movie-oriented basic cable and satellite television network owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner. TCM is headquartered at the Techwood Campus in Atlanta, Georgias Midtown business district, the channels programming consisted mainly of featured classic theatrically released feature films from the Turner Entertainment film library – which comprises films from Warner Bros. However, TCM now has licensing deals with other Hollywood film studios as well as its Time Warner sister company, Warner Bros. and occasionally shows more recent films. The channel is available in United States, United Kingdom, Latin America, Spain, Nordic countries, Middle East and Asia-Pacific. In 1986, eight years before the launch of Turner Classic Movies, concerns over Turner Entertainments corporate debt load resulted in Turner selling the studio that October back to Kirk Kerkorian, from whom Turner had purchased the studio less than a year before. As part of the deal, Turner Entertainment retained ownership of MGMs library of films released up to May 9,1986, Turner Broadcasting System was split into two companies, Turner Broadcasting System and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and reincorporated as MGM/UA Communications Co.
The film library of Turner Entertainment would serve as the form of programming for TCM upon the networks launch. After the library was acquired, MGM/UA signed a deal with Turner to continue distributing the pre-May 1986 MGM and to begin distributing the pre-1950 Warner Bros. film libraries for video release. Turner Classic Movies debuted on April 14,1994, at 6,00 p. m. Eastern Time, the date and time were chosen for their historical significance as the exact centennial anniversary of the first public movie showing in New York City. The first movie broadcast on TCM was the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, at the time of its launch, TCM was available to approximately one million cable television subscribers. AMC had broadened its content to feature colorized and more recent films by 2002. In the early 90s AMC abandoned its format, leaving TCM as the only movie-oriented cable channel to devote its programming entirely to classic films without commercial interruption. In 1996, Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner, which besides placing Turner Classic Movies, in March 1999, MGM paid Warner Bros.
and gave up the home video rights to the MGM/UA films owned by Turner to Warner Home Video. In 2008, TCM won a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, in April 2010, Turner Classic Movies held the first TCM Classic Film Festival, an event – now held annually – at the Graumans Chinese Theater and the Graumans Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. In 2007, some of the films featured on TCM were made available for streaming on TCMs website. The networks programming season runs from February until the following March of each year when a retrospective of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated movies is shown, called 31 Days of Oscar. Turner Classic Movies presents many of its features in their original aspect ratio whenever possible – widescreen films broadcast on TCM are letterboxed on the standard definition feed. TCM regularly presents widescreen presentations of films not available in the format on any video release
